(GUY NOIR THEME)
Tim Russell: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets but on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions......Guy Noir, Private Eye. (THEME UP AND FADE)
Garrison Keillor: It was a dark night and I'd just gotten back to my apartment at the Hawthorne Arms. (KEY IN DOOR, DOOR OPEN. MEOW) (DOOR CLOSE, FOOTSTEPS. MEOW) --You lonely? Huh? Missed me, didn't ya. (MEOW) No, you didn't. Just missed your meal ticket, that's all. Brought you home some moo shoo pork. (MEOW) Your favorite. Let me get your dish. (FOOTSTEPS) -- I stopped to put on some music-- (CLICK. SALLY D, W. PIANO, IN MID-PHRASE, VERY BREATHY TORCH STANDARD, E.G. "IT HAD TO BE YOU") -- I love romantic ballads for the torture they provide -- sort of like living in Minnesota and looking at pictures of the Windward Islands. Sort of like being a gloomy old galoot at the ballet. (CLICK OF SWITCH, MUSIC STOPS INSTANTLY) What-- hey-- who did that?
Sue Scott: Hi, Guy. (STING)
GK: Mona! How'd you get in here?
SS: You gave me a key, remember?
GK: You almost scared the stuffing out of me.
SS: Well, you've still got plenty left. Besides--I didn't think guys like you ever got scared.
GK: Guys like me were born scared, Mona.
SS: Where you been keeping yourself, Guy? I looked all over for you.
GK: Been in all the usual places -- what you looking for, Mona?
SS: I think you know. Maybe this revolver in my hand will refresh your memory. (STING)
GK: Mona-- you shouldn't be messing around with guns. You're an English major. You're liable to go off and shoot a tree. Or a sunset.
SS: I may have majored in English but I'm evil. Worthless. I love evil. Sometimes I want to take people in my hands and just -- just -- bend them to my will -- make them dance and sing and do exactly as I please. (LAUGHS DARKLY)
GK: So-- you're a movie director. No harm in that.
SS: No harm in that!!! (SHE LAUGHS CRUELLY) We'll see about that. -- I came here to get the manuscript I left here when you and I had our little -- tete-a-tete.
GK: What manuscript?
SS: A memoir. Called "Poisonous Seed."
GK: What's it about?
SS: (SNEERS) "What's it about?" -- It's about a girl growing up in the green suburbs of Minneapolis -- sent to private schools -- indulged by her loving parents -- ballet lessons, cello, trips to Europe -- but deep in her heart all she wants to do is -- kill things and make cheeseburgers out of them.
GK: You don't look like you have a cheeseburger problem, Mona--
SS: It's not a problem, it's a need. I need cheeseburgers that are made from endangered species. (STING)
GK: I looked at her. (BRIDGE) She was beautiful in an introspective sort of way. Black hornrim glasses, plaid skirt, white blouse, sweater, long auburn hair that draped over her shoulders like a metaphor that was maybe more intricate than it needed to be-- but her eyes-- her eyes burned with anger.
SS: My parents were in the Sierra Club. A couple of goody two-shoes. Episcopalians, PTA, Coalition for the Homeless, civil rights, you name it -- if it was out to help people, they were in it.
GK: So you couldn't come up to their standards so you're trying to get back at them by killing endangered species and making them into cheeseburgers.
SS: Cut the psychology, Noir. Let me have the manuscript. Otherwise, you're gonna be cheese yourself. Swiss cheese. (CARTRIDGE OF REVOLVER TURNS)
GK: I could see the shadow of the cat as it tiptoed along the cupboard right behind her head. He stopped. The tip of his nose was two inches from the back of her head. He was fascinated by the diamond clip in her hair. And when he jumped at it, (MEOW) she turned around (SS SHARP INTAKE OF BREATH), and I grabbed the gun. (BRIEF STRUGGLE, THEN CLATTER OF GUN ON FLOOR. MEOW.) -- Just leave it there, sister.
SS: You tricked me--
GK: That cat sure earned his kitty litter.
SS: Give me my manuscript.
GK: I don't think so. Not yet.
SS: You read it, didn't you--
GK: I did.
SS: And--?
GK: It needs work.
SS: "It needs work."!!!! What do you know?
