I thought I’d post this annual feature a bit early so that you’re not overly slammed in the coming days when I put my other best lists of 2025’s movies on this site. My annual caveats: I take the dialogue straight from the movies themselves rather than from any shooting scripts. The stage directions are mine. WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE AHEAD.
We start off this list with Companion, which came out near the beginning of the year and was written by Drew Hancock. Here, Josh and Kat set down a USB drive in front of their friend Eli to explain why Josh’s sex robot killed the Russian guy who tried to rape her.
ELI: What is that? What am I looking at?
JOSH: A mod.
ELI: A mod? And what does it mod?
JOSH: Iris. It gives me access to parts of her programming that you’re not normally given access to.
ELI: I’m sorry, did you jailbreak your sexbot? What did you do to her?
JOSH: I bumped up her aggression and her self-defense functions, and I turned off the parts of her programming that prevent her from doing harm. But she escaped before I had a chance to reset her, so if Empathix finds her before we do, then they’ll know she was tampered with, and then, then we’re fucked.
ELI: Did you kill Sergey?
JOSH: No! No, no, no. Iris killed Sergey.
ELI: Thank God.
JOSH: We just gave her a little push.
ELI (getting up from the table): Oh my God!
JOSH: You’ve got to understand, Eli, Sergey was a bad dude. He was mixed up in all kinds of fucked-up shit, like drugs and guns and, like, human trafficking.
KAT: Not to mention a terrible boyfriend.
JOSH: Yeah, just the worst.
ELI: Why?
JOSH: I don’t know. Who’s to say why people do bad things? Maybe it had something to do with his upbringing.
ELI: No, dick! Why did you do it?
JOSH: Oh. Well…
(Cut to a giant portrait of Sergey, which Kat swings back to reveal a wall safe with a keypad.)
JOSH: You still remember the code?
KAT (punching “181278” into the keypad): Stalin’s birthday. It’s his code for everything.
(She opens the safe to reveal at least 100 stacks of U.S. currency in the safe.)
ELI (subdued): I see. How much is that?
KAT: Just over 12 million.
ELI (fanning a pack of money in front of his face): Oh goddammit, that smells so fucking good.
This scene from Black Bag is an object lesson in why you shouldn’t be a spy’s friend or dinner guest. George and Kathryn are MI6 agents who have gathered together two other couples who are all colleagues. George plays a party game where each dinner guest makes a New Year’s resolution for the guest on their left. While Freddie and Clarissa are both pretty horrible to each other, the real villain is George, who breaks them up just to see what will happen. The script here is by David Koepp.
ZOE: My turn. I resolve to… (pointing to James) Wait, I’m speaking in his voice, yeah? (looking at him) Okay, I resolve to do my best to finish second whenever possible. Or once, even. (James laughs) Once would be a refreshing change of pace.
CLARISSA: Sing it, sister.
FREDDIE (to James): Trust me, one day you’ll be thrilled to finish at all.
CLARISSA: You are so full of shit, Freddie.
JAMES: Point taken. (to Zoe) You’ll be begging me to stop.
ZOE: Oh, what every woman longs for. An endless abrasive experience.
GEORGE: Let’s move on.
JAMES: My turn. (points to Clarissa) This one’s for you, right? Okay, I resolve to figure out this old-man obsession of mine.
CLARISSA: Oh, I figured that one out a long time ago. Young men bore the shit out of me. (to James) I mean, you know, you haven’t done anything. You haven’t been anywhere. All you want to do is invite me over to watch you play video games. (to Zoe) Oh God, did I get that one right?
ZOE: Second date, Call of Duty: Pacific Theater.
KATHRYN: Well, this has been absolutely delightful.
FREDDIE (to James): I may be old and wizened, but at least I know how to book a decent restaurant, Major.
JAMES: It’s Colonel.
FREDDIE: Colonel Xbox.
JAMES: Okay.
FREDDIE: Major Minecraft.
