Before Midnight Page #4

CELINE:

No, of course he reads them; he just

doesn't compliment the writing the

way you want.

JESSE:

I just know that if I miss these

years, they are never coming back.

CELINE:

Oh, my god.

JESSE:

What?

CELINE:

This is where it ends.

JESSE:

What're you talking about?

CELINE:

This is how people start breaking

up.

JESSE:

Oh, my god. What'd you just... you

just jumped off a cliff.

23.

CELINE:

No, no. I'm marking this. This is

the day you light the ticking bomb

that will destroy our lives.

Jesse laughs.

CELINE (CONT'D)

Yeah. Watch.

JESSE:

Okay. Well, first off, you don't

light a ticking bomb, okay, you set

it and it's a timer

CELINE:

Oh, okay, whatever! Whatever, okay.

JESSE:

-That's why it ticks.

CELINE:

It has a timer. Well, you know what?

It's ticking. Right now. And this

is how it happens.

JESSE:

Right.

CELINE:

You're unhappy, you blame it on the

other person, resentment grows,

everything slowly rots and you break

up. That's it.

JESSE:

You're just doing this to shut me

up.

CELINE:

Not at all. Not at all!

JESSE:

I know you are. That's what you're

doing. Yeah.

CELINE:

No-no-no-no. I'm actually surprised

we lasted this long.

JESSE:

Okay, Okay. So here comes the

hyperbole

24.

CELINE:

We were on parallel tracks for a

while but now our tracks have crossed

and I'm going west and you're going

east. And believe me, this is how

it happens. I've seen it, okay?

Catherine Alexander -

JESSE:

You're kidding, right?

kidding.

You're

CELINE:

Well, no! I'm kidding.

not. All right?

(beat)

And I'm

Just - this is it.

As Celine talks, the girls wake up. One of the girls, ELLA,

groggily says:

ELLA:

How much longer to the ruins?

CELINE:

Oh, they were closed.

JESSE:

Yeah. Sweetie, you know what we

decided, we're gonna catch them on

the way back, when we're going to

the airport.

CELINE:

Exactly.

JESSE:

Okay?

CELINE:

We'll leave early, right? Yeah.

JESSE:

Yeah. Yeah.

ELLA:

What happened to my apple?

CELINE:

Your apple. La pomme, elle etait

fini, cette pomme. Right?

25.

EXT. FISHING VILLAGE STORE - AFTERNOON

They pull up at a small store in a coastal fishing village

and start getting out of the car. Celine is speaking in

French to the girls.

CELINE:

Give me the list.

JESSE:

I don't have it.

CELINE:

It's in your wallet.

JESSE:

Oh.

CELINE:

In your wallet.

JESSE:

Okay.

He gets out his wallet and hands it to Celine. She pulls

out the list instantly.

CELINE:

Voilà!

She turns to the girls.

CELINE (CONT'D)

Okay, I'm the General! Captain Nina,

(tells her what to do

in french)

NINA:

Oui!

JESSE:

Who made you General?

CELINE:

The General, okay?

JESSE:

Oh.

CELINE:

Captain Ella,

(tells her what to do

in french)

26.

ELLA:

Oui!

CELINE:

Private Clean-Up, you don't touch

anything.

JESSE:

Oui. D’accord.

EXT. ARRIVAL HOME - AFTERNOON

The car pulls up outside an estate by the shore. They get

out and the girls sprint through the entryway.

EXT. PATRICK'S HOUSE - AFTERNOON

On the patio outside the house, a soccer game is going on

with Jesse and many other participants.

EXT. PATRICK'S HOUSE - AFTERNOON

At a wonderful seating area, PATRICK listens to a story

NATALIA is telling him.

EXT. PATRICK'S HOUSE - AFTERNOON

In a small garden, Celine, Nina and Ella pick vegetables.

Celine has a nice moment where she's just looking at her

little girls in nature, engaged with the earth.

CELINE:

The red one.

ELLA:

Cela?

CELINE:

Très bien... Okay. Pepper.

EXT. PATRICK'S HOUSE - AFTERNOON

Jesse, PATRICK, and STEFANOS are relaxing at the far end of

the patio where there's a beautiful ocean view.

STEFANOS:

I actually read them both. The first

one is called THAT TIME, the second

one is called THIS TIME.

JESSE:

The first one is THIS TIME, the second

one is THAT TIME.

27.

STEFANOS:

Yeah.

JESSE:

We've got a joke in our family that

"This" brought us back together and

"That" paid for our apartment.

PATRICK:

Okay.

STEFANOS:

Well, it must be a little weird for

Celine, man, the way she's in a book

like that, no?

JESSE:

Why? I think she's gotten used to

it.

STEFANOS:

But the second one is sexy, man.

When he misses the plane and they

black out the windows and they have

sex for days and days and days like

there's no tomorrow. I mean wow,

did you guys actually do that?

Jesse shrugs his shoulders.

STEFANOS (CONT'D)

You did that, uh?

PATRICK:

Have you read Jesse's third book?

It's actually better than the first

two.

JESSE:

It certainly took longer to write

than the first two put together.

STEFANOS:

No, the third one I didn't read. I

mean, my wife gave it to me but it's

just a little bit too long for me,

man. Even the title is long. What's

the title?

JESSE:

"Temporary Cast Members of a Long

Running But Little Seen Production

of a Play Called Fleeting."

28.

STEFANOS:

Well, exactly my point.

JESSE:

Ah, well, you're not alone. Everybody

else thought it was too long.

PATRICK:

It's a better book. It's so much

more ambitious.

(in Greek)

The first two were so so.

STEFANOS:

(speaks Greek)

Really? Do you think?

JESSE:

What's that?

STEFANOS:

No, he says he likes all the books.

He does..

Jesse laughs.

INT. KITCHEN - AFTERNOON

Natalia, Ariadni, and Celine are sitting at a table in the

kitchen, chopping vegetables.

CELINE:

I mean, I love it here. This place

is amazing. These tomatoes are so

amazing. I can... I can smell them!

They smell so good.

ARIADNI:

Yeah, Patrick is very proud of them.

CELINE:

I know it's stupid but when we were

about to leave Paris I was a little

nervous to come here. And now that

we're about to leave, I don't want

to go.

NATALIA:

Why were you nervous?

ARIADNI:

Yeah, why was that?

29.

CELINE:

I don't know. This place is so full

of thousands of years of myth and

tragedy and I thought something tragic

was going to happen.

NATALIA:

What, you thought the Minotaur was

going to eat your children or

something?

CELINE:

Yes. Exactly.

All three women laugh.

EXT. PATIO - AFTERNOON

Back with the guys...

JESSE:

All right, well, the whole time I've

been here, I've been working on this

idea about a group of different people

with all these brain abnormalities.

So the book would be like a day in

their life from all their unique

points of view, right? Like there's

this older lady who has a condition

that makes you feel like you're in a

perpetual state of déjà vu. Every

single experience she has, she feels

like she's had it before. I mean

she can be sitting here with us,

talking seemingly functional right?

And in her head, she's thinking:

Didn't he already say that? I mean;

weren't we here yesterday having

this exact same conversation.

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