2) If viable, do not flee

The question was how to translate this action into a viable script that would produce a film from which audiences would not flee. One can appreciate the difficulty of this assignment by reading two scripts that Jean-Paul Sartre wrote at John Huston's request in the late 1950's; Sartre took considerable liberties. To give but one example, he takes Freud's most famous case, commonly known as "Dora," sets it in 1892, and has Freud massaging the back of his almost completely naked analysand. The historian, however, will note that the real Dora spent some eleven weeks as Freud's patient late in 1900, when he had not been doing any sort of massage for years. Furthermore in Freud's published account of 1905 it is perfectly clear that he never laid hands on Dora. Indeed, even in 1892 Freud never had his patients undress and never massaged anything but their foreheads. A pretty analysand who wears nothing but her stockings may capture a certain attention in the movie house; her scanty attire may even hint at an erotic undercurrent in Freud's treatment of Dora, for which there is some warrant. Yet the scene represents the triumph of dramatic license over historical truth.

Peter Gay
in Past Imperfect, History According to the Movies
1995, by Agincourt Press

3) How Ma Barker died

The kidnappings led to a nationwide FBI manhunt. Dock was captured on January 8, 1935 by G-Man Melvin Purvis. Eight days later, FBI agents surrounded a cottage in Lake Weir, Florida, occupied by Freddy and Ma. The FBI opened up with tear gas and machine guns, killing both of them. Because Kate Barker had never been charged with a crime, the FBI created the legend that Ma Barker had been the criminal mastermind of her killer brood.

Max Allan Collins & George Hagenauer
True Crime trading cards
Volume 1: G-Men and Gangsters:
From Slum Gangs to the Mafia
1992, by Max Allan Collins & George Hagenauer

4) A weapon

Weinglass tried to introduce into evidence a round object, a little bigger than a baseball, that was a bomb within a bomb. It contained myriad razor-sharp slivers of steel. When the main cluster exploded, these round objects were rained on an area about as large as a city block. They in turn exploded and cut to shreds any living thing within their reach. The slivers even sliced through walls. Renny Davis had brought it back from North Vietnam as evidence that the United States bombed that country with the intention of wiping out populations, not just "military targets" as the Pentagon usually claimed. This supported the defendants' intentions for coming to the Democratic convention to demonstrate against the near genocidal intentions of the United States in Viet Nam. The object was not allowed into evidence. The defendants laughed as they tossed it from one to another, from Froines to Dellinger to Abbie Hoffman to Jerry Rubin.

John Schltz
Motion Will Be Denied:
A new report on the Chicago Seven Conspiracy trial
William Morrow & Company, New York, 1972

5) Here's a chestnut you don't hear much anymore

An old colored mammy who had just been divorced by her husband came down the courthouse steps talking to herself.

"Dar ain't no justice in dis world," she said. "Dat useless old husband of mine, he got his divorce, he got de house, got de money, got my three chillun, and dey ain't none of 'em his'n."

J. H. Johnson, Jerry Sheridan and Ruth Lawrence, editors
The Laughter Library
Copywright 1936
Maxwell Drake Publisher

6) Too true!

Hence a man's intellectual as well as his moral nature proceed from the depths of his own nature, and are not the result of external influences; and no educational scheme - of Pestalozzi, or of any one else - can turn a born simpleton into a man of sense. The thing is impossible! He was born a simpleton and a simpleton he will die.

Arthur Schopenauer
Essays
No date. A.L. Burt Company, Publishers, New York

7) Why I really want to direct

Where to put the "credits" is a film decision, not a writing one. Determining the placement of credits is the last thing done on a film, and it's the decision of the film editor and director. Whether it's a dynamic credit montage, or simply white cards superimposed on a black background, credits are not your decision. You can write "credits begin," or "credits end" if you want, but that's it. Write the screenplay, don't worry about the credits.

Syd Field
Screenplay
1979 by Syd Field

8) The butler?

'As to that,' said Falmouth, unmoved by the outburst, 'you must do as you think best. I have discharged my duty to my own satisfaction; and I have no more critical taskmaster than myself. But what I am more anxious to hear is exactly what you mean by saying that I handed any papers into your care.'

Edgar Wallace
The Four Just Men
Oxford University Press (First published 1905)

9) Loyalty

Amongst the soldiers who advised me to make my escape, there was one, a man of great wit and courage, who reasoned with me thus: "Benvenuto, you should consider that a man who is a prisoner neither is nor can be bound to keep his word, nor to any thing else: take my advice, and fly from this villain of a Pope, and from his bastard son, who have sworn your destruction." But I, being determined rather to lose my life than break the promise I had made to the worthy constable, bore my hard lot as patiently as I could.

Benvenuto Cellini
The Autobiography of a Florentine Artist
Manufactured in the United States of America by the Cuneo Press Inc.

10) Sounds like a good reason to me

A white judge with whom I served on the Criminal Court, Joel Tyler, is now a federal magistrate. One morning, he stopped me in a public corridor of the courthouse and literally screamed, "You almost ran me down at Canal Street and Broadway!" I thought for a moment that he was unveiling a previously unseen sense of humor. But he immediately removed all basis for that supposition by continuing, in a loud voice and unmistakable heat, "And the only reason you did it is because I am white."

Bruce Wright
Black Robes, White Justice
1987, 1994 A Lyle Stuart Book

11) Proper bar technique

I ordered a glass of beer and arranged my coins before me on the bar in columns according to value. When the beer came, I dipped finger in it and wet down each corner of the paper napkin to anchor it, so it would not come up with the mug each time and make me appear ridiculous. I drank from the side of the mug that a left-handed person would use, in the belief that fewer mouths had been on that side. That is also my policy with cups, any vessel with a handle, although you can usually count on cups getting a more thorough washing than bar glasses. A quick slosh her and there and those babies are right back on the shelf!

Charles Portis
The Dog of the South
A Book of the Month Club selection, Summer 1979