SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE
By Jeff Arch
Rewritten: Nora Ephron & Delia Ephron
May 10, 1992
FADE IN:
CLOSE ON SAM BALDWIN
A card: Chicago.
Hes in his thirties. His neck is pinched into a crisp
dress shirt and tie. His expression is vacant, faraway.
A breeze blows but he doesnt react to it. In the
distance the architecture of the Chicago skyline.
SAM
Mommy got sick and it happened
just like that an
circular ramp to a lower level. As it straightens out, the
view through the windshield reveals a gathering of men and
vehicles - marked and unmarked DC police cars - and two black
SWAT vans.
The panel van - with Marcells Crab House painted on its
sides - pulls to a stop. The back doors open from the inside
and Starling is the first one out - well-rested and alert -
hoisting down her equipment bag
arched ground. The earth-shuddering
impact causes the tusk to rebound once in slow motion before
finally settling to the desert floor in a cloud of dust.
The first tusk is quickly followed by a second, also dropping
from the heavens. It lands near the first. Another tusk
smashes to earth several yards away. Yet another comes crashing
into the foreground.
Finally the dust settles upon a graveyard
cannot hear him. The vision becomes
completely clear, for an instant - clear enough to see the
face of a young boy at the window.
CLOSE on Reting Rinpoche. Looking. Searching.
Cut to: a portrait of a mountain: Kyeri - a majestic,
glacier mountain - the "house mountain" of the village of
Takster, Amdo Province, North Eastern Tibet.
Sound returns as the wind whistles around this jagged,
mountain
AND REVEALS THE inside of a domed city honeycombed with fantastic arches. The city is inhabited by young beautiful people in luxurious but simple costumes.
THE CAMERA ROAMS through the City, observing some people seated at a kind of cafe sipping drinks and relaxing; other people are in some kind of exercise class doing beautiful graceful movement; and finally a class of five year old children lis