White Noise (2022) Movie Script

[man] Okay, roll film.
[machine powering up, whirring]
Don't think of a car crash in a movie
as a violent act.
No, these collisions
are part of a long tradition
of American optimism.
A reaffirmation
of traditional values and beliefs.
A celebration.
Think of these crashes
like you would Thanksgiving
and the Fourth of July.
On these days, we don't mourn the dead
or rejoice in miracles.
No, these are days of secular optimism.
Of self-celebration.
Each crash is meant to be
better than the last.
There's a constant upgrading
of tools, skills, a meeting of challenges.
An American film director says,
"I want this flatbed truck
to do a double mid-air somersault
that produces an orange ball of fire
in a 36-foot diameter."
The movie breaks away
from complicated human passions
to show us something elemental,
something loud and fiery and head-on.
Watch any car crash in any American movie.
It is a high-spirited moment,
like old-fashioned stunt flying
or walking on wings.
The people who stage these crashes
are able to capture
a light-heartedness, a carefree enjoyment
that car crashes in foreign movies
can never approach.
You might say, "But what about
all that blood and glass?"
"The screeching rubber,
the crushed bodies,
the severed limbs?"
"What kind of optimism is this?"
Look past the violence, I say.
There is a wonderful brimming spirit
of innocence and fun.
[female volunteer] Welcome, freshmen!
Any questions, ask me.
Welcome. Come on, freshmen.
Hey, you guys! Welcome!
-We've got to go. We're double-parked.
-Do not rush me.
[father 1] Traffic is bad right now.
You're not planning on helping me move in?
I got all this stuff.
-[father 2] Hey, buddy!
-We've got this.
I can't believe that you said that
to my roommate.
You don't even know him.
Don't tell him my own business.
You've tied this three times already.
-It's the same every time.
-I didn't like the way it looked.
[car horn honks]
[man] Let's enjoy these aimless days
while we can.
-You should have been there.
-Where?
[man] It's the day of the station wagons.
Did I miss it again?
You're supposed to remind me.
[man] It was a brilliant event.
They stretched all the way
past the music library
and onto the interstate.
You know I need reminding, Jack.
-They'll be back next year.
-I hope so.
I realized it was 1968
I started the Hitler Studies program.
I've witnessed this event now
for 16 years.
I don't care about the station wagons.
I wanted to see the people.
What are they like this year?
The women wear plaid skirts
and cable-knit sweaters.
I knew it.
And the men are in hacking jackets.
What is a hacking jacket?
They've grown comfortable
with their money.
They believe that they're entitled to it.
They glow a little.
I have trouble imagining death
at that income level.
Maybe there's no death as we know it,
just documents changing hands.
-How do astronauts float?
-They're lighter than air.
There is no air. They can't be lighter
than something that isn't there.
-Not that we don't have a station wagon.
-It's small and maroon.
-I thought space was cold.
-[Jack] It has a rusted door.
-Space?
-Our station wagon.
It's called the sun's corolla.
We saw it on the Weather Network.
-I thought Corolla was a car.
-Everything's a car.
Where's Wilder?
-Wilder?
-[Jack groans]
-Wilder, are you hungry?
-[girl 1] How cold is space?
You still playing the fellow in prison?
-I think I've got him cornered.
-Who did he kill?
-He was under pressure.
-How many did he shoot?
-Five.
-Five people?
Not counting the state trooper
which was later.
This is not the lunch
I planned for myself.
I was thinking yoghurt and wheat germ.
-Where have we heard that before?
-[girl 1] Probably right here.
You keep buying stuff you never eat.
Steffie, Capricorn
Babette thinks if she keeps buying it,
she'll have to eat it.
We love her habits.
If anybody here has to show discipline
in matters of diet, it's me.
in your favor into profitable enterprise.
-[girl 2] What's beeping?
-Smoke alarm.
-Is there a fire?
-That or the battery's dead.
Jack, Virgo,
you've been swimming against the tide
Most fires in buildings start
because of faulty wiring.
Phrase you can't hang around
without hearing.
-You'll add to your possessions.
-I'll replace them.
He tries not to listen
although he secretly wants to.
It's like love slash hate.
Did he know who he was killing
or were they strangers?
-[boy] Total strangers.
-Was he hearing voices?
-[boy] On TV, yeah.
-What did they say?
[boy] They told him to go down
in history, but I don't think he will.
-Iron City is too small of a media market.
-Okay!
I'm going to take a shower
and then we'll go to the mall
and then I'll teach my posture class.
-[Steffie] I didn't know we had Pringles.
-Didn't she already shower today?
Can I have one? No, actually two.
[boy] I'm going to give you three
because you'll ask for more later.
[Steffie] Maybe I won't.
[objects clatter]
[man on TV] Start your good breakfast
with Eggo waffles from Kellogg's
[girl] Dylar.
-What do you want to do?
-What do you want to do?
I want whatever's best for you.
What's best for me is to please you.
But you please me
by letting me please you.
Is it wrong for the man
to be considerate to his partner?
I'm your partner
when we're playing tennis,
which we ought to start doing again,
by the way.
Otherwise, I'm your wife.
-Do you want me to read to you?
-[sighs]
First rate.
[Jack groans]
Please don't choose anything that has
men inside women or men entering women.
-Got it.
-We're not lobbies or elevators.
"I wanted him inside me."
As if he could crawl completely in,
sign the register,
sleep, eat, and so forth.
I don't care what these people do as long
as they don't enter or get entered.
Life is good, Jack.
[Jack] What brings this on?
I just feel it has to be said.
I want to die first.
[Jack] You sound almost eager.
Life would feel
unbearably sad and lonely without you.
Especially if the children
were grown up and living elsewhere.
Right now we're safe.
As long as the children are here.
They need us.
It's great having these kids around
but once they get big and scattered,
I want to go first.
No, Jack.
Your death would leave
an abyss in my life.
I'd be left talking to chairs and pillows.
Your death would be more than an abyss.
-What's more than an abyss?
-A yawning gulf.
Your death would be a profound depth
-A void.
-Don't be an ass.
Your death would leave a bigger hole
in my life than mine would in yours.
You'll be fine.
You'll travel
and live a new and exciting life.
I'll just sit in that chair in the suit
that I wore to your funeral forever.
You're wrong.
And you don't really want to die first.
You don't want to be alone,
but you don't want to die
more than you don't want to be alone.
I hope we both live forever.
Doddering, toothless,
liver-spotted, hallucinating.
Who decides these things?
[both chuckle]
Who's out there?
Who are you?
[mysterious instrumental music playing]
[chanting inGerman]
[cheering]
[announcer speaking German]
[projector whirring]
[crowd cheering]
[in English] When people
are helpless and scared,
they're drawn to magical figures.
Mythic figures.
Epic men
who intimidate and darkly loom.
Could you talk about
the Stauffenberg July 20 plot
to kill Hitler?
All plots move deathward.
This is the nature of plots.
Political plots,
terrorist plots, lovers' plots.
[Babette] Way, way up
[Jack] Narrative plots.
Up to the sky
Plots that are a part of children's games.
And now make fists
We edge nearer to death
every time we plot.
Left foot, left arm, and what was that?
It's like a contract all must sign.
Perfect!
The plotters,
as well as the targets of the plot.
-Let me see.
-[interviewer speaking on TV]
[girl 2] Give it back.
[man on TV] 45 years of age,
brown hair, dark eyes.
-Six feet tall, 165 pounds
-[mumbles]
-A most fascinating phenomenon.
-[man] Study my tongue.
"Tomorrow is Tuesday."
Morgen ist Dienstag.
Morgen ist Dienstag.
-Morgen
-Morgen
-ist
-ist
-Dienstag.
-Dienstag.
-[casually] Morgen ist Dienstag.
-Morgen ist Dienstag.
[in English] "Tomorrow is Tuesday."
Tomorrow is not Tuesday.
Tomorrow is Wednesday.
But, "Tomorrow is Tuesday."
"Tomorrow is Tues--" Well--
"I am eating potato salad."
Ich esse Kartoffelsalat.
-Ich
-Ich
-Ich hef
-esse Ich esse
Ich heffe Forto-- Forto salad.
-Fortofu salad.
-Ich esse Kartoffelsalat.
Ich heffe Ich heffe Fortofu--
Ich esse Kartoffelsalat.
-Iche Iche
-Ich
-Ich.
-Ich.
[Jack, in English] I'd appreciate it
if you didn't mention
these lessons to anyone.
You probably don't know,
but I may be
one of the most prominent figures
in Hitler Studies in North America.
I'm J.A.K. Gladney.
I I teach Advanced Nazism
over at the College-on-the-Hill.
So as you can understand,
it's a great source of embarrassment
for me that I don't speak German.
Maybe it explains the dark glasses, but
best not to analyze it.
As you can probably see,
something happens between the back
of my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
After all, I require my students to take
a minimum of one year of German.
The urgency is the Hitler conference.
It's coming here
to the College-on-the-Hill in the spring,
and scholars from all over Germany
will be in attendance.
Do you think you can get me up to speed
on the basics of the language by then?
I also teach sailing.
[PA chimes]
[announcer] Kleenex Softique,
your truck's blocking the entrance.
This is exciting.
[man] We have these in New York.
The oven aroma of bread
combined with the sight
of a blood-stained man
pounding strips of living veal
is very exciting.
Murray Suskind, this is my wife, Babette.
Murray came to the college this year
from New York.
-Oh.
-His specialty is living icons.
You have a very impressive husband,
Mrs. Gladney.
Nobody in any university in this country
can so much as utter a word about Hitler
without a nod in J.A.K.'s direction,
literally or metaphorically.
-He's Jack in real life.
-Hitler is now Gladney's Hitler.
I marvel at what you've done with the man.
I want to do the same with Elvis.
-[Steffie] My dirt.
-[girl 2] Dirt's dirt.
Who are these children? Yours?
Well, there's Denise, of course
[boy] "Hot" and "cold" are words.
We have to use words
-We need more Glass Plus.
-[boy] We can't just grunt.
That's Heinrich
there are more people dead today
than in the rest of world history.
-[Jack] Steffie.
-We have to boil our water
[Jack] Mine from wives one and three.
