(ENTERING THE PARLOUR)
It's still not all finished, all my father had planned.
Noticing WILLIAM immediately, KANE has stopped, and THE MAJOR, as though forced to do so by KANE's attention, turns to introduce WILLIAM with the almost apologetic manner he reserves for his son, as one whose presence seems to dismay him as does anything he does not understand, and for this reason almost fears.
Ah… Mister Kane, my son William…
(AS THOUGH FORCED TO EXPLAIN WILLIAM'S PRESENCE, AS KANE AND WILLIAM SHAKE HANDS)
William's kept things up here the whole time I've been gone. This whole year since the war started.
(THIS ACCOMPLISHED, HE TAKES UP HIS EARLIER TONE; TO KANE)
You might notice the tilt to this mantel shelf? It killed him, this mantel shelf did. It killed my own father. It's solid Maryland marble, the whole thing. There wasn't a floorboard laid when it arrived here, just the oak beams to climb on, but he couldn't wait. My father wanted that mantel shelf up, and he wanted it just so. They had it swung into place, and he stepped in there to set it right. He was like that, stepping right in like that to move it just that much of an inch, the hair breadth between it being perfect and not, and it crushed him. It slipped and crushed him right down on the beam.
(PATTING THE MANTEL WITH APPARENT SATISFACTION)
It's still not finished, all my father had planned here. Wrought iron running in a balcony up there inside the el of the house, that never got here from Pennsylvania. And the mirror for over the mantel shelf here…
— Excuse me there Mister Crease, maybe…
— And the mirror for over the mantel shelf here, it got broke on the way. Just to give you the feel of it Mister Basic, would you like some tea? Tea? No, no, just some coffee if it wasn't that much trouble, already had one hell of a morning just getting out here and finding the place, got lost two or three times looking for the gates with that STRANGERS REQUESTED NOT TO ENTER sign and finally must have come in the back door, the service entrance there with that woman barring the way in the kitchen, planting those splendid thighs that could have swallowed him whole and the toot of this horn, it was tooting right now, threatening the crippling rush of a four year old on a three wheeler down the long hall where no one's expecting you, make you feel like a thief in broad daylight, nobody expecting Harold Basic wasn't that about it? — No well you see Mister Basic they didn't ah, oh Use? with stabbing motions toward his guest, — you bring coffee? She doesn't speak much English.
— That great big not, requested NOT to enter, what you'd call xenophobia isn't that about it? Not too friendly, walk down Worth Avenue after sunset they pull right up beside you, who you work for boy? Not too friendly.
— No well that's just ah, they don't mean anything by it it's just ah, when I talked to Mister Lepidus on the phone, Sam Lepidus, I didn't mean…
— Don't mean anything by it yes, that's good to know Mister Crease. They don't ordinarily send people out like this but they said you came recommended by your cousin Harry Lutz?
— Not my cousin no, he's my brother in law. You don't, do you know him?
— Know of him. He's on this big Pop and Glow case.
— Pop and what?
— You get these Episcopals tangling assholes with Pepsico you're really in the big time.
— Yes I, I see. The big time I mean. That's why Harry thought your firm could handle this case of mine, a ninety million dollar movie it could be a landmark.
— Could be if you won it.
— Well of course that's why you're here isn't it, why I want to give you some feel for the thing before we get down to cases on this Kiester person. He should be drawn and quartered.
— Probably will be, you see him in the paper this morning?
— It's on that pile right there beside you no, no I don't read that kind of rubbish, these movies they're making are all of them rubbish, you saw that review? the most widely discussed mass rape scene in screen history? That Uburuwhatever it was, people throwing up in the aisles?
— You didn't see it?
— The notorious sledgehammer scene the papers talked about, whatever that may be. I certainly did not see it.
From a flurry of the newspaper, — what this is about, here. Charges of malfeasance and deceptive practices surfaced today involving the producer director of the recent motion picture Uruburu, an extravaganza set in Africa promoted as 'not for the squeamish' which made his overnight reputation as 'king of special effects' and led to the multimillion dollar backing for his current gory Civil War blockbuster, The Blood in the Red White and Blue. The producer, Constantine Kiester, is charged with using actual film footage of the gruesome sequences which made Uruburu an overnight sensation and broke box office records throughout the country. The charges involving Mister Kiester emerged from an analysis by a second year film student at UCLA, Barry Gench, isolating one widely discussed sequence purporting to show in extreme slow motion close up a man's face being smashed by a sledgehammer. Mister Gench contends that the notorious sledgehammer sequence, cited by reviewers and critics as a grisly triumph of the latest in special effects technology, actually took place and was filmed with an ultra high speed sixteen millimeter camera at up to two hundred forty frames per second, requiring from four to ten times the lighting employed in routine production shots. The sequence was later slowed and blown up to the thirty five millimeter format as evidenced, according to Mister Gench, by the rough edges and difference in grain structure of the continuous shot in which no cutaways occur and where microscopic examination reveals the contrast between the more intense colour values characteristic of sixteen millimeter Ektachrome and the Kodachrome reversal negative reduced to the common stock. If substantiated, the charges could provoke severe restrictions on a film industry which is already, in the words of one critic, saturated with blood and guts, and will at the least open the way for a variety of lawsuits. Efforts to reach Mister Kiester were unavailing, and his office disclaimed any knowledge of his whereabouts. How about that.
— Well? How about it.
— He's got a lot on his plate, Mister Kiester has.
— Just what I've been saying about him isn't it? Just another rotten, a scandal like this maybe it will put him out of business.
— Afraid you've got it exactly backwards Mister Crease, bigger the mess you make out there the more they want you. Forge a few checks, get caught with your hand in the till, the more you steal the more you're in demand, figure you've got just the kind of smarts they need out there. It's all just money.
— It's not all just money! Stealing money is…
— You want to sue them for damages, that's money isn't it?
— Because that's the only damn language they understand! Isn't that what you just said? But stealing a whole world somebody's created and turning it into a hogpen just because there's money in hogs? Steal poetry what do you sue them for, poetry? and the court sentences Kiester to two hundred hours of community service? Two hundred hours teaching Yeats to the fourth grade? Expect me to pay your legal bill with Maid Quiet?
— Match her up with Mister Clean.
— With what?
— Where has Maid Quiet gone to, Nodding her russet hood?
— The winds that awakened the stars Are blowing through my blood. Well! Well, we share something then don't we Mister Basic, no small thing either.
— That's good to know. Now getting back to the…
— To where we left off yes, I can see now you'll be sensitive to these nuances I tried to get in here, the Major's still talking when Thomas walks in.