JIM

So how're you planning to spend your retirement, Oscar?

OSCAR

You're asking me already, Jim?

JIM

You should think about it. You've only got a few weeks left here.

OSCAR

I'll work my last few weeks, then I'll think about retiring.

JIM

But then you'll already be retired. Retirement's like a career. You didn't go through your career without definite career plans, goals, objectives. Retirement's the same.

OSCAR

During my career, I made my plans to reach a particular place. After I retire, I'm going to reach a particular place whether I plan or not.

JIM

Florida. You should think about Florida, Oscar.

OSCAR

I try not to.

JIM

Palm Beach is magnificent. You've been to my place. Doesn't that appeal?

OSCAR

A little out of my price range, Jim. Sorry.

JIM

Not the house. The ambience. Get yourself a condo. Why, those big buildings, they're full of widows. You'll have women chasing after you day and night.

OSCAR

My accident insurance policy doesn't have a herpes clause.

JIM

What about your guns, all those Lugers and Mausers and Brownings and Colts? You're still shooting, aren't you?

OSCAR

I sold them.

JIM

Whatever for? I know, you just couldn't bear to kill an animal, ecology and all that.

OSCAR

Not at all. Those animals weren't a good substitute for what I really wanted to shoot at.

JIM

Now, Oscar, you shouldn't take it so hard. You've been our anchorman since 1961 -- twenty-three years. It's time for a change, for us and for you.

OSCAR

I suppose.

JIM

You're a little bitter; that's understandable. But you shouldn't be.

OSCAR

Why sack me because I'm sixty-five, dammit?

JIM

I'm just the chairman of the company. It wasn't my decision. It was the news director's decision.

OSCAR

Bernie Goldfine does what you tell him. "It's Jim's candy store," isn't that his expression?

JIM

Our ratings are falling. Your news broadcast is now in third place, behind NBC. Every point costs us millions in advertising. We have our stockholders to think of.

OSCAR

Last month we were up two points.

JIM

Only because of Kathy Litter's interview with Bubbles LaRue.

OSCAR

A San Francisco topless dancer with three tits.

JIM

Kitty created a sensation with that interview. She's the best female interviewer, the best newswoman we have. CBS and ABC are mad to get her. Her book was a best seller.

OSCAR

Who would want to read a book with that title, How to Talk to Practically Anybody Who's Not a Nobody.

JIM

Kitty has an enormous public following.

OSCAR

I suppose that's why she's a contender for my job.

JIM

There's no decision yet.

OSCAR

I can't believe it. Kitty has a speech impediment. How can the anchor have a speech impediment?

JIM

She has a slight lisp; it only appears when she's highly agitated.

OSCAR

What do you mean, a slight lisp? It's a "W" for "R" substitution. Whenever she gets mildly nervous, she sounds like Elmer Fudd.

JIM

I told you, everything's up in the air.

OSCAR

You're thinking about Frank, too?

JIM

Of course we are. You know he's threatened to go over to CBS if we don't make him anchor.

OSCAR

My god, a dyslexic anchor. He can hardly write; he can't spell; he stumbles reading words over two syllables long.

JIM

Why does he have to write or spell? We have writers who can do that. They know which words he has trouble with, and they don't use them. He's one of the best news readers in the business. When he reads the news, he's sexy; people get excited. You, Oscar, you sound as though you're teaching a civics class. There's no thrill in your voice. You'd read the end of the world the same way you'd read the telephone book.

OSCAR

What about my Peabody award? Doesn't that mean anything? What have Frank and Kitty won?

JIM

They've won a following. Look, don't take it so personally. I happen to like your style. It's intellectual, highbrow. And, as I said, nothing's decided. (JIM pats OSCAR on shoulder, glances at wristwatch) Jeese! I'm supposed to meet the governor for a couple drinks -- got to get going.

(JIM exits. DICK EVANS, a desk assistant, hurries in, clutching a piece of paper, wire copy torn from a teletype. DICK is a very attractive young man in his early twenties, nattily dressed in blazer, tie, and nicely pressed slacks.)