JAMES (smiling but annoyed): Fucking hilarious shit, mate.
FREDDIE (to Zoe): Promise you’ll go down on him while he’s playing Zelda so he can die a happy little soldier, won’t you?
CLARISSA: Shut the fuck up, Freddie.
FREDDIE (to Clarissa): What the fuck is your problem tonight?
CLARISSA: You know, the problem with old men is the miserable, suffocating fear of death. I mean, it’s there, so they can feel it, and they are literally pissing themselves with fear, which I suppose explains the pathetic priapic lunging at anything that moves.
FREDDIE: I’m wondering if perhaps you’ve had enough to drink.
CLARISSA: But it’s my turn now, right? (to everyone) I get to speak for Freddie now, right?
(silence)
CLARISSA (to Freddie): I’m going to stop fucking her.
FREDDIE: Oh, I can’t, gorgeous. I am powerless before you.
CLARISSA: Not me, her.
(pause)
FREDDIE (lightly): Is this some sort of prank? (to the table) This is why you can’t date SIGINTs, they’re all fucking insane. (pause) It would appear, it would appear my young friend and I would benefit from a private conversation.
CLARISSA: I’m not going anywhere.
FREDDIE: I am.
ZOE: You know, maybe on Monday the two of you could find a few minutes to come by my office. We could sit down and then…
CLARISSA: I’m not going anywhere.
FREDDIE: My God, you are an infant.
CLARISSA: That’s not the issue.
FREDDIE: You’re psychotic. Pathological. I have indulged your constant need for support and encouragement and reassurance and fucking paternal engagement for a year and a half now, and I’m sick to fucking death of it. (She laughs at him.) He left. I’m so sorry Daddy walked out the door, probably because he didn’t love Mummy, but maybe because he became so hopelessly bored with your needy, constant demands that maybe he figured getting out was better. (She is not laughing anymore.) And that is a shitting tragedy, but it happens! It happens, and you move on! That is what a healthy human being does.
CLARISSA (furious): You are a perversion of what a man is supposed to be.
ZOE: Stop it.
FREDDIE: You are a diseased creature who has spent the last 20 years of her life running in frantic circles trying to compensate for a so-called tragedy that is quite possibly the most boring story ever told, and I’ve had it with you.
CLARISSA: I hate you. I hate you so fucking much!
FREDDIE: I have slept with no one but you for the past year and a half, you sweet fucking lunatic. No one! Oh my God, how I regret it now. Get some help and stop spraying your sickness on the rest of us! On the loyal, faithful, decent men who have only tried to love you as well and as truly as they possibly could!
GEORGE (quietly): The Zetter Hotel in Clerkenwell.
FREDDIE (looking guilty): I beg your pardon?
GEORGE: That’s the hotel you prefer. Normally Mondays and Thursdays. Easiest for you because it’s the department meetings and you can slip away. Your lover pays with a credit card and her own name. I assume you split it in cash, but that’s immaterial, as is her name. The junior suite with city view is your favorite. I don’t like liars.
(Clarissa grabs her knife and stabs Freddie’s hand, pinning it to the table.)
JAMES (going to him): Oh my fucking God. Don’t move! Don’t move it!
FREDDIE (to Clarissa): That is the most boring thing you’ve ever done, hands down.
I said Celine Song’s script for Materialists contained some of the best movie dialogue I’d ever heard, and so it makes this list. In this scene at a wedding, Lucy locates handsome bachelor Harry and starts pitching him her services as a matchmaker when they’re interrupted by her ex-boyfriend John. What’s with her drink order? Is she one of those weirdos who pours a Coke into their beer?
HARRY: You’re the matchmaker.
LUCY: You’re the brother. What are you doing at the singles table?
HARRY: My mother wants me to marry.
LUCY: I can help you with that.
HARRY: I saw you recruiting earlier. A wedding like this must be a gold mine.
LUCY: There’s a lot of opportunity here for our company.
