Whose Side Are You On?

(A recording studio. SCOTT stands alone, fretting. After a beat, THERESA enters.)

SCOTT
He still out there?

THERESA
Yeah.

(pause)

SCOTT
If he can’t go through with it, are you willing to do the voiceover?

THERESA
No! I have a horrible voice!

SCOTT
Don’t say that.

THERESA
It’s true! It’s worse than yours.

(pause)

SCOTT
Yeah, I guess it is.

THERESA
I could never sell something as radical as this. Hell, I could tell people the earth was round, and they’d second guess themselves and consult a globe.

(pause)

SCOTT
The jury’s still out on the earth being round, as far as I’m concerned.

THERESA
Not today. Please.

(ROB enters.)

SCOTT
What’s up?

ROB
I’m in.

THERESA
You sure? Because we can’t screw around on this stuff anymore, we only have the studio till 2:30.

ROB
Right. Let’s just plow through it. I just want it to be known that I don’t believe any of this crap.

SCOTT
You don’t have to.

(THERESA and SCOTT retreat to the recording equipment and ROB positions himself in front of the microphone. All three put on headphones.)

THERESA
Take it from “slurry walls.”

ROB (reading)
“The slurry walls, three-foot-thick walls of concrete buried deep underneath the World Trade Center, were designed to hold back the ocean and the Hudson River. But these walls were displaced, in some areas by up to eighteen inches. If the walls were strong enough to support the weight of the towers and the ocean for over twenty-five years, why would they be knocked out of alignment?” Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because two one-hundred-story buildings had just fallen down on top of them?

SCOTT
Cut!

ROB
I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I can’t get behind this because I don’t believe it.

THERESA
Hey, Rob, I see on your résumé that you played Nathan Detroit in “Guys and Dolls.” So, did you “believe” that you had to find a place for the big craps game?

ROB
The fact that I was in “Guys and Dolls” is not going to make people not want to work with me in the future!

THERESA
No, your unprofessionalism will do that nicely!

SCOTT
Please. Everyone just calm down. Rob, you’re very good. You have the steely timbre, the gravitas we need.

ROB (grudgingly)
Thank you.

SCOTT
There’s a reason we hired you for this. 9/11 was an inside job. The idea that a handful of guys with box cutters could do this is ridiculous, and everyone knows it.

ROB
Okay. I need to tell you something. Sometimes a conspiracy theorist will make a grand conspiracy statement, and he will follow it with the phrase, “and everyone knows it.”

SCOTT
Okay.

ROB
Those four words tag you as a crackpot. They carry the implication that when I claim to disagree with you, that means I must be “in on it.” Or that they’ve “gotten to me” and threatened my family or something.

SCOTT
All right.

ROB
And since I know that neither of those is the case, your entire theory crumbles. If there is no room in your worldview for me to disagree with you without being a coward, or a shadowy architect of clandestine machinations, then you are a crackpot, and you are to be ignored.

SCOTT
Noted. Are we doing this?

(SPYDER, owner of the recording studio, enters.)

SPYDER
Guys, I need you to wrap this up. I got a “My Little Pony” Christmas special coming in here at 2:30.

THERESA
Spyder, can they reschedule? We’re trying to open the eyes of the nation here.

SPYDER
No, man, I want them in and out of here ASAP. They’re unlicensed.

SCOTT
What do you mean?

SPYDER
It’s not an official “My Little Pony” video, it’s a knockoff they’re going to sell on the street.

(pause)

THERESA
Let’s just drop it.

SCOTT
Are you serious?

THERESA
Yeah. I guess the truth loses again. Give Rob his money and let’s go home.

SCOTT
Yeah, okay.

THERESA
I guess I’ll read the closing paragraph later. We can cobble together the rest

(SCOTT stares down ROB for a moment, then shakes his hand.)

SCOTT
You fucked us, Rob. But you took a stand. On some level, I have to respect that.

(ROB watches everyone pack up. He is about to take his water bottle and leave, but he stops himself. He swipes the script back from SCOTT.)

ROB
Roll the tape.

SCOTT
What are you doing, Rob?

ROB
Just roll it.
(They do. ROB is magnificent, heartfelt, as he recites from the script.)
“To review. George W. Bush was eager to create enough chaos to allow his half-brother Osama bin Laden to divert Afghanistan’s heroin trade through Putin’s Russia. So he asked the 107-year-old Dick Cheney to combine the Catholic Church’s weather machine with the water engine technology owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Using it all in conjunction with a holographic sky-projector with possible origins in the blueprints from the ancient alien astronauts, they staged the most massive act of treason our country has seen.”
(pause)
“The President has said, you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists. Open your eyes, America. They are one and the same.”
(pause)
“Whose side are you on?”

(pause)

THERESA (softly)
You nailed it.

ROB
Well.

THERESA
No, you fucking nailed it.

SCOTT
Rob. Thank you.

(SCOTT nods and makes his way out of the studio. SPYDER approaches THERESA.)

SPYDER
Hey, is that stuff true? About the water machine and the ancient astronauts?

THERESA
Every last word.

SPYDER
Could I get a copy of this video?

(ROB, hearing this, nods at THERESA and SCOTT. They nod back. ROB exits.)