DICK

Bulletin just off the AP wire, Mr. Klinger.

(Hands paper to OSCAR)

OSCAR

(After reading bulletin) Where's Dan Kleinbart? Have you seen him?

DICK

He's down on the floor someplace. Shall I page him?

OSCAR

Yes. (DICK heads for exit.) Evans. (Dick stops)

Evans, see if you can find Sam Zuckerman also.

(DICK nods and exits. DAN KLEINBART enters. He is a distinguished-looking producer in his mid-fifties. He wears no coat, but a nicely pressed shirt and silk tie. His convention press credentials hang around his neck by a chain. He carries a clipboard in his hand.)

DAN

What's up, Oscar? You want to change the lineup again?

OSCAR

Look at this, Dan. Where should we put it? (Hands wire copy to DAN) You're the producer. I'll let you decide.

DAN

(Reads copy)

I don't believe it: Delbert Knudson again. He threatened to shoot

the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service four years ago. I thought he was still in prison.

OSCAR

What do you mean? He was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He claimed that paying so much income tax had driven him crazy. They put him in Rockland State Hospital, in a ward for the criminally insane.

DAN

Some judge crazier than he is must have let him out.

OSCAR

So now he calls the White House, threatens to shoot the Democratic presidential candidate, in the midst of the Democratic National Convention.

DAN

Here's the lineup. All we've got left is twenty-five seconds in the number fourteen spot.

OSCAR

Come on, Dan, this is an important story. It needs more than twenty-five seconds.

DAN

So what am I supposed to pull for more time?

OSCAR

How about this piece, number twelve: Russian violinist defects. That's the seventh Russian violinist who's defected this year.

DAN

But how many of them defect to Red China?

OSCAR

The story is screwy. We shouldn't even use it yet. I think Dick Reynolds botched the interview. His Russian is terrible. No Soviet citizen defects because he can't find a decent Chinese restaurant in Moscow.

DAN

We're checking out the tape of the interview. Anne Garrels is going to listen to it. Her Russian is better than my English.

OSCAR

Look at this piece: number 25 on evolution, four minutes and forty seconds, all for the discovery of a little jaw bone in an African gopher hole. Cut it down to twenty seconds and give me the rest of the time for Delbert Knudson.

DAN

Twenty seconds? Are you kidding? We want to cover the whole theory of evolution. How can we get from slime to Nixon in twenty seconds?

(ASSISTANT DIRECTOR and CAMERAMAN enter. CAMERAMAN begins to adjust and place camera, puts headphone on head. ASSISTANT DIRECTOR puts headphone on head.)

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Thirty seconds to the 5 PM lead in, Mr. Klinger.

OSCAR

Look, Dan, you fit that piece on Knudson in. I'm going to lead with it.

DAN

You win, Oscar -- as always.

(OSCAR puts on a blazer, shoots cuffs, runs a comb through his hair. He sits behind anchor desk at his place; ASSISTANT DIRECTOR helps him conceal wire as OSCAR inserts a small earpiece in his ear. ASSISTANT DIRECTOR walks out of camera view. Bright lights come on)

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Stand by for air, ten seconds...nine...eight ...seven...six...five...four... three...two...one...   

(Chattering of teletypes is heard, followed by voice over of ANNOUNCER)

ANNOUNCER

This is USBC, The United States Broadcasting Company.

(A red light lights on top of camera)

OSCAR

A demented man has just threatened the life of the democratic presidential candidate. Stay tuned to USBC for the local news in an hour and the USBC Evening News at seven o'clock. Tonight we will have special reports and interviews from the convention floor, here at Madison Square Garden in New York, from our correspondents Kitty Litter and Frank Pangborn. Thank you. This is Oscar Klinger.

(Red light on top of camera goes off. Bright lights on OSCAR go off. OSCAR relaxes, takes out earpiece, takes off coat. DAN, who has been out of camera view, sits down next to OSCAR.)

DAN

(holding clipboard)

Well, I guess I'll just have to eighty-six this story about Chrysler paying for Lee Iacocca's masseur again. Then you should have enough time for...