HARRY: Your sales pitch is perfect because you make it feel like it’s their idea. It’s not like you’re telling people they need you. Nobody wants to hear that. If they need you, then something is wrong with them. Instead you’re saying, “You could do this on your own, but if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford me, why not?” You’re a luxury good. Then they really do feel like they need you, just like they need every other luxury in their lives. Once you get your first $400 haircut, you can’t go back to Supercuts, can you?
LUCY: It’s easy.
HARRY: No, you’re just really good. What’s it like?
LUCY: What’s what like?
HARRY: Being a matchmaker.
LUCY: It’s like working at the morgue or an insurance company.
HARRY: In what way?
LUCY: Six-two, five-six, skinny, fit, fat, white, Black, Asian, doctor, lawyer, banker, 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand, smoker, non-smoker.
HARRY: But you must know a lot about love.
LUCY: I know about dating.
HARRY: What’s the difference?
LUCY: Dating takes a lot of effort. A lot of trial and error. A ton of risk and pain. Love is easy.
HARRY: Is it? I find it to be the most difficult thing in the world.
LUCY: That’s because we can’t help it. It just walks into our lives sometimes.
HARRY: Are you hitting on me?
LUCY: Definitely not, but I do think that you would be a great match for a lot of our clients. We need more straight men in New York City. You look about six feet tall. How much money do you make?
HARRY: Just straight up like that?
LUCY: I make 80 grand a year before taxes. Do you make more or less than that?
HARRY: More.
LUCY: I know. Finance, right?
HARRY: Private equity. Do you want a drink?
LUCY: Sure.
HARRY: What do you want?
LUCY: Coke and beer.
(A waiter immediately puts a Coke and a beer on the table in front of her. She looks up and sees that the waiter is John.)
JOHN: Hey, buddy.
LUCY (getting up to hug him): Hi, John!
JOHN: Working now, obviously, but talk after dinner service?
LUCY: Yeah.
In Highest 2 Lowest, music mogul David King pays a ransom of $17.5 million in Swiss francs to the person who has kidnapped his teenage son and his son’s best friend. However, he uses the song lyrics that the kidnap victims heard to track down aspiring rapper Yung Felon and travels to a dangerous part of the Bronx to confront the musician at his recording studio. It turns into an impromptu rap battle where David tries to bring out the artist in the young man. The script is by Alan Fox, based on Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom and the four writers (including Akira Kurosawa) who adapted it into High and Low. David couldn’t be more right: Why she gotta be a bitch?
YUNG FELON: So what you got, police waiting outside for a nigga or something? How the fuck you found me?
DAVID: You ain’t hard to find. I heard one of your hot joints.
YUNG FELON: Okay, and? So what about it?
DAVID: You got a lot of potential.
YUNG FELON: Potential? Nigga, fuck outta here. You deaf, nigga? My shit lit. My shit buzzin’ out there. Beyond potential. Proof is in the pudding. My niggas on the block, all the niggas in the trenches and shit, they show a nigga that real love, that hood love. That’s my core audience. That’s all I need.
DAVID: You want a bigger audience? Do the math. You talkin’ about fifty niggas, man. They love you. They payin’ you? Are they showin’ you any money? That’s a yes or no answer.
YUNG FELON: They don’t gotta show me shit, nigga. I’m up right now.
DAVID: How much you up? Seventeen five?
YUNG FELON: To be precise.
DAVID: You sure? You’re seventeen five to the good?
YUNG FELON: Uh huh. Swiss francs.
DAVID: You think you gonna leave here with it?
YUNG FELON: You’ll see.
DAVID: Who taught you to do wrong, B? Who told you you weren’t any good? Who broke your heart? Where’s your father?
YUNG FELON: Fuck that nigga.
DAVID: Where’s your father?
YUNG FELON: Fuck that nigga!
DAVID: So he did what you did, huh? So you gonna be better than him? You gonna be bigger than him? You gonna do a longer bid than him? Huh? What you gonna do? Decades? Yards? What you want?
