Sleepers Page #5

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Listen, I got a story I want to tell you.

It ain't the one about the lepers, is it? Cause that one gave me nightmares.

No lepers. Michelangelo. He was born poor, just like you guys.

He was a painter, he was a sculptor.

He takes this job from the Pope. Good money, good work.

Okay, Father, but why'd the Pope call him?

Because the Pope was looking for the best guy he could find...

...to paint the ceiling of his church in Rome.

It don't sound like that big a job, Father.

Well, for Michelangelo it was.

Michelangelo needed the job...

...because it paid more money than he ever had in his life.

And that way, he could pay off the loan sharks that were chasing his father down.

What's his father?

He was like a low-level...con guy.

Conned people out of money, goats, sheep...

Goats?

Chickens, whatever he could, you know.

-Chickens? -Chickens?

You know what happened?

He painted a ceiling no one will ever forget.

Painted it like he was touched by the hand of God.

Did he pay off the loans?

Every single one of them.

How long did it take him, painting the ceiling and all?

It took him about years.

years?!

That's a big ceiling!

I had a Puerto Rican do my whole apartment in two days.

And he had a bum leg.

You know, I don't know what I'm gonna do with you guys.

Hey, just give us a job painting, and leave the rest to us.

You know what it was? The Sistine Chapel!

Sixteenth Chapel?

Who painted the other fifteen?

Outside events meant little. In a society changing radically by the hour...

...we watched the images scatter nightly across the T.V. screens.

Young protesters spoke about how they were going to change our lives...

...and fix the world. But while they shouted their slogans...

...my friends and I went to funeral services...

...for the young men of Hell's Kitchen...

...who came back from Vietnam in body bags.

We viewed with skepticism the faces on television...

...those protected by money and upper-middle-class standing.

A growing army of feminists marched across the country...

...demanding equality. Yet, our mothers still cooked...

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