Original subtitles

(The Billionaire Theme)

- [Secretary] Your client is here, sir.

- Oh, please, send him in.

- Are you Julius Sagamore, the worthless nephew

of my late Solicitor Pontifex Sagamore?

- Well, I don't advertise myself as worthless,

but yes, Pontifex was my uncle

and I've returned from Philadelphia

to inherit as much of his business

as I can persuade his clients to trust me with.

- I've heard him speak of you

and as you had been packed off to Philadelphia,

I naturally concluded that you must be worthless.

But it doesn't matter, my business is very simple.

I wish to make my will,

leaving everything I possess to my spouse.

You can hardly go wrong with that, I suppose.

- I shall do the best I can.

Please, have a seat.

- No, I feel restless.

I shall sit down when I feel tired.

- As you wish, but in order to draw up a will,

I will first need to know who your spouse is.

- My spouse is a fool and a loser.

You will state that fact in the will!

You will add that it was his conduct

that drove me to commit suicide.

- His conduct?

I'm not sure I follow.

- What don't you follow?

That my spouse is a man, and that this is the year 2017

in the United States of America?

Are you as homophobic and ignorant as you are worthless?

Love is supposed to win in this country,

even if it didn't within the context of my marriage.

- I'm afraid you have it all wrong.

I haven't the slightest trouble understanding

that love wins in the good old USA.

My own brother has officiated many same sex weddings.

What I don't follow is how your spouse's conduct

has driven you to commit suicide when,

unless I'm addressing a ghost,

you haven't committed suicide.

- I shall have, when the will is signed.

- Of course, quite so.

How stupid of me.

His name?

- His name is Alexander Fitzfassenden.

- What?

The amateur tennis champion and boxer?

- Do you know him?

- We swim together at the same club every morning.

- The acquaintance does you little credit.

- I had no idea you were the other Mr. Fitzfassenden.

- Do not refer to me by that abominable name of his.

Put me in your books as Victor Ognisanti di Parerga.

- Well, I am very honored indeed.

Pray, be seated.

- Sit down yourself and don't fuss.

- Certainly, if that's what you prefer.

You know, your father was a really wonderful man.

- My father was the greatest man in the world.

And he died a pauper.

I shall never forgive the world for that.

- A pauper?

You amaze me.

It was reported that he left you, his only child,

$2.3 billion.

- Well, what was $2.3 billion to him?

He lost 10.4 billion.

He had promised to leave me 15 billion.

I was left with a beggarly 2.3.

It broke his heart.

- Still, an income of almost 90 million.

- Where did you get that from?

I have barely 50 million a year!

Do you know what that means to a boy brought up

on an income of 10 figures?

The humiliation of it!

- I never thought I'd say this to a member of my own sex,

but you take my breath away, sir.

- As I am about to take my own breath away,

I have no time to attend to yours.

- Oh, the suicide, I almost forgot.

- Had you indeed?

Well, will you please give your mind to it for a moment,

and draw up a will for me to sign,

leaving everything to Alexander?

- To humiliate him?

- No.

To ruin him.

To destroy him.

To make him a beggar on horseback

so that he may ride to the devil!

Money goes to his head, I have seen it at work on him!

- Yeah, I've seen that happen to many other clients.

But you can't be sure.

He may marry some sensible fellow.

- You are right.

Make it a condition of the inheritance

that within a month from my funeral

he marries a lowly man called Thonghunter.

- Funny name.

- Oh, his real name is Hector Rodriguez.

But he calls himself "Thonghunter" on social media,

and his emails to Alexander are also signed Thonghunter,

as a hint, I suppose, that he wants Alex

to buy him another dozen.

It's disgusting!

- Well, I should like to meet this Thonghunter.

I mean, Hector.

- Why in the world?

I thought you were straight,

or do you secretly fall elsewhere on the Kinsey scale?

- Well, if Alex prefers Hector to you,

he must certainly be worth knowing.

I shall have Alex introduce me.

- I am sorry that you wish to add yet another loser

to your circle of friends, Julius Sagamore.

- Well, my friends and I wont matter

once you've taken this.

- What's this?

- Oh, for the suicide.

One sip of that will kill you like a thunderbolt.

- You seem to take my death very coolly, Mister Sagamore.

- I'm used to it.

- Do you mean to tell me

that you have so many clients driven to despair

that you keep a prescription for them?

- I do.

It's infallible.

- You're sure that they have all died painlessly

and instantaneously?

- No, they're all still alive.

- Alive?

The prescription is a harmless fraud.

- No, that's a deadly poison, they just never take it.

- Why?

- I don't know, but they never do.

- Well, I will.

And I hope you are lethally injected for giving it to me.

- I'm only acting as your solicitor.

You have said you wanted to commit suicide

and you've come to me for advice.

I'm doing my best for you, so that you can die

without wasting a lot of gas or diving off a cliff.

And I'll only charge your executors $500.

- For advising me how to kill myself?

- Tomorrow, not today.

- Why put it off until tomorrow?

- Tomorrow's as good as today.

There's no hurry.

- You are a brute, a beast, and a pig.

My life is nothing to you.

You do not even ask what has driven me to this.

You're the lowest of the low.

You make money out of the death of your clients!

- I do.

There will be quite a bit of business connected

with your death.

I'm sure Alex will come settle your affairs.

- And you expect me to kill myself to make money for you?

- Well, it's you who raised my expectations, sir.

- Oh, St. Joan of Arc, listen to this man!

Has it ever occurred to you

that when someone's life is wrecked,

they need a little sympathy and not a bottle of poison?

You're as despicable as a psychiatrist!

- I really can't sympathize with suicide.

It's never appealed to me, somehow.

But still, if it must be done,

it should be done promptly and scientifically.

- You don't even ask what Alexander has done to me.

- Why does it matter what Alexander has done to you

when you're dead?

- You are what my grandmother would have called

an unmitigated hog, Julius Sagamore!

- Why bother about me?

The prescription will solve everything.

- Damn your prescription!

There!

- Infallible.

Now that you've blown off some steam,

why don't you sit down and tell me what is wrong?

Please, go ahead.

- As I said, my father was the greatest man in the world.

He loved me, his only child, so much

that as soon as it became apparent to him

that I would happier spending my life with a man

than a woman, he became one

of the nation's most avid supporters of same sex marriage.

His only concern was that I should make a foolish marriage,

and lose the little money he was able to leave me.

- The 2.3 billion, precisely.

- Don't interrupt me.

He made me promise that whenever a man wanted me

to marry him, I should impose a condition on my consent.

- So?

What condition?

- I was to give him $10,000,

and tell him that if within six months

he had turned that $10,000 into three million, I was his.

If not, I was never to see him again.

I saw the wisdom of this!

Nobody but my father could have thought

of such a real, infallible, unsentimental test.

I gave him my sacred promise

that I would carry it out faithfully.

- And you broke that promise, I see.

- What do you mean, broke that promise?

- Well, you married Alexander.

Now Alexander is a jolly good fellow

but you're not going to persuade me

that Alexander made 3 million in six months

with a capital of 10,000.

- He did.

That man's luck is extraordinary.

He always wins.

He wins at tennis.

He wins at boxing.

I saw him win an amateur middle weight championship.

He has a solar plexus punch

that no other boxer can withstand.

- And you married a man

for his superlative solar plexus punch?

- Well, he was handsome.

Now, I admit I can be quite prudish,

and I don't enjoy the sexual activities

that most men of my orientation revel in.

I'm a pure romantic,

and I've never needed anything beyond kissing

and cuddling to feel happy with a man.