(OSCAR begins to cough violently. He holds a handkerchief over his mouth

God, Oscar, have you been to your doctor?

OSCAR

It's nothing. My heart's failing a little. Lungs congested.

OSCAR

(lights a cigarette and takes a few deep drags.)      .

Smoking helps it -- the nicotine constricts the vessels.

DAN

I think you need to get away from this stress. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise that you don't have to anchor much longer.

OSCAR

Well disguised.

DAN

You think you need it; you don't. I've worked with you twenty years. Every day, you get made up; you put on the high heels, the fucking girdle, and you go to war. Anyone else would say "screw it" now and then.

OSCAR

I like war.

DAN

You like the power, charging out of your office late in the afternoon: "Get Irving at the State Department", "Get London on the phone", "Find out what Dick knows about this budget bill". You even seem to like the fans fawning over you. You chat with them when they interrupt your meals in restaurants. How you've never been killed by a mob of them in a public place, I don't know.

OSCAR

Nelson Rockefeller saved me there. You know what he once told me? Always keep moving. Chat, wave or shake hands, but never stop, even for a second, or you've had it.

DAN

You know why you need the power? You're too anal. An anal personality has the need to control everything. Your gun collection means the same: anal people like to collect things.

OSCAR

You've convinced me. I'm anal.

DAN

I've told you to get a little therapy. You never listened to me. A few years with a good analyst can help anybody.

OSCAR

Now that I'm almost finished career-wise, analysis might be unnecessary.

DAN

You've had bad luck.

OSCAR

When Dan Rather started wearing those sweaters, I was through.

DAN

Even now, if you could raise your Nielsen ratings by just a few points, they'd keep you on.

OSCAR

I don't know how.

DAN

You were our hottest correspondent in the old days. I remember in the fifties, when the Stockholm hit the Andrea Doria in the middle of the Atlantic, how you hired that plane yourself and flew over the wreck with a cameraman. What an eye-witness report. The other programs had their pictures narrated by somebody who hadn't been at the scene.

OSCAR

It was sensational. Now everyone is doing eye-witness reports.

DAN

Did Fred Friendly call you again?

OSCAR

Last week. Last Tuesday.

DAN

He wants to make you professor of journalism at Columbia?

OSCAR

I suppose.

DAN

Oscar, you should take that Job.  

OSCAR

I'l1 think about it, but teaching journalism to a bunch of kids is

quite a step down for someone who's been doing the real thing his whole life.

DAN

Come on, Oscar. Do you really think you're a Journalist?

OSCAR

What a question -- of course, I'm a journalist.

DAN

I mean now.

OSCAR

When I was at the Kansas City Star in the thirties, I was a journalist. When I was the chief UPI correspondent in London in the forties, I was a journalist. How many reporters do you know who flew in B-17 bombing raids over Germany? I'm just as much a Journalist now as I ever was.

DAN

This isn't journalism; this is show business. Why deny it? Don't you know that denial is one of the primary Freudian defense mechanisms?

OSCAR

You ought to know about show business, Dan: you and your casting couch.

DAN

The couch came with my Office.

OSCAR

You're one of the worst heterosexual harassers in the whole place.

DAN

I have a very strong id and a weak superego.

OSCAR

You're just plain horny. Every young woman who applies for a correspondent's Job, you give her the same line: You tell her she looks very good on camera and her writing is high quality. Then you tell her she has to fuck you; otherwise, she doesn't get the Job.

DAN

So what? So what, as long as she gets what she wants.

OSCAR

Aren't we losing talented candidates who don't want the job badly? Maybe that's one of the reasons our ratings have fallen.

DAN

Our ratings are down because your Q number is down. I just got a look

at the latest Q's. Of a thousand people the Marketing Evaluation Company polled, 500 said they were familiar with you. Of those 500, fifty said you were one of their favorites. That's a Q rating of 10. Cronkite almost always had at least a 33.

OSCAR

Even so, only forty percent of the success of the broadcast depends on the anchor. Sixty percent depends on the quality of the newsgathering and the presentation.

DAN

You sound now like you sound on the air: numbers, figures, statistics.      How can you expect to hang onto your job if you don't jazz up your act?

