By Sidney Lumet Page #9

that horse in, that's the idiot who

should have been questioned before he took one brick down. SERPICO: Why didn't you tell

him about Delaney and Kellogg? Frank, this was a grand

jury about police officers actively engaged in corruption. You don't implicate people

without sufficient evidence. Now that's crap

and you know it, because even a dumb

cop like me knows a prosecutor can take

a grand jury anywhere it wants to take it. Now you never led me anywhere

near the real problems, nothing about the bosses, the brass,

how corruption like this could exist without

anybody knowing about it. Now a few flunky cops

in the Bronx, that's it. None of the sh*t in Queens,

Brooklyn, Manhattan. While you're at it, why

don't you mention Kansas City? Well the biggest

thing since Harry Gross, that's what you said. All right. Look, Frank, you've

got guts, integrity. There's going to

be a detective's gold shield in this for you. Well that's terrific. Now that's good. Maybe this is what

it's all about. Maybe I should take my

gold shield and forget it. I know you've been

through an ordeal, Frank. I'm a marked man in

this department for what? I've already arranged

the transfer for you. To where? China? I love characters who are

rebels because not accepting the status quo, not accepting

the way it's always been done, not accepting that this

is the way it has to be is the fundamental area of human

progress and drama, god knows. Did you ever hear the

story of the wise king? Nope, but I got the feeling

I'm going to hear it. Well there was this-- this king

and he ruled over his kingdom. Yeah? Right in the middle

of the kingdom, there was a well and that's

where everybody drank. And one night this

witch came along and she poisoned the well. Ah. And the next day, everybody

drank from it except the king and they all went crazy. And they got together in

the street and they said, We got to get rid of the

king because the king is mad. Uh oh. [gun shot] [sirens] SIDNEY LUMET: I'm not

denying for a minute that I'm attracted

to the radical. I'm attracted to the questioner. I don't know if life

is possible without it. Serpico was certainly a radical. One of the most interesting

things about Serpico as a character to me is

that he would have been the same pain in the

ass no matter what his profession had been. He was geared for overthrowing

whoever was immediately over him, and the

fact that he was a cop just made it exceedingly

difficult and very dangerous. With my generation

of kids, you develop this sense of resistance. You never went to them for help. Any contact with the

police, unless it was a murderous situation,

was considered being a rat. Just get me wired and sit back. It'll happen. Now remember, the

antenna has to hang loose. The battery back,

the transmitter, they're always problems. They're bulky. If you frisk,

they're hard to hide. [knock] SIDNEY LUMET: "Prince

of the City"-- I did not know how I

felt about Bob Leuci, the leading character in it. In my bringing up,

a rat is a rat. Ben Gazzara and I used

to talk about this in live television days. He was doing a show for

me once, a live show, on Salvatore Giuliano, you

know, the Sicilian bandit. And at rehearsal, he told us

about how he was walking, how he was in the street

talking-- he was eight-- and a cop came over and

asked him something. And he answered

the cop and he went upstairs, entered his

apartment and his father went-- [smack] --spia, spy. I accuse that one. This rat! Don't you call him that! What are you scared of? He is a rat. He belongs in a sewer. And I was brought up that way. So the fact that he ratted

right away separated us, yet it's the first script that I

co-wrote with the wonderful Jay Presson Allen. And I picked the name-- we

had to give him another name-- and I picked the name Ciello,

which in Italian means sky. So this ambivalence existed

from the very beginning, and I did not know-- I promise

you this is the truth-- I did not know how I felt about

him until I saw the first cut and I ran it after it

had been all edited. STUDENT: What did you

say your name was? CIELLO: Ciello. STUDENT: Are you the

Detective Ciello? I'm Detective Ciello. I don't think I have

anything to learn from you. [music playing] SIDNEY LUMET: Oh,

I made him a hero. The weak. The weak have got to have

something to fight for. Ain't that the truth? Want another drink? Yeah. Jimmy! Yeah? See, that's why

the court exists. The court doesn't exist

to give them justice. The court exists to give

them a chance at justice. Are they going to get it? They might. They might. See, the jury wants

to believe-- I mean the jury wants to believe. It is something to see. I got to go down there tomorrow

and pick out 12 of them. All of them, all their

lives, think, it's a sham. It's rigged. You can't fight city hall. But when they step

into that jury box, I know you just barely see it

in your eyes, maybe, maybe-- Maybe what? Maybe I can do something right. FRANK GALVIN: I am an attorney

on trial before the bar, representing my

client, my client. You open your mouth, you're

losing my case for me. JUDGE: Now listen to me, fella. No, you listen to me. All I want out of this

trial was a fair share. Push me into court five days

early, I lose my star witness, and I can't get a

continuance and I don't care. I'm going up there. I'm going to try it. I'm going to let

the jury decide. They told me about you,

said you're a hard ass, you're a defendant's judge. Well I don't care. I said to hell with

it, to hell with it! SIDNEY LUMET: In "The

Verdict," Paul Newman plays a lawyer who's

become an ambulance chaser. He's a boozer, a

bit of a Womanizer, but doesn't even have much

passion for that anymore, who gets involved in a

case about a woman injured in an accident. Somehow or other, this woman

becomes more than the case and becomes a

human being to him. Because it's a human

contact, it opens him up to a salvation of

his own self, a case to care about, a

client to care about, and in which he wants to

win no longer for the money, but in which he wants to

win for his own salvation. In his summation to the jury, he

doesn't tell them that in fact, but he tells them

that in spirit. FRANK GALVIN: You know, so much

of the time, we're just lost. We say, please, God,

tell us what is right, tell us what is true. Only there is no justice. The rich win. The poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing

people lie and after a time, we become dead, a little dead. We think of ourselves as

victims and we become victims. We become-- we become weak. We doubt ourselves. We doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. But today, you are the law. You are the law,

not some book, not the lawyers, not

a marble statue, or the trappings of the court. See, those are just symbols

of our desire to be just. All that they are, they are,

in fact, a prayer, a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say,

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