- And Alexander knew that you were,

well, essentially Asexual, when he married you?

- Every man I've ever gone out with

on a date has known that!

I've tried to confine myself to Roman Catholic men,

as they are much easier to convince

that sex is base and vulgar,

and that, you know, romance and matters of the heart

are what's really important.

Alexander himself comes

from a very strong Roman Catholic family,

and I'm afraid I made a very common mistake.

I took him at his word when he told me that, as a Catholic,

he believed it was sinful to have sex with a man.

At first I thought that his religious beliefs

and my chastity were going to be compatible,

but what I didn't realize was that boxing had been his way

of sublimating his sexual urges.

Do you know what sublimation is?

- I do.

I minored in Psychology.

- Oh, so did I.

Anyhow, all of Alexander's ardor was in his fists.

I shall never forget the day, it was during our honeymoon...

(Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette" inspired theme)

...when his unwillingness to spoon together infuriated me

to such a degree that I went for him with my fists.

He knocked me out with that abominable punch

in the first exchange.

(shouting)

Have you ever been knocked out

by a punch in the solar plexus?

- No, no, thank goodness.

I'm not a pugilist.

- It does not put you to sleep like a punch on the jaw!

When Alexander saw my face contorted in agony,

he was horrified.

He said he did it automatically,

that he always countered that way, by instinct.

I almost respected him for it.

- Then why do you want to get rid of him?

- I want to get rid of myself!

I want to punish myself for making a mess of my life

and marrying an imbecile.

I, Victor Ognisanti di Parerga, saw myself

as the most sophisticated young man in America

marrying the most impressive fellow I'd ever seen.

And I was only a goose marrying a buck rabbit!

What was there for me but death?

And now you have put me off it with your fooling

and I don't know what I want.

That is a horrible state of mind.

I am a man who must always want something and always get it!

- An acquisitive man.

Precisely.

How splendid.

(phone ringing)

One moment.

Yes?

One moment.

Your husband is here with another man.

They want to see me.

- I have no sense of humor,

but this strikes me as irresistibly funny!

(laughs)

You actually left me to spend the night

in the arms of Mr. Thonghunter.

- No.

No, no, I tell you, it's perfectly innocent.

- Was he in your arms or was he not?

- Well, yes, of course he was in my arms.

Just not in the way that you mean.

- Then he's even more of a repressed fish

than I took him for.

But really, a man capable of flouncing out of the house

when I was on the point of pardoning him

and giving him a night of real romantic bliss

would be capable of any imbecility.

- Pardoning me?

Pardoning me for what?

What had I done when you flew out at me?

- I did not fly out at you.

I have never lost my dignity

even under the most insufferable wrongs.

- You hadn't any wrongs.

You drove me out of the house.

- I did not.

I never meant you to go.

It was abominably selfish of you.

You had your Thonghunter to go to, I had nobody.

Adrian was out of town.

- Adrian?

I don't follow.

- Well, he is a gentleman with whom I discuss subjects

that are beyond my husband's mental grasp,

which, as you can see, is extremely limited.

- A dude that sets up to be an intellectual

because his father was a publisher.

He makes up to Vicki and pretends to be in love with him

because Vicki has a good caterer.

I tell Vicki the dude cares for nothing but his food.

He only comes at mealtimes.

A belly-god, I call him.

And I'm expected to put up with him.

But if I so much as look at Hector...

Oh my!

- The cases are quite different.

Adrian worships the ground I tread on, that is true.

But if you think Thonghunter worships

the ground you tread on, you flatter yourself grossly.

The man endures you and pets you

because you buy thongs for him,

and no doubt anything else he might be short of.

- Well, I never contradict anyone,

as that always leads to trouble.

And I'm afraid I do cost him a good deal,

as he does like me to have nice things that I can't afford.

- No, Hecky darling, you don't.

I'm always pushing things on you that you won't take.

You're a heck of a lot more careful with my money

than I am myself.

- Aww, how touching!

(phone ringing)

- One moment.

Yes?

Did you say Blenderbland?

- Adrian?

How did he know I was here?

- Ask the gentleman to wait.

Perhaps you can tell me something about him, Mr. di Parerga?

Is he the chairman of Blenderbland's Literary Pennyworths?

- No, no, no.

That's his father, who created the business.

Adrian is on the board, but he has no business ability.

He is on 15 boards of directors, in fact,

on the strength of his father's reputation,

but has never, as far as I know,

contributed an idea to any of them.

- Be fair to him, Vicki.

No man in New York knows how to order a dinner better.

That's what keeps him at the top in this town.

- Thank you, I think I know enough.

Shall I send him in?

- Certainly, I want to know what he is doing here.

- That's fine with me.

You understand, of course, that I am not supposed

to know anything of his relations with my husband,

whatever they may be.

- They are perfectly innocent..so far.

I am not quite convinced that I love Adrian yet.

He makes himself agreeable, that is all.

- Send the gentleman in.

- Hello.

Where have we all come from?

(laughs)

Good morning, Vic.

How you doing, Alexander?

And Mr. Sagamore, I presume.

- Yes.

- I didn't know you were engaged.

- You actually came

at exactly the right time, Mr. Blenderbland.

Please have a seat.

- Thank you.

The fact is, Victor mentioned your name to me

in conversation as his choice of a new solicitor.

So I figured I couldn't place myself in better hands.

- Did you come here to consult Mr. Sagamore about me?

- Well, yes, I suppose so.

But hadn't we better discuss it a little in private first?

- You shall do nothing of the sort!

I will not have my affairs discussed by anybody

in public or in private!

They concern myself alone.

- May I not discuss my own affairs?

- Not with my solicitor,

I shan't have it!

- And now he's off at the deep end again.

We might as well go home.

- What is life if it isn't lived at the deep end?

Alexander, you are a tadpole!

- Don't do that!

- Mr. Fitzfassenden, why did you marry Mr. di Parerga?

- Why?

Does that require an explanation?

I have told you why I married him.

- Well, though you might not think it,

he can be terribly fascinating when he wants to be.

- You are all here consulting me,

but none of you has given me any instructions.

Had you all better not be divorced?

- What is the creature to live on?

He has nothing.

When Alexander proposed to me,

he was too great an idiot to comprehend his own audacity.

I kept my promise to my father.

I handed him a check for $10,000.

"Make that into three million within six months," I said,

"and I am yours."

- You never told me this.

- Why would I tell you this?

It's a revolting story.

- What is revolting about it?

Did I make good or did I not?

Did I go through hell to make that money and win you

or did I not?

- Do I understand you to say, Alex,

that you made $3 million in six months?

- [Alexander] Why not?

- With your own madness, your ignorance,

your criminal instincts,

and the luck that attends the half-witted!

You won my hand,

for which the matrimonially inclined gay populations

of America, England, and Europe were on their knees!

What you deserved was a five year prison sentence.

- Five?

15, more likely.

That was what I risked for you.

And what did I get by it?

Life with you was worse than any prison sentence.

- It would have been heaven to you

if nature had fitted you for such a companionship as mine.

But what was in it for me?

No man had been good enough for me!

I was like a prince in a modern fairy tale

offering all eligible gay men alive my hand and fortune

if they passed my father's test.

Able men, brilliant men, younger sons

of the noblest, progressive-minded families

either refused the test or failed.

Why?

Because they were too honest or too proud.

This thing succeeded,

and I found myself tied for life to an insect.

- You can say what you want,

but you were just as much in love with me as I was with you.

