Sneakers

Carl:
Hey, that's not easy, what I just did!

Cosmo:
There I was in prison. And one day I help a couple of older gentlemen make some free telephone calls. They turn out to be, let us say, good family men.

Martin Bishop:
Organized crime?

Cosmo:
Hah. Don't kid yourself. It's not that organized.

Cosmo:
Pollution. Crime. Drugs, poverty, disease, hunger, despair - we throw GOBS of money at them and problems only get worse. Why is that? Because money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it.

Martin Bishop:
I agree. Now who did you say you were working for?

Cosmo:
Oh, that's just my day job.

Cosmo:
Who else is going to change the world, Marty? Greenpeace?

Cosmo:
There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!

Mother:
We got bubkes! We turn ourselves in now, they'll give us twenty years in the electric chair!

Cosmo:
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons.

Martin Bishop:
You know I could have been in the NSA, but they found out my parents were married.

Whistler:
I want peace on earth and good will toward man.

Bernard Abbott:
Oh this is ridiculous.

Martin Bishop:
He's serious.

Whistler:
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward men.

Bernard Abbott:
We're the United States Government! We don't deal with that sort of thing.

Martin Bishop:
You're just gonna have to try.

Bernard Abbott:
All right, I'll see what I can do.

Whistler:
Thank you very much. That's all I ask.

Crease:
Now what are you saying, the NSA killed Kennedy?

Mother:
No, they shot him but they didn't kill him. He's still alive.

Carl:
It's fascinating what 50 bucks will get you at the county recorder's office. Playtronics Corporate Headquarters, the complete blueprints.

Martin Bishop:
Very good. Very good, Carl. Where'd you get the 50 bucks?

Carl:
Took it from Mother's wallet.

Martin Bishop:
Good.

Cosmo:
Posit: People think a bank might be financially shaky.

Martin Bishop:
Consequence: People start to withdraw their money.

Cosmo:
Result: Pretty soon it is financially shaky.

Martin Bishop:
Conclusion: You can make banks fail.

Cosmo:
Bzzt. I've already done that. Maybe you've heard about a few? Think bigger.

Martin Bishop:
Stock market?

Cosmo:
Yes.

Martin Bishop:
Currency market?

Cosmo:
Yes.

Martin Bishop:
Commodities market?

Cosmo:
Yes.

Martin Bishop:
Small countries?

Cosmo:
You will give me the box, right now, or I will kill you, right now.

Cosmo:
I cannot kill my friend.

Cosmo:
Kill my friend.

Mother:
Cattle mutilations are up.

Donald Crease:
Don't.

Mother:
Sorry.

College-Aged Bishop:
Richard Nixon's personal checking account is in here!

College-Aged Cosmo:
Oh, this is a challenge. Marty, we have to find someone truly worthy to give his money to.

College-Aged Bishop:
How about... the National Organization to Legalize Marijuana?

College-Aged Cosmo:
Perfect!

Mother:
They've even got photos of the guy leaving the embassy, through the back service entrance. Hey, Crease, you on?

Donald Crease:
Yeah, I'm on.

Mother:
Were you still in C.I.A. in '72?

Donald Crease:
Yeah, why?

Mother:
Did you know the Deputy Director of Planning was down in Managua, Nicaragua the day before the earthquake?

Donald Crease:
Now what are you saying, the C.I.A. caused the Managua earthquake?

Mother:
Well, I can't prove it, but...

Dick Gordon:
National Security Agency.

Martin Bishop:
Ah. You're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone.

Dick Gordon:
No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance.

Martin Bishop:
Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments. Set up friendly dictators.

Dick Gordon:
No, that's the CIA. We protect our government's communications, we try to break the other fella's codes. We're the good guys, Marty.

Martin Bishop:
Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is, Dick.

Martin Bishop:
Gimme a break. We won, they lost, you know? It's been in a couple of the papers.

Donald Crease:
You guys'll be chalk outlines without me.

Mother:
Uh, could we maybe just go back to the "they might kill us" part?

Gregor:
Uh, new title: "Cultural Attache."

Martin Bishop:
Unbelievable.

Gregor:
Last few years has been very confusing for people in my line of work.

Martin Bishop:
How's the audio?

Whistler:
Good, Mother's pretty close.

Donald Crease:
He's just wearing four safety belts this time.

Martin Bishop:
What, no parachute?

Whistler:
Fellas, Janek's little black box is on his desk between the pencil jar and the lamp.

Mother:
Uh, Whistler, I hate to tell you this, but you're blind.