OSCAR

I am a journalist. My act, as you call it, is reporting the news, accurately, impartially, fairly.

DAN

Oscar, you are not at The New York Times. Our viewers are the lower

middle class: the steelworker with a beer can in his hand; the steelworker's wife with the curlers in her hair, who thumbs old copies of COSMOPOLITAN in the beauty salon, trying to liven up her sex life.

OSCAR

Whether they're steelworkers or the president of United States Steel, the news is still the news.

DAN

I try to save your job for you; I try to tell you; don't give them news, give them vaudeville: a little soft shoe, a little sock-'em-in-the-gut, a little sex, a little blood, a little Hollywood gossip, and always keep it moving. Why won't you listen to me? Even now they'd keep you on if you could just raise our Nielsen rating a few points.

OSCAR

I want to stay on, but I refuse to compromise my journalistic integrity.

DAN

Who's talking about journalistic integrity? Am I asking you to read commercials? Am I telling you to push vaginal deodorants and remedies for athlete's foot?

OSCAR

What about the movie review you wanted to run the other night?

DAN

An important new film: it's going to be a triumph, a landmark, an immortal work of cinematic art.

OSCAR

Exhausted starring Big John Holmes?     

DAN

Hollywood is big with our audience. And you know Jim Lake likes us to run pieces on his celebrity pals.

OSCAR

Jim Lake may be the chairman of the United States Broadcasting Company, but I am the editor of this news broadcast. I determine what stories are included and what stories are not.

DAN

Be a little flexible. Anyone else around here would throw himself in front of a train in Times Square if Jim Lake or Bernie Goldfine told him to.

OSCAR

What does Jim Lake know about news? A two-bit tobacco peddler who buys a television station.

DAN

He was one of the largest cigar manufacturers in the northeast: Rabbi's Kosher Cigars.

OSCAR

He thinks he's a genius, that he knows it all, because he beat out his biggest competitor, the Priest Tobacco Company, with a dumb slogan: "Call for a Rabbi instead of a Priest."

DAN

He knows entertainment; you have to admit it. He took a tiny, foundering television station and built it into a network that rivals the big three.

OSCAR

When he was in the cigar business, his name was Lashevsky. Now it's

Lake. If only he would fall into his new name and drown.

DAN

Do I detect an undertone of jealousy?

OSCAR

Jealous. Why should I be jealous?

DAN

After all, some people are born with the ability to run a business, with the knack for making money; others aren't. It's like being born with the talent to play the violin.

OSCAR

In other words, Jim Lake is Heifetz; I'm Jack Benny.

DAN

What about that farm of yours in New Jersey?

OSCAR

Bad luck. I hired a manager who robbed me blind.

DAN

Even if he'd been honest, how could you have come out ahead with the deal you gave him?

OSCAR

That deal involved some very sophisticated tax planning.

DAN

Sure, oh sure. He’d keep the proceeds from the sale of the cows, and you'd keep the money made any natural gas emanating from the cow dung.

OSCAR

I was supposed to get a big energy tax credit for exploiting an alternative energy source.

DAN

And instead an energetic thief exploited you.

OSCAR

Look, Dan, I needed a tax shelter; I'm being eaten alive. Every time I mail in my quarterly estimated payment to the IRS, it's a struggle stifling my urge to scribble obscenities an the check.

DAN

So you ended up losing the whole farm to the bank.

OSCAR

Biggest write off I ever had. Another couple like that and I'll never pay tax again.

DAN

Another couple like that and you'll end up in debtors' prison.

OSCAR

I am eminently solvent.

DAN

Who are you kidding, Oscar? They could plug the Holland Tunnel with the money you've lost. Do you have any left at all?

OSCAR

I'm a journalist. I never pretended to be the world's most astute investor.

DAN

But the things you invested in. I still remember that cemetery company you wanted me to put money into.

OSCAR

One of the soundest companies I ever owned a piece of. They had three big graveyards in Brooklyn, a dozen roving salesmen, newspaper, television, and radio ads. Thirty thousand direct mail solicitations a year -- just think of it.

