The Grand Budapest Hotel Page #14

INT. OFFICE BUILDING. NIGHT

A bank of elevators in an art-deco lobby. A bell rings,

and a pair of doors slides open. Deputy Kovacs emergesand navigates his way through a maze of suds-buckets andwomen on their hand-and-knees scrubbing the floor. Hedoes not notice:

Jopling sitting in a chair behind a column reading theevening edition of the Trans-Alpine Yodel.

EXT. STREET. NIGHT

The evening sky is bright blue. Crowds hurry in and outof shops and restaurants. Deputy Kovacs crosses thestreet and stands next to an old lady at a tram-stop. Hechecks his watch. The tram arrives, and the door opens.

65.

Deputy Kovacs assists the old lady, then boards behindher. He takes a seat. He looks out the window. Just as

they pull away, he sees Jopling exit the building andclimb onto his motorcycle.

Deputy Kovacs frowns.

Jopling kick-starts his engine and follows the tram,

close behind, for three blocks. At the nextintersection, a policeman blows a whistle, holds up hishand, and makes Jopling wait while a stream of opposingtraffic crosses.

The tram rounds a corner and stops. Deputy Kovacs jumpsup and ducks out onto the street. He looks left andright. He hurries up a path toward a grand, colossal,

domed palace. A sign carved in stone above the doorreads: Kunstmuseum Lutz.

As he goes inside, Deputy Kovacs looks back to seeJopling’s motorcycle pulling slowly to the curb.

INT. MUSEUM. NIGHT

The spacious, soaring entrance hall is dim and deserted.

One guard sits alone in a corner writing in a log-book.

Deputy Kovacs strides across the room. His clacking feetecho broadly. He detours into an ante-chamber filledwith French still-lives. He pauses.

A second set of foot-steps clack through the lobbybehind him.

Deputy Kovacs advances rapidly into the next gallery,

past a long mural of an ancient war, and descends astaircase. He pauses again at the bottom.

The second set of foot-steps continues through the antechamber

behind him.

Deputy Kovacs turns a corner and rushes between rows ofGreek and Roman statues. He cuts through an Egyptiantomb. He skims through an alcove of iron weapons andsuits of armor. He pauses once more and listens.

Silence.

INSERT:

A pair of high-heeled boots. Two feet quietly slip outof them and tip-toe away.

CUT TO:

Deputy Kovacs looking all around, frantic. Across theroom, he sees:

66.

A door labelled VERBOTEN.

Deputy Kovacs runs to the door and opens it. He scansthe hall behind him. He sneaks inside.

INT. STORAGE ROOM. NIGHT

Deputy Kovacs flicks on a light. He is in a long hallwaylined with racks filled with hundreds of canvases. The

room goes dark at either end. He chooses a direction,

then sprints straight through into the blackness. Upahead, he sees lines of faint light around the edges ofa door. He skids to a stop and searches for the knob. Heturns it and pulls. It is locked. He fumbles at a latch.

He snaps it sideways. He swings open the door. His eyeslight up:

There is a bicycle leaning against the wall across thealley behind the museum. Deputy Kovacs grabs the door-

frame and takes one last, quick look back into thedarkness behind him.

INSERT:

Deputy Kovacs’ hand on the knob. A second hand, wearingbrass knuckles, gently enfolds it.

CUT TO:

Deputy Kovac’s face. He gasps.

EXT. ALLEY. NIGHT

The door hammers shut with a bang. Four of DeputyKovacs’ fingers, gripping the door-frame, pop-off at theknuckles all at once and fall down into a shallow

puddle.

On the other side of the door, there is a scream ofblood-curdling agony, then a thump, a thwhack, and,

finally, a wallop. Pause.

The door opens again. Jopling comes out in his stocking-

feet. He puts on his boots. He takes out a handkerchief,

leans down and collects the four fingers off the ground,

wraps them up, slips them into his pocket, and walksaway down the alley.

INT. LOBBY. DAY

Eight a.m. Zero, substituting at the concierge deskagain, looks up to the high window across the room. HerrBecker waits alone in the storage pantry with the ledgerbook under his arm. He checks his watch.

67.

MR. MOUSTAFA (V.O.)

The next morning, Herr Becker received apeculiar, last-minute-notice from theoffice of Deputy Kovacs: postponing theirscheduled meeting -- in perpetuity.

TITLE:

Three Days Later

EXT. VILLAGE. NIGHT

A nearly-empty bus squeals to a stop behind a quiet innin the middle of a deserted hamlet and deposits Zero onthe road-side. He carries a knapsack and is dressed likea vagabond. The bus drives off.

Zero wanders to the middle of the cobblestone lane. He

looks down at a rusty manhole. He looks up at the prison-

castle across the way, high above the village. He checkshis watch.

INT. CELL. NIGHT

M. Gustave, Pinky, G.nther, Wolf, and Ludwig all liequietly in their bunks with the sheets pulled up totheir necks. Faraway voices shout and echo eerily. Aguard walks through the section slamming doors andthrowing bolts. With a series of loud thumps, block-byblock,

the lights go out, and the prison goes dark.

Silence. Ludwig whispers:

LUDWIG:

Let’s blow!

The cell launches into soundless activity: bed-linensare whisked away, the table is carried into the corner,

and a row of floor-planks is carefully lifted. M.

Gustave, Pinky, G.nther, Wolf, and Ludwig are alldressed like vagabonds already and carry various sacksand baskets. One-by-one, they disappear into the floor.

A pair of hands, at the rear, reaches up to replace theplanks.

INT. CRAWL-SPACE. NIGHT

M. Gustave, Pinky, G.nther, Wolf, and Ludwig advance onall fours, single-file, through a low, moldy substructure.

INT. TOWER. NIGHT

A small window in a stone wall. Ludwig gently taps-loosefour pre-cut iron bars with one of the small hammers.

INSERT:

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The stump of one of the bars. A little noose is fittedover it and pulled tight.

G.nther assists Ludwig as they slowly feed an unfurlingtangle of rope and rungs out the window, inch-by-inch.

CUT TO:

M. Gustave, Pinky, G.nther, Wolf, and Ludwig all on therope-ladder at once like a string of beads dangling downthe outside of the tower 325 feet above the moat with

crocodiles gliding along the dark surface. The laddertwists and creaks as they descend. Suddenly, a sharpvoice calls out above their heads:

CONVICT:

How’d you get out there?

They all look up. An anxious convict with a missing earstares down at them from a cell window. Ludwig whispers:

LUDWIG:

Shut up!

The convict frowns. He turns to his unseen bunk-mates

and says loudly:

CONVICT:

These guys are tryin’ to escape!

Ludwig looks furious. He whispers fiercely:

LUDWIG:

What’s wrong with you, you goddamnsnitch?

CONVICT:

(hollering)

Guard! Guard! They’re gettin’ away!

They’re -

A single, large hand grabs the convict with the missingear by the neck, crushes the wind out of him, and ripshim away from the window, out of view. Pause. The giantwith the long scar across his face appears in theconvict’s place, looking down at the dangling escapees.

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