- Well...you were young, you were well shaped,

your lawn tennis was outstanding,

you were a magnificent boxer,

and I was excited by...physical contact with you.

- [Julius] I thought you were revolted

by sexual contact, Mr. di Parerga.

- Physical contact is obviously distinct

from sexual contact, Julius Sagamore,

and therefore, physical attraction is obviously distinct

from sexual attraction.

A person can be physically attracted to someone

and want to kiss them and embrace them,

without necessarily wanting to make sexual contact with them

and blow them or screw them!

Anyhow, Alexander is physically attractive.

I wished to keep making physical contact with him,

and that is my sole excuse for having married him.

Now are you going to sit there

and pretend that he has any mental charm?

- But how did he make the $3 million?

Was it on the Stock Exchange?

My bank account balance at present is

somewhere around 10 grand,

so I should very much like to know how

to make it up to three million.

You are so rich, Victor, that every decent man

who approaches you feels like a needy adventurer.

You don't know how a guy

to whom $5,000 is a considerable sum feels

in the arms of a man

to whom a million is simply pocket money.

- Nor do you know what it's like to be in the arms of a man

and know that you could buy him up 20 times over

and never miss the price!

- Now, if I give you my 10 grand, will you invest it for me?

- It is not worth investing.

You cannot make money on the Stock Exchange

until your weekly account is at least a couple of millions.

Do not meddle with money, Adrian!

You do not understand it.

I will give you all you need.

- No, no, no, thank you.

I would lose my self respect.

Plus I prefer the poor man's luxury

of paying for your taxi rides and flowers

and theater tickets and high teas,

and lending you all the little sums of money you need

when we're together.

- Yes, it's true,

I never carry any pocket money about with me.

Oh my gosh, I must owe you a couple of hundred millions

in odd 10 dollar notes.

I shall tell my bankers that you want 100 grand on account.

- But I don't.

I love lending you 10 dollar notes.

Of course, as they run through my bank account

at an alarming rate, I would honestly like a lesson or two

from Alex in the art of turning tens of thousands

into hundreds and hundreds of thousands.

- His example would be useless to you, Adrian,

because Alexander is one of nature's marvels.

There is nothing marvelous about you...except your appetite.

Listen.

On each of his birthdays, his aunt presented him

with a CD featuring one or all of the Three Tenors.

He found that he could imitate the Three Tenors

with the greatest facility

and became convinced that he could make a fortune

as an operatic tenor himself.

He was like those people who go on reality TV shows

and think that they can sing opera

without any kind of formal classical training.

You know those people.

So the first use he made of my money was

to give $3,500 to the manager of an itsy bitsy opera company

which was then on its last legs in Buffalo

to allow him to appear for one night as Romeo

in Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette".

I laughed until I fell on the floor of my box

in screaming hysterics.

The audience hooted and booed

but they could not make themselves heard above your roaring.

Romeo and Juliet hadn't even met yet,

when one of the ushers came charging into my box

and informed me that the manager had absconded

with my $3,500 and left the whole company flat.

- I'm telling you it was a plot.

Why shouldn't people like my singing?

I can sing louder than any tenor on the stage.

I can sing higher!

- The poor blighter who sang Mercutio was deaf

in the left ear, into which you bellowed

with all your force!

Not only did I have to agree to pay everyone's salaries

at the end of the night,

but the prima donna refused to get on the same stage

on which you'd bellowed! And they didn't have an understudy,

so...I managed to save the day for everyone

by singing Juliette myself!

Of course, we had to make an announcement

that the soprano was being replaced by a baritone,

and so Juliette became Julien.

You see, I'd been classically trained

since I was a teenager,

and I know almost every major opera by heart.

Especially the French ones,

as French is my favorite language.

While other teenagers were watching porn,

I was studying opera.

(orchestra playing dramatically)

(singing the 'Ah! Je veux vivre' French operatic aria)

(audience applauds)

(Victor's V/O) I must say, they lapped it all up like honey.

- Yes, it's true.

He's probably the only baritone on Earth

that can execute the florid musical ornaments

usually reserved for a soprano.

- Wow.

I'll have to hear you sing some day, Mr. di Parerga.

- Oh, he could have gone pro in opera if he wanted to.

- Except I could never tolerate

the way they sexualize opera these days,

you know, to cater to the lowest common denominator.

- Well, in any case,

singing onstage with you was one

of the greatest experiences in my life.

And of course there was no competition between us,

since I'm a tenor and he's a baritone.

I should have been the happiest man alive

if I could have established my own opera company with you,

and gone on singing together for the rest of our lives.

- And you would have been the most handsome tenor

in the world to look at, dear,

but if I had to do one more duet with you,

I should have gone deaf myself.

I only did it that one night

because I believed I owed it to the audience

to let the show go on.

- Still, this does not explain how he made the $3 million.

- I leave him to tell that disgraceful tale himself.

I believe he is proud of it.

He descended from opera to the depths of ghetto garbage.

- Well, it worked out all right.

I met this young producer

and I told him I was crazy about a guy who wouldn't marry me

unless I made three million in six months,

and that I had 6.5 grand to start with.

We took a theater.

We engaged a first rate cast.

We got a play.

We got a superb production.

The story had all the elements the public loves -

hookers, booze, weed, and hip hop.

We never asked the price of anything,

just went up to our necks for tens and tens of thousands.

- But how did you pay for all these things?

- It was a "Flamingo", but it was a heck of a job.

- I don't understand.

What is a "flamingo"?

- It's actually quite simple.

You sell shares of the production

in order to pay for something with a check.

So say you paid for something

with a check for 6 1/2 thousand,

but you don't have a dime in the bank.

You induce a friend or investor to buy a share from you

for 6 1/2 thousand.

That provides for that check.

But then it obliges you, on pain of 18 months imprisonment,

to induce another friend or another investor

to buy a share for 13,000 from you.

That provides for the next check and the first investor.

And so you go on spending and selling

from 100% of shares to 500% of shares,

from thousands to tens of thousands,

and from risks of 18 months imprisonment to five years,

10 years, even 15 years.

But all I wanted was the three million,

so I cleared out with it

and I came swanking back to claim Victor's hand.

He thought I was great.

I was great.

The money made me great.

I tell you, I was drunk on it, I was like a new man.

- But just now, when I suggested a divorce,

you asked how he would live.

What happened to the $3 million?

- He bought a circus with it,

after traveling to my ancestral Sri Lanka with me

and falling in love with elephants.

He thought he could launch the next Cirque du Soleil...

with elephants!

He thought everything he touched would turn into gold.

I had to liquidate that circus a month later.

He was about to turn the wild beasts loose

and run away when I intervened.

I was down $26,308 by the transaction.

- Was it my fault?

The elephant got influenza.

The Department of Health and Human Services shut me down

and wouldn't let me move on

because the animals might carry foot-and-mouth disease.

- In any event, the net result was

that instead of his being $3 million to the good,

I was $26,300 to the bad.

Instead of bringing me the revenues of a prince and a hero,

he cost me the allowance of a worm.

And now he has the audacity to ask me for a divorce!

- No, I don't.

It was Julius who suggested that.

How can I afford to let you divorce me?

As your husband I enjoy a good deal of social consideration,

and the retailers give me unlimited credit.

- For thongs, among other things.

- Oh, does he pay for them, Ally?

- No, never mind, darling.

I have proven that I can make money when I am put to it

and I will do it again, and I will buy you all the satin

and leather and jeweled thongs you want

out of my own earnings.

Don't be upset, darling.

- There!

They think they are married already.

