Original subtitles

People ask, where do you get your ideas?

Right here.

All this is mine.

I'll never starve here.

I'm Ray Bradbury.

And this is...

I have what seems to be total

recall from the moment of my birth.

But if it should falter, the toys, the trivia that surround me in my workroom

help me remember back 60 years.

But what if I lost all these in a fire?

Then I'd be forced to rely on sheer memory alone.

But what about everyone else?

Would they choose to remember or prefer to forget?

Would my memories be a threat to them? To find the answer, I wrote to the

Chicago Abyss.

Fine wool.

That's lambs, huh?

Oh, you don't see much of that now.

No lambs, huh?

Oh, please.

No, I didn't mean... You don't have to... No, please. You mean... I didn't

mean...

Chesterfields. Rawleys. Lucky Strikes.

Kent's Cools. Those are the names.

Paul Malls. Old Golds.

White, Red, Amber Packs.

Grass Green. Sky Blue. Pure Gold.

Shut up!

Gently, gently.

Gently, he says. Gently.

He doesn't even know where he is.

And gently.

Look up, damn you!

What do you see out there?

Buildings? Ruined!

Bomb craters.

I'm sorry. Such a nice, friendly day.

Who knows friends?

Who had one?

Back in the 80s, maybe.

You must have been a baby then.

They still had Butterfingers that year.

In bright yellow wrappers. What's wrong with you?

I remember limes and lemons. That's what's wrong with me.

Do you remember oranges?

You try to make me feel bad?

Don't you know the law?

What would the police say?

They heard your oranges and lemons.

I ought to beat the living hell out of you.

I ain't heard no one in so long.

Damn you!

Baby Ruth!

Butterfingers!

Yes!

Yes! Orange is coffee!

Cigarette! Remember!

Please.

It's my fault.

We won't be hungry forever.

We'll rebuild the cities.

There's no crying. I just want our people to think where we're going, what

done. Police!

I said fool.

You saw.

You were there. You did nothing.

Fight one fool to save another?

No.

Come on.

Come on.

We're home. I don't want you stolen from us.

I've heard of you for months.

And then just when I find you...

Good grief, what did you say that made that guy mad?

I said about lemons and oranges.

I was just about to recollect wind -up toys and back -scratchers. No wonder.

You bringing back the past.

I almost don't blame him, old man.

I could almost go mad myself.

Dangerous memories.

Dangerous memories.

There's food.

Food?

Well, I don't know. My mouth.

Well, wine, then, until your mouth feels better.

Here.

Wine.

I can hardly believe it.

Aren't you having any?

We have only one glass.

You first.

To you, kind lady.

To you, kind sir.

To you.

The man to lead us out of limbo.

The man who tells us to rebuild.

To all of us.

To other years.

To old men who talk too much.

To pummelings, beatings, and locked teeth.

Relax. No one follows it.

Old man.

Why do you behave like a... Like a saint, panting after martyrdom?

And everyone's heard of you.

It makes you tick.

17, 18.

19 strands of spaghetti.

And, uh... 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7... 20,

29 peas.

I shall pray over these like a fine rosary.

How fine.

I remember.

I remember a motion picture I once saw as a child.

National Police!

Police! We're looking for a criminal fugitive.

If you turn him in, there's a week's rations as a reward.

A week's rations? He must be much wanted.

Plus a bonus of ten cans of vegetable soup and five cans of beans.

Soup? Beans.

Think of it.

We have no information on the criminal.

Beans. Soup.

Fifteen solid pet cans.

Even I was tempted to turn myself in and claim the reward.

Why didn't you?

You'll find out.

Eat. Eat.

My wife.

Go on. You know what to do. Go.

Your wife?

She's going to get everyone in the apartment house.

And, old man, old man, if you're going to remember, and you must remember, why

not do it in one fell blow? Why waste your breath on one or two?

Old man.

You're no fool.

You have the truth.

Old man, please.

Please, tell us all.

It's like a theater.

Like motion picture houses.

Yes.

And the lights dim.

And the people will hold hands and listen like in the old days with the

balconies in the dark.

And in the midst of the smell of popcorn and orange crush,

my show begins.

Fool!

I accept the name.

Years ago, I looked at the ruined world, at the dead states and the empty

nations, and I said, what can I do?

I'm a tired old man.

What?

Rebuild a devastation?

Lying half asleep one night, I remembered an old photograph record I

It was an ancient vaudeville team.

The Duncan sisters.

Ah.

Do you hear that?

Remembering.

Ah. I sang the song.

And suddenly...

It wasn't a song anymore.

It was a way of life.

What could I offer a world that was forgetting?

My memory.

How could my memory help?

By making comparisons.

By telling the children what once was.

By considering our losses.

And I found, the more I remembered, the more I could remember.

Like...

Imitation flowers.

Dial telephone.

Jews, harps, harmonicas, kazoos.

And bicycle clips.

Not bicycles.

Bicycle clips.

And anti -macassars.

Giant snowflakes for furniture.

Once a man asked me to remember the dashboard dials on a Cadillac.

I remembered.

He cried great tears, happy or sad, I can't say.

But not literature.

No, I never had a head for plays or poems.

They slip away.

They die.

All I am, really, is a trash heap of the mediocre.

At a third rate, they hand me down useless and chromed -over slush and junk

of a racetrack civilization that ran last over a precipice and

still hasn't struck bottom.

All I can offer, really, is the scintillant junk and absurd machineries

never -ending river of robots and robot -mad owners.

Yet, one way or another, civilization must get back on the track.

To those who can offer butterfly poetry, let them remember, let them offer.

Those who can weave butterfly nets, let them weave.

My gift is smaller than both.

Perhaps contemptible.

But I... I must dream myself worthy.

For the things... See, the things, silly or not, that people remember are the

things they will search for again.

And I will ulcerate them so as to have them inside of a good memory.

So that maybe then they'll... Rattle, bang, the big clock together again.

Which is the city, the state, and then the world.

Once I would have raved.

Only the best is best. Only quality is true.

But roses grow from blood manure.

And mediocre must be so that most excellent fine can bloom.

And I shall be the best mediocre there is.

And I'll fight all those who say slide back, slip under, dust wallow, let

brambles scurry over your living grave.

No, I shall protest.

The sheep people munching in the far fields,

preyed on by the feudal land barren wolves who rarify themselves in

summits and hoard unremembered foods.

And these villains I shall kill.

With can opener and corkscrew.

I'll run them down.

I'll thrash them with licorice whips.

Until they cry, mercy.

Can one do this?

can only try.

Do they understand?

This way, this way.

Each month, one train crosses the country.

Here.

Where's the ticket?

One way to the Chicago abyss.

It's the crater where the city once was, looking into nothing.

Nothing?

No.

Not nothing now.

And on that edge, old man, on the very rim, you'll find people.

People gathering, collecting, living.

Tell them not to forget.

And please, after you leave here, remember what you must, but forget you

know us.

Forget me?

For God's sake, for the next year in the open, keep your fine mouth shut.

Did they hear?

Do they know?

Yes. They heard and remembered.

Thank you.

Now call that in.

Why are you doing this?

I wanted to remember.

But I couldn't.

Chicago Abyss.

Nighttime. Cold train.

Old cars.

Crammed people.

Remember, be quiet.

Shut up.

Be careful.

Sheesh.

Joseph.

Joseph.

Well,

Joseph, once upon a time...