Their Finest Page #3

Desk. Parfitt, you've met.

Writing partner.

Delighted to have you on board.

Report.

So, what do you think?

Uh, the father leaves a bad taste.

Drunken sailor angle's good, though.

Make him an uncle.

Uncle Frank.

- Yeah.

- Soused in the hold.

Wakes up in Dunkirk.

Double-take

when he sees the Stukas.

Gives us our laughs,

then takes a bullet in act three.

- Comic life, tragic death.

- Tears all round.

Yeah. First mate, bloke in France,

needs to be a boyfriend.

- Rose or Lily's?

- Either.

Both? What are they like?

Shy, quiet. Lily hardly spoke.

- One quiet, one chatty.

- They're both quiet.

- Not if we want any dialogue.

- How old are they?

- Thirty?

- Ah, marvelous.

Working title, Old Maids of Margate.

It's Southend.

Twenty-one, Lily sweet, Rose spunky.

Rose gets the boyfriend.

"My darling, I couldn't die

without seeing the cornflower blue

of your eyes a final time."

You can have that one on me.

What's his name, the boyfriend?

Eric. Eric Lumb.

Do you hear that noise?

That's 200 women in the one and nines

vowing aloud never to call their sons

anything as bloody feeble as Eric.

- Now give me a hero's name.

- John.

- Dull.

- Johnnie.

- Mmm-hmm.

- He'll have to make it back.

- Injured.

- A risk. A rescue.

"Don't be a fool, Johnnie.

There's a sniper out there!"

- Yep. Mm...

- Saves his commanding officer.

Fellow soldier?

Saves the dog.

But he didn't.

In real life, he didn't.

Film, Mrs. Cole.

Real life with the boring bits cut out.

Don't confuse facts with truth

and, for Christ's sake,

don't let either of them

get in the way of the story.

Now we know how it starts.

Johnnie in France.

- We know how it ends.

- Home safe.

And we know that

somewhere in between

we have dog, Dunkirk,

engine failure, and uncle's death.

Now all we have to do is fill in the gaps.

I'm buying it.

Down payment.

Call it rent, call it what you like,

but I am not leaving London.

- Hmm!

- Sorry. Bad night.

Buckley, Parfitt, meeting now.

Ministry of War Transport.

Seems they've had wind of

your proposed filmic scenario.

Apparently, they're concerned

that "the Nancy Starling's engine failure

may cast morale-sapping doubt

on the quality of British engineering."

It was her.

Bloody Ministry spy.

What if it's not the engine?

What if it's the propeller?

It gets snarled up with flotsam,

Uncle Frank goes in the water

to free it, gets shot,

and the girls have to finish

the job under fire.

- Not the girls.

- Not the girls?

- No. Uh, Johnnie.

- Johnnie?

- Is there an echo in here?

- Why him?

- Because he's the hero.

- So?

Well, how do we know he's the hero

if he never does anything heroic?

Well, he's called Johnnie.

Are you trying to pick

a fight with me, Mrs. Cole?

Johnnie can't go in the water.

He's injured, badly injured.

A manly slash on the bicep,

for Christ's sake.

He's not gonna be leaking spleen

through his trousers.

This is Rose and Lily's story,

and you won't let them do anything.

- They go to Dunkirk.

- And Johnnie pilots them home.

They're girls. Girls don't

want to be the hero.

They want to have the hero.

They want to be had by him.

- Tom, cab.

- Oh!

And if that ginger viper

so much as gets her nose

through the office door

while we're out, you're sacked.

And don't think I won't know.

I can smell her shaving cream on the wind.

Anything else?

Since you're so keen to flex

your femininity, you can tidy up!

I heard furniture.

"Angels of the Sea.

Across the Waves.

Two to Dunkirk.

Three to Dunkirk.

Dunkirk or Bust.

Busts to Dunkirk."

Somewhere in the world there is

a bullet with that man's name on.

Why hasn't he been called up?

I mean, Parfitt's too old, but Buckley...

Baker persuaded someone

that Buckley was more use

to the war effort with a typewriter.

It won't last.

He'll end up in uniform,

like every other mother's son.

That is, if he ever had a mother.

More likely, Parfitt found him in a pub,

spawning spontaneously

in the sawdust.

You know,

a lot of men are scared

we won't go back into our boxes

when this is all over.

It makes them belligerent.

Something's changed.

I tidied.

What happened at the meeting?

I outlined our proposed changes.

They accepted them.

- What's this?

- Lunch.

The girls can pilot

the boat home, all right?

They can pilot the bloody boat.

They can lead the damn fleet,

for all I care.

But Johnnie frees the propeller.

Hmm.

You're late. I took

the liberty of ordering.

Sorry. We have guests staying,

friends from Poland.

Things are very bad in Europe.

It's not exactly a picnic here,

if you hadn't noticed.

You can't find a decent waiter in SoHo

since Italy joined the war.

They were all rounded up as so-called

enemies of the state,

apart from Geppetto over there,

who almost certainly is a spy.

Cerberus!

' " Ugh!

Christ, a dead sheep?

- Ugh.

- Not strictly ration book,

but Cerberus can't live

on crusts and scraps.

Ugh...

Sophie's going to boil it up

and make him some broth.

Lucky fellow.

Well, perhaps your sister would

like to start feeding me, too,

unless, of course, you've actually

found me some work.

So, Baker's outline for the Dunkirk film,

you read it?

It rattles along rather better

than one might have expected.

Johnnie's escape from the steel thrust

of the German war machine.

The rescue of the dog was very good.

Here, boy. Here.

No, no. No, not you, Cerberus.

Of course, it all depends on who

they're planning to cast as Rose.

Uncle Frank?

"A shipwreck of a man"? Sammy!

"Sixties. Looks older"?

Senior roles are not

to be sneered at, Ambrose.

- Gravitas. Experience. Maturity.

- Ugh.

We all have a part to play

in defeating Hitler.

Not this part. It's a corpse role.

He's dead before the end of act three.

Mr. Smith.

- Mmm-mmm.

- Mr. Hilliard.

Ambrose, you must see...

You, me, the industry, we are all

at the service of the war now.

The war. The war.

Damn the bloody war!

The war has skimmed off the cream,

and we're left with the rancid curds!

I'm sorry I took so long.

There was a bomb crater

on the Marylebone Road. Oh!

No one told me there was a meeting.

No, we've been rather trying to keep this

under wraps for the present.

It seems that there's a someone

in Mr. Swain's department

who knows a someone who says that

the Starling sisters never got to Dunkirk.

That their engine broke down before

they were even out of British waters.

Pity. Pity all round, really.

Your first draft boded so well.

- Well...

- So the Starling sisters lied?

What difference does it really make?

For God's sake, of course it makes

a difference. It's not the truth.

The truth is, they stole a boat

from a man who terrified them

and set out to cross 5O miles

of open sea into a war.

- They never got there.

- Because their engine failed.

Now, there's a truth we won't be telling.

Morale-sapping, apparently.

We pick our truths.

Isn't that the point?

We're saying this is based

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