GK: I can read-- that's what I know. -- Listen to me. The whole section on hunting down each specie -- the ocelot, the grizzly, the panther, the bighorn sheep, the spotted owl, the sperm whale -- and shooting it and cutting off a hunk and grilling it over a fire and putting cheese on it and sticking it in a bun and eating it with catchup -- it gets repetitious. One specie after another. And it's a lie. A reader can tell that. I mean, the scene where you're chasing the sperm whale and you write, "The blue-green waves undulated like great hills and valleys as the salt spray doused my hair and I steered the 16-foot runabout toward the wake of the giant dorsal fin, the harpoon gun clenched tightly in my left hand." It's fiction, Mona.
SS: How can you say that???? You don't know. You weren't there.
GK: It didn't happen.
SS: It did!!!
GK: The guy you rented the boat from was named Ishmael Melville?
SS: Okay, I made that up, but the rest is true--! I swear.
GK: You couldn't have done those things. I don't believe you for a moment.
TR: Well, maybe you'll believe this then. (STING)
GK: I turned. He was standing in shadows. He'd jimmied the lock on the back door using a No. 2 pencil and he was holding a tear-gas pen in his hand.
TR: I'm her editor. Lance Letterman. "Poisonous Seed" is going to be the book next fall. We have a first printing of 500,000--We've sold the film rights--Lindsay Lohan is playing Mona--Avril Lavigne is doing the title song. Give me the manuscript, Mr. Noir.
GK: Why are you doing this to your parents, Mona? They're good people. They'll be devastated.
SS: I'll tell you why -- because I'm a writer, that's why. And I want to earn a potful of money. Buckets. I want to be rich. And every writer knows that goodness is boring. And evil is interesting. And that's just how it is, Mr. Noir.
GK: So? If evil interests you, you crusade against evil. You fight it.
TR: How quaint -- When was the last loberal novelist who sold more than 300 copies of anything? Hand over the manuscript.
GK: You get angry -- you set out to describe evil and put a human face on it -- and then you haul off and you pop it in the snoot. Like this -- (HE SWINGS, KONK, TR GROANS AND FALLS).
SS: You-- you hit my editor.
GK: I've been wanting to hit an editor for a long time.
SS: Please-- give me back the manuscript of "Poisonous Seed," Mr. Noir. I've worked on it for years. I really need it.
GK: Maybe you need to work on it some more.
SS: Why?
GK: It isn't truthful, that's why. The truth is you grew up the daughter of unitrians who always slept late on Sunday morning and their little girl liked to turn on the TV and watch the preachers talk about Armageddon and the Last Judgement. Your parents were fond of committees and people working together and you were fond of avenging angels with flaming swords.
SS (DEEP): Used to be fond of committees. But no more.
SS: Mom! (STING)
GK: Mrs. Anderson. Welcome to my apartment--
SS (DEEP): I came for the manuscript, Noir. Hand it over. (BRIDGE)
GK: She stepped out of the shadows.
SS: Mom-- what happened to your hair?
GK: Mrs. Anderson was a bleached blonde in a black leather jacket -- cruel red lipstick and a cigarette on the lower lip, smoke curling through her fake eyelashes, and an automatic rifle cradled in her arm. -- You don't look like a Unitarian, ma'am.
SS (DEEP): I was and then I got over it.
SS: I had no idea-- when did you do this?
SS (DEEP): November. After John Kerry lost. I took a look in the mirror and I said, Ellen, you've been on the losing side for too long. It's time to be a winner. You've been a giver - it's time to take.
GK: So you haven't been home for awhile, Mona--
SS: I was hunting a bald eagle to make an eagleburger out of him.
GK: You know how to operate that automatic rifle, Mrs. Anderson?
SS: (DEEP) Don't ask for a show-and-tell, big boy -- you might not like it. Get me the manuscript of "Poisonous Seed" -- I have a pretty good idea of how my daughter depicted me and that's one book that's Dead On Arrival. I'm gonna take it out to the woods and remainder it with this Uzi.
TR (MINN): I don't think so, my dear. (STING)
SS: Dad!
SS (DEEP): Don't try to stop me, Todd.
