The Prophet of the People

THE PROPHET OF THE PEOPLE

Open: EXT, night. Violent MOB with torches chases COPS into police station.

INT: COPS and AGENT JONES, a black suited FBI agent, rush in. Shut, barricade door.

Violent noises outside. Shouts. Things smashing.

COP: (gets on radio) Mayday! Mayday! Six officers and FBI agent trapped in Anytown USA police station, one officer wounded.

Sound: brick hitting window.

COP: (flinches, but getting control back in his voice) Surrounded by violent mob led by uh “Prophet of the People.” Request immediate assistance.

Sound: Just static. From outside, we still hear violent noises.

COP: Nothing, who am I kidding? Those fucks are everywhere. (drops mike) We’re screwed.

Violent noises get louder. Then sudden silence.

COP #2: (nervous rookie) Now what?

Here’s what: From outside they hear creepy chanting, getting louder and louder. A “Lord of the Flies” moment.

MOB: (chanting) Prophet of the People! Prophet of the People! Prophet of the People!

(the chants continue under this exchange)

COP #3: (contemptuously) ‘Prophet of the People.’ Who the hell is this guy?

AGENT JONES: A real jerk.

This is stating the obvious.

COP #2: Yeah, duh.

AGENT JONES: I mean I know from experience.

This makes all the COPs turn to look at him.

AGENT JONES: I mean I knew this guy in high school, college, kinda followed him after that.

COP: You knew this guy?

AGENT JONES: Yeah.

COP: What’s his name?

AGENT JONES: Well he changed it a long time ago but. (thinking) Lyle. Lyle Talbot. A real jerk.

Fade to …

Cover of 1959 high school yearbook.

Open to: picture of geeky looking guy. Caption: LYLE TALBOT, president ANYTOWN HIGH FORENSIC SOCIETY. Under that, scrawled insults: Most likely NOT to succeed. Eat shit and die commie fag junkie, etc. (Don’t linger on this. Just a quick flash.)

JONES: He had this sky-high IQ, 160, something like that. Everybody hated him. Teachers hated him cause he knew more than the teachers. Jocks hated him.

Scene of jocks giving TALBOT a swirly – i.e: holding him by legs and dunking him head first into flushing toilet.

JONES: Society kids hated him ‘cause he was this poor little shit. Parents were these old Marxist types, these blacklisted screenwriters, real bitter, which tells you right there he’s un-American.

Montage illustrates all this.

Go to – INT, high school library.

TALBOT emerges from bathroom, wet head. JOCKS behind him laughing. Younger version of AGENT JONES sees him, also laughs.

TALBOT: Ha-ha-ha, the jocks dunked the skinny kid in the toilet, what’s the joke here, oh I get it – you’re stronger than me, pretty funny. (hollering with almost prophetic power) You’re bullies, you know that? Not just you, this whole rotten society. You’re all bullies! Well one of these days there’s gonna be a revolution!

JONES: Yeah? That’s a big joke. Whose gonna lead this revolution?

TALBOT: Me!

JONES: You? You and what army?

TALBOT: The army of the people!

JONES: You fucking commie. (punches him)

The whole library applauds.

JONES: So he graduates, I graduate. Wound up at the same college. U of C at Berkeley. He’s in on a full scholarship – I mean the little shit had straight As, SATs through the roof. I’m in ROTC. So we’re in the study hall. I’m boning up on tank silhouettes, he’s reading some commie shit. These eggheads come walking through. They’re talking like they own the place. Professor, old guy with a beard, some Jewish chick, had to be his assistant or something, nice tits.

PROF: Of course it doesn’t make sense. History’s a nightmare. (whispering) Please don’t mention this to the students. It’s our job to make history make sense, but just between you and me, it doesn’t. The engine of historical change is irrationality. Popular delusions. The madness of crowds. Revolution.

TALBOT perks up.

PROF: Usually takes some charismatic figure of course, a catalyst offering some irrational article of faith. One loves this figure. One hears, one believes, one no longer fears death. Multiply the one by the many and one has a mob that no longer fears death.

Mobs of believers who rush into hails of bullets, set things on fire, human sacrifice, beheadings, that sort of thing, all at the prophet’s command. Thus change. Always comes to a bad end, though.

GRADUATE ASSISTANT: And this applies to any revolution?

PROFESSOR: Well, violent revolution, certainly. Marxist. Religious. Both are irrational articles of faith.

ASST: Good thing it’s never occurred to anyone to combine the two.