DAN

Face it, Oscar. As a marketer, they were very unsophisticated.

OSCAR

Personally, I liked their ads.

DAN

Oh, they were unique, all right: A sexy girl in a tiny black bikini,

with a scythe and hourglass -- Miss Grim Reaper -- walks up to the man

in the street and says, "Joe, you ought to buy some cemetery plots." He buys, then he suddenly drops dead, and his wife says, "It would have been hard for me to make that decision on my own."

OSCAR

Those TV ads were an inspiration. The graveyards, the pretty flowers, they looked great in color. You know who wrote the ads? One of the best copywriters, the biggest creative talents in New York.

DAN

You should have buried that copywriter in your cemetery before he wrote the first ad. How many plots did they end up selling? Two?

OSCAR

I admit that they didn't do well, but that's because people are living longer. The death rate is down. People are being cremated.

DAN

Your wife keeps your remains in an urn on the piano, she doesn't need a cemetery. It stands to reason.

OSCAR

Of course, that's it exactly. Not that any of my wives would want me on the piano.

DAN

If only they all watched you at seven, our Nielsen's would go over the top.

OSCAR

You're exaggerating again. You make me sound like Mickey Rooney.

DAN

I'm not exaggerating. God, all those divorces. You've been subdivided so many times, you're beginning to resemble Levittown.

OSCAR

Look, Dan, when a man's devoted to his work, a marriage suffers. I was never home.

DAN

Your devotion was misplaced. You can love a network news show, but it's never going to love you back. You have to find something else in life.

(DICK EVANS enters)

DICK

Mr. Klinger, Senator Ratchet is downstairs ready to be interviewed. The camera crew is standing by.

(OSCAR looks around a little ruefully, then puts on coat, picks up some papers, and exits.)

DAN

(Shakes head) Listen to Uncle Dan, Dickie boy. Don't end up like that poor schmuck.

DICK

Poor schmuck.

DAN

Of course he's a poor schmuck. I'll bet ten million bucks have passed through his hands. What's he got to show for it, eh? Bupkis.

DICK

Bupkis?

DAN

Nothing.

DICK

Oh, right. You're absolutely right, Mr. Kleinbart.

DAN

Right? Naturally I'm right. I'm always right. The United States Broadcasting Company -- you think they made me the producer of this show because I'm wrong half the time?

DICK

Oh, no, Mr Kleinbart.

DAN

No? Of course, no.

DICK

Of course.

DAN

Kid, you're going to go far in this business.

DICK

Thank you, Mr. Kleinbart.

DAN

You know how I know?

DICK

How is that, Mr. Kleinbart?

DAN

You know how to say yes, kid. Don't look surprised. It's a big asset. Now take our friend Oscar. He's an arguer. He should have been a lawyer, not a broadcaster. He says he fights for his ideals. He's idealistic, he says.

DICK

Yes he does. He's told me that many times.

DAN

Horseshit. He only thinks he's got ideals. You know what he's really got? Unresolved oedipal conflicts. Don't you know what those are? When he was three years old, he lusted after his mother and saw his father as a rival.

DICK

I see.

DAN

Simple, isn't it? First he fought with his father. Then he fought with Jim Lake and the news directors. But all that fighting, it didn't make anybody love him, and it finally began to show up in our Nielsen ratings.

DICK

It came across to the audience?

DAN

He fought to show clips of fur trappers killing baby seals. Would you want to watch trappers killing baby seals after you had a hard day at the office and got chewed out by the boss?

DICK

Oh, no.

DAN

No? Of course no, Besides, Jim Lake is allergic to seals. Sealskin makes him break out in welts. He has to have special allergy shots before he can even sign over the corporate seal on our annual report. So now I make sure there are no more seals on our broadcasts. I watch Oscar while he's writing his copy. If I see him start to type the word "seal," I rip the paper out of his typewriter.

DICK

I'd give anything if only someday I could know a fraction - just a fraction -- as much about the news business as you know today.