- I'm afraid the matter is not in your hands, Alex.

Mr. di Parerga can divorce you whether you like it or not.

The evidence is that on a recent occasion

you left your spouse to take refuge

in the arms of Mr. Rodriguez.

The Court will give Mr. di Parerga a decree on that.

- Well, let it.

I can support Alexander until he makes another fortune.

Yes, you all think he's a fool, but he's a good boy.

I think it's just disgusting how you all turn against him,

and how you treat him like dirt under your feet.

I mean, I would like to know,

what would you be without your money?

- Nobody is anybody without money, Thonghunter.

My dear old father taught me that.

"Stick to your money," he said,

"and all the other things shall be added unto you!"

He said it was in the Bible.

I have never verified the quotation

but I have never forgotten it.

I have stuck to my money

and I shall continue to stick to it.

Rich as I am, I can hardly forgive Alexander

for letting me down by $26,300.

- $26,308, stingy beast, don't forget.

But I will pay it.

- Yes, you will, hun,

I'll take out my insurance and give it to you.

- May I have that in writing, Mr. Rodriguez?

- Oh, you should be ashamed of yourself, you greedy pig.

It was your own fault.

Why did you sell the elephant for 2,500?

He cost 20 grand!

- Let's not diverge from the point.

- What is the point?

- The point is you can obtain a divorce if you wish.

- I don't wish.

Do you think I am going to be dragged through divorce courts

and have my picture in the papers with that thing?

To have the story of my infatuation told in headlines

in every tabloid in town?

Besides, it is convenient to be married.

It is respectable.

It keeps other men and women off.

It gives me a freedom that I cannot enjoy as a single man.

I have become accustomed to having a spouse.

No, decidedly, I will not divorce Alexander,

at least until I can find a substitute whom I really want!

- You can't divorce Alexander unless he chose to let you.

He's too much of a gentleman to mention it,

but your own behavior hasn't been so very pure

that you'd like to have it shown up in court.

- Look.

Alexander was the first man I ever loved,

and I hope he will not be the last.

But legal difficulties do not exist for people with money.

In any event, as Alexander here cannot afford to divorce me,

and I have no intention of divorcing him,

the question does not arise!

And now I shall need some fresh air.

This orgy of domesticity has made the room stuffy.

Come along, Adrian, we'll drive along to the country

and lunch there.

I know the quaintest little lakeside place,

with enough trees and flowers around to rejuvenate my soul.

How jolly!

- Well, I must be a very attractive man.

- Indeed!

Not that I am denying it,

but what has it to do with what I have just said?

- You said "How jolly!"

I look round at this rotten old inn

trying to pretend that it's a lakeside hotel.

We have just had a horrible meal.

Now if you can suffer this and say "How jolly!"

there must be some irresistible attraction present

and I can see nothing

that is not utterly repulsive except myself!

- Don't you like these dear old-world places?

I do.

- I don't.

Your apartment on the Upper East Side cost more to furnish

than this place did to build from the ground up.

You can get a decent lunch there, perfectly served,

by a word through the telephone.

Or one of your luxurious cars will whisk you off

to one of a dozen first rate hotels with great views.

And yet you chose this filthy old inn and say "How jolly!"

What is the use of being a billionaire on such terms?

- When I was first let loose on the world

with unlimited money, how long do you think it took me

to get sick of shopping

and tired of all the luxuries you think so much of?

About a fortnight.

My father, when he had $7 billion, flew commercial

rather than having his own private jet,

and never spent more than $50 a day on himself,

except when he was entertaining people

who were useful to him.

Why should he?

He couldn't eat more than anyone else.

He couldn't drink more than anyone else.

He couldn't wear more than anyone else.

Neither can I.

- But you promised me a very special treat, Victor.

You said you had found out the most wonderful place

by the lake, where we could be ourselves

and have a delicious cottage meal in primitive happiness.

Now where is the charm of this dismal hole?

Have you ever had a viler lunch?

There's not even a private sitting room.

All these base people can just come and go

as ever they please.

I can think of at least five other places upstate

where we would have been much more comfortable.

And look, the weather forecast says there might be rain.

- Is that my fault?

- Well, it completes your notion of a happy day by the lake.

Why is it that people

who know how to enjoy themselves never have any money,

and the people who have money never know how

to enjoy themselves?

- You are not making yourself agreeable, Adrian.

- And you are not entertaining me munificently, Victor.

For heaven's sake,

let's get in the car and go to the Hamptons.

The car is far more luxurious

than this hideous coffee room, and more private.

- I am tired of my car.

- I'm not tired of your car.

I wish I could afford one like it.

- I thought you would enjoy sitting

in this crazy out-of-the-way place talking to me.

But I find you are a spoiled, fussy bachelor.

You care about nothing but your food

and your little comforts.

Oh my goodness!

You should have met my father.

- I'm very glad I did not.

- What's that you say?

- My dear Victor, if we are to remain close,

I might as well be quite frank with you.

Everything you've told me about your father convinces me

that though he was an affectionate parent and amiable enough

to explain your rather tiresome father fixation,

as Dr. Freud would call it,

he must have been quite the most appalling bore

to ever devastate even a Rotary Club!

- My father!

You infinite nothingness!

My father made billions of dollars.

You never even made half a million.

- My good boy, your father never made anything.

I haven't the slightest notion of how he contrived

to get a legal claim on so much of what others made,

but I do know he managed to lose 4/5ths of it

by being far enough behind the times

to buy up the properties of those Middle Eastern royals

under the belief that America would squash

the revolution there in three weeks or so.

Could anyone have made a stupider mistake?

Not I!

- You rotten thing.

Take that for calling my father a bore!

- Please, restrain yourself!

You might have hurt me very seriously.

- I will hurt you until you wish yourself dead.

Scum!

Filth!

Take that for saying he never made anything.

- Help!

There's a madman on the loose.

I won't be able to hold him single handedly, help!

- Vermin!

- Help, police!

He's murdering me.

He's mad.

- Dirt!

Carrion!

(groans)

You brute!

You've killed me.

(crying)

Oh, Daddy!

(banging)

- What's the matter?

What is going on here?

- Who the devil are you?

- I am a doctor.

I heard a great disturbance,

I hastened to ascertain the cause,

and now I find you here in convulsions.

Can I help?

- I am dying.

- Nonsense.

You can swear.

The fit has subsided.

You can sit back, you are quite well.

Good afternoon.

- Stop!

I am not quite well, I am on the point of death.

I need a doctor!

I am a rich man.

- In that case, you should have no difficulty

finding any doctor in the area. You don't need me.

Is there anyone else who needs my help?

I was upstairs.

The sound was of somebody falling downstairs.

He may have broken some bones!

Excuse me.

- Never mind him!

If he had broken every bone in his body,

it is no more than he deserves.

Come back instantly.

I want you.

Come back.

Come back!

- The landlord is taking the gentleman

to the hospital in your car.

- In my car?

I shan't permit it.

Let them call an ambulance.

- The car has gone.

You should be very glad it is being so useful.

- It is your business to doctor me, not to lecture me.

- I am not your doctor.

I am not in general practice.

I keep a clinic for penniless refugees and immigrants,

and I work at the cottage hospital.

I cannot attend to you.

- You can attend to me!

You must attend to me!

Are you going to leave me here to die?

- You're not dying.

Not yet, at least.

Your own doctor will attend to you.

- You are my own doctor.

I tell you I am a rich man! Doctors' fees are nothing to me.

Charge me what you please,

but you must and shall attend to me!