YUNG FELON: What the fuck you wanna say to me, nigga?
DAVID: Doesn’t matter what I want. What matters is what you want. You want some advice?
YUNG FELON: Advice? Aight. We here, why the fuck not? I’m all ears.
DAVID: On the chorus, ad-lib a little bit. Layer the vocals differently. Something like, “Nigga, where’s my money? / I got the four-pounder sittin’ right here, don’t try nothin’ funny.” Something like that, like Nasir in 93, 94.
YUNG FELON: That old shit you talkin’ bout, nah nigga. It sound more like, “I got the blicky you owe me, OG / So don’t try nothin’ tricky on me, OG.”
DAVID: “I got mine too, young G, nine millimeter / A lot of reasons you shouldn’t fuck with me either / Young G, I’m the one that can pay you / I don’t need to be the one that’s gonna slay you.”
YUNG FELON: Fuck, is this a battle right now?
DAVID: “I’m the brutalizer / I’m the Buddhacizer / I’m the accelerator / I ain’t the type of nigga that be pissin’ in your elevator / But sometime the rap game / Remind me of the crap game / I used to sport Ballys and Gazelles with black frames / But now I’m in the new chicks, TECs, and becks.” Come on, represent. Give me something.
YUNG FELON: “I gotta feed the streets, my lady, and a newborn kid / And I ain’t tryin’ to go back and do another bid, you dig?”
DAVID: Then handle your business and do what’s right. Keep your head up.
YUNG FELON: Now this nigga a muthafuckin’ rapper.
DAVID: I ain’t no rapper. I’m a chance giver.
YUNG FELON: Chance? Yo, you mad late, son. I been givin’ you a chance to give me a chance. You baited. Nah, I’m good, B. It’s quiet, curtains.
DAVID: I know what it is to risk everything you have for something that you want. I know what that means. To have nothing and want everything. I met your girl.
YUNG FELON: Fuck you mean?
DAVID: I’ve been in your house, and I appreciate you for naming your son after me.
YUNG FELON: Damn! Stupid bitch talk too fuckin’ much, B!
DAVID: Why she gotta be a bitch?
YUNG FELON: Fuck!
DAVID: Why she gotta be a bitch?
YUNG FELON: Fuck!
DAVID (slight pause): Why she gotta be a bitch?
YUNG FELON: Damn, B!
DAVID: I made some mistakes. Big ones. We all have. I just wanna try and help you.
YUNG FELON: Help me, man? Fuck outta here, man. (taking off his headphones) Aight. So what? You know where I lay, I know where you stay, nigga. What? What you wanna do? What? What?
DAVID: You hollow on the inside. You lonely on the inside. You quiet on the inside. You hurt on the inside. That’s what I wanna feel. That’s what I wanna see. That’s what I wanna know. I wanna know what’s inside you. Fuck all this fake outdoor shit. Who are you?
Robert Kaplow wrote the script for Blue Moon, in which Lorenz “Larry” Hart attends the Broadway premiere of Oklahoma! and walks out to go to Sardi’s Steakhouse and drag the show to Eddie the bartender and Knuckles, the U.S. Army serviceman who’s playing the piano in the restaurant. Larry talks too much, but you can see why he’s so entertaining.
LARRY: I sat in my box seat tonight and watched Oklahomo exclamation point. (Eddie laughs.) Down there glittering in all its pink lights, cowboy hats, and twirling lassos, and I knew two things with absolute certainty: It was a 14-karat hit and it was a 14-karat piece of shit.
EDDIE: Oh. Friend of mine saw it in previews, said it was the best show he’d ever seen.
LARRY: The show is fraudulent on every possible level. It’s not jealousy speaking, okay? I watched that show tonight and I felt this great sinking in my heart, and all around me people are roaring. They are roaring at third-rate jokes. I wanted to grab the audience by the shoulders and say, “What are you laughing at? Come on! Demand more!” Rodgers is a genius. I say that without one second’s hesitation. (to Knuckles) You’re a piano player. You know that already.