DAN

Just stick with me, kid, and you're going to learn a thing or two. You can't help but. I've been in television news since the beginning. Did you know I started in radio news? I worked with Ed Murrow at CBS.

DICK

Really, Mr. Kleinbart? Gee!

DAN

Murrow was the greatest, a brilliant communicator. He could take something that was happening in one part of the world and make it understandable to people thousands of miles away. Jesus, he was handsome, ungodly handsome, and that voice; it had just enough drama in it to make what he was doing work. Simplicity and understatement were his secret.

DICK

(He pulls out a small pad and pencil and writes.)

Simplicity and understatement. Got it.

DAN

I was in the control room when Murrow made his big broadcast denouncing Joe McCarthy. I can still hear Murrow's voice: "We will not walk in fear of one another; we will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. If we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular…"

DICK
It sounds like great television.

DAN

In 1954, Murrow got away with it, though it was the beginning of the end for him at CBS. Bill Paley didn't want a noisy employee like Murrow in his candy store, no matter how handsome he was and how elegant his manners were. Murrow upset too many people -- powerful people. You'd think Oscar could learn a lesion from that, but I don't know that he has.

DICK

What lesson, Mr. Kleinbart?

DAN

What lesson? he asks. Don't rock the boat; don't make waves; do what you're told; make the sponsors happy. Are you getting all that, kid?

DICK

(Scribbling furiously in his pad)

Yes, sir.

DAN

Good work. Maybe now you'll avoid getting put out to pasture like Oscar.

DICK

But he's not being shut out. I heard he'd be like Cronkite at CBS, doing specials and commentary.

DAN

Is that what you heard? The rumors in this place are unbelievable. Look, kid, Oscar is not Cronkite...

DICK

Oh, no.

DAN

I feel sorry for Oscar; I really do. He was always a soft touch for anybody with a hard luck story. He worked so hard, he was never home, and his wives all cheated on him. He was so kind-hearted, he never shot animals with those guns of his, just rocks and tin cans. Now he'll probably end up in Florida living on cat food. Too bad.

DICK

Cat food--yech.

DAN

Well, some kinds of cat food maybe aren't so...

(ASSISTANT DIRECTOR races in holding wire copy)

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Dan, look at this. We have an unconfirmed report that some guy, a crank named Delbert Knudson, has shot the mayor.     

DAN

What? Let me see that. (reads report quickly) You mean it took the AP correspondent to pick this up? Where's our city hall correspondent? Listen, Sam, get a camera crew and a reporter on this right away.

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

I've already done that. What I have to tell you is, we've got a former girlfriend of this Knudson in London. Lynn Meadows is ready to interview her.

DAN

Did you order the bird?

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

You want to use the bird? We're not even sure the mayor was hurt.

DAN

Look, we've got the satellite; we've got the transponder. We may very well have to go with that interview in a hurry.

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

(He picks up phone receiver on corner of anchor desk, punches some buttons.)

This is Sam Zuckerman in the broadcast booth at the garden. I want central switching...Central switching? Bernie? This is Sam. Listen, you're going to be getting a feed over the London to New York bird, an interview. Can you channel it to our control room at the Garden? Great. Can you transfer me to network operations? Great ... Network operations? Jack? This is Sam. I'm at the Garden ... Yeah, that's right,. the interview with the girl in London. Bring it in on the London to New York bird; then it's going to be channeled, here. Great. (ASSISTANT DIRECTOR hangs up phone.) OK. It should be coming up on the monitor in just a sec. Ah, here we go.

(The whole set darkens. A spotlight lights a small area DSR in front of monitor. An attractive REPORTER in her 20's is revealed, holding a large microphone with the logo USBC. She is about to interview a dignified-looking Anglican PRELATE, about 40 years old. REPORTER wears a small earpiece and wire.)

REPORTER

This is Lynn Meadows in London. Are you receiving me, New York?

DAN

(He has put on headset and microphone from anchor desk) Lynn, this is Dan Kleinbart at the convention booth in New York. You've got this Delbert Knudson's old girlfriend there? I don't see her on the monitor. Are you ready to begin your interview?

REPORTER
I am, Dan, and you're going to love this one.