Klondike Page #2

BILL (V.O.)

My whole life:
planned out for me.

Fast-tracked to get me to the

Promised Land. My father told me

not to complain, because guys like

Byron Epstein...didn’t have that

same sort of opportunity...

And we see:
Epstein’s house--as he moves for it--slightly

better than a hovel.

5.

INT. UNIVERSITY - DAY

Quick hits:
tracking from other students reading math texts,

business texts....to a COLLEGIATE BILL flipping through

“travel lit”, 1890’s-style--Bret Harte’s accounts of the

California Gold Rush, W.L. Stevenson’s south seas stories-

BILL (V.O.)

They prepared me, all right. For 10

years, I read every book under the

sky.

EXT. BIG CITY - DAY

Quick hits:
Epstein in the broad-shouldered industrial world

of American cities in the 1890s...

BILL (V.O.)

And while I was reading...Bill was

living. He saw the world. The

unvarnished one that was not in

books.

Epstein:
exiting a Loan Shop with a turn-of-the-century

version of a payday loan in hand--PROPRIETOR emerging behind

him, watching him go with the eyes of a shark...

BILL (V.O.)

The one filled with bank failures,

with families being tossed out of

homes, 4 million men wandering the

continent looking for work...

As Epstein stands in an impossibly long unemployment line:

BILL (V.O.)

This couldn’t be it. There was no

possibility in it. There had to be

more. A place where there was

nothing but possibility.

INT. BALLROOM - DAY

A banner fills frame: CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 1897! Camera

booms from this down to a coat-and-tie affair. A bit stiff,

if we may call a spade a spade. It’s “May 1, 1897.”

We find Bill here, newly graduated, being introduced to

various movers-and-shakers by an enthusiastic COLLEAGUE.

COLLEAGUE:

Captains of industry everywhere you

look. Guy over there’s in the

horseless carriage game. Guy over

there:
telephones. Supposedly he’s

figured out how to lower rates so

the common man can afford it. And

if the common man can afford

it...sky’s the limit. Those are the

games we wanna be in.

6.

While all of this is going on, we are with Bill: amicable, if

uncomfortable. These people: the 1%. Not, at the end of the

day, his people. Colleague, noticing:

COLLEAGUE (CONT'D)

I’m not detecting ambivalence am I?

Misinterpreting Bill’s silence:

COLLEAGUE (CONT’D)

God, of all people, you shouldn’t

be nervous. Your dad’s been pulling

strings with all of these people.

Candidly, I’m a bit jealous...

Bill’s demeanor changes when he does spot one of his people.

Arguing with the Concierge at the door.

A scruffy guy with a poor suit. Epstein.

BILL:

Excuse me.

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