Brazil Page #2

Faintly from outside comes a burst of laughter. A tilt of

the CAMERA indicates that the laughter is coming from the

floor above.

16 INT. JILL'S FLAT NIGHT 16

The flat is very bare and basic. The laughter is coming

from a cheap portable television showing "Sgt. Bilko. From

BILKO'S POV we look through an open door of a bathroom

straight at a mirror propped up by the bath, to enable the

person in the bath to watch the TV. The person in the bath

is JILL LAYTON, washing the grime off herself while she

watches Bilko in the mirror. From her POV in the mirror,

the T.V. screen is suddenly obscured by part of the body

of a MAN in uniform.

JILL:

(scared)

Who's there?

17 INT. BUTTLE'S FLAT NIGHT 17

The BUTTLE FAMILY as before. MRS BUTTLE is closing the

book.

MRS BUTTLE:

There, that's enough for tonight. He

won't come Xmas Eve if you don't get

plenty of sleep.

GIRL BUTTLE:

Father Christmas can't come if we

haven't got a chimney.

MRS BUTTLE:

You'll see.

The GIRL exchanges goodnight kisses with her parents and

leaves the room.

GIRL BUTTLE:

How will he get down from upstairs?

BOY BUTTLE:

It's a secret.

We follow GIRL BUTTLE out of the sitting room into ...

18 INT. HALLWAY AND CHILDREN'S BEDROOMNIGHT 18

GIRL BUTTLE enters her bedroom. There is little or no

light there, and she sees a bulky figure apparently

lowering himself into the room from the direction of the

ceiling.

GIRL BUTTLE:

(unalarmed)

You've come ...

As she moves, the light from the hallway shows us the

figure of what looks like a commando on a night raid,

slowly sliding down a pole in he middle of the room. The

pole at the top end disappears through a hole in the

ceiling. Things become immediately clearer

19 INT. BUTTLE SITTING-ROOMNIGHT 19

Crash! It's a raid! Battle-dressed SECURITY TROOPS smash

trough the door. Another ONE, swings from a rope, kicks in

the window from the outside and enters that way. Most

alarmingly of all, a shower of plaster comes down from the

ceiling in which a fairly neat round hole appears and

through the hole comes a fireman's pole down which slide

TWO MORE SECURITY TROOPS. The whole thing is short, brutal

and violent.

BUTTLE is grabbed violently and stuffed into a baglike

canvas device that covers him from head to waist. A metal

clamp goes round his neck, a metal bar slides up the back

of the bag. His hands are handcuffed to the metal bar. In

seconds he has become a canvas parcel. Meanwhile, GIRL

BUTTLE has been carried out of her bedroom and dumped into

the lap of her screaming mother. BOY BUTTLE has his toy

machine gun knocked out of his hands by a TROOPER who we

see is identical in dress to the action men BOY BUTTLE has

been playing with. He rushes to his mother as guns are

viciously trained on them. TROOPS are kicking open the

doors of other rooms and generally doing a good job. An

OFFICIAL, wearing plain clothes, now enters from the front

door and during the turmoil is reading aloud from an

official document. It goes something like this:

OFFICIAL:

I hereby inform you under powers

entrusted to me under Section 47,

Paragraph 7 of Council Order Number

438476, that Mr Buttle, Archibald,

residing at 412 North Tower, Shangri

La Towers, has been invited to assist

the Ministry of Information with

certain enquiries, the nature of

which may be ascertained on

completion of application form

BZ/ST/486/C fourteen days within this

date, and that he is liable to

certain obligations as specified in

Council Order 173497, including

financial restitutions which may or

may not be incurred if Information

Retrieval procedures beyond those

incorporated in Article 7 subsections

8, 10 & 32 are required to elicit

information leading to permanent

arrest - notification of which will

he served with the time period of 5

working days as stipulated by law. In

that instance the detainee will be

debited without further notice

through central banking procedures

without prejudice until and unless at

such a time when re-imbursement

procedures may be instituted by you

or third parties on completion of a

re-imbursement form RB/CZ/907/X ...

... and more of the same, most of which is part of the

audible wall paper while the chaos reigns. As the front

door slams behind the captive relative peace returns,

broken by MRS BUTTLE's anguished sobbing.

OFFICIAL:

(proffering a pen and a

thick book of pink receipts

to Mrs Buttle)

Sign here please.

MRS BUTTLE:

(dazed. She signs weakly)

What? where have you taken him?

OFFICIAL:

(taking the book)

thank you.

(he hands her another book,

this one of blue receipts)

(indicating place to sign)

Same again please. Just there.

(checking first book of

receipts)

Press harder his time. Good.

MRS BUTTLE:

(signing again)

What is this all about?

OFFICIAL:

(tearing out sheet from

pink book)

That's your receipt for your husband.

(taking blue book from her)

Thank you. And this is my receipt for

your receipt.

(he turns to leave along

with troopers)

JILL's shocked face appears looking down through the hole

in the ceiling. The faces of the workmen BILL and CHARLIE

also appear, above and behind her.

JILL:

Mrs Buttle, are you alright?

The helmeted SECURITY TROOPS in Buttle's flat drop to

defensive positions and swing their machine guns up

towards the hole in the ceiling. All three faces retreat.

20 INT. JILL'S FLAT NIGHT 20

CHARLIE:

(starting back from the

hole with Bill and Jill)

Eh! Eh! Eh! We're Department of

Works! Department of Works up here!

Careful with those bloody things!

JILL, CHARLIE and BILL are hustled aside by a SECURITY MAN

who clears the fireman's pole from the hole. We can see

the TROOPS in the room below leaving. A SECOND SECURITY

man has untied a rope hanging out of the open window. He

coils the rope up neatly and the TWO SECURITY MEN leave

the flat.

BILL:

(to Jill as they watch this

highly efficient operation)

Don't take any notice, love, it's

their training makes them like

animals. Best in the world, though.

JILL:

Who are you?

CHARLIE:

Don't you worry love, we'll have

everything shipshape in a jiffy.

BILL:

That's it. Nothing to worry about.

CHARLIE:

It's Buttle downstairs who can worry,

eh?

JILL:

There must be some mistake ... Mr

Buttle's harmless...

BILL:

We don't make mistakes.

So saying, he drops the manhole cover, which is faced with

same material as the floor, over the hole in the floor. To

his surprise it drops neatly through the floor into the

flat below.

CHARLIE:

Bloody typical, they've gone back to

metric without telling us

20a INT. BUTTLES' FLAT NIGHT20a

MRS BUTTLE stands stunned in the middle of her decimated

flat. The KIDS wail. Slowly MRS BUTTLE collapses -

slumping to the floor with the receipt in her hand: we

tighten into CLOSE UP of "Receipt".

JILL (off CAMERA)

Mrs Buttle? Mrs Buttle?

21 INT. RECORD CLERK'S POOL 21

We come in on a CLOSE UP of a pink version of the RECEIPT

being stamped and impaled on desk spike as we PULL OUT to

reveal an infinite expanse of regularly arranged metal

desks, each desk with a built-in T.V. console, and each

(except one) occupied by a CLERK. Every desk is snowed

under with pieces of paper much like the receipts seen in

the previous scene. More pacers are delivered to each desk

intermittently by way of pneumatic tube. OFFICE BOYS

bustle about with even more paperwork. From the back of

the room we get a view of the screens which show graphs,

tabulations, figures ... All of this activity is

supervised from an elevated walkway by MR KURTZMAN.

Satisfied that all is well with his clerks he turns and

walks towards his glass enclosed private office at the top

of the room, his name lettered on the opaque glass door.

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