Mother:
O.K., boss, this LTX-27 concealable mike is part of the same system that NASA used when they faked the Apollo moon landings. Yeah, the astronauts broadcast around the world from a soundstage at Norton Airforce Base in San Bernadino, California. So it worked for them, shouldn't give us too many problems.

Mother:
But the key meeting took place July 3rd, 1958, when the Air Force brought the space visitor to the White House for an interview with President Eisenhower. And Ike said, "hey look, give us your technology, we'll give you all the cow lips you want."

Martin Bishop:
Carl?

Carl:
I'd like to have a deep relationship with a beautiful woman who'll love me the very first time our eyes meet.

Martin Bishop:
We're not getting paid that much, Carl.

Carl:
Well, you know, someone like Liz.

Martin Bishop:
We're definitely not getting paid that much.

Donald Crease:
There isn't a government on this planet that wouldn't kill us all for that thing.

Whistler:
Very good, Bish. Remind me to make you an honorary blind person.

Cosmo:
Anyway, I couldn't have you talking to the Russians. Five years ago, yes, we could trust them not to go running to the F.B.I., or if they did we could trust the F.B.I. not to believe them, but today we can't trust anybody.

Donald Crease:
This is what's in Cosmo's office. Best motion sensor on the market.

Mother:
And watch this.

Donald Crease:
Also responds to thermal differentials.

Martin Bishop:
Does this have a happy ending?

Mother:
Oh, yeah. We can wrap you in a full-body suit of neoprene, heat-resistant rubber. Or we can raise the temperature in Cosmo's office to 98.6 degrees - which is probably what we'll have to do, because the neoprene would suffocate you. Either way, you've got a top speed of two inches per second. Any faster than that-

Mother:
and, uh, big guys with guns. But you'll probably do fine.

Martin Bishop:
How about a lunch? You can chaperone.

Bernard Abbot:
No, I will not do this.

Martin Bishop:
Hey, Abby, Abby, come on, now the F.B.I.'d give him twins!

Carl:
I'm Carl.

NSA Agent Mary:
I'm Mary.

Bernard Abbott:
I'm going to be sick.

Martin Bishop:
"Give him head"?

Whistler:
"Be a beacon"?

Carl:
So it's a code breaker.

Martin Bishop:
No. It's *the* code breaker.

Cosmo:
Martin Brice - my old and good friend who promised me we would not get in trouble and who, I might add, did not.

TV Anchorman:
In a surprise announcement, the Republican National Committee has revealed it is bankrupt. A spokesman for the party said they had plenty of money in their accounts last week, but today they just don't know where the money has gone. But not everybody is going begging. Amnesty International, Greenpeace and the United Negro College Fund announce record earnings this week due mostly to large anonymous donations.

Liz:
The man who folded this tube of Crest is looking for someone meticulous, refined. Anal.

Liz:
What?

Mother:
Oh no!

Martin Bishop:
What...? Don't say, "Oh no."

[Buddy Wallace and Dick Gordon reveals charges about Martin Bishop's gang. Wallace brings up Bishop himself.]

Buddy Wallace:
And then, there's Martin Bishop...[looks at a folder while Martin has a blank stare. Wallace turns the folder to show it has no papers] He doesn't seem to have a past.

Martin Bishop:
[Walks away] I'm sorry, but I don't work for the government.

Dick Gordon:
We do. [Shows a card] National Security Agency.

Bishop:
Ah. You're the guys I hear breathing on the other end of my phone.

Gordon:
No, that's the FBI. We're not chartered for domestic surveillance.

Bishop:
Oh, I see. You just overthrow governments. Set up friendly dictators.

Gordon:
No, that's the CIA. We protect our government's communications, we try to break the other fella's codes. We're the good guys, Marty.

Bishop:
Gee, I can't tell you what a relief that is...Dick.

Gordon:
Change your mind, call us at this number... [gives Bishop a folded piece of paper] Mr. Brice.

Bishop:
The probable level of security is very low. But if you guys don't want to take that chance just to keep me out of jail, fine, I understand, I'll do it.

Whistler:
Well, Bish, I can't speak for the other guys, but I'm in it for the money, I don't care if you go to jail.

Carl:
Me neither. I'm in.

Mother:
Uh... could we maybe just go back to the "they might kill us" part?

Bishop:
Mother, if I thought that was likely to happen, I wouldn't bring this to you. But there is a risk.

Whistler:
And it pays $175,000!

Mother:
I'm in.

Crease:
You guys will be chalk outlines without me. All right, what do we need?

[Carl and Whistler try out Jannek's black box and they surprisingly break into some secure mainframes]

Liz:
[upon seeing the data for the Air Traffic Control System] Oh, my God.