You are abominably rude,

but you inspire confidence as a doctor.

- If I attended all those in whom I inspire confidence,

I should be worn out in a week.

I have to reserve myself for the poor and useful people!

- Then you are either a fool

or a miserable imitation of Mother Teresa!

- I wouldn't compare myself to Mother Teresa.

I am a devout Catholic

and I do consider myself a servant of God.

- You are not! You are my doctor, do you hear?

I am a sick man.

You can't abandon me to die in this wretched place.

- I see no symptoms of sickness about you.

Are you in pain?

- Yes.

Horrible pain.

- Whereabouts?

- Don't cross-examine me as if you didn't believe me.

I must have sprained my wrist

throwing that beast all over the place.

- Which one?

- This!

- Nothing whatever the matter.

- How do you know?

It's my hand, not yours!

- You would scream the house down

if your wrist were sprained.

You are shamming, lying.

Why?

Is it to make yourself interesting?

- Make myself interesting?

Man, I am interesting!

- Not in the least, medically.

Are you interesting in any other way?

- I am the most interesting young man in America!

I am Victor Ognisanti di Parerga.

- Never heard of him.

Eurasian aristocrat, I presume.

- Aristocrat?

Do you take me for a fool?

My ancestors were moneylenders

to half of Europe and Asia 500 years ago.

We are now bankers to almost the whole world.

- Well then, you should be a Jewish Princess.

- Spare me your attempts at humor.

The stupidest di Parerga can just walk

round the cleverest Jew when it comes to moneymaking.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world,

the aristocracy of money.

- The plutocracy, in fact.

- If you like.

I am a plutocrat of the plutocrats.

- Well, that is a disease for which I do not prescribe.

The only known cure is a revolution,

but the mortality rate can be high.

If it is the wrong sort of revolution,

it only intensifies the disease.

I cannot help you.

I must get back to work.

Good afternoon.

- But this is your work!

What else have you to do?

- There is more good to be done in the world

besides attending to rich imaginary invalids.

- But if you are well paid?

- I make the little money I need by work

which I venture to think more important.

Although my father's American,

I grew up mostly in France with my French mother,

and so I do not espouse the materialistic values of America,

only its work ethic.

- You are a hog, a beast, and a twit.

It is the most abominable thing of you

to leave me here in my distress!

My car is gone!

I have no money!

I never carry any money about.

- I have none to carry!

Your car will return presently.

You can borrow money from your driver.

- You are an unmitigated hippopotamus is what you are!

I've known many fine gentlemen from France

but you are just a Snail Snapper!

I might have known it from that ridiculous cap

pretending to be a beret.

You should take it off in my presence!

At least have the manners to stay with me

until my chauffeur comes back.

(car honks)

- He has come back!

- Damn.

Can't you wait until he's had his coffee at least?

- No.

Be good enough to give me back my cap.

- I wanted to see what you looked like without it.

Now listen to me.

You are having an adventure!

Is there no romance in you?

- First of all, what makes you think I'm gay?

- Oh, I have an excellent gaydar!

And the only young men who come here anymore are

the more old-fashioned young gay men,

who appreciate the fact that Joan Crawford

and Judy Garland used to be regulars here,

back when they lived in New York.

I'm not telling you anything you don't know already, surely.

- I may be a friend of Dorothy,

but I'm not a big Joan Crawford fan.

- Oh, but Joan made so many romantic pictures

in the late '20s and throughout the '30s.

I love her just as much as Judy...and Audrey.

But anyway, leave romance aside for the moment.

Haven't you even common curiosity?

Don't you want to know why I threw that beast downstairs?

Don't you want to throw your wretched work

to the devil for once and have an afternoon by the lake

with an interesting and attractive man?

I'm not a sexual person, you see,

so you don't have to worry

about me trying to hook up with you.

I don't do 95% of the things that other gay men do,

and I get the feeling you don't either,

being the devout Catholic you say you are.

- Yes, that is true.

But regardless of gender, I'm afraid people in general are

neither interesting nor attractive to me

unless they're ill.

I know them too well, inside and out.

God has put me on this earth to treat those who are ill.

You are perfectly well.

- Liar!

Nobody is perfectly well,

nor ever has been, nor ever will be.

- That is true.

Are you married?

- Yes.

But you need not be afraid.

My husband is openly unfaithful to me

and cannot take you into court

if you were to make out with me.

I can divorce him if necessary!

- And the man you threw downstairs, who was he?

One does not throw one's spouse downstairs.

Did he make out with you, or perhaps make you angry

by trying to do more than make out with you?

- No.

He insulted my father's memory

because he was disappointed with his lunch here.

When I think of my father,

all ordinary men seem to me the merest trash!

But you are not an ordinary man.

I should like to see some more of you.

Now that you have asked me confidential questions

about my family, and I have answered them,

you can no longer pretend that you are not my family doctor!

So that is settled.

- A father fixation, did you say?

An excess of money?

- Only a beggarly 2.3 billion.

- You are a psychological curiosity.

I will consider it.

- Consider it?

You will feel honored, gratified, delighted.

- I see...

Enormous self-confidence, reckless audacity, insane egotism,

and apparently sexless.

- Sexless? In the sense

that I am chaste, pure, and abstinent, yes.

But I've been told over and over by countless men and women

that I'm strikingly sexy.

- I meant you have a rather androgynous demeanor

about you. Neither masculine nor feminine.

More like an angel.

- [Victor] I should think that's a good thing.

- The bad thing is that you seem to regard yourself alone

as sacred, without recognizing the sacredness

of any other members of your sex, as gay men usually do.

- Other members of my sex indeed!

I've always been infinitely purer, more intelligent,

and more refined than other members of my sex!

You were right to call me more angel than human.

Five minutes conversation with the man I married

will convince you that he and I do not even belong

to the same species!

You told me a minute ago

that you find neither sex interesting or attractive.

Likewise, I find neither sex sacred

nor automatically worthy of respect.

Most men and women are weak in mind!

They yield to dozens of different vices,

whether it's the consumption of alcohol,

the viewing of pornography, the engagement in all manner

of disgusting sexual activities,

and the compulsion to cheat, steal, defraud, and destroy.

But there are some great men, like my father.

There are some great women,

like the patron saint of France, St. Joan of Arc.

And there are some good doctors, like you.

- Thank you.

What does your regular doctor say about you?

- I have no regular doctor.

If I had, I should have an operation a week

until there was nothing left of me or of my bank balance.

I shan't expect you to maul me about with a stethoscope,

if that's what you are afraid of.

I have the lungs of a whale and the digestion of an ostrich.

I have a clockwork inside.

I'm up by sunrise no matter what time I go to bed.

When I want anything, I lose my head so completely about it

that I always get it!

- What things do you want most?

- Everything!

Anything!

Like a lightning flash.

And then there's no stopping me.

- Well, everything and anything is no thing.

(Victor laughs and the Doctor chuckles)

- Five minutes ago I wanted you.

Now I have got you!

- Oh, come now.

You cannot bluff a doctor.

You may want the sun and the moon and the stars,

but you simply cannot get them.

- That is why I take good care not to want them!

I want only what I can get.

- Good.

A practical intellect.

And what do you want at the present, for instance?

- That is the devil of it.

There is nothing one can get except more money.

- What about more men?

- More Alexanders, more Blenderblands?

Those are not deep wants.

At present I want a motor launch, yes.

- There is no such thing in this place.

- Tell the landlord to stop the first one

that comes along and buy it.

- Impossible.

People will not sell their boats like that.

- Have you ever tried?

