what's wrong?
eli, it played like a dream. my god, it was marat-sade.
well, who was that on the phone in the middle of the night when you first read it, raving about the magical madhouse scene, the upstairs maid?
what do you wanna do, eli?.  they're all waiting.
being childish isn't going to help your movie. you know, there's nothing wrong with the story. the real problem is since i wrote this thing two years ago, you've had watergate, the energy crisis, women's lib, the economy is down the tubes. you want to talk about burning issues?. there's arsenic in the glue on the back of food stamps! that's why you don't like the "madhouse scene." your goddamn war story has lost its relevance.
cut it out, will ya?
two years ago you were all charged up to make a great big anti-war statement and they wouldn't let you. now they let you, but you haven't got a war. what you've got is egg on your face because vietnam's long gone and it's too late!
oh?
what's the disease?
hey, lucky, give me your cot by the window and i'll let you read a great madhouse sequence.
all right, eli. i'll write you another scene. what difference does it make? the studio will cut it all out anyway and what you got left is a lot of swell battle scenes, which, when i was back there they said were "just terrific."
yeah, what makes you different?
they call him "eli the terrible"
being an insecure writer, i'd call my agent. and get another opinion.
you are a smug, insufferable son-of- a-bitch. when i read the insane asylum scene to my wife and four children, my wife cried, my oldest son shook my hand for the first time in his whole life. so, why is it, eli, that this vulgar little scene turns out to be so much. stronger, more moving?
goddamn little prudish bastard!
are you kidding?. if that guy in the rowboat was a marine sticking a bayonet in her instead of a cock, that uptight son-of-a-bitch would have saluted.
fucking fascist. what are you laughing at?
goddamn you, eli. that's not funny!
son of a bitch.
that's all we'd need.
better? how better?
dropping a dead man's boots over his own airfield, out of chivalry.  that's not crazy enough for you?!
like what?
like what?!
is that what you're after, reality? i thought you wanted something outrageous!
eli.
a charleston?
that's ridiculous.
the charleston is silly. they won't believe it.
you'll get a laugh, eli.
eli. an idea, maybe. instead of flowers, what if she brought him the things of their life together. of their sexuality. like her nightgown, her underclothes.
'course they'd be rags by now, but let me show you this.
what do you mean? it'll break their hearts!
young man, taking my life in my hands, i must inform you that you are an asshole.
being a devout masochist, it follows that i'm eli's best friend. i know quite a lot about him and nina.
he met her three years ago. two lonely people rattling around new york. a brutal winter. eli's marriage had just broken up.
i got fourteen versions. take your pick. what are you doing in there?
thirteen. in one version he lives. turns the girl in, opens a gay bar in berlin, gains fifty pounds and changes his name to goering.  . please, anything but the sweaters. you'll stretch the hell out of the sleeves.
why don't you let the kid go before he gets hurt?
he's dangerous to have around. stop playing games, eli. tell jake you've replaced him. what are you so hooked on?
bullshit.
yeah, what?
like gonorrhea.