PROF: Yes.

TALBOT gets a wicked grin on his face.

PROF: This is not to say there’s no irrational component to capitalism. The right deodorant will make women like you, induce coitus, that sort of thing. It’s a question of scale.

ASST: You know you’re a helluva lot more interesting in person. Why don’t you talk like this in class?

PROF: You’ll find I’m much more interesting in person.

ASST: But why don’t you …

JONES: Next thing you know he starts working out in the gym. Boning up on his public speaking. Taking acting classes, improv. Making himself charismatic, you know?

COP #2: How the hell do you know all this shit?

JONES: Well, they had me watching him, part of my ROTC duty. They knew he was a commie from the beginning.

COP: Well that’s pretty fucking comforting.

(Mob noises outside)

JONES: (ignoring this) He starts studying Hitler tapes in the film lab. Hitler, Mao, Stalin. Getting his moves down.

Go to JONES in rafters in film lab watching TALBOT watch film all by himself. JONES shifts around to get a better look, causing a massive spot light fixture to fall down, right on the seat next to TALBOT.

TALBOT: (looking up) Hey!

Outside. JONES walking away. TALBOT bursts out of door, follows him.

TALBOT: You tried to kill me!

JONES: It was an accident.

TALBOT: Bullshit.

JONES: If I’d wanted to kill you, I’d a killed you.

TALBOT: Why are you watching me?

JONES: What have you got to hide?

TALBOT: Fascist.

TALBOT starts to say something else, changes mind, walks away. JONES follows him. Grabs him by his denim jacket lapels.

JONES: What are you up to, commie?

TALBOT breaks grip, does judo throw.

JONES: Jesus, where the hell’d you learn to do that?

TALBOT: Judo class.

JONES: (picking himself up) Judo class. Oh yeah. I forgot.

TALBOT: (makes fist) Power to the people, fascist. I’m no pushover. Not anymore. I’m making myself strong. Judo. Karate. Marksmenship. You got me under surveillance, you should know, dumbass.

JONES: I wanna know why you’re watching all these dictators and shit. You training to be a dictator?

TALBOT: Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m training to be a dictator. (pushing against JONES’ chest aggressively) In a play, asshole. It’s theater. A one-man show. Make sure you put that in your fucking report.

Walks away.

JONES: And maybe that was all he was doing. I don’t know. He didn’t get too crazy until he started taking LSD. I mean the CIA was paying people to take that stuff. College students. In experiments. He needed the money so he took it. Made him nuts.

TALBOT rushes out of lab with ecstatic look in his eyes. Starts spinning around.

TALBOT: I am the revolution! I am the revolution! Revolution, revolution, revolution!

Falls.

JONES: But I think it helped his charisma.

TALBOT gets up, camera goes in and we see a wild Messianic look in his eyes, that acid-Jesus Manson/Jim Morrison vibe. I.e.: charisma.

TALBOT has now transformed into the PROPHET OF THE PEOPLE.

JONES: Next thing you know, he drops out in 63, a week before graduation. Starts his own religion – you can actually do that. Starts calling himself the “Prophet of the People.” Sets up these ashrams, all these nut jobs start going there. Me, I go straight in the Army. Do a turn of duty in Nam before things started getting hot. Came back, got a job in the FBI. Director told me to start watching him again. By now it’s 67. His timing’s perfect. Whole country’s going nuts same time he’s going nuts, drugs, riots, all that hippy shit. Feeds right into his shit. He’s got ashrams all over the country. Big celebrity. His fucking face is everywhere. Rock stars giving him plugs in “Rolling Stone.” Serious articles in “Time.” That kinda shit. You turn on the tube, he’s always there …

Go to montage of TV coverage –

GROUPIE CHICK: He’s a beautiful person.

MANSON: I was starting my own thing up in the hills, man, but I dropped all that. I’m following the Prophet of the People now. I’m John the Baptist, he’s Jesus. He’s paying me to write songs, man!

POMPOUS NEWSCASTER: Prophet of the People – a refreshing voice of change or a pied piper leading the youth of America astray? In the next 60 minutes we’ll …

JONES: And he’s building up to something. Some big revelation … but nobody knew what he was really up to. Nobody expected it. So he has this big meeting in LA stadium …

Go to EXT stadium …

MOB: Chanting. Prophet of the People! Prophet of the People

PROPHET: I am the Prophet of the People. And you … you are the people! You are the oppressed people! But not for long. Today, is the beginning. Today, is the revolution. Today, we shall cleanse the world. With blood!

