Their Finest Page #5

and, as I believe you chaps say,

- the camera loves him.

- Yeah.

Even more if he was in Technicolor.

Color? I think we can manage that.

But there weren't

any Americans at Dunkirk.

Pedant

Pack your bags, Mrs. Cole.

You're coming to Devon.

Pretty copper kettle,

pretty copper kettle

Bright copper kettle,

bright copper kettle

I've got to get a kettle

I've got to get...

I've got to get a kettle,

I've got to get a kettle

Pretty copper kettle...

I'm nearly finished.

No, you're completely finished.

If I hear the f***ing word "kettle"

one more f***ing time,

I'm gonna find one

and shove it up your arse.

- Sideways.

- Mm...

Sorry.

I think some Fuller's earth

through your hair and grease.

God. Fuller's earth?

But I would like to make your eyebrows

really unruly, you know,

so that they're sticking out

in different directions.

- Different directions? What, you...

- And then...

I'd rather have four honest words

than 50 pages of bilge.

- Now, you play Rose...

- No, I play Rose.

And I play Lily-

This script is the best thing I have read

in a month of Sundays.

- Don't you think?

- Well...

- Wyndham Best. I play Johnnie.

- Johnnie?

- The soldier.

- Ah.

Or the hero, if you will.

A documentary

about the Clydeside dockers.

Right. Who have we got here?

Ah, Alex, mind if I join you?

Documentary makers and authenticity.

The rancid curds.

Buckley, just hide me, hide me.

What?

Uncle Frank. Mr. Hilliard.

- You knew he was gonna be here.

- Yes, but I didn't expect to be.

Is she all right?

Avoiding Hilliard.

Unfortunate experience.

- Carnal?

- What? No.

Oh, that? Oh, I shouldn't

worry about that.

He's an actor.

Unless you review them, have intercourse

with them, or do both simultaneously,

they don't remember you.

Uh, ladies and gentlemen,

it is my privilege

to introduce you now

to a young man to whom

we all owe a great deal.

Soon we hand him back to the RAF

for a very different kind of shooting.

Until then,

he is our very own American.

Mr. Carl Lundbeck.

- Hi. Hello.

- Alex Frayle, director.

Hi. Good to meet you.

Wyndham Best. How do you do?

I'm playing Johnnie.

Carl Lundbeck, Flight Lieutenant.

- Hi.

- Hello.

- Mr. Hilliard.

- If I've got the right...

Mr. Ambrose Hilliard.

Yes.

Sir, I saw every Inspector Charnforth

picture there ever was.

Just used to go right back

and watch them again.

Oh!

"You see, someone has

made a mistake."

"A simple mistake, but easy to miss."

Yes! Oh!

Sir, I need to wire my mom.

There's our secret weapon.

Now you write him in.

No excuses and no bar bills.

- God bless America.

- God bless America.

- Well, he's very handsome.

- Oh, come on!

So, what's an American doing in Dunkirk?

No, scrub that.

- What isn't he doing?

- Fighting.

- Yeah, so what does that make him?

- A priest?

- No, we need a hero.

- I don't know...

- Travel writer? Journalist?

- A journalist.

Hard-boiled, wise-cracking Yankee hack

who can pilot a boat heroically.

You're not pinching any more action

from Rose and Lily.

I'm not unpicking

the entire bloody structure either.

Will somebody give them

a hand over there, please?

All the way up.

Of course, the irony is,

they've given this to a bloody

documentaries director.

He won't want any dialogue, anyway.

It will all be fishing nets

and local kids playing football, you wait.

What if it's not what the American does

that makes him heroic,

it's what he doesn't do?

He falls for Rose,

but he doesn't try to come

between her and Johnnie.

Self-sacrifice, that's noble.

- Only if he stands a chance.

- Maybe he does.

Maybe she likes him, because he's the sort

that'd let her fix the propeller.

So give him a name, our journalist.

Joe.

Hard-boiled types only have last names.

- Buckley.

- Taken.

And what were you

before you became Cole?

Catherine Pugh.

- Catherine?

- Catrin's the Welsh version.

It was his idea. "A beautiful Welsh girl

deserves a beautiful Welsh name."

Where would you have drawn the line?

"Cardiff Cole.

Caerphilly Cole.

Coalmine Cole."

' - Hey!

Those were my chips!

Right, Catherine Pugh,

you're coming with me.

All right.

Brannigan, Johnnie, positions.

- No. Uh, no, thank you.

- Let... Let me.

Quiet, please.

Quiet, please, everyone.

Thank you.

I'll give you a finger click

for a sniper shot.

Just a very quiet click, please.

It's hard to explain to a non-actor,

but I want to react

to the sniper up there

and not the click down here.

Do you see?

In fact, there's no chance of firing

a real gun up there, is there?

- No.

- Right.

Going for a take. Sound?

Sound rolling.

Speed.

Dunkirk film, scene 17, take one.

Good luck, Lieutenant Lundbeck.

Action!

Here, boy.

Here.

Come on, boy.

Don't be a fool, Johnnie.

There's a sniper out there.

And he's got a friend.

It's a Karabiner 98 Kurz.

Best damn gun since the Win...

Chester 73.

I'm most awfully sorry.

I'm afraid I've lost my line.

Cut.

Jesus.

Twenty-three takes.

We only stopped because

we ran out of film stock.

The War Office wanted him.

The distributors wanted him.

And no one thought to give him

a bloody screen test?

Well, can't we replace him?

This film has a significant part to play

in putting the national case

to the American public.

- He's the template.

- If that lump of Yank stays,

the film fails

and the national case with it.

He is a brave boy.

Would you or I be so brave?

He was a soldier, my dad,

in the last one.

The thing about men who get

sent away to war, Mrs. Cole,

is that some of them

don't come back at all,

some come back as heroes...

and some of them come back

drunk, squalid bullies.

I was better off out of his way.

- In the pub.

- Or the pictures.

I liked the pictures best.

Once in a while you just need

to make one that's worth it,

worth the hour and a half of someone's

life it's gonna cost them to see it.

Why do you think people like films?

It's because stories are structure.

They're a shape, a purpose, a meaning.

And when things turn bad, it's still

part of a plan, you know, it's...

There's a point to it.

Unlike life.

You don't believe in much, do you?

I believed this was gonna be

a good picture.

How did you get to do this?

Writing, I mean.

Parfitt.

He was making comedies for Baker.

I used to collect gags

I heard in the street

and sell them to him

in the pub, penny a time.

Phyl thinks that

you were born in the pub.

I certainly spent

enough time in them as a kid.

Is Mr. Baker all right?

- He lost one of his grandsons.

- Oh...

- Hit by a tram on shore leave.

- Oh!

It must make it so much worse

that it wasn't for anything.

- Poor Mr. Baker.

- It's never for anything.

I really thought this one would be.

The bloody Yanks.

It would be all right if all you had to do

was look at him.

We strip Lundbeck's dialogue

down to essentials and use a VOICEOVER.

"I wasn't there

at the beginning of the story,

but it all began in a little fishing

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