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 first.
He always wants us to have a drink first.
The flop suicide of a flop writer.
All right, maybe you're not a writer.
Why don't you do something else?
Sure, take a nice job.
Public accountant, real estate salesman.
I haven't the guts, Helen.
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.
I can't take quiet desperation.
But you are a writer. You have every quality for it.
Imagination, wit, pity...
Come on, let's face reality.
I'm thirty-three, I'm living on the charity of my brother.
Room and board free. Fifty cents a week for cigarettes.
An occasional ticket to a show or concert,
all out of the bigness of his heart.
And it is a big heart and a patient one.
-I've only been carrying you along for the time being.
-Shut up, Wick
I've never done anything, I'm not doing anything,
I never will do anything.
Zero, zero, zero.
-Now you shut up. We'll straighten it out.
-Look.
Wick has the misfortune to be my brother.
You just happened to walk in on this.
Now if you know what's good for you, you'll turn around
and walk out again and walk fast and don't turn back.
Why don't you make some coffee, Wick? Strong, three cups.
Look, Helen.
Do yourself a favor. Go on, clear out.
Because I've got a rival? Because you're in love with this?
You don't know me, Don.
I'm going to fight and fight and fight.
Bend down.
All right.
That was three years ago, Nat.
That's a long time to keep fighting, to keep believing.
She knows she's clutching a razor blade but she won't let go.
Three years of it.
And what? How does it come out?
I don't know. Haven't figured that far.
Want me to tell ya?
One day your guy gets wise to himself and gets back that gun.
Or, if he's only got a buck then, he goes up
to the Empire State Building, way up on