- Well, no.

- I have.

When I need a car or a motor boat

or a launch or anything like that,

I buy straight off the road or off the river

or out of the harbor.

These things cost hundreds of thousands

if not millions when they are new,

but the next day you can't get $500 for them.

Offer a couple of thousands for any of them

and the owner dare not refuse.

He knows he will never get such an offer again.

- Aha!

You are a psychologist.

This is very interesting.

- Nonsense.

I know how to buy and sell, if that's what you mean.

- That is how good psychologists make their money.

- Have you made any money?

- No.

I do not care for money, I care for knowledge.

- Knowledge is no use without money!

You're not married, right?

- I am married to Science.

I have been since I was a boy.

- Well, now you are a man,

and I think you will find me a far more fascinating spouse

than Science could ever be, if you marry me!

- Oh!

Is there any question of that between us?

- Yes.

I want to marry you.

- No, Monsieur.

You are an exceptionally handsome man,

but Science is my spouse.

- You can have Science as well, I shan't be jealous of him!

But does that mean that you're averse

to Art, Literature and Music?

- Quite the contrary.

My mother raised her children on Art, Literature, and Music.

However, I only listen to Classical, specifically Opera.

- Would you like to listen

to a French operatic aria right now?

- Right now?

How, on your phone?

- Well, yes, the music's on my phone,

but I'll perform it in the flesh.

(singing Saint-Saëns' aria "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix" )

- How did you know that that is one of my favorite arias?

- I didn't know.

I only sang it because it's one of my favorites,

and because, well,

the sentiment seemed perfectly appropriate right now.

- I have never heard it sung more beautifully.

You are truly, deeply blessed!

- Thank you.

That's very kind of you to say.

I daresay it's a sign, that you and I should both like...

But I made a solemn promise to my father on his deathbed-

- Stop.

I made a solemn promise to my mother on her deathbed!

- What?

- My mother was a very wise woman.

She was a pillar of the Roman Catholic Church

and raised me on all the Christian principles,

but she also realized that no amount of holy water

would change the fact that I'm gay.

(Victor laughs)

After her prayers to make me heterosexual

remained unanswered for 10 years,

she accepted that it was the will of God that I be gay.

She made me swear to her however

that if any man wanted to marry me, and I felt tempted,

that I would hand the man 100 euros

and tell him that unless he went out into the world

with just that and the clothes he stood in,

and earned his living alone and unaided for six months,

then I would never talk to him again.

- And if he stood the test?

- Then I must marry him,

because any man who could help himself

would be helped by God.

- And you dare ask me,

me, Victor Ognisanti di Parerga,

to submit myself to this test, to any test?

- I swore.

I was a mama's boy.

My mother was as sweet as the Blessed Virgin.

I was attached to her like Jesus was to the Madonna.

- I myself have been compared to the Madonna,

a masculine version of the Madonna, that is,

by virtue of my chastity and purity.

What was your mother, anyhow?

A teacher?

- A seamstress.

A widow.

She raised seven children.

I was the youngest, the Gretl.

The other six are honest working folk.

With their help, she raised me to be a man of learning.

It was her ambition to have a son

who could serve God by serving mankind.

With her prayers to the Blessed Virgin,

God endowed me with the necessary talent.

- And you think I will allow myself

to be beaten by an old seamstress?

- I am afraid so.

You could never pass the test.

- Indeed!

And my father's test for a husband worthy of me?

- Oh.

I am to be tested too?

- Mm-hm.

- Never occurred to me.

- Nor to your mother either, it seems.

Well, you know better now.

I am to give you $10,000.

In six months, you are to increase it to three million!

How is that for a test?

- Quite conclusive.

At the end of the six months,

I shall have not a penny to my name, praise be to God.

- You confess yourself beaten?

- Absolutely.

Completely.

- And you think I am beaten too.

- Absolutely.

You do not know what homeless poverty is,

and God in his love and mercy will take care

that you never do.

- How much is 100 euros exactly?

- At the rate of exchange contemplated by my mother,

about $110.

- Hand it over!

- Unfortunately, my mother didn't provide

for this contingency.

I do not have $110.

I will have to borrow it from you.

- I haven't a dollar on me.

No matter, I will borrow it from my chauffeur.

He will write you a check for $10,000 on my account,

if you dare ask him.

Goodbye for six months.

(instrumental variation of "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix")

(The Billionaire Theme)

- Hey, what...

What do you want?

What are you doin' here?

- I want employment.

A man told me I should find it here.

I am destitute.

- That is not the way to get employment,

sticking your nose into places that don't concern you.

Get out.

There's no one workin' here besides my wife and I.

- You lie!

There are four women and two young men working in there.

Who employs them?

- Is that the way you talk to me?

You think a lot of yourself, don't you?

Just what do you take me for?

- A worm!

- Take care, Joe.

He's an inspector.

Look at his shoes!

- I am not an inspector,

and what is the matter with my shoes?

- Well, sir, could a young man looking for minimum wage work

afford shoes like those?

I assure you, we don't employ anyone here.

We're only caretakers.

- But I saw six people.

- Where?

Not a soul.

Search the whole damn basement.

- Joe, please!

Don't speak to the gentleman like that.

So you see, sir, not a soul.

- There's a smell.

You have given them a signal to hide.

You are breaking the law.

Give me some work or I will call an inspector right away!

- Look here, mister.

Can't we arrange this?

What good does it do you to get me into trouble

and to shut up my little shop?

- What good will it do me to say nothing?

- Well, what about $100 a week?

- I cannot live on $100 a week!

- You can if you look around a bit.

There are others, you know.

- Give me the address of the others.

If I am to live by blackmail,

I must have an extended practice.

- Well, if I have to pay,

I don't see why the others shouldn't too.

So will you take 100?

Look here.

Look at it.

(bill crinkles)

Listen to it.

It's yours, and another hundred every Wednesday,

if you keep the inspector off me.

- It's no use waving a $100 bill in my face,

I am accustomed to them.

And I feel convinced that you will pay

at least 350 if I insist!

- Oh, please, sir, have a little feeling for us.

You have no idea how much we struggle to live!

- Here, we're not beggars.

I will pay you exactly what the business can afford

and not a dollar more.

You seem to know we can afford 350,

so you must also know that we cannot afford any more.

Take this 350 and be damned with you.

- Now, Joe, let's not get hasty.

- You shut up.

You think you can beg him down a hundred or two? You can't.

I can size up a tough lot without looking at his shoes.

He's got us, and he knows he's got us!

- I don't like this blackmailing business.

Of course, if I must, I must,

but...can't you give me some manual work?

- You want to get a little deeper

into our business, don't you?

- I am as deep as I can go already.

You are employing six young people in there,

who are no doubt making less than minimum wage!

Except that the sanitary arrangements

are probably abominable,

there is nothing more for me to know.

I have you in the hollow of my hand.

Give me some work to live by

or I will have you cleared out like a wasp's nest!

- I have a good mind to clear out now

and take up somewhere where you won't find me so easy.

I'm used to changing my address.

- That is the best card in your hand.

You have some business ability!

But tell me, why can't you give me work to live by,

just as you give it, I suppose,

to the young people I saw in there?

- I don't like the people I employ to know too much!

- I see.

They might call in the inspector!

- Call the inspector?

(laughing)

What kind of fool are you?

They dread the inspector more than I do.

- Why?

Don't they want to be protected?

- The inspector wouldn't protect them, sir,

he'd only shut up the place

and take their jobs from them.

