旅行终点 The End of the Tour Movie Script

DAVID:

To tell you truly, if you structured this as some “and then he spiraled into some terrible addiction thing,” it would be inaccurate. It was more like, I got more and more unhappy. The more unhappy I would get, the more I would drink. There was no joy in the drinking. I used it for anesthesia.

Okay?

LIPSKY:

Okay. What kind of drinker were you?

Were you a falling-down drinker? A waking-up-in-the-curb drinker?

DAVID:

No, I was not! Okay? Part of my reticence about this whole thing is that it won't make very good copy for you. Because, no, I was not like that at all!

LIPSKY:

You did agree to this interview.

DAVID:

I know that I did.

LIPSKY:

Alright, I'm not gonna push much further.

DAVID:

I'm also aware that some addictions are sexier than others. My primary addiction my entire life has been to television. I told you that. Now, television addiction is of far less interest to your readers than something like heroin, that confirms the mythos of the writer

LIPSKY:

A myth I do not believe, okay?

DAVID:

I know you don't believe that. I’m also aware that one of the things swirling around here is you want the best f***ing article you can have!

74.

Why don’t you write whatever the f*** you want, but the fact of the matter is, it was not a Lost Weekend sort of thing. Nor was it some lurid, romantic writer-as-alcoholic-sort-of-thing.

What it was, was a 28-year-old person who exhausted a couple other ways to live, really taken them to their conclusion. Which for me was a pink room, with a drain in the center of the floor. Which is where they put me for an entire day when they thought I was going to kill myself. Where you don’t have anything on, and somebody’s observing you through a slot in the wall. And when that happens to you, you become tremendously... unprecedentedly willing to examine some other alternatives for how to live.

David looks at him for a moment. He walks out of the room, leaving Lipsky behind, his head reeling. Lipsky presses stop on the tape recorder.

100 INT. DAVID'S HOUSE/BATHROOM - 1996 - NIGHT 100 Lipsky, still digesting the conversation, looks at himself in the mirror while brushing his teeth. He spits into the sink.

101 INT. DAVID'S HOUSE/GUEST ROOM - 1996 - NIGHT 101 Lipsky is in bed, still awake in the moonlight. The door ajar, David comes in. He speaks softly, in shadow. He can’t be seen and can’t see Lipsky very well; it’s sort of like confession.

DAVID:

You awake?

LIPSKY:

Yeah.

DAVID:

I was just thinking... It wasn't a chemical imbalance, and it wasn't drugs and alcohol. It was much more that I had lived an incredibly American life. That, “If I could just achieve X and Y and Z, everything would be OK.” (A beat.) 75.

There's a thing in the book: when people jump out of a burning skyscraper, it's not that they're not afraid of falling anymore, it's that the alternative is so awful. And then you're invited to consider what could be so awful, that leaping to your death seems like an escape from it. I don't know if you've had any experience with this kind of thing.

But it's worse than any kind of physical injury. It may be what in the old days was known as a spiritual crisis. Feeling as though every axiom of your life turned out to be false, and there was actually nothing, and you were nothing, and it was all a delusion. And that you were better than everyone else because you saw that it was a delusion, and yet you were worse because you can't f***ing function. And it’s really horrible.

(A beat.) I don’t think we ever change. I’m sure there are still those same parts of me. I’ve just got to find a way not to let them drive. Y’know?

(A beat.) Well, anyway... Good night.

LIPSKY:

Good night.