Mother:
How is this possible?

Whistler:
Cryptography systems are based on mathematical problems so complex they cannot be solved without a key.

Liz:
Jannek figured out a way to solve those problems without the key and he hard-wired it into that chip.

Martin Bishop:
Turn it off.

Whistler:
Want to crash some passenger jets?

Bishop:
I said turn it off. Turn it off. [shuts down computer]

Carl:
[contemplates] So, it's a code-breaker.

Bishop:
No, it's The code-breaker. No more secrets. [leaves]

[At the gang's hideout, Crease is on the phone with a contact in the wake of discovering that Jannek was killed the night before]

Donald Crease:
Don't tell me you can't do it because I know you can. And don't tell me you won't do it because I've got to have it. I need to know, and I need to know now.

Mother:
Guys, that federal building's been scheduled for demolition since August. Housed the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Agriculture. Been vacant for a month.

Carl Arbogast:
[checks out the Yellow Pages] The NSA never had an office in San Francisco. Their West Coast operations are out of Los Angeles.

Crease:
[shocked] Oh, God. Yeah, thanks. [hangs up] Jannek's grant is from the NSA. [throws phone in disgust; to Marty] How could you be so goddamn stupid?!? Two guys show up, say they're government, and you just buy it.

Whistler:
They probably were government [everybody looks at him] - just not ours.

Martin Bishop:
Everybody pack up whatever you can. This place isn't safe. [gets revolver]

Mother:
What are you doing?

Bishop:
I'm going to a concert.

Cosmo:
Posit: people think a bank might be financially shaky.

Bishop:
Consequence: people start to withdraw their money.

Cosmo:
Result: pretty soon it is financially shaky.

Bishop:
Conclusion: you can make banks fail.

Cosmo:
Bzzt. I've already done that. Maybe you've heard about a few? Think bigger.

Bishop:
Stock market?

Cosmo:
Yes.

Bishop:
Currency market?

Cosmo:
Yes.

Bishop:
Commodities market?

Cosmo:
Yes.

Bishop:
Small countries?

Cosmo:
With luck, I might even be able to crash the whole damned system. Destroy all records of ownership. Think of it, Marty. No more rich people, no more poor people, everybody's the same, isn't that what we said we always wanted?

Bishop:
Cos, you haven't gone crazy on me, have you?

Cosmo:
Who else is going to change the world, Marty? Greenpeace?

[Cosmo has just forced Martin Bishop at gunpoint to give him the box]

Cosmo:
You could have had the power.

Bishop:
I don't want it.

Cosmo:
Don't you know the places we can go with this?

Bishop:
Yeah, I do. There's nobody there.

Cosmo:
Exactly! The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money, it's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons.

Bishop:
I don't care. [walks away]

Cosmo:
I don't expect other people to understand this but I do expect you to understand this. We started this journey together.

Bishop:
It wasn't a journey, Cos. It was a prank.

Cosmo:
There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!

Bishop:
If I were you, I'd destroy that thing.

Cosmo:
Don't go. [aims at Bish's head as he prepares to go down the ladder] Don't go.

Bishop:
You do what you have to do, Cos, but if you want to stop me, you'll have to pull the trigger. You. [leaves]

Bishop:
Carl?

Carl:
[to Bernard Abbot] The, uh, young lady with the Uzi, is she single?

Bishop:
Uh, you know, Carl. [sets Carl aside] Carl, this is the brass ring. Now you've got to think bigger thoughts.

Carl:
I just want her telephone number, that's all. Please?

Bishop:
Hey Abby, how about a lunch? You can chaperon.

Bernard Abbot:
No, I will not do this. [Male NSA agents smirk]

Bishop:
Hey, Abby, Abby, come on, now the FBI'd give him twins-

Abbot:
NO!

NSA Agent Mary:
Wait a second. You can have anything you want, and you're asking for my phone number?

Carl:
Yes.

NSA Agent Mary:
273-9164. Area code 415.

Carl:
Thanks. I'm Carl. [offers hand]

NSA Agent Mary:
[smiles while shaking Carl's hand] I'm Mary.

Abbot:
I'm going to be sick. Are we done here?

Bishop:
Not yet. Whistler?

Whistler:
I want peace on earth and good will toward man.

Abbot:
Oh, this is ridiculous.

Bishop:
He's serious.

Whistler:
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward men.

Abbot:
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.

Bishop:
You're just gonna have to try.

Abbot:
All right, I'll see what I can do.

Whistler:
Thank you very much. That's all I ask.

*I'm smart, Marty*