-There's Denise
-On Neptune it rains diamonds.
Babette's from husband two.
Wilder is ours. We're each other's fourth.
[Heinrich] The French eat glands.
Family is the cradle
of the world's misinformation.
There must be something in family life
that generates factual error.
That's because facts threaten
our happiness and security.
It's the over-closeness,
the noise and the heat of being.
[announcer] Tegrin. Denorex. Selsun Blue.
[Murray] Your wife's hair
is a living wonder.
[Jack] Yes, it is.
-She has important hair.
-I think I know what you mean.
-I hope you appreciate that woman.
-Absolutely.
-A woman like that doesn't just happen.
-I know it.
[announcer] Dristan Ultra. Dristan Ultra.
That stuff causes cancer
in laboratory animals if you didn't know.
You wanted me to chew sugarless gum.
It was your idea.
There was no warning on the pack then.
Then they put a warning,
which I don't believe you didn't see.
Either I chew gum
with sugar and artificial coloring
or sugarless gum
that's harmful to rats. It's up to you.
Don't chew at all. Ever think of that?
Denise.
Steffie.
-Either I chew gum or I smoke.
-[Denise] Why not do both?
That's what you want, isn't it?
We all get to do what we want.
Unless we're not allowed to
because of our age and height.
You're making a fuss over nothing.
I guess you're right.
Never mind. Just a warning on the pack.
-Just rats.
-Just useless rodents.
Plus, I'd like to believe
she only chews two pieces a day,
the way she forgets things.
What do I forget?
It's all right. Never mind.
-What do I forget?
-[clattering]
[announcer] Sunny Delight. Sunny Delight.
-[shopper] Leon! Parsley!
-79!
Let me help you up.
[announcer] Uh, Cheerios spill in aisle 6.
Sorry, aisle 4.
You stole my visor.
Hey, give it
[announcer] Sorry. Lucky Charms.
Tell Denise you're sorry.
Maybe later. Remind me.
She's a great girl
and she wants to be your older sister.
And your friend, if you let her.
I don't know about "friend."
She's a little bossy.
Aside from telling her you're sorry,
be sure to give her back her book.
It's a medical journal.
She reads it all the time. It's weird.
-At least she reads something.
-It's lists of drugs and medicines.
-You want to know why she reads it?
-Why?
She's trying to find out
the side-effects
of the stuff that Babette uses.
What does Baba use?
Don't ask me, ask Denise.
-How do you know she uses anything?
-Ask Denise.
-Why don't I ask Baba?
-Ask Baba.
[pleasant music playing]
[Babette] I know I forget things,
but I didn't know it was so obvious.
[Jack] It isn't.
[Babette] I dial a number
and forget who I'm calling.
I go to the store
and I forget what to buy.
[Jack] We all forget.
[Babette] Sometimes
I call Steffie "Denise."
I forget where I've parked the car.
I don't care what the girls say.
It can't be the gum I chew.
-That's too far-fetched.
-Maybe it's something else.
[Babette] What do you mean?
[Jack] Maybe you're taking something
besides chewing gum.
-[Babette] Where did you get that idea?
-I got it from Steffie.
-[Babette] Where did Steffie get it from?
-Denise.
What does Denise,
through Steffie, say that I'm taking?
I wanted to ask you
before I asked her.
We always tell each other everything.
I am not taking anything
that would affect my memory, Jack.
These are the days
that I want to remember.
[Jack] Everybody forgets things.
There's a lot going on.
My life is either/or.
Either I chew regular gum
or I chew sugarless gum.
Either I chew gum or I smoke.
Either I smoke or I gain weight.
Either I gain weight
or I run up the stadium steps.
Sounds like a boring life.
I hope it lasts forever.
-Do you drink coffee yet?
-No.
Baba likes a cup
when she gets back from class.
Her class is demanding.
-Coffee relaxes her.
-[car door closes]
That's why it's dangerous.
-Why is it dangerous?
-Whatever relaxes you is dangerous.
[enunciating words in German]
[in English] What are we
going to do about Baba?
She can't remember anything
with those pills she takes.
We don't know for sure
she's taking something.
I saw the empty bottle in the trash
under the kitchen sink.
-How do you know it was hers?
-I saw her throw it out.
It had the name of the medication.
-Dylar.
-Dylar?
"One every three days,"
which sounds like it's dangerous
or habit-forming or whatever.
-What does your book say about Dylar?
-That's just it.
It's not in there. I spent hours.
There are four indexes.
It must be recently marketed
or go by different names.
-Do you want me to doublecheck?
-No, I looked.
If we could get a pill,
maybe you could get it analyzed?
I I don't want to make too much of this.
-We could call her doctor?
-Everybody takes medication.
-Everybody forgets things occasionally.
-Not like my mother.
-I forget things all the time.
-What do you take?
Uh, blood-pressure pills,
stress pills, allergy pills
Eyedrops, aspirin.
I looked in your medicine cabinet.
I thought there might be a new bottle.
-And no Dylar?
-No.
Well, maybe she's done taking it.
Why don't you wanna believe
something might be wrong?
We have to allow each other
to have our secrets, don't you think?
She hides books on the occult
in the attic.
I found them.
Also, I don't think
she went to her posture class tonight.
[Jack] Why do you say that?
She went right
instead of left at the stop sign.
-Maybe she took the scenic route.
-That's left too.
Come on, hurry up. Plane crash footage.
[reporter on TV] a maneuver called
a reverse Cuban Eight
[Heinrich] It was a jet trainer
in an air show in New Zealand.
They'll show it again.
[reporter on TV] did not have
enough room to make.
[reporter] The plane came down
in a field next to the Ball corporation
None of the thousands of spectators
have been allowed in that area
-Let's watch a sitcom or something.
-[kids] No!
[reporter] it appears
the F-86 was coming around,
but not far enough or quickly enough.
-[crashes]
-[siren wailing]
[breathing heavily]
[clicks]
[softly] Baba?
[clicks]
[clicks]
[clicking]
[chair creaking]
[urinating]
[toilet flushing]
[eerie music playing]
-[Jack wheezing]
-[music stops]
[sighs]
[breathes heavily]
[inhales deeply]
I felt like I was falling through myself.
Like a heart-stopping plunge.
Someone was here with us. Something.
[professor] It's natural.
It's normal that decent,
well-meaning people would find themselves
intrigued by catastrophe
when they see it on TV.
[professor 2]
We're suffering from brain fade.
We need an occasional catastrophe
to break up
the incessant bombardment of information.
The flow's constant.
It's words, pictures, numbers
Only catastrophe gets our attention.
We want them.
This is where California comes in.
Mud slides, brush fires
If I were to get you a pill
A pill? Like a pill?
Yes, a pill.
-Could you analyze it?
-Jack.
-Why do you ask me?
-You're brilliant.
We're all brilliant.
Isn't that the understanding around here?
You call me brilliant.
I call you brilliant.
-We call Alfonse brilliant.
-California deserves whatever it gets.
Californians invented
the concept of lifestyle.
This alone warrants their doom.
-Jack
-No one calls me brilliant.
They call me shrewd.
They say I latched onto something big
You're saying it's more or less universal
to be fascinated by TV disasters.
-Where's the pill?
-I have to find it.
[professor] whether to feel good or bad
that my experience is widely shared.
Jack, I I need your help
establishing an Elvis Presley
power base in the department.
What does Alfonse say?
He seems to feel
Cotsakis has established a prior right.
Cotsakis was in Memphis
when the King died.
He interviewed members of his entourage
Did you take a crap
in a toilet bowl that had no seat?
A great and funky men's room
To Cotsakis, Elvis is just Elvis.
But for me, Elvis is my Hitler.
How can I help?
If you could drop by
on my lecture this afternoon,
lend a note of consequence
to the proceedings.
Your prestige, your physical person.
It would mean a lot.
Pissing in the snow
is also a fetish for me.
These are the things we don't teach.
Bowls with no seats, pissing in sinks,
the culture of public toilets.
I've pissed in sinks
all through the American West.
I've slipped across the border
to piss in sinks in Manitoba and Alberta.
Ever had a woman peel flaking skin from
your back after a few days at the beach?
Cocoa Beach, Florida. It was tremendous.
Second or third greatest experience
of my life.
-Was she naked?
-To the waist.
[chewing] From which direction?
[train engine chugging]
[singing] Stop, look and listen, baby
That's my philosophy
["Rubberneckin'" by Elvis Presley
playing on radio]
[tires screeching]
[Murray] Did his mother know
that Elvis would die young?
She talked about assassins.
She talked about "the life."
The life of a star
of this type and magnitude.
Isn't this life structured
to cut you down early?
This is the point, isn't it?
There are rules, guidelines.
[students murmuring]
Now, I have a feeling about mothers.
Mothers really do know.
The folklore is correct.
[Jack] Hitler adored his mother.
He was the first
of Klara's children to survive infancy.
Elvis and Gladys liked to nuzzle and pet.
They slept in the same bed until
he began to approach physical maturity.
They talked baby talk to each other.
Hitler was a lazy kid.
His report card
was full of unsatisfactorys.
Gladys worried about his sleepwalking.
She lashed out at any kid
who would bully him.
Gladys walked Elvis
to school and back every day.
-She defended him in street rumbles.
-But Klara loved him.
Spoiled him.
Gave him the attention
his father failed to give him.
Elvis confided in Gladys. He brought
his girlfriends around to meet her.
Hitler wrote a poem to his mother.
He took piano lessons,
made sketches of museums and villas.
When Elvis went into the army,
Gladys became ill and depressed.
Hitler is what we call a "mama's boy."
Elvis could hardly bear
to let Gladys out of his sight.
As her condition grew worse,
he kept vigil at the hospital.
When his mother became severely ill,
Hitler put a bed in the kitchen
to be closer to her.
Elvis fell apart when Gladys died.
He cooked and cleaned,
he wept at the grave.
-Fondled and nuzzled her in the casket.
-Fell into depression and self-pity.
He talked their baby talk.
For the rest of his life,
Hitler couldn't bear
Gladys's death caused
a fundamental shift
died near a Christmas tree.
-King's world view.
-Years later
Elvis began to withdraw
deep remoteness
into a state of his own dying.
