Barton Fink Page #16

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His bellowing has drawn onlookers' attention.

VOICES:

Step aside, four-eyes! Let someone else

spin the dame! Give the navy a dance!

Hey, Four-F, take a hike!

Barton turns furiously against the crowd.

BARTON:

I'm a writer, you monsters! I CREATE!

He points at his head.

. . . This is my uniform!

He taps his skull.

. . . THIS is how I serve the common

man! THIS is where I -

WHAPP! An infantry man tags Barton's chin on the button. Bodies surge.

The crowd gasps. The band blares nightmarishly on.

HOTEL HALLWAY:

Quiet at the cut.

After a beat, there is a faint ding at the end of the hall and, as the

elevator door opens, we faintly hear:

PETE:

This stop:
six.

Barton, disheveled, emerges and stumbles wearily down the hall. He stops in

front of his door, takes his key out, and enters the room.

BARTON'S POV

Mastrionotti is sitting on the edge of the bed reading Barton's manuscript.

Deutsch stands in front of the desk staring at the bathing beauty.

MASTRIONOTTI:

Mother:
What is to become of him. Father:

We'll be hearing from that crazy wrestler.

And I don't mean a postcard. Fade out. The

end.

He looks up at Barton.

. . . I thought you said you were a writer.

DEUTSCH:

I dunno, Duke. I kinda liked it.

BARTON:

Keep your filthy eyes off that.

Deutsch turns toward Barton and throws a folded newspaper at him.

DEUTSCH:

You made morning papers, Fink.

Barton opens the paper. A headline reads: Writer Found Headless in Chavez

Ravine. The story has two pictures - a studio publicity portrait of Mayhew,

and a photograph of the crime scene: two plainclothes detectives stare down

into a gulley as a uniformed cop restrains a pair of leashed dogs.

MASTRIONOTTI:

Second one of your friends to end up dead.

DEUTSCH:

You didn't tell us you knew the dame.

With a jerk of his thumb, Mastrionotti indicates the bloodstained bed.

MASTRIONOTTI:

Sixth floor too high for you, Fink?

DEUTSCH:

Give you nose bleeds?

Barton crosses the room and sits at the foot of the bed, staring at the

newspaper.

Just tell me one thing, Fink: Where'd

you put their heads?

Distractedly:

BARTON:

Charlie . . . Charlie's back . . .

MASTRIONOTTI:

No kidding, bright boy - we smelt Mundt

all over this. Was he the idea man?

DEUTSCH:

Tell us where the heads are, maybe they'll

go easy on you.

MASTRIONOTTI:

Only fry you once.

Barton rubs his temples.

BARTON:

Could you come back later? It's just . . .

too hot . . . My head is killing me.

DEUTSCH:

All right, forget the heads. Where's

Mundt, Fink?

MASTRIONOTTI:

He teach you to do it?

DEUTSCH:

You two have some sick sex thing?

BARTON:

Sex?! He's a MAN! We WRESTLED!

MASTRIONOTTI:

You're a sick f***, Fink.

DEUTSCH:

All right, moron, you're under arrest.

Barton seems oblivious to the two men.

BARTON:

Charlie's back. It's hot . . . He's

back.

Down the hall we hear the ding of the arriving elevator.

Mastrionotti c*cks his head with a quizzical look.

He rises and walks slowly out into the hall. Deutsch wathces him go.

HIS POV:

Mastrionotti in the hallway in full shot, framed by the door, still looking

puzzled.

MASTRIONOTTI:

. . . Fred . . .

Deutsch stands and pushes his suit coat back past the gun on his hip,

revealing a pair of handcuffs on his belt. He unhitches the cuffs and slips

one around Barton's right wrist and the other around a loop in the wrought

iron footboard of the bed.

DEUTSCH:

Sit tight, Fink.

THE HALLWAY:

As Deutsch joins Mastrionotti.

DEUTSCH:

Why's it so goddamn hot out here?

