12 Monkeys Page #5

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INT. ART GALLERY - NIGHT

A strikingly "real" world of bright colors. Extravagant paintings

adorn the walls. A POET, tiny and ruddy faced, squints over his

glasses as he reads in a booming voice to an AUDIENCE of thirty

seated on folding chairs.

POET:

Still among the myriad microwaves, the

infra-red messages, the gigabytes of ones

and zeroes, we find words, infinitesimally

small, byte-sized now, tinier even than

science lurking in some vague electricity

where, if we listen we can hear the solitary

voice of that poet telling us,

"We are no other than a moving row

Of Magic shadow-shapes that come and go

Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern hold

In Midnight by the Master of the show."

As the POET reads, we STUDY the audience, mostly YUPPIE CULTURE

JUNKIES or BOHEMIANS. Among them, a light-haired woman of twenty-

eight, soberly dressed, wearing glasses. She's KATHRYN RAILLY. And

it's her beeper that suddenly BEEPS. BEEP! BEEP!

POET'S VOICE (o.s.)

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on:
nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

BEEP! BEEP! Scowling at the outrageous interruption, the POET

looks up from the text just as RAILLY, tumbling, shuts off the

beeper and rises, embarrassed. As she makes her way to an exit,

the glaring POET continues...

POET:

"Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare;

Tomorrow's Silence, Triumph or Despair:

Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why:

Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where."

INT. CORRIDOR/POLICE STATION - NIGHT

DETECTIVE FRANKI leads RAILLY past crowded holding cells.

FRANKI:

-- so they get there and they ask the guy

real nice for some kind of i.d., and he gets

agitated, starts screaming about viruses.

Totally irrational, totally disoriented,

doesn't know where he is, what day it is,

alla that stuff. All they got was his

name. They figure he's stoned out of

his mind, it's some kinda psychotic

episode, so they're gonna bring him...

RAILLY:

He's been tested for drugs?

FRANKI:

Negative for drugs. But he took on

five cops like he was dusted to the

eyeballs. No drugs. You believe that?

FRANKI pauses, indicating a tiny observation window of thick meshed

glass in an otherwise solid door, and RAILLY looks through it.

RAILLY'S POV THROUGH THE WINDOW: a MAN, his back to her, in

strait-jacket and prison denims, examining the wall of the padded

cell with the distorted intensity of a "mental case".

RAILLY:

You have him in restraints.

FRANKI:

Were you listening? We got two officers in

the hospital. Yeah, he's in restraints, plus

the medic gave him enough stellazine to kill

a horse. Look at him! Still on his feet.

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