Hitler put a portrait of his mother
in his quarters at Obersalzberg.
He began to hear
a buzzing in his left ear.
Elvis fulfilled the terms of his contract.
Excess,
deterioration, self-destructiveness,
grotesque behavior,
a physical bloating and a series
of insults to the brain, self-delivered.
His place in legend is secure.
He bought off the skeptics
by dying early, horribly, unnecessarily.
No one could deny him now.
His mother probably saw it all,
as on a 19-inch screen,
years before her own death.
[Jack] Picture Hitler,
near the end,
trapped in his Fhrerbunker,
beneath the burning city.
He looks back
to the early days of his power,
when crowds came.
Mobs of people overrunning the courtyard,
singing patriotic songs,
painting swastikas on the walls,
on the flanks of farm animals.
Crowds came to his mountain villa.
Crowds came to hear him speak.
Crowds erotically charged,
-the masses he once called his only bride.
-[crowd clamoring faintly]
Crowds came to be hypnotized by the voice,
the party anthems,
the torchlight parades. But wait!
How familiar this all seems to us.
How close to ordinary.
Crowds come, get worked up,
touch and press,
people eager to be transported.
Isn't this ordinary?
We all know this.
-We've been part of those crowds.
-[crowd squealing]
But there must have been something
different about these crowds. What was it?
[sighs]
Let me whisper the terrible word
from the Old English,
from the Old German,
from the Old Norse.
[grunts]
[whispering] Death.
Death.
These crowds were assembled
in the name of death.
They were there
to attend tributes to the dead.
But not the already dead.
The future dead.
The living dead amongst us.
Processions, songs, speeches,
dialogues with the dead,
recitations of the names of the dead.
They were there
to see pyres and flaming wheels,
thousands of flags dipped in salute,
thousands of uniformed mourners!
There were ranks and squadrons,
elaborate backdrops,
blood banners and black dress uniforms.
Crowds came to form a shield
against their own dying.
To become a crowd is to keep out death.
To break off from the crowd
is to risk death as an individual,
-to face dying alone!
-[tires screeching]
[panting]
Crowds came for this reason
above all others.
They were there to be a crowd.
[screeching, grinding]
[indistinct praise]
[screeching]
[indistinct praise continues]
[sinister music playing]
[siren wailing in distance]
[Jack] May the days be aimless.
Let the seasons drift.
Do not advance the action
according to a plan.
[thuds]
[breathing heavily]
[woman] Decongestant, antihistamine,
cough suppressants, pain reliever.
[speaking]
[siren wailing indistance]
Hey. What do you see out there?
The radio said a tank car derailed,
but I don't think it derailed.
It got rammed
and something punched a hole in it.
There's smoke,
I don't like the looks of it.
What does it look like?
[siren wailing]
-[Jack] You see fire engines or
-They're all over the place.
It looks to me like
they're not getting too close.
It must be pretty toxic
or pretty explosive stuff.
-It won't come this way.
-How do you know?
It just won't.
The point is, you shouldn't be standing
on ledges. It worries Baba.
You think if you tell me it worries her,
I'll feel guilty and not do it.
But if you tell me it worries you,
I'll do it all the time.
Shut the window.
Did you finish your homework?
Can you see the feathery plume
from the attic?
-It's not a plume.
-Will we have to leave?
-Of course not.
-How do you know?
I just know.
What about that leak at school
and we had to evacuate?
That was inside. This is outside.
They're using leaf blowers
to blow stuff onto the spill.
What kind of stuff?
I don't know, to make the spill harmless.
-Doesn't explain what they're doing.
-Keeping it from getting bigger.
-When do we eat?
-[Steffie] Dunno.
If it gets bigger, it'll get here
with or without a wind.
-[Jack] It won't.
-How do you know?
Because it won't!
The radio calls it a feathery plume,
but it's not.
-That's what Dad says.
-[Denise] What is it?
Like a shapeless, growing thing.
A dark, black breathing thing of smoke.
-Why do they call it a plume?
-Air time is valuable
[Denise] Have they said
what chemical it is?
It's called Nyodene Derivative
or Nyodene D.
We saw it in a movie
in school on toxic waste.
-[Jack] What does it cause?
-Those videotaped rats?
It wasn't sure what it does to humans.
Mainly it was rats growing urgent lumps.
That's what the movie said.
What does the radio say?
Skin irritation and sweaty palms.
-Sweaty palms in rats?
-The radio, not the movie.
They updated it to nausea,
vomiting, shortness of breath.
-[Steffie] The radio or the movie?
-Both.
-It won't come this way.
-How do you know?
Because it won't.
It's calm and still today.
Wind at this time of year,
it blows that way, not this way.
-What if it blows this way?
-It won't.
-What if just this one time?
-Why should it?
-They closed part of the interstate.
-They would do that.
-[both] Why?
-Why would they?
They just would.
It's a sensible precaution.
-It's a way to facilitate movement
-Hold on, Helen. Jack is here.
The Stovers say the spill
from the tank car was 35,000 gallons.
Her girls were complaining
of sweaty palms.
There's been a correction.
They ought to be throwing up.
Is anyone nauseous?
-Okay, okay. Thanks, Helen.
-[helicopter whirring]
Stay in touch. The Stovers spoke directly
with the weather center outside Glassboro.
They're not calling it
a feathery plume anymore.
What are they calling it?
A black billowing cloud.
That's more accurate. They're coming
to grips with the thing. It's good.
[garbage disposal crackles]
It's expected that some sort of air mass
may be moving down from Canada.
There's always an air mass
moving down from Canada.
That's true.
There's nothing new in that.
Since Canada is to the north,
if the billowing cloud is blown due south,
it'll miss us by a comfortable margin.
When do we eat?
Maybe we ought to be more concerned
about the cloud.
-I know we don't want to scare the kids
-Nothing is going to happen.
I know nothing's going to happen,
you know nothing's going to happen,
but we ought to think about it
just in case.
I mean, when do we know when this is real?
These things happen to people
who live in exposed areas.
Society is set up, I mean sadly,
in such a way
that it's the poor and uneducated
who suffer the main impact
of natural and man-made disasters.
It is sad.
Did you ever see a college professor
rowing a boat down his own street
in one of those TV floods?
-Why do you want dinner so early?
-I missed lunch.
-Shall I do some chili-fried chicken?
-First rate!
-Where's Wilder?
-I don't know.
-I ironed your gown.
-Thank you.
-Did you pay the phone bill?
-I can't find it.
I paid the gas and electricity.
Let's think about the cloud
a little bit, okay?
What if it's dangerous?
Everything in train tank cars
is dangerous.
But the effects are long-range.
-So we die later?
-We don't die. Not from this.
All we have to do
is stay out of the way.
Let's be sure to keep it
in the back of our mind.
Here's Wilder.
Baba's making chili-fried chicken.
[Heinrich] They're calling it
a black billowing cloud.
-That's what the Stovers said. It's good.
-Why is that good?
I told your sister they're looking
the thing more squarely in the eye.
Can you spot me?
[siren wailing indistance]
Okay.
[grunts]
Well, it's still hanging there.
Looks rooted to the spot.
Make sure Wilder
doesn't get into that insulation.
So you don't think it'll come this way?
I can tell
you know something I don't know.
Think it'll come this way or not?
You want me to say it won't come this way,
then you'll attack with your data.
-Come here, buddy.
-What'd they say?
It doesn't cause nausea, vomiting,
shortness of breath,
like they said before.
What does it cause?
Heart palpitations and dj vu.
Dj vu? Come on.
It affects the false part
of the human brain.
-I don't believe that.
-That's not all.
They're not calling it
the black billowing cloud anymore.
What are they calling it?
The airborne toxic event.
Names are not important.
The important thing is location.
It's there. We're here. Wilder!
A large air mass is
moving down from Canada.
-We knew that.
-Doesn't mean it's not important!
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Depends.
The weather's about to change.
[cutlery clinking]
Aren't we eating a little early tonight?
-What do you call early?
-'Cause we wanna get it out of the way?
What do we wanna get out of the way?
-In case something happens.
-Like what?
This is delicious, Baba.
You're not eating, honey.
[retches]
-[Babette] Denise, honey, are you okay?
-She's showing outdated symptoms.
[Denise retching]
-Um, Steffie, can you
-[siren wailing]
[Denise vomiting]
[toilet flushing]
-Baba, could you pass more of the corn?
-Sure.
Thank you so much. [grunts]
[grunting]
-Are you feeling better?
-These peppers have a wonderful
[siren blaring]
-I think that came from the firehouse.
-What's for dessert?
[siren continues blaring]
-[dogs barking indistance]
-[tires screeching]
[Fire Captain] Cloud of deadly chemicals.
Evacuate all places of residence.
Cloud of deadly chemicals.
Cloud of deadly chemicals.
Evacuate
They want us to evacuate.
They were only making a suggestion
or was it a little more mandatory?
It was a fire captain's car
In other words,
you didn't have an opportunity
to notice the subtle edges of intonation.
Due to the sirens.
The voice said something like,
"Evacuate all places of residence.
Cloud of deadly chemicals."
-"Cloud of deadly chemicals."
-[Steffie crying]
[upbeat purposeful music playing]
[Babette grunts]
It's okay.
[Babette] Jack, just leave it!
Has anyone seen my ski mask?
[chatters]
-I couldn't find my ski mask.
-[Babette] Why do you need a ski mask?
[Denise] It something you take
in these kind of things.
People waste
tremendous amounts on motion.
[Jack] I'm not sure
we need the plant, but
-Are we all here?
-[Babette] Accounted for.
[Denise] Everyone's gone already.
We're late.
[engine starts]
[tires screech]
[radio crackling]
[man on radio] Blacksmith residents
are to take the parkway
to the fourth service area
where they would proceed
to a restaurant called Kung Fu Palace.
[Steffie] Is that the place
with the lily ponds and the live deer?
That's right.
-[Denise] Where do we go?
-[Jack] They'll tell us.
-Can we play my mix?
-[Babette] Later.
Was this a mild winter or a harsh winter?
-[Babette] Compared to what?
-Don't know.