KNUCKLES: Yeah, he’s pretty good.
LARRY: Pretty good! There is no one with his range, his inventiveness. Great, soaring, masculine melodies building like pile drivers. I mean, Rodgers is a cold-hearted son of a bitch, but he can get a melody to levitate, and that is the hallmark of great art: levitation. (singing) “I’ve got a beautiful feeling.” That’s the moment. (to Eddie) You hear that? Your spine glows, and suddenly the whole apparatus of songwriting breaks free from gravity. There’s maybe five people on the planet that can pull that off and that son of a bitch is one of them. And then why “words by Oscar Hammerstein II”. What can I say about Oscar? He’s gonna come striding in here any second, all seven and a half feet of him, and you know Dick deliberately went with somebody tall this time. You know that. What can I say about Oscar? He’s so earthbound, and let’s face it, most of us are earthbound, but there are moments, I swear to God, there are moments I have made something bigger than myself.
KNUCKLES: I agree, definitely.
LARRY: Thank you. The words were bigger than the music, bigger than the characters who sang them, and they approached for maybe one half-second something immortal. Excuse my limitless self-regard, but they did, and if nobody else is gonna say it, then I’m going to. I have written a handful of words that are going to cheat death.
EDDIE: Spoken with the modesty of a true lunatic.
LARRY: Hey, when Shakespeare wrote “Not marble, not gilded monuments / Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,” did people say “My God, what an ego!”? No, they said, “He is a genius and he knows his work is going to last.”
EDDIE: So now you’re Shakespeare?
LARRY: Look, Oklahoma! is going to win the goddamn Pulitzer. I know that. High schools are gonna put it on from here till doomsday because it is so inoffensive. But really, who wants inoffensive art? Knuckles, are you listening to me? I’m trying to answer your question. Is that why God put us on the planet? To not offend people? The problem with Oklahoma! is this, and the problem is right there in the original play, Green Grow the Fucking Lilacs. When Dick first showed that play to me and asked me to adapt it, I said no, and I don’t mind that it’s nostalgic. Oklahoma exclamation point is nostalgic for a world that never existed, and do you really want to write a show where the main character’s name is Curly? Oh, here’s an idea for a song. (imitating Curly from the Three Stooges) “Hey Moe, hey Larry, I just nicked the couch! Nyuk nyuk nyuk!”
Sorry, Baby is divided into five chapters, and in “The Year With the Questions,” Agnes Ward is called to serve jury duty some years after being raped at graduate school. In determining whether she can be an impartial juror, the prosecutor unwittingly forces Agnes to say stuff about the incident that she never had to face before. The script is by the actress portraying Agnes, Eva Victor.
PROSECUTOR: As the prosecution, I must prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, meaning that there is no other reasonable explanation that can come from evidence presented. If any of you have been victims of a crime, please raise your hand.
(Agnes starts to raise her hand, but puts it down.)
PROSECUTOR (to a male juror): Mr. Faber, what was the crime?
JUROR: Uh, I was robbed at gunpoint.
PROSECUTOR: Do you have any reason to believe that experience would make you unable to serve as an impartial juror on this trial?
JUROR: No.
PROSECUTOR: Miss Ward.
AGNES: What?
PROSECUTOR: When I asked who has been a victim of a crime, did you raise your hand?
AGNES: No, I realized I shouldn’t share it, so…
PROSECUTOR: You’re unable to share the crime?
AGNES: Um, it is frankly my worst nightmare to have to tell this whole room of strangers about the thing that happened to me, so that is the reasoning as to why I did not decide to continue having my hand raised. Thank you.
PROSECUTOR: Do you think the crime would make you unable to serve as an impartial juror on this case?
AGNES: That is a good question, and one I’ve been thinking about.
PROSECUTOR: Have you come to any conclusions?
