Original subtitles

People ask, where do you get your ideas?

Well, right here.

All this is mine.

I'll never starve here.

I'm Ray Bradbury.

And this is... This

is a postcard from a friend overseas, which caused me to write The Haunting of

the New. A postcard?

Not a stuffed lion or a robot dinosaur or a toy xylophone, but an airmail

postcard? Yes.

Because it told about an old house in a far place on a strange night.

A house that died and came alive again. And here's how it happened.

Hello? Charles, hello?

Charlie, that you?

Are you rich at last?

Do rich writers still dream of fabulous estate?

Nora? I'm at Grinwood. I want you down here now.

Nora, it's five o 'clock in the morning.

You know I hate practical jokes.

It's no jokes.

It's real stuff.

Get in your car and come on up.

of the night. It's more than 200 miles.

Charlie, please, get up and get going.

Even on these roads, you can be here by evening.

Oh, and one little thing.

You can have the house.

Have the house?

If the house likes you.

You can have the house.

If the house likes it.

Dear old Nora.

Her parties, her jokes.

My body take a Grinwood party again?

Your love, Nora.

It's a zoo.

Darling, you'll be petted and hugged. Her house will chew, gnaw, bite, and gum

you to death by Monday noon.

Well, I'm wearing three suits of steel -plated armor.

No house, no home. No room can turn me to mush and digest me.

No?

We shall see most of your skeleton by Sunday sunrise.

You were no right, Duchess.

Well,

let's not waste time. Where's the party?

Looks like the band's here.

Nora, Charles.

Charles, Nora.

Gangway!

Gangway!

Beaten at my own game.

All right. Never fear, you have.

Perhaps I'd better, just to be different, put my clothes back on.

Help me?

The Ballet Russe is in the East Wing. Of course.

I flew them in from Paris.

In the north wing... In

the west wing...

And on the top

floor of the west wing... And then

tomorrow, there's the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Sandy the Dame Edith Sullivan and the Italian architects.

Oh, it's utterly maddening.

Do take off your jacket at least.

And that scrumptious waistcoat.

No lights.

No music.

No shrieks of laughter.

That's Grinwood.

But you've changed.

Hello, Charles.

What are you doing out here?

The house won't let me come in.

What's happened?

Nothing.

Everything.

Oh, my dear Charlie, you won't believe.

But your party, where's everyone gone?

That was last night.

Impossible. You've never had a one -night party in your life. It's always

two, three days.

It never stopped.

Oh, no.

Oh, my dear Charlie, last night, it did.

The last great party at Grimm's.

Last night.

Mad Fleur was from Paris. The other time sent a fabulous girl from Nice.

Roger, Pertin, Eamon, Lillian, John were here.

The bullfighter who almost killed the playwright of the ballerina was here.

The Irish playwright who crawled off stage drunk was here.

97 guests teamed in that door between 8 and 10 last night.

By midnight, they were gone.

It wouldn't let us have our party.

It let, Nora, come on.

Oh, the music was splendid, the wine divine.

Champagne to die for.

At midnight, all the shut doors in the upper rooms where all the happy, loving

people played, all these doors, all by themselves.

Almost.

I have invited us for lightning.

But why?

Go in and look, Charles.

Look? For what?

Look. At everything.

The room, the hall, the chair.

The mystery.

You're coming with me.

I can't.

The house is yours, Charles, if you want it.

But you have to go in alone.

Well?

What do you see?

Nothing. The house.

See the Gainsborough?

It's here.

No, it's not.

A marble Florentine chess set?

It's here.

It's not.

And the big maroon leather armchair where you drank sherry with Father years

ago, did you see that? That's not there either.

You can have that.

But it is.

They all are. If the house likes you.

What the hell is going on in here?

Brynwood is gone, Charlie.

Four years ago, it burnt to the ground.

Burned utterly.

Did you feel it?

Hear it?

Smell it?

But it's there, look.

No, it's not.

No, I'm not ill.

I don't lie.

It's all fake, Charlie.

All remade, all new.

Now look, Nora, that's quite enough.

It's me, Charlie.

I'm the one who makes up stories, not you.

Stop playing these games, Nora.

It's not games, Charlie.

No, no, no, no.

It's not games.

When I was 18 and came into my money, I didn't believe in conscience

and guilt, did you?

No, never.

A conscience is real.

And guilt collects. Oh, yes, it collects, Charlie.

And a house is like a large person collecting, too.

Bosh. It's not bosh. It's fact.

A thousand lovely men have army troops through my arms and through that house.

Five hundred parties have rattled those windows, haunted those attics, warmed

ten score of beds, brimmed that pool with licentious swimmings in gin and

From a thousand midnights to a thousand dawns.

And I don't believe there's ever been a happy person in that house, Jolly.

We were happy.

We had a wonderful time.

It was a lie.

Stabbing each other, pretending that was love.

When your satins left, they left their sins and the memories of their sins

behind.

Combustion between sin and love.

A house choked on our past.

Four years ago,

It burned itself down in despair.

And you rebuilt?

There were plans.

Drawings on my memory.

I flew in stonemasons, stonecutters from Perugia. They hammered and sawed and

cut for years.

A thousand days, Charlie, as I flew to France and watched as great spiders

reweaved my tapestries.

I rode to Hans in Waterford as cryptal men blew new glass for wine.

Wynwood will rise, I cried.

Phoenix! From ashes.

A mad woman.

Rich with dreams.

And money.

And clever.

Charmed.

But no, said the new.

I am freshly born.

You are stale and dying.

It was good.

We were wicked, so it turned us out.

We tried to laugh. It smothered us. We tried to dance. It crippled our steps.

tried to drink. It thawed our wine.

And so the last great party.

The party that never happened, that never could begin, was over.

It's all over, Charlie.

Here are the keys to Grinwood.

I'm giving you them. A gift.

The house is yours.

Now look, Nora.

In the morning.

If the house allows.

Nora, a house cannot throw people out.

You go in there tonight.

If it likes you, stay.

We can't both be so full of sin.

Go in there alone, Charlie.

All right, Nora.

That's what you want.

It didn't want you, either.

I'm too old for sin.

I wish I could burn myself down.

Start again.

Charlie, the door.

Not for us.

Not for us.

Maybe it's hoping, one day, tomorrow, the next, a young girl,

fresh, innocent, a milkmaid, will come up that road and go in.

And will it let her stay?