Youth Page #14

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Fred opens one eye and spots Mick walking with the doctor not

too far away. They are speaking intently. Fred closes his

eye.

Fred and Jimmy float in silence, eyes closed.

... until the arrival of the boy violinist makes them open

their eyes.

BOY:

Hello, Fred Ballinger.

FRED BALLINGER:

Hi.

BOY:

I wanted to tell you that I checked

at the front desk, and you really

are Fred Ballinger.

FRED BALLINGER:

Good, I’m glad you set your mind to

rest on that score.

Jimmy Tree smiles.

BOY:

There’s something else I wanted to

tell you too.

FRED BALLINGER:

Go right ahead.

BOY:

I wanted to tell you that ever

since you corrected the position of

my elbow, I play better. The sounds

comes more naturally.

FRED BALLINGER:

Very good. Do you know why? Because

you’re left-handed.

(MORE)

62.

FRED BALLINGER (CONT'D)

And left-handed people are

irregular, so an irregular position

helps.

Now we see - we didn’t before - the South American’s fat face

looming close to ours. He has been listening in on the

conversation, and, in a strong Spanish accent, says candidly

to the other three:

OBESE SOUTH AMERICAN

I’m left-handed too.

Fred, Jimmy, and the boy are astounded and look at him

excitedly.

Jimmy flashes him a beautiful smile and says:

JIMMY TREE:

Christ! The whole world knows

you’re left handed.

35. INT. HOTEL POND. DAY

Lena, wearing only a towel, sits at the edge of a beautiful

pond. Her long wet hair falling on her shoulders, she seems

even more beautiful than she really is.

The hippy mountaineer, all excited, is facing her. He too in

only a towel. With his hairy shoulders, hairy chest, shaggy

beard, and long hair, he looks like a giant bear, like some

large, peaceful beast.

Lena keeps her eyes closed. The mountaineer can’t take his

kindly eyes off of her.

He swallows, musters his courage, starts to say something,

changes his mind, too timid to speak, then tries again. This

is his chance. He has a heavy Tyrolean accent.

MOUNTAINEER:

I’m Luca. Luca Moroder.

Embarrassed, he lets out a moronic laugh that sounds like a

thunderclap.

Lena opens her eyes, expressionless, and simply says:

LENA:

Hello.

MOUNTAINEER:

I’m a mountaineer. And I teach

climbing. I give lessons at the

hotel.

And he produces another laugh, so moronic it makes us doubt

his intelligence.

63.

MOUNTAINEER (CONT’D)

This is a Forerunner 620, it has a

color touch display, it estimates

VO2max values - the maximum rate of

oxygen consumption during maximum

exertion. I’d like to give it to my

cousin for Christmas. We always go

climbing together. He was supposed

to be here too, but he slipped in

the bathtub and broke his femur.

Lena smiles politely.

LENA:

The bathtub is more dangerous than

Mount Everest.

MOUNTAINEER:

How true. (hesitates) Do you know

what I found once, on the K2

summit?

LENA:

What?

MOUNTAINEER:

A bedside table.

LENA:

No.

MOUNTAINEER:

Yes, I did. I opened the drawer,

but it was empty.

He’s quiet for a moment but then starts in again.

MOUNTAINEER (CONT’D)

It’s an amazing feeling, climbing,

you know? A real sense of freedom.

Yet another moronic laugh, as if he’d never be able to

confirm what he just said.

Lena closes her eyes again and comments somewhat ironically:

LENA:

All I would feel is fear.

MOUNTAINEER:

That’s an amazing feeling too, you

know.

And he laughs again.

Lena opens her eyes but doesn’t look at him.

64.

Overlooking the little pond is a glass cube that houses the

indoor pool. With an expressionless face, Fred Ballinger

looks out the window at his daughter down below.

36. EXT. HOTEL SOLARIUM. DAY

Fred, Mick, and Jimmy Tree, in white robes, are sunning

peacefully on chaise lounges. Eyes closed. Fred has a

newspaper open on his lap. Mick and Jimmy are chatting.

JIMMY TREE:

So who’s the most talented actress

you’ve ever worked with, Mr. Boyle?

MICK BOYLE:

Brenda Morel. Without a doubt. A

genius. She can’t have read more

than two books her whole life, and

one of them was her autobiography,

written by a ghost writer

naturally, but still, Brenda’s a

genius.

Jimmy chuckles.

JIMMY TREE:

A genius in what sense?

MICK BOYLE:

If you know how to steal, you don’t

need training. Stealing becomes

your education. That’s how Brenda

is. Even when, thanks to my films,

she’d become a diva, she never

forgot where she came from, her

home was really the street. And

that’s where she stayed, on the

street, stealing everything.

Everything. Which is how she

created such unforgettable

characters. And won two Oscars.

JIMMY TREE:

What would she steal?

MICK BOYLE:

We were filming “The Crystal

Woman.” And in the middle of a

scene, an electrician walks by,

toward the back of the set. He’s

got this limp, real slight.

Whenever he steps with his shorter

leg, it makes a noise, real faint

though, barely noticeable. No one

even hears it, no one but Brenda,

that is.

(MORE)

65.

MICK BOYLE (CONT'D)

She’s reciting her lines and all of

a sudden she yells “stop.” So I

yell back, “What the f*** are you

doing, Brenda? Only I can say

stop.” “F*** that, Mick,” she says

to me, “if my character is wrong,

then I’ll say stop.” She looks at

the electrician. He’s dying, but

Brenda lights up and says, “Mick,

my character has to have one leg

shorter than the other. She limps.”

I practically fall off my chair.

“Are you out of your mind, Brenda?”

I say to her. “Your character can’t

limp. Your character is the most

desirable woman in the whole world,

every man on the planet wants to

get her into bed, she’s a dream.”

And you know what she says? She

says to me, “Even dreams have their

problems, Mick.”

Jimmy laughs.

MICK BOYLE (CONT’D)

And she was right. That little limp

won her her second Oscar.

A muffled, intermittent sound, which at first only Fred

hears, makes him open his eyes. But the sun is shining right

in them, so all he can see is a small black circle that rises

up to the sky and then falls again. The sound, and then the

black circle again.

It’s enough to make Fred want to get up and take a look.

Curious, he shuffles toward the tennis court, and Jimmy Tree

and Mick Boyle decide to go with him.

37. EXT. TENNIS COURT. DAY

At the tennis court, Fred, Mick, and Jimmy are struck dumb by

what they see.

That obese South American is doing something out of this

world:
with his left foot he sends a tennis ball flying high

in the air, and when it comes down, he kicks it up again,

without ever letting it touch the ground, sending it sixty,

seventy feet in the air. The tennis ball against the blue

sky. It falls, he kicks it again, with a naturalness -

despite the inhuman effort it takes for that massive body to

move - that sparks admiration and horror at the same time.

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