If they thought that you could be so cruel

as to report them,

they'd be down on their knees to you to spare them.

- You that know so much ought to know

that a business like this can't afford luxuries.

It's a cheap labor business.

As long as I get people to work for their natural wage,

I can get by, but no luxuries, mind you.

- And just what is a person's natural wage according to you?

- $5.85 an hour for a 12 hour day.

- Slavery!

- Oh no, sir, nobody could call that slavery.

- Can a person live on $420 a week?

- [Joe] Of course one can.

What's preventing 'em?

- Well, I will work even for that,

to prove that I can work and support myself.

So give me work and be done talking!

- Who started talking?

You or I?

- I did!

I thank you for the information you have given me.

It has been instructive and to the point.

Is that a sufficient apology?

And now to work, to work.

I am in a hurry to get to work!

- What kind of work can you do?

- Can you use a sewing machine?

Can you make a buttonhole?

- Certainly not.

I don't call that work.

- Well, what kind of work do you want?

- Brain work.

- [Joe] (laughs) He's crazy!

- Your work.

Managing work, planning work, driving work.

Let me see what you make there.

Tell me how you dispose of it.

- The man in the truck comes and takes them away.

- Does he pay you for them?

- No.

He gives us a receipt.

Mr. Superflew pays us for the receipts

at the end of the week.

- And what does Mr. Superflew do with the coats?

- He takes them to the wholesaler

who supplies the cloth for him.

The truck brings us the cloth

when it picks up the finished clothes.

- Why don't you deal directly with the wholesalers?

- Oh, no, that wouldn't be right.

We don't know who they are and Mr. Superflew does.

Besides, we can't afford a truck!

Not even an old, weathered truck like that one.

- [Victor] And does Mr. Superflew own the truck?

- No, that wouldn't be right.

He hires it out by the hour from Bolton's.

- And is the driver always the same man?

- Yes, always old Tim Goodman.

- Write those names down for me.

Bolton's, Superflew, Goodman.

- Look here.

I'm not your secretary, you know.

- You will be, soon.

Do as I tell you.

- Well, of all the nerve!

- Now, when Goodman comes round next,

tell him to tell Bolton's that he has found somebody

who will buy the truck for $1,500.

Tell him that if he can induce Bolton's

to part from it at that figure,

you will give him $200 for himself

and engage him at $100 advance on his present wages

to drive just the same old round to the same places.

He knows the wholesalers.

Mr. Superflew (laughs) is superfluous!

We shall collect not only our own stuff,

but that of all the other sweatshops.

- Sweatshops!

Who are you calling sweatshops?

- Man, know thyself!

You sweat yourself, you sweat your poor wife,

you sweat those poor young people in there,

you live on sweat.

- That's no way to talk about it.

It isn't right.

I pay the right wages, same as everybody else pays.

And I give employment to the likes of them

that couldn't make it themselves!

- You are sensitive about it.

I am not.

I am going to sweat Mr. Superflew out of existence!

I am going to sweat Mr. Timothy Goodman

instead of allowing Mr. Superflew to sweat him.

- Look here.

Does this business belong to me or to you?

- We shall see.

Dare you buy the truck?

- Where's the money to come from?

- Where does all the money come from?

From the bank!

- (laughs) You got to put it there first, haven't you?

- Not in the least.

Other people put it there and the bank lends it to you

if it thinks you know how to extend your business.

- Oh, Joe, don't trust your money in a bank.

No good has come out of banks for the likes of us.

Don't let him tempt you!

- When had you last a holiday, my dear?

- Me, a holiday?

I can't afford a holiday!

I had one when my brother brought his little daughter

to New York, 10 years ago.

- Then it required your brother to impregnate a woman

to give you one holiday in your entire adult life!

I can do better for you than that.

- We don't understand that sort of talk here.

We have no time for it.

Please, take our little present, and go away.

(horn honks)

- That's Tim, for the clothes.

- Sit down.

I will deal with Tim.

- Don't listen to him, Joe.

Don't let him meddle with our lives.

- Listen, mister, let's have an understanding.

- No understanding is necessary.

Tim is sure that Bolton's will take 1,250 for the truck.

(Joe's wife crying)

Tim is my devoted slave.

Oh, do stop that poor woman from howling if you can.

I'm going now.

There is not enough work here for me.

I can do it all in half a day every week!

I will take a job washing dishes at a hotel

to fill up my time.

But first, I must go round to the address Tim has given me

and arrange that we send them our stuff direct,

and then collect, just as Superflew did.

When I have arranged everything with them,

I will come back and arrange everything for you!

Meanwhile, carry on as usual.

Good day.

- It's like a sort of dream to me.

I don't know what to do.

- Do what he says, Joe.

We're like children.

- Isn't this a dream, Hector?

- It's lovely, darling.

- Nothing beats a fine weekend on the lake!

- Good afternoon, gentlemen.

I hope you're finding everything here to your liking.

- It's the loveliest, most peaceful hotel.

But what have you done to the old place?

When I was here last, a year ago,

it was an old pub called 'The Sow and Whistle'?

- Oh, it was so until quite lately, sir.

My parents kept the old sow, right back

to the days of Rudolph Valentino.

Our old guestbook is filled with numerous signatures

of stars throughout the decades!

Everyone from Joan Crawford to Audrey Hepburn.

But it was on its last legs when you saw it, sir.

- Well, you have made a first rate job of it now.

- Oh, it wasn't my doing, sir.

I'm only the Manager.

You'd hardly believe it if I were to tell you the story.

- Well, fire ahead, my dear!

- One day a boy came in here,

looking for a job washing dishes.

My poor old father hadn't the nerve to turn him down,

so he said that he might just try him for a day or two.

So the boy washed two dishes and he broke six.

My mother was furious.

She said since the boy had broken them,

he should have to pay for them

even if he had to have the price taken out of his wages.

So off went the boy and he came back with a load of crockery

that made my mother cry.

She said that we'd be the laughing stock

of the state of New York if we served a meal on such things.

But the very next day, a European lady came back

and bought them right off the table

for three times the actual value.

My mother never dared say another word to him.

That boy took things into his own hands

in a way that we could have never done.

It was cruel, but it was the truth.

- What's cruel about getting nice crockery?

- Oh, it wasn't only that, sir.

But what was wrong with the old Sow and Whistle was

not the thick old plate that took away your appetite away.

It was the people that it had gathered

who had never been up to much by modern standards.

The boy told them the truth about themselves

and I couldn't deny it!

My father was at his wits' end trying

to pay off the mortgage.

And the next thing we knew,

the boy paid off the mortgage,

and got the banks off us completely.

"It's time for you two to sell and retire...

...you're doing no good here!" he had said.

- That's dreadful, to root them out like that.

- It was hard, but he was right.

Here I was, ashamed of the place, with no prospects.

And now here I am - with a salary and a percentage

more than anything I could have ever dreamt of!

- Then he didn't chuck you, my dear.

- No, sir.

You see, I was intelligent enough to know

that the boy was always right.

I backed him up 100%!

Everything that that boy touches,

it just, it turns into gold every single time.

A wonderful young man, one day washing dishes,

and the next an owner of a first class hotel!

- And are your folks happy and satisfied?

- Well, they have all the comfort that they need.

And it was the best thing for them.

Business is business

and there's no room for sentiment in it!

- Well, that is a very moving story,

more so than you think, my dear,

because I happen to know a man by that stamp.

Oh, by the way, I asked a friend of mine to come

and join us for the weekend - a Mr. Sagamore.

You can find a room for him, I suppose?