MASTRIONOTTI:

. . . Fred . . .

Deutsch looks where Mastrionotti is looking.

THE WALL:

Tacky yellow fluid streams down. The walls are pouring sweat.

The hallway is quiet.

MASTRIONOTTI AND DEUTSCH

They look at each other. They look down the hall.

THEIR POV:

The elevator stands open at the far end of the empty hall.

For a long beat, nothing.

Finally Pete, the elevator man, emerges.

At this distance, he is a small figure, stumbling this way and that, his

hands presseed against the sides of his head.

He turns to face Mastrionotti and Deutsch and takes a few steps forward,

still clutching his head.

MASTRIONOTTI AND DEUTSCH

Watching.

PETE:

He takes on last step, then collapses.

As he pitches forward his hands fall away from his head. His head separates

from his neck, hits the floor, and rolls away from his body with a dull

irregular trundle sound.

MASTRIONOTTI AND DEUTSCH

Wide-eyed, they look at each other, then back down the hall.

All is quiet.

THE HALLWAY:

Smoke is beginning to drift into the far end of the hall.

We hear a muted rumble.

MASTRIONOTTI AND DEUTSCH

Mastrionotti tugs at his tie. He slowly unholsters his gun. Deutsch

slowly, hypnotically, follows suit.

DEUTSCH:

. . . Show yourself, Mundt!

More quiet.

THE HALLWAY:

More smoke.

LOW STEEP ANGLE ON ELEVATOR DOOR

The crack where the floor of the elevator meets that of the hall.

It flickers with red light from below. Bottom-lit smoke sifts up.

CLOSE ON MASTRIONOTTI

Standing in the foreground, gun at ready. Sweat pours down his face.

Behind him, Deutsch stands nervously in the light-spill from Barton's

doorway.

The rumble and crackle of fire grows louder.

THE HALLWAY:

More smoke.

PATCH OF WALL:

Sweating.

A swath of wallpaper sags away from the top of the wall, exposing glistening

lath underneath.

With a light airy pop, the lathwork catches on fire.

MASTRIONOTTI AND DEUTSCH

Sweating.

DEUTSCH:

. . . Mundt!

THEIR POV:

The hallway. Its end-facing-wall slowly spreads flame from where the

wallpaper droops.

LOW STEEP ANGLE ON ELEVATOR DOOR

More red bottom-lit smoke seeps up from the crack between elevator and

hallway floors.

With a groan of tension relieved cables and a swaying of the elevator door,

a pair of feet crosses the threshold into the doorway.

JUMPING BACK:

Wide on the hallway. Charlie Meadows has emerged from the elevator and is

hellishly backlit by the flame.

His suit coat hangs open. His hat is pushed back on his head. From his

right hand his briefcase dangles.

He stands motionless, facing us. There is something monumental in his

posture, shoulders thrown back.

MASTRIONOTTI:

Tensed. Behind him, Deutsch gulps.

MASTRIONOTTI:

There's a boy, Mundt. Put the policy

case down and your mitts in the air.

CHARLIE:

He leans slowly down to put the briefcase on the floor.

CLOSE ON MASTRIONOTTI

Relax. He murmurs:

MASTRIONOTTI:

He's complying.

BACK TO CHARLIE:

He straightens up from the briefcase, a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.

BOOM! The shotgun spits fire.

Mastrionotti's face is peppered by buckshot and he is blown back down the

hallway into Deutsch.

Bellowing fills the hallway over the roar of the fire:

CHARLIE:

LOOK UPON ME! LOOK UPON ME! I'LL SHOW

YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND!!

THE HALLWAY:

The fire starts racing down the hallway.

CLOSE STEEP ANGLE ON PATCH OF WALL

Fire races along the wall-sweat goopus.

TRACK IN ON DEUTSCH

His eyes widen at Charlie and the approaching fire; his gun dangles

fprgotten from his right hand.

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