Go!

And start the first ripple …

Of a giant wave

OF AN OCEAN OF BLOOD!

MOB bursts out of stadium.

MOB: (chanting) Blood, blood! WE want blood!

JONES: Boom, instant riots.

COP: You didn’t see this coming?

JONES: No. He sucker punched us. Managed to keep it all secret. Cell groups, code words, that kinda thing. I mean I was watching him and I didn’t see it coming.

COP: You fucked up.

JONES: Yeah. I fucked up. Anyway, whole country goes up in flames. This happened in LA., happened everywhere. He had simultaneous mass meetings in New York, Miami, you name it. Remote broadcasts. All these nut jobs listening to his voice. And when the Prophet said “blood” they were out for blood.

Go to: jump cut of roaring mob.

JONES: In Washington DC they surrounded the pentagon. This time they had a real psychic. Some telekinetic.

PSYCHIC: Rise.

Pentagon rips out of ground, flies into the sky and into space.

JONES: Everywhere you look, there’s riots. Way beyond Watts, Detroit, all that shit. Total breakdown. He’d got his own people in the Army, National Guard. Troops show up, then they start firing on the wrong side, firing on each other. Prophet puts acid in the water, cuts communications, cuts power. Whole country goes to hell. Back in LA he’s mopping up.

Go to EXT, LA.

MOB starts destroying everything in sight.

MOB: Blood, blood! We want blood!

MOB crashes into bank.

BANK PRESIDENT flees into office. Shuts door.

MOB: Blood, blood! We want blood!

NUTCASE: (holding AK-47) I’ll get ya some blood.

Shoots machine gun through door. Kills BANK PRESIDENT.

PROPHET: Your zeal is great. But we must spare the pigs. For there must be a trial … and quickly.

Go to – Nuremberg style glass booth trial of politicians and heads of corporations.

PROSECUTOR: (stridently) As the president of Standard Oil you are accused of crimes against the people!

Go to –

Shot of the guy’s feet as he shoots down through a gallow’s trap door.

Go to – PROPHET on TV.

PROPHET: Johnson is dead, MacNamara is dead, all the pigs are dead! Babylon Amerika has fallen! Our coordinated, simultaneous revolutionary forces in all major cities have seized control! Victory is ours. Only small pockets of resistance in Texas remain …

Go to ANYTOWN USA, TEXAS.

COP: So that’s why he’s here.

AGENT JONES: Yeah. He saved me for last.

COP: Thanks a lot.

AGENT JONES: Too bad that light didn’t …

Door kicks in.

PROPHET: I am the Prophet …

Cut in mid sentence.

Go to jump cut of 300-pound light fixture crashing down on TALBOT’s head.

PROPHET: … of the People!

COP: Sure you are. (leading him to cell) And here’s your new home.

AGENT JONES: I mean if I hadn’t …

PROPHET: (Slurring speech) Prophet!

COP: Yeah, but it did. You gotta stop beating up on yourself.

PROPHET: People Prophet!

COP: Want a donut?

 THE PROPHET OF THE PEOPLE

Open: EXT, night. Violent MOB with torches chases COPS into police station.

INT: COPS and AGENT JONES, a black suited FBI agent, rush in. Shut, barricade door.

Violent noises outside. Shouts. Things smashing.

COP: (gets on radio) Mayday! Mayday! Six officers and FBI agent trapped in Anytown USA police station, one officer wounded.

Sound: brick hitting window.

COP: (flinches, but getting control back in his voice) Surrounded by violent mob led by uh “Prophet of the People.” Request immediate assistance.

Sound: Just static. From outside, we still hear violent noises.

COP: Nothing, who am I kidding? Those fucks are everywhere. (drops mike) We’re screwed.

Violent noises get louder. Then sudden silence.

COP #2: (nervous rookie) Now what?

Here’s what: From outside they hear creepy chanting, getting louder and louder. A “Lord of the Flies” moment.

MOB: (chanting) Prophet of the People! Prophet of the People! Prophet of the People!

(the chants continue under this exchange)

COP #3: (contemptuously) ‘Prophet of the People.’ Who the hell is this guy?

AGENT JONES: A real jerk.

This is stating the obvious.

COP #2: Yeah, duh.

AGENT JONES: I mean I know from experience.

This makes all the COPs turn to look at him.

AGENT JONES: I mean I knew this guy in high school, college, kinda followed him after that.

