Sunday, September 28, 2008

Michael Clayton - the opening scene

Michael Clayton, the 2007 movie, starts off with the most potent of dialogue and voice acting - Tom Wilkinson's act sucks the audience in (and again in later scenes).

Here's the text to the audio. If I were a director, this is what I'd hand out during my auditions.

Michael. Dear Michael. Of course it's you. Who else could they send? Who else could be trusted? And I know it's a long way and you're ready to go to work. All I'm saying is wait, just wait, just...Just please hear me out. Because this is not an episode, relapse, fuckup. I'm begging you, Michael, I'm begging you. Try and make believe this is not just madness because this is not just madness.
Two weeks ago, I came out of the building, okay? I'm running across 6th Avenue, there's a car waiting. I got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport, and I'm dictating. There's this panicked associate sprinting along beside me scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming. And I realize we're standing in the middle of the street the light's changed and there's this wall of traffic... serious traffic speeding towards us.
And I freeze. I can't move. I'm suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I'm covered with some sort of film. And it's in my hair, in my face. And it's like a glaze, like a coating. And at first I thought, "Oh my God, I know what this is. This is some sort of amniotic, embryonic fluid. I'm drenched in afterbirth. I've breached the chrysalis. I've been reborn." But then, the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns...
...this poor woman screaming, and I'm thinking, "No. This is not rebirth. This is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death."
And then I realise "No, no, no, this is completely wrong" because I looked back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I realized, Michael ... that I had emerged, not through the doors of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen ... not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other larger more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life. And the stench of it, the stain of it would take the rest of my life to undo. And you know what I did? I took a deep, cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself, "As clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is as true a thing as I believe that I have witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time."
And, Michael, the time is now.

Here's the link to the audio, again at the end of this post.

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