-[man] If you're from the west side
-This is us.
head for the Boy Scout camp
called Camp Daffodil,
where Red Cross volunteers
-will dispense juice and coffee.
-Okay, we have a plan.
That's Highway 10
after Inerson's Ford dealership
[Jack] Oh, shit.
between county line and Interstate 5.
We are being asked to stress
that you do not attempt to shelter
outside your designated cachement.
[helicopter whirring]
[horns honking]
[Heinrich] The whole point
of Sir Albert Einstein is
Things should clear up
where it turns into four lanes.
[Denise and Heinrich speaking]
They don't look scared
in the Crown Victoria.
[Denise] Yeah, they're laughing.
These guys aren't laughing.
-Where?
-In the Country Squire.
[Denise] They look devastated.
What does it matter
what they're doing in other cars?
-I want to know how scared I should be.
-We just don't know at this point.
-That makes me more scared.
-Don't be scared.
Nobody's coming in the opposite direction.
Police must have blocked
Where are the police?
Did they leave us on our own?
They're around.
Why are they shopping
during an airborne event?
-[Heinrich] There's a sale.
-[Babette] Maybe they know something.
-[Denise] Maybe there's no way out.
-Maybe it's raining Nyodene D.
Is that possible?
[man on radio] People indoors
are being asked to stay indoors.
-Why would they say that?
-We were told to leave.
you should remain there.
If you have already evacuated,
find shelter immediately.
Again, if you are indoors, remain indoors.
If you're not, authorities are suggesting
you get indoors as soon as possible.
-[Steffie] They're passing us.
-[car honking]
Technically, that's illegal--
[screams]
[speaking indistinctly over walkie-talkie]
[woman crying]
Baba cooked
chili-fried chicken for dinner.
Dad's favorite.
Dad said not to worry,
the plume will not come this way,
but it wasn't a plume,
it was an airborne toxic event.
We packed in a hurry. We ran to the car
only to realize
we were latecomers to an evacuation.
Is this everything that happened?
Rain pelted the roof of our station wagon.
Pip-pip-pip.
We hit traffic as we left
the comfort of sycamores and hedges.
Dad searched for information on the radio.
Traffic lined up on the freeway
like lighted-up dominos.
We passed by people in distress.
An unspoken bond
with our fellow journeymen formed.
And then a crash.
A car flipped on the road.
-People ran to their aid.
-Oh, those poor people.
[Heinrich] We were waved by,
only able to watch in sympathy and awe.
-[Jack] What What's that?
-Drive the car, Jack.
I saw your throat contract.
You swallowed something.
Just a Life Saver.
Keep your eyes on the road.
You place a Life Saver in your mouth
and you swallow it
without an interval of sucking?
Swallow what? It's still in my mouth.
You swallowed something. I saw.
That was just saliva
I didn't know what to do with.
Drive the car, would you?
[man on radio] The situation's scary,
I imagine.
[woman on radio] Yes. This is a very
dangerous chemical we're dealing with.
It could affect a lot of people.
[man] Do you have any idea how many people
in Glassboro have been evacuated?
-We're running out of gas.
-[woman] I have no idea.
-There's always extra.
-How can there be extra?
That's how tank is constructed.
So you don't run out.
Can't be.
If you keep going, you run out.
You don't keep going forever.
-How do you know when to stop?
-When you pass a gas station.
Look.
[bell dings]
[window creaking, thudding]
No one's here.
It's working.
[speaking indistinctly]
[wind howling]
[eerie music playing]
[gasps]
[electrical buzzing]
[rain stops]
[static]
[electrical buzzing]
[thunder rumbling]
[rain pattering]
You didn't pay, Dad.
There was nobody there.
You could've left money
on the counter.
-[car honks]
-I was in a hurry.
-I I'll send them a check.
-Yeah, but you probably won't do that.
What happens if the dogs get contaminated?
-[Babette] Nothing happens to dogs.
-How do you know?
-Ask Jack.
-Ask Heinrich.
Could be true. They use rats
to test for things humans can get,
means we catch the same diseases.
They wouldn't use dogs
if they thought it could hurt them.
-[Denise] Why not?
-A dog is a mammal.
-So is a rat.
-[Babette] A rat is a vermin.
-Mostly, it's a rodent.
-[Babette] It's also a vermin.
-A cockroach is a vermin.
-[Babette] A cockroach is an insect.
You count the legs, is how you know.
-It's also a vermin.
-Does a cockroach
Family is the cradle
of the world's misinformation.
than it is like a cockroach,
even if they're both vermin.
[echoing] Since a rat and a human
can get cancer but a cockroach can't.
What she's saying is
two things that are mammals
have more in common
than two things that are only vermins.
[Babette] Are you telling me
a rat is not only
a vermin and a rodent, but a mammal too?
Oh, shit.
[dramatic music playing]
[helicopter whirring]
[thunder rumbling]
[Heinrich] Look at it. Look at it.
-Can I see through those?
-Me too.
Come on, kids, share. Please.
-We are! No I'll look first and then--
-No, share. Actually share.
[arguing]
[speaking indistinctly]
[thunder rumbling]
[speaking indistinctly]
Welcome to Camp Daffodil.
[radio crackles]
I heard we'll be able to go home
first thing in the morning.
I don't know if I want to go home.
My mother-in-law's been staying with us.
-This has been a respite.
-[evacuee 1] Heard it might be two weeks.
[evacuee 2] The government knows more
[evacuee 3] The reports are coming in
fast and furious.
And they're not saying jack shit.
A helicopter flew into a toxic cloud
and completely disappeared.
I can think of at least seven things
that could mean.
I can think of six, what's the seventh?
Well, without knowing the six
you're talking about
The dogs are in from New Mexico,
they parachuted into a meadow
in a daring night drop.
Those are real heroes.
[Babette] "A world-renowned institute
has used hypnosis to induce
hundreds of people
to recall their previous life experiences
as pyramid builders,
exchange students and extraterrestrials."
"In the last year alone," declares
reincarnation hypnotist Ling Ti Wan,
"I have helped hundreds
to regress to previous lives"
[Heinrich] they sprayed
on the big spill was probably soda ash.
It was a case of too little, too late.
My guess is they'll get some crop dusters
up in the air at daybreak
and bombard the toxic cloud
with lots more soda ash,
which could break it up and scatter it
in a million harmless puffs.
Soda ash is the common name
for sodium carbonate,
which is used in the manufacture
of glass, ceramics, detergents and soaps.
It's also what they use
to make bicarbonate of soda,
which is something I'm sure a lot of you
have guzzled after a night on the town.
[all chuckle]
[Heinrich] So what you're all
probably wondering
is what exactly is this Nyodene D
we keep hearing about.
Well, I'm glad you asked that.
In powder form, it's colorless,
odorless and incredibly dangerous.
[evacuees chattering indistinctly]
[evacuee 4] Two looters are dead
[evacuee 5] There have been
a bunch of UFO sightings around this area.
[evacuee 6] Ronald Reagan. Do you know
that he was going to be in Casablanca?
Heinrich seems to be
coming out of his shell.
Where's he? I haven't seen him.
You see that knot of people?
Don't stand up.
He's right in the middle.
He's telling them
what he knows about the toxic event.
-What does he know?
-Quite a lot, it turns out.
Why didn't he tell us?
He probably doesn't think
it's worth his while
to be funny and charming
in front of his family.
We present the wrong kind of challenge.
Don't you think you ought to go there,
show him his father is there
for his big moment?
-He'll get upset if he sees me.
-What if I went over?
-He'll think I sent you.
-Is that so awful?
-Just a Life Saver?
-What?
Just some saliva
you didn't know what to do with?
It was a Life Saver.
-Give me one.
-It was the last one.
-What flavor? Quick.
-Cherry.
[technician 1] Attention, attention.
If you have been exposed
to the airborne toxic event
for any amount of time
longer than ten seconds,
proceed to the front
-Didn't you hear what the voice said?
-Something about exposure.
-That's right.
What's that got to do with us?
Not us. You.
Why me?
Weren't you the one who got out of the car
to fill the gas tank?
But the airborne event
wasn't on top of us then.
It was ahead of us.
Remember you got back in the car
and there it was in all those lights.
-Beautiful.
-Yes.
You're saying when I got out,
the cloud may have been close enough
to rain all over me?
It's not your fault,
but you were practically right in it
for two and a half minutes.
-How long were you out there?
-Denise said two and a half minutes.
[crying]
Is that considered long or short?
Anything that puts you into skin
and orifice contact with the emissions
means we have a situation.
This Nyodene D
Congratulations!
[technician 2] new generation
of toxic waste. State of the art.
One part per million
can send a rat into a permanent state.
What about the people in the car?
I had to open the door
to get out and back in.
I'd say their situation
is they're minimal risks.
It's the two and a half minutes
standing right in it which makes me wince.
-What does SIMUVAC stand for?
-It's short for "simulated evacuation."
A new state program
they're battling over funds for.
This evacuation isn't simulated.
-It's real.
-We know.
But we thought
we could use that as a model.
Are you saying
you saw the chance to use the
real event in order
to rehearse the simulation?
We took it right to the streets.
How's it going?
The insertion curve
isn't as smooth as we'd like.
We don't have our victims laid out
where we'd want them
if this was an actual simulation.
You've to make allowances for the fact
that everything tonight is real.
What about the computers?
Is that real data you're running through
the system or practice stuff?
You watch.
[keyboard clacking]
I was outside
for two and a half minutes.
The only thing
that she was exposed to is good luck.
That's how many seconds?
I'm getting bracketed numbers
with pulsing stars.
What does that mean?
-I mean, am I going to die?
-Not as such.
-What do you mean?
-Not in so many words.
How many words does it take?
It's not a question of words,
but of years.
We'll know more in 15 years.
In the meantime,
we definitely have a situation.
What will we know in 15 years?
If you're still alive at that time,
we'll know much more than we know now.
The Nyodene D has a life span
of roughly 30 years,
so you'll have made it halfway through.
To outlive this substance,
I'll have to make it into my seventies?
I wouldn't worry
about what I can't see or feel.
Now, I'd go ahead and live my life.
-Get married, settle down, have kids.
-[sighs]
There's no reason you can't do
these things, knowing what we know.