COP: You knew this guy?

AGENT JONES: Yeah.

COP: What’s his name?

AGENT JONES: Well he changed it a long time ago but. (thinking) Lyle. Lyle Talbot. A real jerk.

Fade to …

Cover of 1959 high school yearbook.

Open to: picture of geeky looking guy. Caption: LYLE TALBOT, president ANYTOWN HIGH FORENSIC SOCIETY. Under that, scrawled insults: Most likely NOT to succeed. Eat shit and die commie fag junkie, etc. (Don’t linger on this. Just a quick flash.)

JONES: He had this sky-high IQ, 160, something like that. Everybody hated him. Teachers hated him cause he knew more than the teachers. Jocks hated him.

Scene of jocks giving TALBOT a swirly – i.e: holding him by legs and dunking him head first into flushing toilet.

JONES: Society kids hated him ‘cause he was this poor little shit. Parents were these old Marxist types, these blacklisted screenwriters, real bitter, which tells you right there he’s un-American.

Montage illustrates all this.

Go to – INT, high school library.

TALBOT emerges from bathroom, wet head. JOCKS behind him laughing. Younger version of AGENT JONES sees him, also laughs.

TALBOT: Ha-ha-ha, the jocks dunked the skinny kid in the toilet, what’s the joke here, oh I get it – you’re stronger than me, pretty funny. (hollering with almost prophetic power) You’re bullies, you know that? Not just you, this whole rotten society. You’re all bullies! Well one of these days there’s gonna be a revolution!

JONES: Yeah? That’s a big joke. Whose gonna lead this revolution?

TALBOT: Me!

JONES: You? You and what army?

TALBOT: The army of the people!

JONES: You fucking commie. (punches him)

The whole library applauds.

JONES: So he graduates, I graduate. Wound up at the same college. U of C at Berkeley. He’s in on a full scholarship – I mean the little shit had straight As, SATs through the roof. I’m in ROTC. So we’re in the study hall. I’m boning up on tank silhouettes, he’s reading some commie shit. These eggheads come walking through. They’re talking like they own the place. Professor, old guy with a beard, some Jewish chick, had to be his assistant or something, nice tits.

PROF: Of course it doesn’t make sense. History’s a nightmare. (whispering) Please don’t mention this to the students. It’s our job to make history make sense, but just between you and me, it doesn’t. The engine of historical change is irrationality. Popular delusions. The madness of crowds. Revolution.

TALBOT perks up.

PROF: Usually takes some charismatic figure of course, a catalyst offering some irrational article of faith. One loves this figure. One hears, one believes, one no longer fears death. Multiply the one by the many and one has a mob that no longer fears death.

Mobs of believers who rush into hails of bullets, set things on fire, human sacrifice, beheadings, that sort of thing, all at the prophet’s command. Thus change. Always comes to a bad end, though.

GRADUATE ASSISTANT: And this applies to any revolution?

PROFESSOR: Well, violent revolution, certainly. Marxist. Religious. Both are irrational articles of faith.

ASST: Good thing it’s never occurred to anyone to combine the two.

PROF: Yes.

TALBOT gets a wicked grin on his face.

PROF: This is not to say there’s no irrational component to capitalism. The right deodorant will make women like you, induce coitus, that sort of thing. It’s a question of scale.

ASST: You know you’re a helluva lot more interesting in person. Why don’t you talk like this in class?

PROF: You’ll find I’m much more interesting in person.

ASST: But why don’t you …

JONES: Next thing you know he starts working out in the gym. Boning up on his public speaking. Taking acting classes, improv. Making himself charismatic, you know?

COP #2: How the hell do you know all this shit?

JONES: Well, they had me watching him, part of my ROTC duty. They knew he was a commie from the beginning.

COP: Well that’s pretty fucking comforting.

(Mob noises outside)

JONES: (ignoring this) He starts studying Hitler tapes in the film lab. Hitler, Mao, Stalin. Getting his moves down.

Go to JONES in rafters in film lab watching TALBOT watch film all by himself. JONES shifts around to get a better look, causing a massive spot light fixture to fall down, right on the seat next to TALBOT.

TALBOT: (looking up) Hey!

Outside. JONES walking away. TALBOT bursts out of door, follows him.

TALBOT: You tried to kill me!

JONES: It was an accident.

TALBOT: Bullshit.

JONES: If I’d wanted to kill you, I’d a killed you.

TALBOT: Why are you watching me?

