Hard Street (3)
Angel Obregon

DENVER (continuing)
It's him. I can't share a woman with
him. He's disgusting.

TROUTE
I knew you'd feel that way.

She moves away. He pulls her back.

TROUTE (continuing)
You're not sharing. He's totally
impotent. Isn't that obvious?

DENVER
Well, yes, but not here. In his house.
It's like it's part of the deal.

TROUTE
It is. Of course, it is.

DENVER
Jesus H. Fucking Christ. Alright,
we'll meet. What's good for you?,
Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday?


CONTINUED

38

CONTINUED

TROUTE
Let's go to your apartment right now.

DENVER
No. No woman who 's seen my apartment
has ever spoken to me again. Don't you
have a place?

TROUTE
No.

DENVER
I have a friend. He as two condos
cause he can't sell his old one. He
loaned me the keys. There's nothing
there but a bare floor.

TROUTE
I don't mind.

DENVER
We'll get a cab.

TROUTE
We'll take the Masseratti.

They climb into a silver birdcage Masseratti. She drives.

They peel out into the narrow street at 140 mph.

DENVER
This is overcomplicated.

CUT TO:

INT. A MAGNIFICENT BUT TOTALLY BARE APARTMENT (NIGHT)
THE SAME FLASHBACK AND IN BLACK AND WHITE

They're sitting on the floor naked. She still has her
boots and gloves on and is still clutching her copy of
VOGUE to prop up her breast.

They're surrounded by empty champagne bottles and plastic
cups, two half-eaten lobsters, a sleep mask, a vibrator
and a lot of wet towels.

TROUTE
How do you know this man, your friend?

CONTINUED

39

CONTINUED

DENVER
We used to be in advertising together.

TROUTE
It's a magnificent apartment

DENVER
His new one is even bigger.

TROUTE
Are you alright?

DENVER
Nothing that selling a script won't cure.

TROUTE
Be careful. He's going to get even for this.

DENVER
It was his idea, obviously.

TROUTE
So he can cheat you and you'll feel
too guilty to fight back.

DENVER
You're right, I'm not thinking.

He bends her backward across his lap, one hand on her
throat, the other in her crotch.

DENVER (continuing)
Time for your guitar lesson.

She rolls up her copy of VOGUE tightly, puts the end of
it in her mouth and bites down on it hard.

INT. HILDEBRANDT'S STUDY (DAY)---BLACK AND WHITE
ONE MORE FLASHBACK: DATE OVER JUNE1, 1999

He's completing the copyright application and stuffing
it in the envelope with the script.

HILDEBRANDT
I even tricked him into paying for the
copyright. Next, he'll come whining to
you, pleading with you to help him. You
can make him to anything you want.

CONTINUED
40

CONTINUED

TROUTE
I can anyway, he's pretty easy.

HILDEBRANDT
Obviously.

TROUTE
I hope he kills you.

HILDEBRANDT
I know, but he wont, I chose him very carefully.

CUT TO:

INT. DENVER'S FRIEND'S EMPTY APARTMENT (NIGHT)
BLACK AND WHITE. SAME FLASHBACK AS THE ONE
BEFORE LAST. CONFUSING, HUH?

TROUTE
Do you like me?

DENVER
Yes, I like you.

TROUTE
That could be said with more team spirit.

DENVER
My spirit is all used up.

TROUTE
Why dont you just look at me?

DENVER
Everytime I look up, there's you
staring at me with some kind of
pained expression. It feels like
you're asking me a question and
I dont know what it is.

TROUTE
You know.

DENVER
Why don't you just kill me?

TROUTE
Not on a first date.

CONTINUED
41

CONTINUED

She jumps him.

CUT TO:

INT. AGENT'S OFFICE (DAY)
FLASHBACK IN BLACK AND WHITE
DATE OVER: MARCH 1, 1999

THE AGENT is a middle aged woman built like
like a line backer.

AGENT
You want the short answer?

DENVER
Sure.

AGENT
He said no.

DENVER
What's the long answer?

AGENT
Try fucking a producer.

DENVER
Does that work?

AGENT
As well as anything else. It's a
gamble you have to take.

DENVER
No, I don't.

AGENT
You have nothing left to lose, but
your looks and you're losing those
already. In 5 years they'll be gone.

DENVER
Doesn't leave a great deal to be said.

Denver gets up to go.

AGENT
How's your daughter?

CONTINUED
42

CONTINUED

DENVER
Fine, much better since my wife
remarried. I see her sometimes,
she thinks I'm her uncle.

AGENT
Your wife's idea?, and you haven't told her.

DENVER
I don't want to confuse her. Children
need certainty.

AGENT
You ought to know.

DENVER
It's alright, the nerves are dead.
Can't you get me some TV work?

