The Brave One

[from trailer]

Erica:
I want my dog back!

Detective Mercer:
Most everybody lies. Dead can't.

Detective Vitale:
Guy had a rap sheet longer than my dick.

Detective Mercer:
So, in other words, no priors.

Detective Vitale:
Easy.

Elevator Man #1:
Gross. Who's he gonna shoot next, Donald Trump?

Detective Vitale:
I'd say it was probably the fall that killed this guy... or it could be the crowbar embedded in his skull. I'd say it's about 50-50. [pause as he looks up] Maybe 70-30.

Erica:
Now, who's the b*tch?

[first lines]

Erica:
[voiceover, doing her radio show] I'm Erica Bain. And as *you* know, I walk the city. I b*tch and moan about it. I walk and watch and listen, a witness to all the beauty and ugliness that is disappearing from our beloved city. Last week took me to the gray depths of the East River where Dmitri Panchenko swims his morning laps, like he has every morning since the 1960s. And today I walked by the acres of scaffolding outside what used to be the Plaza Hotel. And I thought about Eloise. Remember Kay Thompson's Eloise? Eloise who lived in the Plaza Hotel with her dog Weenie, and her parents were always away, and her English nanny who had eight hair pins made out of bones. That Eloise. The adored brat of my childhood. [indistinct overdubs for a few lines here]... li'l punk kids... Sid Vicious spewing beer from his teeth in the Chelsea Hotel... Andy Warhol, his sunglasses reflecting... Edgar Allan Poe, freeing live monkeys from the crates of a crumbling schooner on the oily slips of South Street. Stories of a city that is disappearing before our eyes, its people swept over the Williamsburg of those stories. So what are we left of those stories? Are we going to have to construct an imaginary city to house our memories? Because when you love something, every time a bit goes, you lose a piece of yourself. Where's Eloise going to sleep tonight? Can you hear her ghost wandering around the collapsing corridors of her beloved Plaza, trying to find her nanny's room? Calling out to the construction workers, in a voice that nobody hears, "Has anyone seen my turtle, Skipperdee?" This is Erica Bain, and you've been listening to Streetwalk, on WKNW.

Erica:
I always believed that fear belonged to other people. Weaker people. It never touched me. And then it did. And when it touches you, you know... that it's been there all along. Waiting beneath the surfaces of everything you loved.

Erica:
Open the door.

Crazy in the car:
Uh-oh. We got us a super-c*nt here.

Erica:
Open the door, or I'll be the last super-c*nt you'll ever see.

Detective Vitale:
Women kill the kids, the boyfriend, the husband. Sh*t they love. They don't do this.

Erica:
Do you remember what she looked like?

Pawn Shop Guy:
She had two eyes, a mouth and a nose right in the middle of her face. Now please, get the f*** out.

Detective Mercer:
Who did you see?

Chloe:
I saw Nobody

[pause]

Chloe:
and Nobody saw me.

Sketch Artist:
Think about that first moment that you met her. Alright? Where you were, where she was. Tell me anything that comes to mind.

Ethan:
Uh huh... She had light hair... I think. And okay lips. And she was skinny. But she had some ass. You know, you could tell because... [pauses] but, you're not doing the ass, right?

Sketch Artist:
No.

Ethan:
Okay. Urm... She had good skin. It was smooth. And nice breasts. Yeah, like they were little like Kate Moss' titties. But...

Sketch Artist:
[interrupts] You just try to focus on the face.

Ethan:
I'm sorry. [pause] Hey, you what I do remember.

Sketch Artist:
What?

Ethan:
She was like on lockdown.

Erica:
So there's nothing you can do about it?

Detective Mercer:
Nothing legal. No, wait... I didn't say that.

[Erica rewinds the tape and records over it]

Detective Mercer:
Thank you.

Detective Vitale:
[looking at the sketch artist's work] Great. It's Jennifer Aniston!

Sketch Artist:
It's actually quite common- the mind becomes so saturated with popular images that it becomes impossible- especially with people under twenty- to remember anything unique.

[last lines]

Erica:
There is no going back, to that other person, that other place. This thing, this stranger, she is all you are now.

Erica:
I should have walked out of that train. I could have just shown them the gun, they wouldn't have hurt me. Why don't my hands shake? Why doesn't somebody stop me?

Detective Mercer:
How did you... pull it back together after what happened to you?

Erica:
You don't

Detective Mercer:
I'm sorry.

Erica:
No, no.

Detective Mercer:
Jacked-up question, man.

Erica:
It's a fair question. You... you become someone else. A stranger.

Detective Mercer:
Now, if your going to use a gun, you make sure it's legal