(GUY NOIR THEME)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions --- Guy Noir, Private Eye ---
(PIANO)
GK: It was April, and I was in Texas working security on a field of bluebonnets that were in full bloom, trying to keep people from tramping on them. Texans feel very strongly about bluebonnets whose beauty and aroma is so powerful that people may become disoriented and suffer a rather pleasant sort of dementia. My boss was a man named Jim Dave Hooper.
FN: I got 14,000 acres of bluebonnets out there, Mr. Noir. Biggest bluebonnet field in Texas. You see, when I was a little fella, I discovered that if I walked through a field of bluebonnets in bloom, I could make myself into a hound dog and run free for a week or two. Happiest days of my life, being a dog.
GK: Is that what you are now?
FN: I wish. No, for some reason, I am a partridge.
GK: You feel that you are a partridge?
FN: I am a partridge. You can't see that?
GK: No, sir.
FN: These are my eggs. Laid these fresh this morning.
GK: Well, I hope you get your wish and turn back into a dog.
FN: Yes, but what if I turn into a hunting dog and I'm still part-partridge? Then what? (BRIDGE)
GK: I patrolled the bluebonnet fields on foot, carrying little packets of pollen ---- you find someone hallucinating, you just open a packet and it makes them sneeze and sneezing brings them back to reality. And pretty soon I started to hallucinate that I was a movie star in a romantic comedy with Keira Knightly ----
SS (BRIT: How do you want it, Mr. Schwartzman?
TR: I want you to run to him in four quick strides and crush your face against his and chew hungrily on his lips and press your body against his.
SS (BRIT: Okay. I can do that.
TR: You haven't seen him in four months, you weren't sure he was even alive, and now here he is, and you run at him and he picks you up and whirls you around and you rip off his shirt and press your lips against his bare chest.
GK: She rips off my shirt----
TR: Yes. And then you fall down in the tall grass and you roll around and around and then we cut to the hotel room.
GK: Okay.
TR: Think you can do that, Mr. Noir?
GK: Sure. I'll do my best.
TR: Okay. Places. ----- Camera.......Action.
SS (BRIT: Oh darling.....darling.....(RUNNING FOOTSTEPS) (BRIDGE)
GK: It wasn't easy to open up a pollen packet with Keira Knightly wrapped around me, but I did (SNEEZE) and there was a woman walking through the bluebonnets.
SS: (OFF) Hello? Hello?
GK: You're trespassing on private property, ma'am. Going to have to ask you to leave.
SS: I grew up near here. I moved away forty years ago.
GK: You look sort of young to have been gone forty years.
SS: I feel young. ----- Ohhh. Our front door was right here. Our front yard----- Oh look------There's Daddy out plowing. (TRACTOR, OFF) There's my horse, Bluebird. And here comes Mama. (FN MAMA: Alright now, Marcy, you come in and get started scrubbing the kitchen floor. Don't stand there dreaming. Time is a-flying. (AWAY, MUTTERING) (DAUGHTER) Mama---- I'm grown up now and I live in Dallas. I'm a writer, Mama.
TR (TEXAS): Hey, Sunshine---- run in the house, wouldja, and get me out a pitcher of cold nectar, okay?
SS: Daddy----- I'm grown up and I went to Dallas and I named my little boy for you, Daddy----- oh well, never mind.
(TRACTOR STARTS AND PULLS AWAY AND FADES)
GK: There was an old two-tone Pontiac out front. An old white frame house with a screened porch. (DOOR SLAPS SHUT)
FN (MAMA, OFF): How many times do I have to tell you, don't let that screen door slap like that----- (SS: Sorry, Mama! (FN MAMA: You kids don't listen to a thing I say!
GK: There was the old white icebox with the drip pan underneath and the old gas range and oilcloth on the table and a linoleum floor and on the counter an Atwater-Kent radio. I turned it on and (STATIC, DIAL TURNING) I turned the dial and there was Richard Nixon (TR NIXON: One gift I did receive was our family dog, Checkers. And you know, the kids love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it. .....) (DIAL TURN) and there was Elvis (TR ELVIS: Well, I, uh, I am looking forward to my time in the U.S. Army and I'm just gonna do my best....) (DIAL TURN) and there was Billy Graham (TR BILLY: And when we turn to the first chapter of Ezekiel, chapter fourteen, verse eleven......) (DIAL TURN) and there was a young Senator from Massachusetts (TR JFK: Well, I, uh, I believe that lack of leadership is the problem and how to get this country moving again. Time for a new generation.) (CLICK) and (DIAL) there was a show from New York (TR ED SULLIVAN: And now welcome an up and coming young band from Lubbock Texas......Buddy Holly and the Crickets---- (APPLAUSE) (BAND OPENING OF "THAT'LL BE THE DAY" THEN SLOWING IN DREAMLIKE .....
SS: Mama, it's Buddy. He's on the radio.
FN (MAMA): Buddy is? Imagine that. Why I've known him since he was just a little bugger.
SS (BRIT: What's wrong, Mr. Noir? You seem to be someplace else.
GK: Sorry, Keira. Just thinking.
SS (BRIT: Is there something about me that----
GK: No, you're just fine. My mind wanders sometimes.
(DISTANT DOG BARKS)
FN (YOUNG): Peggy Sue?
SS: Hi Buddy.
FN (YOUNG): You see me on the Ed Sullivan show?
SS: You were great, Buddy. We were proud.
FN (YOUNG): I'm moving to New York, Peggy Sue. But first I gotta do a tour up north. Me and Richie Valens.
SS: It's winter up north, Buddy. Don't go.
FN (YOUNG): I signed a contract. Got to. And I need the money.
SS: I wish you wouldn't.
FN (YOUNG): I'll be back. Don't worry. I'll be back in time to see the bluebonnets in bloom. Promise. (BRIDGE)
GK: I wanted to stay in the dream forever but there was a dog jumping on me (PANTING) and his fur made me sneeze (SNEEZE) and there I was in a field of bluebonnets. Nobody around. Just flowers and sky and Lubbock, Texas, on the horizon.
(THEME)
TR: A dark night in a city that keeps its secrets, and there on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building is a guy still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions, Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(MUSIC OUT)