AGNES: You know, I think I would be better not being on the jury and instead would do better fulfilling a different civic role.
PROSECUTOR: And what kind of civic role do you have in mind?
AGNES: So, thank you for asking. I am actually a professor part-time, hopefully soon full-time, which, teaching is important work. I think teaching is important.
JUDGE: Some would say that a teacher makes an ideal juror.
AGNES: Absolutely not, no.
JUDGE: On your questionnaire, you wrote…
AGNES: Oh, no, no, no. I did not know that we would be reading those aloud, so…
JUDGE: “How would your friends describe you?” “Smart,” crossed out, then the word “tall.”
PROSECUTOR (to Agnes): If the crime you were a victim of makes you biased, we will dismiss you.
AGNES: Can I get in trouble for telling you?
PROSECUTOR: Why would you get in trouble if you were the victim?
AGNES: I don’t know. The law makes no sense, in my opinion. (the court reporter pauses, then keeps typing) I, I haven’t said it out loud actually before.
PROSECUTOR: Well, that’s okay. Did you go to the police?
AGNES: No. All I had was a button, and I don’t want him to go to jail.
PROSECUTOR: Why is that?
AGNES: He has a kid. (pause) I want him to stop being someone who does that, and if he went to jail, he’d just be someone who does that who’s now in jail.
PROSECUTOR: Your Honor, may I approach the bench?
(Inaudible conversation between the judge and the prosecutor.)
JUDGE: Agnes Ward, you are excused.
Nia DaCosta’s Hedda adapts Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler to Britain in the 1950s, and in this scene Eileen Lovborg (Eilert in Ibsen’s original) is a lesbian sociologist telling a room full of her male colleagues about a trip to a gay bar that led to the writing of her yet-to-be-published book which, it’s clearly implied, will advance the radical idea that homosexuality is normal and should be decriminalized. It’s dangerous to adapt a classic, but introducing new ideas makes this scene and the whole film fresh.
EILEEN: Anybody want anything?
BRACK: I’ll have an old-fashioned.
FIRST PROFESSOR: Same for me.
EILEEN: Three gin martinis. Got it.
(She goes over to the bar cart and starts mixing. Brack goes over to her.)
BRACK: What’s with that girl?
EILEEN: What girl?
BRACK (lighting a cigarette): Thea.
EILEEN: We worked on the book together.
BRACK: Is that all?
EILEEN: No.
BRACK: Was she your muse?
EILEEN: Muse. (to the room) “Muse” is a man’s word for women they learn from, occasionally steal from and don’t wish to credit, but absolutely want to fuck. (The men laugh.) Or I suppose are fucking.
BRACK: Is that a definition?
EILEEN: Merriam-Webster’s.
GEORGE: Is that in your book? What else is in your book? How did you come up with it?
EILEEN (handing Brack a martini): Well, I knew I had to write this book. (picking up the other two martinis) After a quite elucidating conversation I had with a man at a bar. (handing the second to the professor) I went with a friend of mine. You might have met her here. Dinah. And it was late, just before closing, and we thought, “Why not? Just one more.” She likes a tableau, a bit of show. So we go to Sissy’s.
(The men titter.)
SECOND PROFESSOR: That den of iniquity?
EILEEN: Oh, don’t be such a prude. So we go in, grab a seat at the bar. I light a cigarette, Dinah gets a whiskey, and we have a nice chat with the men tending. (lighting a cigarette) There were two of them. Tall, good. Weak chins, bad. But typical of their type.
GEORGE (struggling to light his cigarette): What type is that?
EILEEN (lighting it for him): The forgotten bastard children of lords. (The men laugh.) We have a bit of a flirt. Obviously with me it’s not going anywhere. After a while they started to bore us, so we retired to a table.
THIRD PROFESSOR: Get to the fucking, Eileen.
