Yeah. I’m gonna have to feel all this now, instead of just sleepwalk through it.
LIPSKY:
What do you mean by “sleepwalk?”
DAVID:
I’ve kind of unplugged myself for the last three weeks. Meeting a whole lot of new people, having to do things, you’re in a constant low-level state of anxiety. And sort of deep, existential, you know: fear, that you feel kind of all the way down to your butthole.
LIPSKY:
What are you afraid of? I mean, what’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?
DAVID:
The worst? That I’ll really get to like it. That’s the worst.
LIPSKY:
The attention?
DAVID:
Uh huh.
LIPSKY:
(nods, then) And what would be so wrong about that?
DAVID:
Become one of these hideous: “Yet another publication party, and Hey, there’s Dave sticking his head in the back of the photo.” I’d rather be dead.
LIPSKY:
Why?
70.
DAVID:
I don’t want to be seen that way.
Why, would you?
LIPSKY:
Well, if you’re deriving your satisfaction from talking about your work, as opposed to writing, then, yeah, I guess you’d get a lot less done.
DAVID:
Exactly. And there’s nothing more grotesque than somebody who’s going around, “I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer.” Is that a dig at Lipsky? Lipsky thinks so.
DAVID:
I don’t mind appearing in Rolling Stone, but I don’t want to appear in Rolling Stone as somebody who wants to be in Rolling Stone. If you see me like, you know, a guest on a game show in a couple of years... Lipsky laughs. Pause. David is pensive again.
DAVID:
To have written a book about how seductive image is, and how many ways there are to get seduced off any kind of meaningful path, because of the way the culture is now...? What if I become this parody of that very thing?
Lipsky looks at David, who stares straight ahead, his eyes maybe filling with tears.
DAVID:
Tomorrow, you drive away, get on a plane, this is over. And I’m back to knowing like twenty people. Then I’m going to have to like decompress from getting all this attention. Because it’s like getting heroin injected into your cortex.
That registers with Lipsky.
71.
DAVID (CONTD) And where I’m going to need real balls is to be able to sit and go through that. And try to remind myself that what the reality is: that I’m thirty- four years old, and I’m alone in a room with a piece of paper.
They drive in silence.
97 EXT./INT. DAVID'S HOUSE - 1996 - NIGHT 97 The Grand Am pulls up, its headlights the only artificial light. The Davids get out and remove their bags. Inside, the dogs are barking in anticipation.
David unlocks the door and the dogs greet him and Lipsky exuberantly. David kneels so that the dogs lick his face.