-But you said we have a situation.
-I didn't. The computer did.
What the computer says
is not a simulation,
despite that armband you're wearing.
It is real.
It is real.
[evacuees speaking indistinctly]
Thank you.
[evacuee 1, faintly] They want you
to think it's a train crash, but actually
it's a dirty nuke.
Murray!
-You're here.
-Jack.
Hey, big boy.
All white people
have a favorite Elvis song.
I thought you were going to New York.
I stayed back to look at car crash movies.
I heard a rumor about painted women
and came out to investigate.
One of them says
she has a snap-off crotch.
-What do you think she means?
-They don't seem busy.
I don't think this is the kind of disaster
that leads to sexual abandon.
We might get one or two fellows
skulking out eventually,
but there won't be an orgiastic horde,
not tonight anyway.
-Any episodes of dj vu in your group?
-No.
Any episodes of dj vu in your group?
Why do we think
these things happened before?
Simple. They did happen before,
in our minds, as visions of the future.
Supernatural stuff.
Maybe when we die,
the first thing we'll say is,
"I know this feeling. I was here before."
How are you doing?
I'm dying, Murray.
I spent two and a half minutes
exposed to the toxic cloud.
Even if it doesn't kill me
in a direct way,
it will outlive me in my own body.
I could die in a plane crash
and the Nyodene D would be thriving
as my remains were laid to rest.
A computer told me.
I'm truly sorry, my friend.
But computers make mistakes.
[chuckles]
Carpet static can cause a mistake.
It was in the barrack.
There was no carpet.
Lint. Hair in the circuits.
There are always mistakes.
Not a word to Babette about any of this.
-She'd be devastated.
-Of course.
Sometimes I actually think
I see it coming for me.
At night, usually.
The thing I've always feared,
and now it's here.
We're all aware
there's no escape from death.
And how do we deal
with this crushing knowledge?
We repress, we disguise.
But you don't know how to repress.
Wish there was something I could do,
and I could out-think the problem.
You thought Hitler would protect you.
Some people are larger than life.
Hitler is larger than death.
I understand completely.
Do you? Because I wish I did.
It's totally obvious.
The overwhelming horror
would leave no room for your own death.
It's a daring thing you did,
a daring thrust.
Daring but dumb.
If I could just lose interest in myself.
Here, take this. I have another one
at home in the drawer under my hotplate.
Heft it around. Get the feel.
It's loaded.
It's an itty-bitty thing,
but it shoots real bullets.
It's a .25-caliber Zumwalt automatic.
German-made. Up your alley.
I I don't want it.
I believe, Jack, there are two kinds
of people in the world.
Killers and diers. Most of us are diers.
We don't have the dispositions, the rage,
what it takes to be a killer.
But think how exciting it is,
in theory, to kill a person.
If he dies, you cannot.
To kill him is to gain life-credit.
Who knows?
Maybe violence is a form of rebirth.
And maybe you can kill death.
[guitar music playing]
[puppeteer] And they were running
because they didn't know what to do.
The townspeople were scared.
They were in awe of the cloud,
it was beautiful above their heads
[singing] The Nyodene dogs
Are here to stay
The government knows
More than they say
UFO sightings in Farmington town
Widespread looting all around
Three live deer
At the Kung Fu Palace are dead
Those pretty clouds
Ain't what they seem
See the men in the Mylex suits
Coming here to burn and loot
There's no difference
Between the blue and the red
The cloud is comin' for us all
There's no difference
Between the blue and the red
The cloud is comin'
[female singer humming]
[male singer] One more time.
[female singer humming]
[faint yelling]
[announcer] Toxic! Toxic everywhere!
Toxic everywhere!
-Jack! Jack, wake up, we have to leave!
-[announcer] Proceed to your vehicles!
-Mom! Mom!
-Five more minutes.
No more minutes!
Why does she say everything twice?
We can hear her.
She likes to hear herself talk.
[announcer] The toxic is coming closer!
Toxic! Toxic!
[indistinct yelling]
[organizer] It is imperative that you wear
your protective face covering.
[engine roaring]
[panting]
[horse neighing]
[boy] That's a fucking horse!
Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!
[indistinct yelling]
-[car honking]
-Stop, stop, stop!
Oh!
-Jack! Jack!
-[kids] Dad! Dad!
-Steffie, you lost your Bun Bun!
-What? What?
-My bunny! Baba, I dropped Bun Bun!
-Jack! Jack!
-Here!
-Jack!
Steffie lost her Bun Bun!
Jack!
Get Steffie's bunny! Her bunny!
-She dropped her bunny!
-[Steffie] Over there!
[Babette] The keys! I need the keys!
The car keys!
The keys! The keys!
[grunts]
[Babette] Everybody get in the car
right now!
[grunting]
[Jack] Thank you.
[people yelling]
I got it.
[engine starts]
[engine revs]
-Jack!
-We're going the wrong way!
What're you doing?
I have a feeling this Land Rover
knows how to stay alive.
[engine revving]
[Denise] Oh, my God!
[Steffie] This isn't a road.
[Babette] Okay, get down. Whoa!
Headlights at nine o'clock.
[Jack] On it.
[tires screech]
[Babette] Oh, God. Oh, my God.
[Denise] The lights
aren't getting any closer.
Now they're over there.
[Steffie] They're behind us now.
-Do it. Do it.
-[barking]
-Fourteen hundred o'clock.
-That is pretty good.
[barks]
[yelps]
-[Steffie] We're in the water, Dad.
-I I realize that now.
Dad, turn off the engine.
-Do sheep have lashes?
-Ask your father.
-We're going sideways.
-[Steffie] Do sheep have lashes?
[Jack] Doesn't anyone want to pay
attention to what's actually happening?
[Babette] Dad wants credit
for fording the creek.
No, I don't want credit.
Forget it, go back to your conversation.
-What if there was a waterfall?
-Dad, is there a waterfall?
-[kids grunt]
-Oh.
[kids grunt]
-[clattering]
-[water bubbling]
Turn it back on.
[engine sputtering]
-[engine starts]
-Floor it.
[engine revs]
[all screaming]
-[Babette sighs]
-[Wilder] Again.
[man on radio] Could this kill somebody
if they got too close to it
or is this an irritant?
[car honks]
-Thank you.
-[man speaking indistinctly on radio]
[voices overlapping on radio]
[reporter] have a built-in appetite for
the particular toxic agents in Nyodene D.
The cloud continues to travel west
as residents are now being asked
to relocate to Iron City
where local businesses
have opened their doors
to shelter evacuees who have been
further displaced from their homes.
[evacuee 1] Two of the men
from the switching lot are dead,
with acid visible on their Mylex suits.
[organizer] Listen up, everybody!
Hold on, let's stop the chatter!
No one is allowed
to leave the building! Okay?
If somebody comes up to me
and says, "Can I leave?"
I'm just going to say
the same thing I'm saying now.
No one is allowed to leave the building.
-[Jack] How is Babette?
-[Babette] I don't like the latest rumor.
Tell me.
They're lowering in technicians
from army helicopters
to plant microorganisms
in the core of the toxic cloud.
-What don't you like about it?
-I don't know.
The greater the scientific advance,
the more scared I get.
Nothing on network.
Not a word, not a picture.
On the Glassboro channel,
we rate 52 words by actual count.
No film footage.
No live reports.
Does this thing happen so often
that nobody cares?
-We were scared to death!
-We still are!
-We left our homes.
-[all agree]
Drove through a rainstorm.
We saw that deadly specter.
That death ship
as it sailed across the sky.
Are they telling us it was insignificant?
Do they think this is just television?
Don't they know it's real?
[all agree]
Shouldn't the streets
be crawling with cameras and reporters?
Shouldn't we be yelling at them,
"Leave us alone.
We've been through enough."
Haven't we earned the right
to despise their idiot questions?
-[all] Yeah!
-[slurps]
Look at us in this place.
We are quarantined.
[all] Yeah!
We are like lepers in medieval times.
[evacuee 2] We are!
Everything we loved and worked for
is under serious threat.
Even if there hasn't been
great loss of life,
don't we deserve attention
for our suffering?
-Our terror?
-[evacuee 3] Yes!
Isn't fear news?
[all] Yes!
[evacuee 4] We matter! That's right!
[cheering]
[reflective music playing]
I saw this before.
Saw what before?
You were standing there,
I was standing here.
Your features incredibly sharp and clear.
It all happened before.
Hissing in the pipes.
Tiny little hairs
standing out in your pores,
that identical look in your face.
What look?
Haunted.
Ashen.
Lost.
[Jack] It was nine days
before they told us we could go back home.
[digital beeping]
[announcer] Welcome back, shoppers.
It's comforting to know
the supermarket hasn't changed
since the toxic event.
In fact, the supermarket
has only gotten better.
Between the unpackaged meat
and the fresh bread,
it's like a Persian bazaar.
Everything is fine,
and will continue to be fine
as long as the supermarket doesn't slip.
Do you know the Tibetans
believe there's a transitional state
between death and rebirth?
-[announcer continues]
-That's what I think when I come here.
The supermarket is a waiting place.
It recharges us spiritually.
It's a gateway.
Look how bright.
Look how full of psychic data,
waves and radiation.
All the letters and numbers are here,
all the colors of the spectrum,
all the voices and sounds,
all the code words and ceremonial phrases.
We just have to know how to decipher it.
[shopper] Whoa! Oh, jeez!
How's that lovely woman of yours?
She's been different,
somehow, since the event.
We've suffered a collective trauma.
She wears her sweatsuit all the time.
She stares out of windows
and cries for no reason.
I don't know how to help her.
I've been distracted
preparing for the Hitler conference--
-And the kids?
-Back in school.
Steffie no longer wears
her protective mask.
And you?
I've got another
doctor's appointment tomorrow.
What does he say
about your status as a doomed man?
I haven't told him.
Since he hasn't found anything wrong,
I'm not going to bring it up.
-I lie to doctors all the time.
-So do I.
But why?
Do you know the Elvis struggle
you helped me with?
It turns out, tragically,
I would've won anyway.
-What happened?
-Cotsakis, my rival,
is no longer in the land of the living.
-He's--
-Dead.