EILEEN: So then we are sitting there. (She sits on the arm of a couch.) Dinah’s complaining about her dull husband Richard, who is dull and vile. And I’m listening as much as one who’s decided not to waste one’s days trying to please a man can. And then my weak-chinned bartender comes over, slides into the booth next to me, and says, “Hello. I think you’re beautiful. Can I smell your feet?”
FOURTH PROFESSOR: What did you say?
EILEEN: I said, “Whatever for?” And he says, “It’s my thing. I like it. Don’t be shy.”
GEORGE: His thing?
FIFTH PROFESSOR: Did you let him?
(pause)
EILEEN: Of course not. Pervert. I told him I preferred my sexual encounters to be mutual and private.
GEORGE: That was sexual?
EILEEN: That’s when I realized maybe all people have a thing that they like. That is different. That is new, maybe. And as some past hidden things have become normalized, I wonder why shouldn’t hidden things in the now become normal in the future.
BRACK: So we’ll all be smelling feet and having a toss in 10 years time.
(The men laugh again.)
EILEEN: Who knows what you get up to, Judge Brack? I’m sure it’s going to be far more scandalous.
Eephus is a nicely elegiac piece about two amateur New England baseball teams playing their last game on a field that’s scheduled to be demolished. In this exchange, teammates Cooper and Merritt watch the opposing team bat while their own team takes the field, and Merritt discusses the mechanics of the pitch known as an “eephus.” The script is by Michael Basta, Nate Fisher, and Carson Lund. Also, if you want to see what the eephus pitch actually looks like, click here.
COOPER: I keep saying he’s gonna go nine. You think you’re pitchin’ today?
MERRITT: I don’t think Ed’s gonna be very good the next couple innings.
(The umpire calls a strike.)
COOPER (clapping): Oh, good pitch. That’s a good pitch.
MERRITT: I was looking at the catcher. I don’t like his framing, but he probably threw a curveball, which is the right move.
COOPER: Yeah, I think it was definitely curvy.
(The next pitch comes in.)
COOPER: Ed throws pretty fast. He looks good to me.
MERRITT: If Ed were 19 he could get that fastball up to 83, 85 with decent command. But he’s got to grunt to get to 75 because he’s old.
(The batter fouls off the next pitch. The catcher John takes off his mask and runs to make the catch.)
JOHN: Oh, fucking kidding me. Fuck, fuck, fuck. (makes the catch) Aw, geez.
GRAHAM: Two down.
MERRITT: He should throw slower. You can tell what that pitch is gonna be coming out of his hand.
BOBBY (to John): Good hustle, man, good hustle.
JOHN (out of breath): I need to be put down.
COOPER: I still haven’t seen you throw that weird pitch that Tim was telling me about.
MERRITT: I throw it sometimes.
COOPER: I’ve been here a few games now. I don’t think I’ve seen it. It’s a curveball.
MERRITT: Eephus.
COOPER: God bless you. (pause) Sorry, what? What is it?
MERRITT (looking at the field): The eephus pitch is a type of curveball that is pitched so unnaturally slow that it confuses the batter. He swings too early or too late. You lob it so it looks like a curveball, but you give it no power.
(The batter Derek hits the ball.)
MERRITT: Double if he can leg this out.
DEREK (limping around first): I was sitting down, too. Fuck!
COOPER: So, it’s like a curveball with no power.
(Derek is thrown out easily at second.)
MERRITT: Your elbow stays in the same place that it would for your curveball, and you tell the batter with your hips that you’re throwing hard. Everybody on the field is expecting a meatball, so I give them a weird meatball. I throw it right, and the pitch looks like it stops in midair.
(The next batter hits the ball. The runner on third scores.)
MERRITT: Ed’s doing bad.
COOPER: That would suck if we lost the last game in this park.
MERRITT: You’d get over it. It’s almost Halloween.
COOPER: Yeah, that’s why you gotta throw the eephus pitch. Give the field the sendoff it deserves.
(The next batter takes the first pitch.)
COOPER: Oh, hey. I think, uh, uh, Ed just threw an eephus.