AGENT
I have standards to uphold!

DENVER
That's beautiful, it really is, but if
I'm not good enough for TV, why are
you my agent?

AGENT
You're a brilliant writer. Why don't you
write a love story, something I can sell?

DENVER
I'm a monster. I write about monsters.

AGENT
Then write about monsters in love.

DENVER
The one about the 3 dykes, the Great Dane
and the entire Harlem Globe Trotters team,
you want to hear that one?

AGENT
No, I don't. I'd have given you your
contract back long ago except I'm
scared shitless of you.

CONTINUED


43

CONTINUED

DENVER
You know I'd never hurt a woman.

AGENT
In that case...

She hands him back his contract.
He takes it and walksout.

The agent looks at the script, NOMONHAN. She's about to
dump it in the trash then picks it up and puts it on a
back shelf.

POV follows Denver. A PANHANDLER approaches him. Denver
hands him his contract. The man stares at it baffled.

CUT TO:

EXT. STREET (NIGHT)

Denver is tearing up the West Side Highway toward the
Henry Hudson. He runs five red lights in a row.

CUT TO:

INT. CAB (NIGHT)

TWO YUPPY GIRLS in jogging clothes are chattering away in
the back seat.

GIRL#1
And it was black tie and Meredith is
wearing this formal that fits like
clasped hands and takes 2 inches off
her 2nd dimension and adds them to her
3rd and she didn't have a tummy and
she said, no, I'm wearing a girdles
down to here. And I said, I never
thought of that. I wouldn't even know
where to buy something like that. I
think maybe Sak's would have them.

GIRL#2
If I could find one, I'd probably wear
it to the school reunion I'm going to
tomorrow afternoon. Most likely, I'd try
it on, throw it aside and later put it
in a yard sale. Bloomies has them

CONTINUED
44

CONTINUED

Lights and sirens go off behind them.

GIRL#1
What's that?

DENVER
The comic relief.

COPS
Move to the right!

Denver floors it and takes off around the corner,
but the cop car catches up with him and he stops.
A COP gets out and walks over. He looks like
Tom Selleck.

COP
I been chasing you for 3 blocks.

DENVER
I thought you just wanted me to move
to the right.

COP
License and registration.

Denver hands them over.

DENVER
Whad I do?

COP
Ran a red light. Why?, you know the
mayor? You know somebody? You want to
tell me a story? Go ahead, I'll
listen.

DENVER
All I can say is 'please'.

COP
No, that's not good enough. You got to
tell me a story!

And Denver does. Like in HUEY ( by O'Neill) or THE
STRONGER (by Ibsen) the listener is doing all the
acting.

CONTINUED

45

CONTINUED

DENVER
Did you ever hear of Nomonhan? That's
alright, no one else has either.
The decisive battle of WWII was fought
there in the summer of 1939. That's
right, before the invasion of Poland.

See, Hitler had already decided to
invade Russia and he wanted the
Japanese to open a 2nd front. That's
what the Axis Pact was about and it
made more sense then than it does now
cause the Japanese and the Russians
were traditional enemies and everyone
knew that they would fight again.

And Hitler's offer is considerable:
all the oil in Siberia.

So, the Japanese decide to test the
Russian strength at a village called
Nomonhan on the Mongol border and
decided that they just didn't want
anything to do with them.

Hitler doesn't notice. It's 1940,
time is getting short and he sends 2
little person, Ott and Stahmer, to
Tokyo telling them: Come back with the
treaty or don't come back. Well, they
come back with the Axis Pact, but
there are secret clauses to the treaty
wherein the Japanese take back every-
thing they've promised so, in fact,
they've committed themselves to
nothing.

Somehow, neither Ott nor Stahmer get
around to tell the Fuhrer that. He
thinks he has a mutual defense treaty
and he doesn't. June, 1941, he invades
Russia and the Japanese do nothing.
By December he is in deep shit then
the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and he
says: Now, I have them. I'm going to
honor the pact by declaring war on
America. Now, they have to reciprocate
by declaring war on Russia. Only they
don't.
CONTINUED
46

CONTINUED

DENVER (continuing)
So, instead of Russia fighting a 2
front war, Hitler is fighting America
and Russia at the same time and the
war was decided before it was even
fought, 1939 at the village of
Nomonhan.

THE COP is trying to follow all this, but doesn't have the
equipment. His computer is overloaded and about to blow

He stares at Denver for a long moment, then hands
him back his license and registration and walks
away a broken man.

DENVER
I didn't know it was that good a story.

GIRL#1
I didn't understand a word.

DENVER
Wait for the movie.

EXT. A DUST DESERT LIKE THE NEGEV (TWILIGHT)

It looks like an endless pile of human bodies collapsed
around and on top of each other in sexual exhaustion.