JONES: What have you got to hide?

TALBOT: Fascist.

TALBOT starts to say something else, changes mind, walks away. JONES follows him. Grabs him by his denim jacket lapels.

JONES: What are you up to, commie?

TALBOT breaks grip, does judo throw.

JONES: Jesus, where the hell’d you learn to do that?

TALBOT: Judo class.

JONES: (picking himself up) Judo class. Oh yeah. I forgot.

TALBOT: (makes fist) Power to the people, fascist. I’m no pushover. Not anymore. I’m making myself strong. Judo. Karate. Marksmenship. You got me under surveillance, you should know, dumbass.

JONES: I wanna know why you’re watching all these dictators and shit. You training to be a dictator?

TALBOT: Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m training to be a dictator. (pushing against JONES’ chest aggressively) In a play, asshole. It’s theater. A one-man show. Make sure you put that in your fucking report.

Walks away.

JONES: And maybe that was all he was doing. I don’t know. He didn’t get too crazy until he started taking LSD. I mean the CIA was paying people to take that stuff. College students. In experiments. He needed the money so he took it. Made him nuts.

TALBOT rushes out of lab with ecstatic look in his eyes. Starts spinning around.

TALBOT: I am the revolution! I am the revolution! Revolution, revolution, revolution!

Falls.

JONES: But I think it helped his charisma.

TALBOT gets up, camera goes in and we see a wild Messianic look in his eyes, that acid-Jesus Manson/Jim Morrison vibe. I.e.: charisma.

TALBOT has now transformed into the PROPHET OF THE PEOPLE.

JONES: Next thing you know, he drops out in 63, a week before graduation. Starts his own religion – you can actually do that. Starts calling himself the “Prophet of the People.” Sets up these ashrams, all these nut jobs start going there. Me, I go straight in the Army. Do a turn of duty in Nam before things started getting hot. Came back, got a job in the FBI. Director told me to start watching him again. By now it’s 67. His timing’s perfect. Whole country’s going nuts same time he’s going nuts, drugs, riots, all that hippy shit. Feeds right into his shit. He’s got ashrams all over the country. Big celebrity. His fucking face is everywhere. Rock stars giving him plugs in “Rolling Stone.” Serious articles in “Time.” That kinda shit. You turn on the tube, he’s always there …

Go to montage of TV coverage –

GROUPIE CHICK: He’s a beautiful person.

MANSON: I was starting my own thing up in the hills, man, but I dropped all that. I’m following the Prophet of the People now. I’m John the Baptist, he’s Jesus. He’s paying me to write songs, man!

POMPOUS NEWSCASTER: Prophet of the People – a refreshing voice of change or a pied piper leading the youth of America astray? In the next 60 minutes we’ll …

JONES: And he’s building up to something. Some big revelation … but nobody knew what he was really up to. Nobody expected it. So he has this big meeting in LA stadium …

Go to EXT stadium …

MOB: Chanting. Prophet of the People! Prophet of the People

PROPHET: I am the Prophet of the People. And you … you are the people! You are the oppressed people! But not for long. Today, is the beginning. Today, is the revolution. Today, we shall cleanse the world. With blood!

Go!

And start the first ripple …

Of a giant wave

OF AN OCEAN OF BLOOD!

MOB bursts out of stadium.

MOB: (chanting) Blood, blood! WE want blood!

JONES: Boom, instant riots.

COP: You didn’t see this coming?

JONES: No. He sucker punched us. Managed to keep it all secret. Cell groups, code words, that kinda thing. I mean I was watching him and I didn’t see it coming.

COP: You fucked up.

JONES: Yeah. I fucked up. Anyway, whole country goes up in flames. This happened in LA., happened everywhere. He had simultaneous mass meetings in New York, Miami, you name it. Remote broadcasts. All these nut jobs listening to his voice. And when the Prophet said “blood” they were out for blood.

Go to: jump cut of roaring mob.

JONES: In Washington DC they surrounded the pentagon. This time they had a real psychic. Some telekinetic.

PSYCHIC: Rise.

Pentagon rips out of ground, flies into the sky and into space.

JONES: Everywhere you look, there’s riots. Way beyond Watts, Detroit, all that shit. Total breakdown. He’d got his own people in the Army, National Guard. Troops show up, then they start firing on the wrong side, firing on each other. Prophet puts acid in the water, cuts communications, cuts power. Whole country goes to hell. Back in LA he’s mopping up.

Go to EXT, LA.

