of my business.
Forget it, Helen.
I better be getting back to the hotel.
Don's probably there already. And don't worry,
Wick, I won'T mention a word of it to him.
-Thank you, Helen.
-Bye.
Bye.
Helen. I'm sorry, Helen. I can't let you go. Not like this.
Shut your mouth, Don. I'll take you downstairs.
Thanks very much for your Philadelphia Story, Wick. Nice try.
That looks so silly on you.
-Don't listen to him.
-You don't even have to. Just look at the two of us.
Yes. What is all this covering up?
All that happened is that Don was nervous at the idea
of meeting your parents and so he took a couple of drinks.
Come on, Wick, she'd have found out sooner or later.
Stop it, both of you.
Don's a little tight.
Most people drink a little.
A lot of them get tight once in a while.
Sure. The lucky ones who can take it or leave it.
But then there are the ones who can't take it
and leave it either.
What I'm trying to say is I'm not a drinker.
I'm a drunk.
They had to put me away once.
-He went to a cure.
-Which didn't take.
You see, that first time we met,
I should have had the decency to get drunk...
just for your sake.
For my sake? We're talking about you.
Is it really that bad, Wick?
Yes, it is.
Can't we go over this tomorrow, Don,
when you're feeling more like yourself?
Helen's heard the facts. That's all there is to it.
Yes, I've heard them and they're not very pleasant.
But they could be worse. After all,
you're not an embezzler or a murderer.
You drink too much and that's not fatal.
One cure didn't take. There are others.
Of course there are.
This has a familiar ring.
But, there must be a reason why you drink Don.
The right doctor could find it.
Look, I'm way ahead of the right doctor.
I know the reason. The reason is me. What I am.
Or, rather, what I'm not.
What I wanted to become and didn't.
What is it you want to be so much that you're not?
A writer.
Silly, isn't it?
You know, in college I passed for a genius.
They couldn't get out the college magazine
without one of my stories.
Boy, was I hot, Hemingway stuff.
I reached my peak when I was nineteen.
Sold a piece to the Atlantic Monthly.
Reprinted in the Readers' Digest.
Who wants to stay in college when he's Hemingway?
My mother bought me a brand new typewriter, and...
I moved right in on New York.
Well, the first thing I wrote, that didn't quite come off.
And the second, I dropped.
The public wasn't ready for that one.
I started a third and a fourth...
only by then, somebody began to look over
y shoulder and whisper...
in a thin, clear voice like the E-string on a violin.
Don Birnam, he'd whisper...
it's not good enough. Not that way.
How about a couple of drinks just to set it on its feet, huh?
So I had a couple. Oh, what a great idea that was.
That made all the difference.
Suddenly I could see the whole thing...
the tragic sweep of the great novel, beautifully proportioned.
But before I could really grab it
and throw it down on paper....
the drinks would wear off
and everything would be gone, like a mirage.
Then there was despair, and...
a drink to counterbalance despair,
and one to counterbalance the counterbalance.
And I'd sit in front of that typewriter,
trying to squeeze out one page that was halfway decent,
and that guy would pop up again.
What guy? Who are you talking about?
The other Don Birnam. There are two of us, you know:
Don the drunk and Don the writer.
And the drunk would say to the writer, come on,
let's get some good out of that portable.
Let's take it to that pawn shop over on 3rd Avenue,
it's always good for U$10,
another drink, another binge, another bender and a spree.
Such humorous words.
I tried to break away from that guy
a lot of times but, no good.
You know once I even got myself a gun and some bullets.
I was gonna do it on my thirtieth birthday.
Here are the bullets.
The gun went for three quarts of whiskey.
That other Don wanted us to have a drink