It looks impossibly ancient and newly made at the same
time: like the mountains of Greece, only this is totally
sterile, inhuman.

TITLE OVER:

MONGOLIA, 1939

A SCRAWNY DISHEVELED JAPANESE SOLDIER sticks his
head up into the frame.

JAP SOLDIER
Mongolia? You got to be kidding?
Who gives a shit about Mongolia?

INT. RALLY ROOM/TAXI YARD (NIGHT)

There's Aruba and JOE, a kill crazy ex-cop carrying a
Ruger mini-14 in a bull-pup stock. He's playing with
the ugliest cat anyone has ever seen.
CONTINUED

47

CONTINUED

Denver slams the meter down on the counter.

DENVER
That cat is looking better.

JOE
He's eating better. Roast beef.

Aruba comes over.

ARUBA
You're in early again. Maybe, you
don't need the money.

DENVER
I'm going home to write.

ARUBA
A drug dealer got taken off last
night.

DENVER
You care?

JOE
Yeah, he had protection and now you
act like you don't need the money.

DENVER
I'm going home.

ARUBA
Anything wrong with the car at all?

DENVER
No acceleration. The cops caught me
once.

ARUBA
Park it by the shop. I'll say you broke
down. Next time, keep it out longer.

DENVER
What about the down time?

Joe breaks out laughing.

ARUBA
You're learning.
CONTINUED

48

CONTINUED

He makes out the down time slip. Denver takes
it and leaves.

EXT. HOTEL MACLOWE (NIGHT)

Denver parks in the taxi line. There's a table covered
with white linen on the sidewalk by the front door. It
has a coffee urn and a sign:

TRIBUTE TO CAB DRIVERS DAY, FREE COFFEE AND CLIPBOARDS.

Denver takes a coffee, smiles his thanks at the waitress
and walks into the hotel. He's still dressed as a cab
driver.

He walks past a number of elegantly groomed,
well dressed people, none of whom seem surprised
to see him. He walks to the back of the hotel
and takes the elevator.

He gets off at the 5th floor and walks several
turns on the corridor to one of the analysis
rooms of the Kasparoff-Karpov match.

There are 3 huge TV screens. One shows Kasparoff
looking like an Armenian pimp. One show Karpov
looking like Artaud in Dreyer's Joan of Arc. The 3rd
shows the 4th game of the Worlds Chess championship.

The room is filled with intensely silent men. It's a
huge conference room and it is packed. The men are mostly
in their 30's, intelligent and successful looking. If the
Pentagon war room looked like this, you'd trust the
government.

Paul Benjamin, Grand Master, is standing in front of the
chessboard studying the position.

BENJAMIN
To tell the truth, I don't know what's
going on either.

ASA, who looks like a young Josef Goebbels, comes up
beside Denver.

ASA
This is science-fiction, let's go
upstairs and play some blitz.

CONTINUED
49

CONTINUED

DENVER
I've got to get back to work.

ASA
I saw you in a tournament in Jersey.

DENVER
It must have been a long time ago.

He leaves.

INT. EMPTY CONDO (FILM NOIR SHADOWS)

Denver is naked on the floor with Troute. A few amenities
have been added. There's now a sleeping bag on the floor,
a roll of paper towels, a bottle of baby oil.

TROUTE
You alright?

DENVER
Sure.

TROUTE
You're so far away.

DENVER
I'm paranoid schiz, what do you
expect?

TROUTE
You're beautiful like a racoon.

DENVER
A racoon?

TROUTE
They're adorable and then you notice
how long the claws are and you remember
that it is a wild animal and you dont
know what it might be capable of.

DENVER
I'm not violent.

TROUTE
You have a right to be. He copyrighted
the script in his name, you know that.

CONTINUED
50

CONTINUED

DENVER
Long as the movie gets made.

TROUTE
It's being made right now, in 6 days.

DENVER
6 days from now?

TROUTE
No, the whole shoot will take 6 days.

DENVER
You can't make a movie that fast.

TROUTE
TV you can. They've got one unit in
Israel shooting the battle scenes.

DENVER
Israel?

TROUTE
The Negev looks just like the
Mongolian desert and they have lots of
old Russian tanks.

DENVER
If he gets out of there alive, the
country has really lost its fizz.

TROUTE
Another 2nd unit is in Berlin shooting
exteriors. The interiors ar being shot
in Austria.

DENVER
Austria?

TROUTE
Non-union.

DENVER
A condition of the subsidies is that
it all be shot in Berlin.

TROUTE
Well, it will look like it.

CONTINUED
51

CONTINUED

DENVER
Get me the video. There's got to be
one.

TROUTE
He made a lot of changes. You won't
like them. I don't like them either.

