Pi Page #3

His arms are covered with faded Russian prison tattoos and he

speaks with a thick Eastern European accent, He's happy to see

Max.

S0L

Max! How are you7

Max is happy to see Sol, but he's a bit bashful and

intimidated.

MAX Okay.

EXT. SOL'S STUDY - MOMENTS LATER

TIGHT ON the Japanese game of Go being played. Sol is white

and Max is black. Sol's moves are secure and controlled while

Max is hesitant.

SOL:

Stop thinking, Max, just

feel. Use your intuition.

It's the only way to get into

the flow.

(Beat)

What did you think of Hamlet?

MAX:

I didn't get to it.

SOL:

It's been a month.

(Knowingly)

You haven't taken

a single break.

MAX:

I'm so close, Sol. I'm

so close but I just can't

grab it.

Sol changes the subject. He feeds his goldfish and points to

one of them.

SOL:

Have you met the new

fish my niece bought me? I

named her Icarus. After you.

My renegade pupil. You fly

too high, you'll get burned.

Max looks up at Sol.

SOL:

The more I see you, the

more I see myself thirty

years ago. My greatest pupil.

Published at 16, Ph.D. at 20.

MAX:

We'll see.

SOL:

But life isn't just

mathematics. I spent forty

years looking for patterns in

Pi, I found nothing.

MAX:

You found things...

SOL:

I found things, but not a

pattern.

INT. MOVING TRAIL - DAY

Max sits in the corner of a rickety New York City subway car.

The train is almost completely deserted.

Max looks down at his hand. He opens his palm and reveals a

black Go chip.

MAX (V.O.)

Tuesday, September

second, eighteen twelve. If

Sol hadn't gotten sick who

knows where math would be. He

spent years in the numbers of

Pi. Searching for meaning, for

order.

Max notices a SKINNY MAN in a business suit staring at him.

The man catches Max's eye and looks away, but then he quickly

looks back, making Max turn away.

He looks down at his Wall Street journal and draws a circle

with its diameter then he writes "A=pir2" and "C=2pir." Next

he writes "pi=3.14159..."

MAX (V.O.)

Three point one

four...off into infinity

and maybe insanity. Somewhere

in there he wanted sanity.

Sanity like he found in the

circles Pi represented.

Simple, sane circles. If only

the stock market had circles.

Some type of sanity. Some

type of form, of shape.

Suddenly, Max hears someone singing. Max looks up. It is the

Skinny Man and he's singing with passion. It's all very

strange to Max, who nervously looks away.

And then the singing stops—

mid-verse Max looks up and the man is gone. Vanished. Max

looks around—no one in Sight.

INT. APARTMENT STAIRCASE - DAY

Max heads up the stairs to his apartment. Just then, a toy

SLINKY appears from nowhere marching down the stairs.

Max stops and waits until the Slinky hits his foot. He picks

it up and looks at it.

He looks around wondering what's going on. Then Jenna leans

out over a railing and starts laughing at Max.

INT. COFFEE SHOP-DAY

Max sits at the counter frantically looking at the Wall Street

Journal. He plops three pills into his coffee.

He draws circles and other shapes across the page.

Max is interrupted by a puff of smoke. At the same time,

someone touches his shoulder and says:

LENNY MEYER:

Hey, Max, how you doing?

MAX:

Oh, okay.

LENNY MEYER:

Lenny Meyer.

(Motioning to the cigarette)

I'll put it out.

(Which be does)

So, what do you do?

MAX:

Um, I work with computers

...math.

LENNY MEYER:

Really? What type of math?

MAX:

Number theory. Mostly

research.

LENNY MEYER:

Number theory? No

way, I work in theory, too.

Not traditional, though...

(Points to his yarmulke)

I work with the Torah.

(Awed by the coincidence)

Amazing.

MAX:

(Passing it of as a coincidence)

Yeah...

LENNY MEYER:

Yeah. You know Hebrew is

all numbers. It's all math.

MAX:

Hm.

Lenny pulls out a worn' dog-eared Bible from his pocket. There

are paper slips marking what seems like every other page. When

he opens it up,

Max sees that the pages are marked up by highlighter pens,

notes and diagrams.

Lenny points to the text. EXTREME CLOSE-UP of Hebrew letters.

LENNY MEYER:

Here, look...the ancient

Jews used Hebrew as their

numerical system. Each

letter is a number.

Lenny pulls out a pen and grabs Max's Journal. He writes on it

as he talks.

LENNY MEYER:

You see...The Hebrew "A," the

number 1. The Hebrew "B,"

Bet, is two. You can take any

Hebrew text and turn them into

a long string of numbers.

The waitress refills Max's coffee.

LENNY MEYER:

The Torah is just

a long string of numbers.

Some say that it's a long

code sent to us from God.

Satisfied, Lenny lights up a cigarette and takes a drag.

MAX:

(Mildly impressed)

Kind of interesting.

LENNY MEYER:

(Proud of himself)

Yeah, like take the

Hebrew word for, say, the

Garden of Eden, Kadem. Kuf,

Dalei Mem...Kuf is a

hundred. Daled, four Mem,

forty. They equal one hundred

and forty-four. Then take the

tree of knowledge...in

the garden, Aat Ha Haim, it

equals two hundred and

thirty-three. Now you can take

that number and...

MAX:

They're Fibonacci numbers.

LENNY MEYER:

Huh?

MAX:

The Fibonacci sequence.

Italian mathematician, thirteenth

century. If you divide

a hundred and forty-four into

two hundred and thirty-three,

it approaches theta.

LENNY MEYER:

Theta?

MAX:

The Greek symbol for the

golden ratio. The golden

spiral.

Lenny exhales the smoke. Max quickly graphs the number on his

Wall Street Journal.

LENNY MEYER:

You're right, I never saw

that before. That's the series

you find in nature. Like the

face of a sunflower.

MAX:

Wherever there's spirals.

LENNY MEYER:

You see, there's math everywhere.

Lenny's smoke drifts by Max's eyes.

SLOW MOTION:
MAX'S POV of smoke spirals spinning in front of

him.

MAX:

Math everywhere...

SLOW MOTION:
Max looks down at his coffee cup. He pours cream

into his coffee. It shoots up and mixes with the black coffee

forming spirals in the mug.

MAX:

(Serious)

Everywhere...

SLOW MOTION:
Max looks at the spiral he just drew on the Wall

Street Journal.

NORMAL SPEED Suddenly, Max stands up.

MAX:

Oh my God...

INT. MAX'S APARTMENT - DAY

Max draws spirals all over his Wall Street Journal. Then he

takes a thick black marker and draws a giant spiral across the

entire page.

Max is ecstatic as he pounds code into the computer takes

moments to wake up, drops pills, and drinks a Ginseng soda.

MAX (V.O.)

Simple shapes!

Tuesday, September second.

Twenty-twenty-two. Sol! Sol!

Sol! Shapes in the market.

Why not? And they're spirals!

Spirals!

Max traces a big circle on the journal. Then, he cuts it out

with an X-acto blade. He cuts out the middle of the circle so

that be has a thin loop like one of those futuristic frisbees.

He tears part of the loop and stretches the circle out in

front of him into a spiral.

MAX (V.O.)

A circle spread out overtime.

It's open-ended. It has a

beginning and it grows and

changes through time. If I

can find where it fits, if I

can spin it and lock it into

a group of numbers, then I

can calculate the future.

Lead into gold. Chaos into

order Madness into sanity. Pain

into bliss. Perfection.

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