Lost in the surf off Malibu.
During term break.
I found out an hour ago,
came right here.
I'm sorry to tell you.
Particularly because of your condition.
Poor Cotsakis.
Lost in the surf?
That enormous man.
-He was big, all right.
-Enormously so.
-He must've weighed 300 pounds.
-Oh. Easily.
Dead! A big man like that.
It's better not knowing them
when they die, but better them than us.
To be so enormous. Then to die.
I can picture him so clearly.
Maybe once we stop denying death,
we can proceed calmly to die.
We simply walk toward the sliding doors.
[cash register dinging]
[announcer] Now. Cool.
Crush. Jolt. Hi-C.
[cash register dinging]
[sniffs]
[announcer] Nancy. Senca.
Senca, Nancy.
[cash register dings echo ominously]
[Jack] What if death is nothing but sound?
You hear it forever. Sound, all around.
-[Murray] Uniform, white.
-[clacks]
It's strange in a way, isn't it?
That we can picture the dead.
[announcer] Disregard last announcement.
Disregard.
Hold on, what?
Oh, regard.
Why so many checkups, Mr. Gladney?
In the past, you were always afraid
to know if anything was wrong.
I'm still afraid.
Well, I'm glad you're finally taking
your status as patient seriously.
My status?
Once people leave the doctor's office,
they tend to forget
that they are patients.
But a doctor doesn't cease
being a doctor at close of day.
Neither should patient.
I don't like your potassium
very much at all.
-What's that mean?
-There isn't time to explain.
We have true elevation
and false elevation.
That's all you need to know.
Exactly how elevated is my potassium?
It's gone through the roof evidently.
Could this potassium be
an indication of some condition
just beginning to manifest itself?
Some condition
caused perhaps by an exposure,
an involuntary spillage-intake,
some substance, say, in the air or rain?
Have you come in contact
with such a substance?
Were you exposed to that cloud?
Why? Do the numbers show
some sign of possible exposure?
If you haven't been exposed, then
they couldn't show a sign, could they?
Then we agree.
And you'd have no reason to lie to me.
I'm going to send you
to Glassboro for further tests.
They have a brand-new facility
called Autumn Harvest Farms.
Have you heard of it?
They have gleaming new equipment.
It gleams, absolutely.
Tell them to send you back to me
with sealed results.
Together, as doctor and patient,
we can do things
that neither of us could do separately.
Uh, Dr. Lu, have you heard of Dylar?
-Is that an island in the Persian Gulf?
-No, it's a--
Oil terminals
crucial to the survival of the West.
[overlapping] Something that comes
in a little white tablet.
Never heard of it.
[reporter] Life is slowly but surely
returning to normal here
in Blacksmith and the surrounding areas.
I'm told German shepherds
have sniffed out only a very low level
of toxic material on the edge of town.
But there is no more danger posed
to humans or animals.
The last of the emergency personnel
are packing up
and taking the dogs with them.
[Heinrich] The real issue is the radiation
that surrounds us every day.
Your radio, your TV, your microwave oven,
the powerlines outside your door.
Forget toxic clouds.
It's the electrical and magnetic fields.
Industry would collapse
if the true results of any of
these investigations were released.
Is Wilder talking less now?
If they release the findings,
there'd be
billions of dollars in lawsuits.
-That's a little extreme.
-[footsteps]
[Heinrich] What's extreme,
what I said or what'd happen?
[Steffie] Why are mountains upstate?
-[Denise] Mountains are always upstate.
-Say more.
The snow melts
as planned in the spring,
and flows down
to the reservoirs near the cities,
which are kept in the lower end
for this reason.
-[Jack] Is that true?
-What do you think?
-I honestly don't know.
-Kids, listen to me.
Hold hands when you cross the street.
Be careful around swimming pools.
If you think someone is a kidnapper,
they probably are.
Where are you going?
They gave me a new class at the church.
-[Jack] In what?
-Eating and drinking.
-Isn't that obvious?
-What's there to teach?
Isn't it kind of late?
It's almost night.
What is night?
It happens seven times a week.
Where is the uniqueness in this?
Jack,
can you help me
with my homework after dinner?
Homework was a canard.
I wanna show you something.
Dylar.
There were four left. Take one for proof.
We need physical evidence.
-We say nothing to Baba.
-All right.
She'll say she doesn't remember
why she put them there.
I'll go to the drugstore in the morning
and ask the pharmacist about Dylar.
-I already did that.
-When?
Around Christmas.
-I went to three drugstores.
-What'd they say?
Never heard of it.
-It's not on any list.
-Unlisted.
-We have to call her doctor.
-I'll call him tomorrow.
[upset] Call him now!
This is serious, Jack.
Something is wrong with her.
I'll call him now. I'll call him at home.
Surprise him.
If I get him at home,
I won't be screened by a receptionist.
Call him at home. Wake him up.
Trick him into telling us
what we wanna know.
I'll call him at home. Wake him up.
Trick him into telling us
what we wanna know.
-Hello?
-Dr. Hookstratten.
This is Jack Gladney,
you treat my wife, Babette.
Okay.
I'm sorry to call you at home,
but I'm concerned about Babette.
And I'm pretty sure the medication
you prescribed is causing the problem.
What problem?
Memory lapse.
You would call a doctor at home
to talk about memory lapse?
If everyone with memory lapse called
a doctor at home, what would we have?
The ripple effect would be tremendous.
They are frequent, the lapses.
Frequent and prolonged.
You would call a doctor
at ten o'clock at night,
you would say to him "memory lapse."
Why not tell me she has gas?
Call me at home for gas.
Frequent and prolonged, doctor.
It has to be the medication.
What medication?
-Dylar.
-Dylar.
Never heard of it.
A small white tablet.
Comes in an amber bottle.
Comes in an amber--
You would describe a tablet
as small and white
and expect a doctor to respond
at home, after 10:00 at night.
Why not tell me it is round?
This is crucial to our case.
It's an unlisted drug.
I never saw it.
I certainly never prescribed it
for your wife.
-Okay. Sorry to bother you.
-Tell him I went to three pharmacies--
I'm never in control
of what I say to doctors.
I will take the tablet
and have it analyzed
by someone
at the chemistry department at the school.
Unless you've already done that too?
[chemist] It's not a tablet
in the old sense.
The medication in Dylar
is encased in a polymer membrane.
Water from your gastrointestinal tract
seeps through the membrane
at a carefully controlled rate.
What does the water do?
It dissolves the medication
encased in the membrane.
The medicine then passes out
of the polymer tablet
through a single small hole.
It took me a while to spot the hole.
That's because it's laser-drilled.
It's not only tiny
but stunningly precise in its dimensions.
-Lasers? Polymers?
-[slurps]
I'm not an expert in any of this, Jack,
but I can tell you
it's a wonderful little system.
-Ah, Twinkie!
-What's the point of all this precision?
The drug is delivered at specified rates
over extended periods of time.
The system is efficient.
I'm impressed. I'm even dazzled.
Now, tell me what this medication
is designed to do.
What is Dylar?
-I don't know.
-Of course you know.
-You're brilliant. Everyone says so.
-What else can they say?
I do neurochemistry.
No one knows what that is.
All I can tell you for certain
is the substance contained in Dylar
is some kind of psychopharmaceutical.
It's probably designed to interact
with a distant part of the human cortex.
I wish I knew more.
But I can tell you this.
It's not on the market.
I found it
in an ordinary prescription vial.
I don't care where you found it.
This is unknown.
It's time for a major dialogue.
You know it, I know it.
We found the Dylar.
What Dylar?
Come on, Baba.
It was taped to the radiator cover.
Why would I tape something
to the radiator cover?
That's exactly what
Denise predicted you would say.
-She's usually right.
-You'll tell me all about Dylar.
If not for my sake,
then for your little girl's.
She's been worried. Worried sick.
Besides, you have no more room
to maneuver.
We've backed you against the wall.
I had one of the tablets
analyzed by an expert.
Dylar is almost as ingenious
as the microorganisms
that ate the billowing cloud.
We know something else,
something crucially damaging to your case.
We know Dylar is not available
to the general public.
As you well know,
I don't have the temperament
to hound people.
But Denise is a different kind of person.
If you don't tell me what I want to know,
I'll unleash your little girl.
She'll come at you
with everything she has.
She'll hammer you right into the ground.
You know I'm right, Babette.
Just let me tell it in my own way.
Take your time.
We've got all day.
I'll be right here
for as long as it takes.
I don't know exactly when it started.
Maybe a year and a half ago.
I thought I was going through a phase.
Some kind of watermark period in my life.
"Landmark" or " watershed."
A kind of settling-in, I thought.
Middle age. Something like that.
The condition would go away,
and I'd forget about it, but it didn't.
What condition?
-Never mind that for now.
-I've never seen you like this.
This is the whole point of Babette.
She is a joyous person.
She doesn't succumb to gloom or self-pity.
-Let me tell it, Jack.
-All right.
You know how I am.
I think everything is correctable.
Given the right attitude,
a person can change a harmful condition
by reducing it to its simplest parts.
I went to libraries and bookstores,
watched cable TV,
made lists and diagrams,
talked to a holy Sikh man in Iron City.
Even studied the occult,
hiding the books in the attic
so you and Denise wouldn't find them
and wonder what was going on.
All this without my knowing?
The whole point of Babette
is that she speaks to me,
she reveals and confides.
This is not a story
about your disappointment in my silence.
The theme of this story
is my pain and my attempts to end it.
Okay.
I did all this research,
but I was getting nowhere.
The condition hung over my life.
Then one day at the supermarket,
I was reading a tabloid in line.
There was an ad.
Never mind exactly what it said.
Volunteers wanted for secret research.
This is all you have to know.
I answered the ad
and was interviewed by a small firm
doing research in psychobiology.
Let's call the company Gray Research,
although that's not the true name.
Let's call my contact Mr. Gray.
Mr. Gray is a composite.
I was eventually in touch with three
or four or more people at the firm.
One of those long, low, pale
brick buildings with electrified fencing
and low-profile shrubbery.
I never saw their headquarters.
Never mind why.
The point is I took test after test.
Emotional, psychological,
motor response, brain activity.