DENVER
Just get me the video. I want to see
my movie. Can you do that?, will you
do that?

TROUTE
You're using me.

DENVER
What's wrong with that?

TROUTE
Alright, I'll do it.

DENVER
Don't knock yourself out.

TROUTE
When you use cliche's you're being
dismissive.

DENVER
Yeah.

TROUTE
I said I'd do it.

DENVER
No, you won't. You'll come back with
excuses and explanations of how hard
you tried but it was just impossible.

TROUTE
You sound like we were married. How
did I get into this?

DENVER
I seduced you. Now, I'm using you.

Troute laughs like the Wicked Queen in Snow White.

CONTINUED
52

CONTINUED

TROUTE
I'll do it. I'll do it. Come on, you
can drive me to the airport.

CUT TO:

INT. SPIDER PORSHE (DAY)

But Troute is driving, one hand on the wheel,
one hand on DENVER's cock.

TROUTE
Feel like a gigolo?

DENVER
I am so this is what it feels like,
but something seems left out.

TROUTE
How does it feel?

DENVER
Like I'm going to have to hit someone
very soon or lose respect for myself.

TROUTE
I'm not promising anything. What if
he won't give me the videotape?

DENVER
Steal it.

TROUTE
What if I can't?

DENVER
No mas pinga.

TROUTE
Hmm. That's a reason I can accept.
I'll bring you the tape.

They wheel into the BOAC terminal at Kennedy. She jumps
out carrying just a large shoulder bag.

DENVER
What do I do with the keys?

CONTINUED

53

CONTINUED

TROUTE
Keep them. I'm coming in on the
Concorde. 9:30 AM on Sunday. Meet me.

She smiles and waves and disappears into the terminal.

Denver starts to drive away then sees a hippie looking
girl (Boston Red Socks T-shirt, backpack with peace signs
all over it, all of that) waiting for the bus.

He pulls up and they look at each other. Then she smiles.

Then he smiles. Suddenly, they're both laughing.

She gets in and they drive off.

CUT TO:

EXT. TAXI YARD (NIGHT)

Denver is parking the Porshe. Aruba runs out.

ARUBA
Don't park that there.

Denver gets out.

ARUBA (continued)
That your car?

DENVER
Well, sort of.

ARUBA
You ever hear from that producer I
gave the script to?

DENVER
Hildebrandt?, yeah, he stole it.

ARUBA
I'm sorry.

DENVER
No, you're not. You knew something was
wrong. If I wanted him to have it, he
would have just asked me for it.

CONTINUED

54

CONTINUED

ARUBA
I didn't know.

DENVER
Sure, you did. He must have promised
you something, did he deliver?

ARUBA
No.

They enter the trailer.

DENVER
Anyway, you acted predictably and
that's all anyone can ask.

ARUBA
Stop that librarian jazz, I said I was
sorry.

DENVER
You did what I wanted you to. He had to think
he was stealing it. That's the only way he'd
think it was valuable. Otherwise, the movie
wouldn't get made.

ARUBA
You're trying to cheer me up.

DENVER
No, I'm trying to drive you crazy.

Aruba hands him a meter and the keys.

ARUBA
Pay now or later?

DENVER
You know, suddenly, I don't feel like working.

Aruba hands the meter back.

ARUBA
Keep it, the shift is free.

Denver takes it, walks out and find the car, he gets in
and drives off. A fare gets in immediately.

CUT TO:

55

INT> BOAC TERMINAL AT KENNEDY (MORNING)

Troute runs out, goofily romantic and acting out a
pantomime of a perfume ad. Denver is waiting. She hands
him the videotape then throws her arms around his neck
and kisses him passionately.

Denver bears it all very patiently. He looks over her
shoulder at the cassette and smiles.

CUT TO:

INT. THE ULTIMATE GREEK AFTER HOURS JOINT (DEEP NIGHT)

The faces are out of a Sergei Leone western. Denver
is watching a tank battle on TV. As usual the samurai
spirit almost prevails, but not quite.

The Japanese are doing a banzai charge against the
Russian tanks with Molotov cocktails. This works pretty
well at first because General Zhukov sent the tanks in
without infantry support. Besides which, these are T-34's
with gasoline engines and they burn easy.

Then the Russians bring up all the artillery in the
world and the battle turns into a TV commercial for
insecticide.

There's a close up of two very Russian looking generals
watching the battle, but they're speaking Yiddish. this
is Israel.

COSTAS
This has got to be the worst movie
I've ever seen. Even the home movies
with the cats in sunbonnets, they're
in focus most of the time.

DENVER
He had the wrong lenses. There's no
depth of field. And no assistant
cameraman to pull focus.

COSTAS

Copyright © 1999 Angel Obregon
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"