MERRITT: He threw a bad slow pitch.
COOPER: Yeah, that’s, isn’t that what an eephus is?
MERRITT: Maybe when Ed throws it. You can tell when it’s an eephus. It stays in the air forever. You get bored watching it. I get bored. And the hitter does, so he tries to swing at it like normal, but it’s already past him, or it waits till he’s done swinging. The eephus makes him lose track of time. It’s pretty mean that way.
COOPER: I like that. It’s kind of like baseball. I’m looking around for something to happen, poof. Game’s over.
We end this feature with this climactic exchange from Bugonia, written by Will Tracy and adapted from Jang Joon-hwan’s script for Save the Green Planet! Conspiracy theorist Teddy has kidnapped pharmaceutical CEO Michelle, believing that she’s an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy. She tricks him into poisoning his comatose mother with a dose of antifreeze, and he comes back ready to kill her, but she forestalls him with this rather amazing bit of exposition. At this point, we still don’t know whether she’s really an alien or just a really good liar. I do so love the last line here.
MICHELLE: How many were Andromedons?
TEDDY: You lied to me!
MICHELLE (loud): How many were Andromedons?
TEDDY: Two.
MICHELLE: Two? You miserable fucking idiot. Do you know what you’ve done?
TEDDY: You, you killed her.
MICHELLE: Quiet, and I’ll tell you why it is I resemble a human. Our 75th emperor first discovered the Earth. This planet was ruled by dinosaurs, magnificent creatures with a complex but stable ecosystem. But we inadvertently spread a fatal virus to the planet. The emperor was struck with guilt watching all of Earth’s creatures perish, so he gave new life to this planet, life resembling us. The early test humans could barely stand, but soon they walked and began to reproduce. Civilization was born in harmony with nature. Atlantis, we were worshipped as gods. But some humans wished to surpass us, so they began creating their own new lab-grown humans that were stronger. But the new humans were more aggressive, so conflict broke out that soon resulted in a thermonuclear war, and in the war’s wake, all humanity was extinguished save for a select few who built an ark that traveled the oceans for a century. When it was finally safe to surface on dry land, the leaders of the ark died, leaving behind only a few mutant specimens of degraded semi-humans, the apes. Evolution resumed, but toward chaos. The newly evolved human beings, your current ancestors, fought among themselves in an endless cycle of war, genocide, ecological destruction. They brutalized the Earth. They ruined her waters, ravaged her climate, poisoned themselves with drugs and technology, and even when presented with irrefutable evidence of their own self-destruction, the humans continued unabated. Even I myself became more human, more selfish and cruel, the longer I stayed here amongst your kind. But humans can’t help the way they are. It’s in your genes, the genes implanted by your ancestors to strengthen themselves. It gets reproduced in your bodies and it grows stronger. We Andromedons are here to eliminate that suicidal gene to save humanity, but also to save Earth from you and your kind.
TEDDY: No! No, you came here to kill us! You came to kill us!
MICHELLE: That’s wrong. That’s wrong, Teddy. Some of us would have preferred to simply eliminate your species, but the emperor believed there was still hope, so the experiments. The experiments your mother was a part of. She was chosen because she was weak, because she was broken. If we could correct her, perhaps all humans could be corrected.
TEDDY: But you, you killed her!
MICHELLE: You killed her. I figured you’d be apprehended feeding antifreeze to a coma patient, and then I’d be freed. I could return to my work. But you actually got away with it, you sick ape.
TEDDY: I’m not a sick ape!
MICHELLE: You are a sick ape. Listen, there are other test subjects who are showing progress, and we must show the emperor the truth. Tomorrow during the lunar eclipse. Teddy, listen, I know, I know. You may hate me. You may want me dead. I don’t blame you. But I have the information you need to save Earth. And you know I do.
TEDDY: You fucking demon.
MICHELLE: This is our destiny, Teddy Gatz. Yours and mine. And the hour is almost upon us. Yay!