Mr. Gray said there were three finalists
and I was one of them.
Finalists for what?
We were to be test subjects
in the development of a super-experimental
and top-secret drug. Code name:
Dylar.
Aha.
He'd found a Dylar receptor
in the human brain
and was putting the finishing touches
on the tablet itself.
I felt hopeful
for the first time in so long.
But there were many dangers
in running tests on humans.
Among other things, it could cause death.
Or I could live but my brain could die.
Or I could not distinguish
words from things,
so that if someone said "speeding bullet,"
I'd fall to the floor and take cover.
In the end, it just made me forget things.
And they let you go ahead anyway,
a human test animal?
No, they didn't.
They finally said it was all too risky.
Legally, ethically, so forth.
Well, that's good.
No.
I refused to accept this.
I want you to try to understand
what happened next.
If I'm going to tell you this story,
I have to include this aspect of it,
this grubby little corner
of the human heart.
You say Babette reveals and confides?
-This is the point of Babette.
-Good.
I will reveal and confide.
But you don't want to know what happened.
You think you do, but you don't.
Mr. Gray and I made a private arrangement.
We would conduct
the experiments on our own.
I would be cured of my condition
and he would be acclaimed
for a wonderful medical breakthrough.
Okay.
It involved an indiscretion.
It It was the only way I could get
Mr. Gray to let me use the drug.
It was my last resort, my last hope.
First, I'd offered him my mind.
Now I offered my body.
How do you offer your body
to a composite of three or more people?
This is a compound person.
Let's concentrate on the genitals.
How many sets are we talking about?
Just one person, Jack.
A key person, the project manager.
So we are no longer referring
to the Mr. Gray who is a composite.
He is now one person.
[hesitates] We went
to a grubby little motel room. [sobs]
Never mind where or when.
It had
It had the TV up near the ceiling.
This is all I remember.
I was so ashamed,
I wore a ski mask to cover my face.
You call this an indiscretion?
You traded sex for pills.
-Jack
-You walked barefoot
on the fire-retardant carpet.
Mr. Gray put his car rental keys
on the dresser
and he entered you.
Please don't use that term.
You know how I feel about that word.
He effected what is called entry.
[angrily] In other words,
he inserted himself inside you.
No one was inside anyone.
I did what I had to do. I was remote.
[hesitates] I was outside of myself.
It was a capitalist transaction.
You cherish your wife
who tells you everything.
I am doing my best
to be that person. [sobbing]
I'm only trying to understand.
How many times did you go to this motel?
More or less on a continuing basis
for some months.
That was the agreement.
Did
Did you enjoy having sex with him?
I I only
I only remember the TV
up near the ceiling, aimed down at us.
Did he have a sense of humor?
I know women appreciate
men who can joke about sex.
I can't, unfortunately. And after this,
I don't think there's much chance
I'll be able to learn.
[Babette] It's better
if you know him as Mr. Gray. That's all.
He's not tall, short, young or old.
He doesn't laugh or cry.
It's for your own good.
No, you have to tell me who he is.
No. How do I know you won't kill him?
Because I'm not a killer.
You're a man, Jack.
We all know about men
and their insane jealous rage.
-This is something men are very good at.
-I'm not good at that.
I I twirl garbage bags
and twist-tie them. I
Is this still going on?
-No.
-Why not?
Because the drug didn't work.
At least on me.
Maybe I should go.
Get a hotel room or
I don't know.
-I don't know.
-[Babette whimpers]
[sniffling]
[emotional music playing]
[sobbing]
No.
No.
You've taken me this far,
put me through this much.
I have to know. What's the condition?
I'm afraid to die.
I'm afraid of my death.
You?
You're still young.
You run up and down the stadium steps.
This is not a reasonable fear.
I I just can't believe
that we're all marching
towards nonexistence.
All of us.
It haunts me, Jack. It won't go away.
Baba, everyone fears death.
But Mr. Gray said
I was extra sensitive to it,
that I fear it right up front.
That's why he was eager to use me.
Baba, I'm the one in this family
who is obsessed by death.
I have always been the one.
[crying] I love you.
I just fear death more than I love you.
And I really, really love you.
There's something I promised myself
I wouldn't tell you.
I'm tentatively scheduled to die.
It won't happen tomorrow or the next day.
But it's in the works.
So we are no longer
talking about fear and floating terror.
This is the hard and heavy thing,
the fact itself.
Apparently, in the amount of time
that it took me to walk
from my door to the gas station pump,
I was exposed
to enough chemicals in the air that
[Alfonse] Imagining yourself dead
is one of the cheapest, sleaziest,
most satisfying forms
of childish self-pity.
How much pleasure did you take as a kid
in imagining yourself dead?
I still imagine my death.
Whenever I'm upset about something,
I imagine all my friends,
relatives, and colleagues,
they're all gathered around my casket.
They are very sorry
they weren't nicer to me while I lived.
Children are very good at self-pity,
which must mean
it's natural and important.
There's something more
childish and satisfying than self-pity,
something that explains why I try
to see myself dead regularly.
[overlapping voices increasing in volume]
[Murray] Death, disease, outer space.
It's all much clearer here.
-[man on TV] Start your breakfast
-[Murray] that's what it comes down to.
A person spends his life
saying goodbye to others.
[Alfonse] But how does
he say goodbye to himself?
[German instructor] Show me your tongue.
-[Alfonse] We are awaiting your lecture.
Panasonic.
[woman on TV] The kids are real fond
at my house of pepperoni,
so I'm going to throw on
some pepperoni slices here
Cooked ham or sausage
This is a great way
to get rid of leftovers.
Anything you have in the refrigerator
is fair game for a sandwich,
at least it is at my house.
I have some mozzarella cheese here,
we'll just load that up in the center.
[objects clattering]
[Denise] What are you doing?
[whispering] Don't worry. It's only me.
I know who it is.
I know what you're looking for.
What did you do with the bottle?
There were three tablets left.
-How do you know I took it?
-I know it. You know it.
If somebody wants to tell me
what Dylar is, we'll get somewhere.
Your mother no longer
takes the medication.
Your reason for holding the bottle,
it's not valid anymore.
Tell me what it does
and I'll give it to you.
Okay.
I had a recent scare.
I thought something awful
was about to happen.
It turned out I was wrong, thank goodness.
But there are lingering effects.
[chuckles]
I need the Dylar.
What's the problem?
Isn't that enough
to know the problem exists?
I don't want to be tricked.
There's no question of tricking.
I just need the medication.
You'll give them to my mother,
who I think stole my ski mask,
by the way.
-Is she a drug addict?
-You know that's not true.
You two aren't going to get divorced,
are you?
Why would you ask that?
You're sleeping on the pull-out.
It's uncomfortable.
[sighs]
We are talking about death.
I fear it.
And the tablets probably don't work,
but maybe they will in me.
Even if they don't, it doesn't matter
what they are. I'm eager to be humored.
Isn't that a little stupid?
This is what happens to desperate people.
You remember you heard on the radio,
the billowing cloud caused sweaty palms
and then your palms got sweaty,
didn't they?
The power of suggestion
makes some people sick
and other people well.
If I think it will help me,
it will help me.
-I threw the bottle away.
-No, you didn't. Where?
I put it in the garbage compactor.
-When?
-A few days ago.
[dogs barking in distance]
[mysterious music playing]
[grunting]
[objects clattering]
[thudding]
[cat yowls]
[phone ringing]
[Mr. Gray] Hello?
I'd like to buy some Dylar.
-Rid the fear.
-Rid the fear.
Clear the grid.
The Roadway Motel in Germantown.
Room 8.
[speaking in German]
[continues lecture in German]
[continues speaking in German]
[guests speaking indistinctly in German]
[in English] Yes. Yes.
[guests continue discussion in German]
[in English] Go, go, go, yep
Great speech, Jack.
You drank a lot of water, Dad.
Don't wait up for me tonight.
-But I need the car. I have my class.
-You take the car.
I don't need our car.
There's a chill in the air.
You know what a chill in the air means?
What does it mean?
Wear your ski mask.
[Jack breathing heavily]
[Murray echoes] I never realized there was
so much to say about Hitler's dog.
Elvis loved dogs too.
There was Woodlawn
and Muffy Dee and Champagne
Also, Muffin. And Wendell,
but of course, Wendell was a cat.
-Murray, I need your car keys.
-Okay.
[keys jingling]
[purposeful music playing]
[engine revs]
Steal instead of buy.
Shoot instead of talk.
[Babette] You're a man, Jack.
We all know about men
and their insane jealous rage.
Steal instead of buy.
Shoot instead of talk.
[Murray] Maybe violence
is a form of rebirth.
And maybe you can kill death.
[twisted music playing]
[faint electrical buzzing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[squeaking]
[door creaking]
[crunches]
["I'm Always Chasing Rainbows"
playing on TV]
Some fellows make a winning sometime
I never even
[Mr. Gray] Are you heartsick or soulsick?
Believe me
I'm always chasing rain
I know you.
Yes. I've been around.
I'm the chick and the cheese.
Um
Where was I?
I'm always chasing rain--
What do you want?
I want some Dylar.
Waiting to find a little bluebird
What do you want?
I want to live.
But you are dying.
But I don't want to.
Then we agree. [chuckles]
To enter a room is to agree
on a certain kind of behavior.
It isn't a street or a parking lot,
for instance.
The point of rooms
is that they are inside.
Good point.
There is an unwritten agreement
between the person who enters the room
and the person
whose room has been entered.
A room is inside.
That is what people in rooms
have to agree on,
as differentiated from lawns,
meadows, fields, orchards.
That makes perfect sense.
To convert Fahrenheit to Celsius,
this is what you do.
I wasn't always as you see me now.
That's what I was thinking.
I was doing important work.
[scoffs]
I envied myself.
Death without fear is an everyday thing.
You can live with it.
Are you saying
there's no death as we know it
without the element of fear?
People would adjust to it?
Dylar failed
reluctantly.
With everybody?
With all bodies.
But it will definitely come.
Maybe now, maybe never.
Eventually, there will be
an effective medication, you're saying?
Just between us, chicken,
I eat this stuff like candy.
I was just thinking that.
How much do you want to buy?
How much do I need?