MOB starts destroying everything in sight.

MOB: Blood, blood! We want blood!

MOB crashes into bank.

BANK PRESIDENT flees into office. Shuts door.

MOB: Blood, blood! We want blood!

NUTCASE: (holding AK-47) I’ll get ya some blood.

Shoots machine gun through door. Kills BANK PRESIDENT.

PROPHET: Your zeal is great. But we must spare the pigs. For there must be a trial … and quickly.

Go to – Nuremberg style glass booth trial of politicians and heads of corporations.

PROSECUTOR: (stridently) As the president of Standard Oil you are accused of crimes against the people!

Go to –

Shot of the guy’s feet as he shoots down through a gallow’s trap door.

Go to – PROPHET on TV.

PROPHET: Johnson is dead, MacNamara is dead, all the pigs are dead! Babylon Amerika has fallen! Our coordinated, simultaneous revolutionary forces in all major cities have seized control! Victory is ours. Only small pockets of resistance in Texas remain …

Go to ANYTOWN USA, TEXAS.

COP: So that’s why he’s here.

AGENT JONES: Yeah. He saved me for last.

COP: Thanks a lot.

AGENT JONES: Too bad that light didn’t …

Door kicks in.

PROPHET: I am the Prophet …

Cut in mid sentence.

Go to jump cut of 300-pound light fixture crashing down on TALBOT’s head.

PROPHET: … of the People!

COP: Sure you are. (leading him to cell) And here’s your new home.

AGENT JONES: I mean if I hadn’t …

PROPHET: (Slurring speech) Prophet!

COP: Yeah, but it did. You gotta stop beating up on yourself.

PROPHET: People Prophet!

COP: Want a donut?

Go to tight close up PROPHET’s face.

PROPHET: I AM THE PROPHET OF THE PEOPLE!

FBI AGENT: Sure you are. (leading him to cell) And here’s your new home.

PROPHET: (slurring speech) I AM THE PROPHET.

FBI AGENT: Right. (closes door walks away – then directs question to cop)

You called the?

PROPHET: I am the Prophet of the People!

Go to tight close up PROPHET’s face.

PROPHET: I AM THE PROPHET OF THE PEOPLE!

FBI AGENT: Sure you are. (leading him to cell) And here’s your new home.

PROPHET: (slurring speech) I AM THE PROPHET.

FBI AGENT: Right. (closes door walks away – then directs question to cop)

You called the?

COP nods head.

COP: They’ll be here in about an hour. So what’s the deal with this guy? He on something?

FBI AGENT: No. Brain damage. I’m kinda responsible in a way …

COP: Responsible?

FBI AGENT: Long story. But I owe this guy. Every now and then he gets out, I track him down, make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. Kinda bend the regs alittle. Director turns a blind eye.

COP: How the hell are you responsible?

FBI AGENT: I said it’s a long story.

Tell me the short version.

I kinda dropped a 300 pound light on his head in college.

Yeah. That’ll do it.

One ofthose things make you wish you could …

Turn back time?

Yeah.

One of those what if kinda things.

You want a donut.

Go to tight close up PROPHET’s face.

PROPHET: I AM THE PROPHET OF THE PEOPLE!

FBI AGENT: Sure you are. (leading him to cell) And here’s your new home.

PROPHET: (slurring speech) I AM THE PROPHET.

FBI AGENT: Right. (closes door walks away – then directs question to cop)

You called the?

PROPHET: I am the Prophet of the People!

Go to tight close up PROPHET’s face.

PROPHET: I AM THE PROPHET OF THE PEOPLE!

FBI AGENT: Sure you are. (leading him to cell) And here’s your new home.

PROPHET: (slurring speech) I AM THE PROPHET.

FBI AGENT: Right. (closes door walks away – then directs question to cop)

You called the?

COP nods head.

COP: They’ll be here in about an hour. So what’s the deal with this guy? He on something?

FBI AGENT: No. Brain damage. I’m kinda responsible in a way …

COP: Responsible?

FBI AGENT: Long story. But I owe this guy. Every now and then he gets out, I track him down, make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. Kinda bend the regs alittle. Director turns a blind eye.

COP: How the hell are you responsible?

FBI AGENT: I said it’s a long story.

Tell me the short version.

I kinda dropped a 300 pound light on his head in college.

Yeah. That’ll do it.

One ofthose things make you wish you could …

Turn back time?

Yeah.

One of those what if kinda things.

You want a donut.