The Truman Show Page #15

MARLON:

(suddenly concerned)

Who?

TRUMAN:

I don't know. They look just like regular

people.

(producing a notebook from

his jacket pocket)

But I've been writing down numbers - license

plates, taxi numbers, ID numbers - the same

ones keep cropping up over and over.

MARLON:

Is someone leanin' on you, Tru? Cos I got

some friends here, they owe me. We can lean back.

(pointing out a taxi

parked outside the yard)

Is he one of them?

TRUMAN:

(anxious)

I don't know. Could be. One thing's certain.

The key is spontoneity. Be unpredictable.

They can't stand that. That's why we've got

to get outta here. Can you come with me?

MARLON:

(weakening)

Christ, Truman. You're gonna get both our

asses fired.

Marlon shuts his van and gets in. Truman enters the

passenger side.

MARLON:

Where're we going?

TRUMAN:

The beach.

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM. DAY.

CHRISTOF is in deep conversation with two executives. MOSES, a

contemporary of Christof but more jaded and debauched-looking

and ROMAN, a fresh-faced, younger man. CHLOE hovers in the

background. A monitor, suspended from the ceiling shows a

surveillance shot of TRUMAN and MARLON pulling into a beach

parking lot in Marlon's van.

The glass conference room looks out onto the vast control

facility where SIMEON continues to call the shots, all too aware

of the closed-door discussion taking place in the background.

CHRISTOF:

(marveling, excitedly referring

to Truman on the monitor)

I can't believe how much he's shoved down. That he

sensed the significance at aged seven and clung

to it so fiercely.

Roman paces, agitated, unimpressed. Moses, mnore respectful.

CHRISTOF:

(gesturing to the clifftop on the

monitor pointedly excluding Roman

from the conversation)

You remember, Moses, it used to end right

there, before the expansion.

ROMAN:

(unable to contain his anxiety

any longer)

Christof, the cracks are starting to show.

CHRISTOF:

(reassuring, keeping

himself in check)

I'll paper over them.

CHLOE:

(coming to the defense of her mentor)

Truman's had bouts of paranoia before and

recovered.

ROMAN:

(adamant, faintly hysterical)

No, not like this. It's compromised.

Becoming unwatchable.

Too much for Christof. He wheels on the young man.

CHRISTOF:

Fear? Doubt? Is that what you have

trouble watching? Perhaps you don't like

watching yourself.

Roman is stung into silence.

MOSES:

(realizing his colleague is in

over his head, including Chloe

to save Roman's face)

Why don't you two wait outside?

Reluctantly Roman and Chloe exit and join Simeon at the video

wall.

CHRISTOF:

(instantly more comfortable in the

company of a man his own age)

He's jumped the rails, Moses, that's all. We'll

get him back on.

MOSES:

You know why they're so nervous. The birth of

Truman's child is going to double revenue.

For God's sake don't let him upstage you.

(indicating Simeon through

the glass walls)

You've been grooming a successor.

CHRISTOF:

He's not ready.

MOSES:

Him or you?

CHRISTOF:

(jaw setting firm, referring

to Truman on the monitor)

You can't pull him back in without me.

(more reflective)

He's just acting out of character.

MOSES:

What if he's in character? What if he's

starting to act in character at last? Have

you ever considered that?

EXT. LONG ISLAND BEACH. DAY.

TRUMAN runs down the beach towards the cliff he attempted to

scale as a seven-year-old boy.

EXT. CLIFFTOP. DAY.

TRUMAN sits on the clifftop, staring out at the view his father

had been so desperate for him not to see twenty-seven years

earlier. However the deserted bay beyond is exactly as his

father described - almost identical to its neighbor. MARLON,

laboring, crests the rise and joins his friend on the clifftop.

MARLON:

What're we doing here, Truman?

TRUMAN:

This is where it started.

MARLON:

Where what started?

TRUMAN:

Things. Things that don't fit. Loose threads.

False steps. Slips of the tongue.

MARLON:

(irritated)

Make sense, Truman. You going religious on me?

TRUMAN:

(tears of bitterness welling in his eyes)

My father didn't want me to see what was over here.

Whatever it was, it's gone now. I never shoulda

listened to him that day. I knew it was wrong.

We see a quick flashback of SEVEN-YEAR-OLD TRUMAN on the cliff-

face twenty-seven years earlier.

TRUMAN:

There were a hundred people on the beach that

day. Everybody knew what was going on except me.

MARLON:

I don't want to put you down but why would

anybody go to all this trouble over you?

TRUMAN:

Maybe I've been mistaken for somebody else.

(a memory triggered)

A couple of years ago, I tried to get hold of a

copy of Time Magazine. The week before an ad said,

"Next Week:
Truman Burbank and the Lost Generation".

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