You're a big man. Middle age?
Does this describe your anguish?
I see you as a person
with your dark-brown leather jacket,
champagne-colored pants.
Tell me how correct I am.
I learned my English watching American TV.
I I barely forget
the time I had in this room
before I became misplaced.
There was a woman in a ski mask
but her name escapes me at the moment.
American sex.
[chuckles]
Let me tell you, this is how
I learned my English. [chuckles]
[static]
[sinister music playing]
-[man speaking indistinctly on TV]
-[gulps]
[feedback]
[electrical buzzing]
[rain pattering]
[TV crackling]
[static]
[Babette] I could not distinguish
words from things.
If someone said "falling plane,"
I'd fall to the floor and take cover.
Falling plane.
-[plane whirring]
-[gasping]
Plunging aircraft.
-Why are you here, white man?
-To buy.
You're very white, you know that?
It's because I'm dying.
[panting] This stuff fix you up.
-I'll still die.
-But it won't matter,
which comes to the same thing.
Hailing bullets.
-[gunshots]
-[thuds]
Fusillade.
[grunting]
[gun cocks]
My name is Jack Gladney
and I'm here to kill you.
I'm a former dier who is now a killer.
You know my wife, Babette.
She wore the ski mask.
[panting] She wore the ski mask
so as not to kiss my face,
which she said was un-American.
I told her a room is inside.
Do not enter not agreeing to this.
This is the point, as opposed to
emerging coastlines, continental plates.
Or
you can eat natural grains,
vegetables, eggs
no fish,
no fruit.
Or fruit,
vegetables,
animal proteins,
no grains, no milk.
Or
lots of soybean milk for B12
and lots of vegetables
to regulate insulin release,
but no meat,
no fish, no fruit.
There are endless workable combinations.
Did you ever wonder why out of 32 teeth,
these four cause so much trouble?
I'll be back with an answer in a minute.
-[flushes]
-[gunshot]
["Can't Help Falling In Love"
plays faintly]
[sounds muffle]
[sounds sharpen]
For I can't help
Falling in love with you
Like a river flows
Surely to the sea
Darling, so it goes
Some things are meant to be
Take my hand
Take my whole life too
For I can't help
Falling in love with you
Take my whole life too
For I can't help
Falling in love
With you
Jack?
Jack?
-[grunts]
-Ah! [groans]
-Baba?
-[whimpering]
[gun clicking]
You've been shot!
Oh.
So have you.
I I'm sorry.
This could represent
the leading edge of some warmer air.
-It must have ricocheted off my wrist.
-And hit my leg.
How did you know I'd be here?
Men are killers.
-He needs help.
-[Jack] Let's get him out.
[Babette grunting]
We need help.
Why did you give him a loaded gun?
Well, I was thinking I shot him
three times, but it was only twice.
And my plan was
I don't know, I clearly fucked that up.
[both grunting]
I'll come back and get Murray's car later.
-[choking]
-He's choking.
[coughs]
[blows]
-[gasping]
-[panting]
-Who shot me?
-Um
I
You did.
You shot you.
-And who shot you?
-You did.
-You You have the gun in your hand.
-[groaning]
What was the point I was trying to make?
You were out of control.
You weren't responsible.
We forgive you.
Who are you, literally?
We're passersby. Uh, friends.
It doesn't matter.
Some millipedes have eyes, some don't.
-Okay.
-Sure.
[purposeful music playing]
[Mr. Gray] These playful dolphins
have been equipped
with radio transmitters.
Their far-flung wandering
may tell us things.
You are on the air!
[tires screeching]
[panting, grunting]
-Have you got his head?
-[grunts]
Tennis, anyone? Anyone, tennis?
-[doorbell ringing]
-We've been shot!
[sighs]
We're shot.
[chuckling]
We see a lot of that here.
[whispering in German]
[both grunting]
[nun speaking German]
[in English] Stretcher.
How come we have only two stretchers?
Sister Hildegard!
Bring Einkaufswagen.
[nun, annoyed] Na mach schon!
-Amateurstunde in Dixie?
-[in English] Sorry, ma'am.
[both grunt]
[nun continues]
Hier der dnne Mann Karl!
-Trag ihn da rber.
-[Mr. Gray mumbles]
[nun, impatiently]
Vorsicht! Nimm ihn am Arm.
[nun continues directions in German]
[nun] Eins, zwei, drei!
[nun continues in German]
[nun calling out orders in German]
[Mr. Gray, in English] Inflated,
adjusted, real income.
[hopeful music plays]
No one knows
why the seabirds go to San Miguel.
[hopeful music surges]
[Jack laughs]
What is your name?
Sister Hermann Marie.
Gut, besser
-Best.
[Sister Hermann Marie chuckles]
Am besten.
[Jack repeats] Am besten.
[Jack begins to count] Eins, zwei
[nuns join in] drei, vier
fnf, sechs
sieben, acht, neun, zehn.
[light conversation continues in German]
[nun] Fu
[Jack] Sessel.
-[nun] Stuhl.
-[Jack repeats]Stuhl.
[in English] What does the Church say
about Heaven these days?
Is it still the old Heaven, like that?
[contemptuously]
Do you think we are stupid?
We are here to take care
of sick and injured.
Only this. You want to talk about Heaven,
you find another place.
Why do you have that picture on the wall?
It's for others, not for us.
[incredulously]
You don't believe in Heaven? A nun?
If you don't, why should I?
If you did, maybe we would.
If I did, maybe you would not have to.
-Someone must appear to believe.
-[groans]
Is death the end then?
Does anything survive?
Do you want to know what I believe
or what I pretend to believe?
I don't want to hear this.
This is terrible.
-You're a nun!
-Act like one!
You come in from the street, married,
dragging a body by the foot,
and talk about angels
that live in the sky.
Get out from here!
[in German]
[Babette whimpers]
[in English] So maybe you should try
to believe in each other.
[speaking quietlyin German]
[Jack] Herr Dokter.
Herr Herr Dokter?
[in English] Will he be all right?
Not for a while. But he will survive.
[exhales]
[emotional music playing]
I wish I hadn't told you
about my condition.
Why?
Because then you wouldn't have told me
you were going to die first.
The two things I want most in the world
are for you to not die first
and for Wilder
to stay the way he is forever.
[chuckles]
Once I almost asked you
to put on legwarmers before we made love.
Why didn't you?
I thought you might suspect
something was wrong.
[pleasant music playing]
[nuns whispering]
[reporter on TV]new nuclear weapons
and their delivery systems.
In addition, conversion planning
is urged to protect
the economic well-being
of those people in communities
who would be impacted
by a nuclear weapons freeze
[Denise] What is it camels
store in their humps? Food or water?
It depends which kind.
There are one-hump and two-hump camels.
[Denise] Two-hump camel stores food in one
and water in the other?
[Heinrich] The important thing is that
camel meat is considered a delicacy.
-[Denise] Thought it was alligator meat.
-[Heinrich] Are you sure?
Who introduced the camel to America?
Murray says that we are fragile creatures
surrounded by hostile facts.
-[Steffie] Bolivia has tin.
-[Denise] Chile has copper and iron.
[Steffie] I'm the only person I know
who likes Wednesdays.
We're out of milk.
[reporter on TV] the next World War
may be fought over salt.
[Jack, voiceover]
There is just no end to surprise.
I feel sad for us and the queer part
we play in our own disasters.
But out of some persistent sense
of large-scale ruin,
we keep inventing hope.
And this is where we wait
together.
["New Body Rhumba" playing]
Climbing
-the down escalator
-Up! Up! Up!
To the frigid bardo
Rise
Kidnap yourself
Fives, tens, twenties, fifties
Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds
Yeah, I need a new body
I need a new body
I need a bit of shape and a tone
Yeah, I need a new body
I need a nobody
I can't shake sleeping alone
You see, I have been misplaced
I have been mislaid
Like a covetous dog
That you can't just leave in your home
Yeah, I need a new lover
I need a new buddy
I can't stay out too long
Yeah, my hands have gone numb
Pana! Sonic! Pana! Sonic!
Pana! Sonic! Pana! Sonic!
Just give us what we want
Pana! Sonic! Pana! Sonic!
Pana! Sonic! Pana! Sonic!
I never deny it, no point in denying
The ransom and the defense
Has drained us with their expense
It's endless
Yeah, I try not to hide it
I try not to buy it
But you can't just sit on the fence
It's true
And no, I have been mispriced
I have been mispriced
Chipped and then deviced
Tagged and rinsed for lice
No, there's never a warning
I needed a warning
I try to be content
But I'm tight in the chest
-Pana! Sonic! Pana! Sonic!
-Necco! Mini! 'Nilla! Wafers!
-Pana! Sonic
-Necco! Mini
So, give us what we want
-Pana! Sonic! Pana! Sonic!
-Necco! Mini! 'Nilla! Wafers!
-Super! Super! Super! Super!
-Necco! Mini! 'Nilla! Wafers!
-Super! Super
-Necco! Mini
Please give us what we want
Super! Super! Super! Super!
Super! Super! Super! Super!
Over 200 miles of turnpike
3,000 miles of goods!
Would you like to add a protein?
Would you like to ask me
About my day rates?
I need a new body, I need a new party
To represent my needs
Yeah, the distance is growing
but so is the longing
Which leaves the in between
And so, this is the end
Or near to the end
Let's say goodbye
To our beautiful friend
Staggered and blind on the rack
On the mend
Let's close the eyes
Of our beautiful friend
So, I need a new love
And I need a new body
To push away the end
To the water we send you
Dim that light in your eyes
Coming out of your eyes
People can see it
When it pierces the veil
The pink ones at night
When it gets too much
Otherwise, too much noise
If you look up
Block out the periphery
The earth and trees surround you
Framing your escape
Into the sky
Into the stars
Leaving the ground
You feel your feet let go
The air a bit cooler now
Thinner in the lungs
Cleaner in the mouth
And you know what they say
"Don't look down"
"Don't look down"
But they also always say
Selfish, by the bed
"Don't go to the light"
"Don't go to the light"
"Don't go to the light"
"Don't go to the light"
Well, go into the light
Go into the light
Go into the light
Go into the light
[song ends]