Thursday, September 27, 2007

Woody Allen's Sleeper (Cell)

Woody Allen's Sleeper (Cell)
by Don Steinberg

FADE IN
Abrupt medium close up of Harvey, speaking directly into the camera.


HARVEY
There's an old joke. Two terrorists decide to kill an important government official. At 10 o'clock the next morning, they meet across the street from a building where the president is scheduled to have a meeting, and one of them brings a rocket propelled grenade launcher. Ten o'clock comes and goes, but no president. Then eleven o'clock. Eventually it's noon and the president still hasn't arrived. One terrorist turns to the other and says, "Gee, I hope he's okay."

I guess that's how I feel about life. You wait and wait for the glorious victory, and by the time it arrives, tsch, you just want to go home and watch the Knicks. Gladys and me, we thought we had it all figured out --

CUT TO: Harvey and Gladys are standing in their kitchen.

HARVEY
I'm really looking forward to my martyrdom, in particular the part about having relations with 72 virgins. Can you imagine what that would be like?

GLADYS (looking away)
Uh, no. Why do you think I would know about that?

HARVEY
It's the death part that has me a tad nervous. I'd be interested in a suicide attack where you could fake the suicide, collect the insurance money, and just buy a lot of really good, you know, Reuben sandwiches. Did Dr. Kevorkian call back yet?

GLADYS
I don't think you know how do to this.

HARVEY
I know better than Ned. For his suicide attack, he gave himself smallpox. He was so miserable with it, he didn't feel like going out. Look, I have to go now to the hideout. We're having a very important meeting with all the guys in the sleeper cell, and I'm the only one who knows the address of the secret Web site that contains our instructions. Me and Google.

CUT TO: Four men around a small table. Above it, by a thin wire, hangs a bare lightbulb.

OZZIE
I heard in Europe they are using palladium. It's very a sophisticated material.

HARVEY
Palladium? It's polonium. Jeesh. That stuff is…that's dangerous. I heard they slipped a tiny bit of it onto the desk of a lawyer in, in Berlin, and it mutated him. He ended up with the head of an attorney and the body of a memo.

PHILLIP (toying with a surface-to-air missile launcher)
Where does the missile shoot out of this thing?

HARVEY
Put that thing down. For God sake, do you know how to operate something like this? You have the missile pointing backwards.

PHILLIP
It looks cooler this way.

HARVEY
I'm surrounded by cretins. Terror would be just having you talk to people. Somebody please hit me on the head with a shoe.

LEONARD
You don't want me to do that. It's explosive.

HARVEY VOICE-OVER
After that we all had to go. We set up another secret meeting, and I think in the end we just enjoyed one another's company more than executing our big plans. It…it reminded me of that joke, you know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist, and he says, 'doctor, my brother thinks he's a sheep.' And the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" And the guys says, "We would. But we need the anthrax."

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