TR (MINN): You're going through an episode here, Ellen. Disappointed Liberal Dissociation Disorder. Dr. Lorentz warned me about it. You got off your meds --
SS (DEEP): This isn't about drugs, Todd--
TR (MINN): You pretended to be taking your meds and I suspected that and then I found the receipt from the self-storage company so I snuck the key off your key ring and went to the storage bin and found the motorcycle and the Uzi and a thousand rounds of ammo.
SS (DEEP): Don't try to stop me, I'm warning you--
TR (MINN): I was worried about you, so I bought some clay and came home and I made you another Uzi--the one in your hand.
SS (DEEP): You mean--? This gun is----?
TR (MINN): It's ceramic, Ellen.
SS (DEEP): You tricked me-- (SHE SOBS) I'll never forgive you for that--
TR (MINN): I had to do it. You're not a gangster, Ellen. You're a Democrat. Like me--
SS: I'm no Democrat, so count me out, Pops.
TR (MINN): I'll never understood why you got your hair dyed black, Mona. Or had your neck pierced. I've seen girls with nose rings and eyebrow rings -- you're the first with a neck ring. Isn't it hard to breathe with that?
SS: I learned a new way of breathing. Circular breathing. How could I explain it to you? You're living in the Sixties!
TR (MINN): Try!
SS: You think everything has to have a reason! It isn't about reasons! It's about irrationality!!! I'm not rebelling - I'm being.
TR (MINN): What did we do????
SS (DEEP): I don't care what we did -- I'm done being a mother. I'm ready to be a marauder! An avenging angel! A fury! I'm going to go out and start kicking butt. (DOOR SLAM)
TR (MINN): It's your fault, Noir.
GK: Mine???
TR (MINN): You turned my little girl against me!!!
SS: You're so irrelevant, Dad..
GK: How did I come to be in the middle of this?
TR (RICO): Hold it right there. (BIRD SHRIEK) Shuddup. (BIRD SHRIEK) I said, shuddup. (BIRD CROAK) That's better.
GK: A man in a green plaid jacket stepped out of the shadows with an enormous bird perched on his shoulder.
SS: Hi, Danny.
TR (RICO): I brought you your condor. (BIRD CROAK)
SS: You took your sweet time.
TR (RICO): It was the last one.
SS: Thanks. Where is my pistol?
TR (MINN): This what you're looking for, Mona? This pistol? (STING)
SS: Dad-- you wouldn't. I'm your daughter.
TR (MINN): Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. I remember a UPS man from twenty-five years ago who you bear a certain resemblance to.
SS: Put the gun down, Dad.
TR (MINN): Let that condor go and I will.
SS: It's only a condor. (BIRD SHRIEK)
GK: And when the bird heard that, it clamped down on Danny's shoulder (TR RICO CRY OF PAIN) and it spread its enormous wings (WING FLAP AND BIRD SHRIEK) and it flew to the top of the fridge where the manuscript of "Poisonous Seed" was (WING FLAP, SHRIEK) and taking the memoir in its talons, it flew straight out (WINGS FLAP, SHRIEK) through the kitchen window (CRASH OF GLASS) as Mona ran after it (
SS: Come back!!!! FAST LIGHT FOOTSTEPS FADE) with Danny in pursuit (
TR: Hey baby!!!! FAST HEAVY FOOTSTEPS FADE) and the editor (
TR: Come back!) her dad chasing him (TR MINN: You leave her alone, hear me? HEAVY FOOTSTEPS FADE) and that was the end of it. (DUCT TAPE RIP) I covered the busted window with duct tape and put the needle back on the record (SALLY D & PIANO IN MID-PHRASE, TORCHY SONG) and opened up the moo shoo pork (MEOW) -- hey, there you are. Where'd you go? (MEOW) -- Yeah, you can have half. You don't care for water chestnuts, right? (MEOW) That's what I thought. How about bamboo shoots? (MEOW) Okay. Extra bamboo shoots. Want me to heat it up for you? (MEOW) All right. There you go. (CAT SCARFING UP FOOD) -- I love this song. Takes me back to Chicago--- 1978. North Side. A girl named Shoshana. I'll never forget her. -- That's why I had you neutered. (CAT UNHAPPINESS) Believe me, it was for your own good. (CAT MISERY) Someday you'll thank me, son.
(THEME)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets but high above the empty streets, on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions......Guy Noir, Private Eye. (MUSIC OUT)