- That will be quite alright, sir, thank you.

- Are there many guests staying at the hotel this weekend?

- Less than usual, sir.

We have a doctor who takes his meals here -

very quiet, not a word to anyone.

And then we have another gentleman, an invalid,

who was just discharged from the hospital.

The doctor recommended our chef here,

so he takes his meals here as well.

- Well, we must put up with them, I suppose.

- Sir, you came up this morning

without signing the register.

I brought it up.

Would you be so kind?

- Of course, I forgot.

There you are.

- Thank you very much, sir.

Oh, indeed, sir!

We are honored.

- Anything wrong?

- The proprietor of this hotel was once married

to a Mr. Fitzfassenden.

- What?

Get me out of here.

Pack up, Hector!

My bill, please, instantly!

- Certainly, sir.

But may I say that he's not on the premises,

and I do not expect him this weekend?

- Don't fuss, darling.

We certainly have a right to be here

just as much as anyone else,

if we pay our way. Come on. Please!

- Very well, very well.

Have it your way.

But my weekend is spoilt!

- He won't be here, sir.

He's getting tired of paying us unexpected visits

now that he knows that he can count on me.

Your friend Mr. Sagamore, sir,

coming up with the invalid gentleman.

- Alex!

Mr. Rodriguez.

What does this mean, Sagamore?

You never told me who you were bringing me to see,

you said two friends.

- What has happened to you, man?

What have you done to yourself?

- Everybody asks what I have done to myself.

I haven't done anything to myself.

I suppose you mean this and this?

Well, they are what your husband has done to me.

- Wow, I'm awfully sorry, man.

- Oh, you're really kind,

but I can't accept the privilege of a friend

and at the same time be a plaintiff

in an action for assault and battery!

- Yes, you can, bro.

The situation isn't new.

The victims are always coming to us for sympathy.

Make yourself comfortable.

- Well, the truth of the matter is

that Mr. Blenderbland won't be reasonable,

and I was hoping you two might help me

bring him to his senses.

- It's no use, Sagamore.

2.5 million.

And costs.

Not a dollar less.

- Too much!

Ridiculous.

A jury might give 500,000

if there were a clear disablement from earning,

or if the defendant had attacked you with a weapon.

But you are only a sleeping member

in the firm your father founded.

You don't really earn your money.

Besides, hang it all.

Mr. di Parerga is a very dramatic young man, to be sure,

but he's not a cruel person,

and I don't think you can persuade any jury

that he injured you in cold blood.

- Why didn't you give him a punch in the solar plexus?

- Physically harm someone?

Impossible.

- Bullshit!

If a man becomes violent,

he must take what he gets and deserves.

- Well, unfortunately I have neither your skill

nor your knowledge of how to punch.

But I will take lessons when I am well.

And he will pay for them.

2,500,000!

And medical expenses!

And costs!

- And cab fare to the hospital, I suppose.

- No, I went in his own car.

But now you remind me, I did tip the chauffeur.

Now don't misunderstand me.

It's not the money, but I won't be beaten by a rich man.

It's a point of honor, of self-respect!

It was a brutal, unprovoked, cowardly assault.

- Was it quite unprovoked?

- I'm extremely sorry, sir,

but my proprietor is here with the doctor.

I really did not expect him.

- You have allowed my husband

to bring another man to my hotel and enjoy themselves here.

You are fired!

- [Manager] I am so sorry, sir, but I didn't know

that this gentleman was your husband.

But you're always right.

Do you wish me to go at once or carry on

until you find someone to replace me?

- I do not wish you to go at all, you are re-engaged.

Throw them both out, instantly!

(laughs)

- Your manager cannot throw Alexander out.

He could throw us all out, if it came to that.

And as for Mr. Rodriguez, this is a licensed house

and he has as much right to be here as you or I.

- I will set the hotel on fire if necessary!

Hello.

What is this?

Adrian here too?

What has happened to you?

What are those sticks for?

Send the doctor here at once.

Did you hurt yourself?

- Hurt myself?

Hurt myself?

- Has he been run over?

- This man has half killed me,

and he asks if I have hurt myself.

I fell down that whole flight of stairs.

My ankle was sprained.

My knee was twisted.

The small bone in my leg was broken.

I ricked my spine.

- But why didn't you walk downstairs properly?

Were you drunk?

- I-

- He declares that his injuries were inflicted by you

when you last met, Mr. di Parerga.

- By me?

Am I a prizefighter?

Am I a coal-heaver?

- Both.

- Do you deny that you assaulted him?

- Of course I deny it.

Anything more monstrous I never heard.

What happened was that he insulted my father grossly,

without the slightest provocation,

at a moment when I had every reason

to expect the utmost tenderness from him.

- I am not going to be talked out of my case.

- What do you mean by your case?

- He has a case action against you.

- An action?

Very well, you know my invariable rule.

Fight him to the last ditch, no matter what it costs.

Take him to the Supreme Court if necessary!

We shall see whose wallet will hold out the longest.

I will not be blackmailed!

- Do you think your father's money places you above the law?

- Again!

- No, no, no, no, we'll have none of that.

Toko, my boy, toko.

- [Julius] Toko?

What is toko?

- He knows.

Toko is an infallible medicine for calming the nerves.

A punch in the solar plexus and a day in bed, that's toko.

- Okay, why don't we all step outside,

get a breath of fresh air?

- Yes, go on.

Insult me, threaten me, blackmail me.

You can all do it with impunity now.

- Don't take it that way, Mr. di Parerga.

There is no question of insulting or blackmailing you.

I just want to settle this business

of Mr. Blenderbland's injuries before I move on

to the matrimonial question.

- I want to hear no more of Mr. Blenderbland

and his ridiculous injuries!

- Be reasonable, Mr. di Parerga.

How do I address the compensation due Mr. Blenderbland

if we don't mention his injuries?

- There is no compensation due to Mr. Blenderbland.

He deserved what he got, whatever that was.

- But he will take an action against you.

- Take one against him first.

- What for?

- For anything, only don't bother me about it!

Claim $20 million damages.

I tell you I will not be blackmailed!

- Neither will I.

I am entitled to compensation and I will have it!

- Please, please, steady.

I cannot advise either of you to go to court...

but quite seriously, Mr. di Parerga,

Mr. Blenderbland is entitled to some compensation.

You can afford it.

- Mr. Sagamore,

a young man as rich as I am cannot afford anything.

I have to fight to keep every dollar I possess.

Every beggar, every blackmailer, every swindler,

every charity, every testimonial, every political cause,

every league and brotherhood and sisterhood,

every church and chapel, every institution

of every kind on earth is busy from morning to night

trying to bleed me to death.

My standing instructions to you are to defend every action

and to forestall every claim for damages

by a counterclaim for 10 times the amount.

That is the only way that I can write across the sky:

"Hands off my money!"

- [Julius] You see, Mr. Blenderbland, it's no use.

You must withdraw your threat of an action.

- I won't.

- You will.

Mr. di Parerga, he can do nothing against you.

Let me make an appeal on his behalf ad misericordiam.

- Oh, we are wasting time,

and I have more important business to settle!

Give him $2,000 and have done with it.

- $2,000?

- Oh, Mr. di Parerga.

- Yes, $2,000.

No man can refuse $2,000

when you crackle all those $100 bills under his nose.

- He wants 2,500,000.

- Two mill-

- Not a dollar less.

- Adrian, darling, I have underrated you.

Your cheek, your gluttony,

your obstinacy impose respect on me.

I threw a half baked gentleman downstairs,

and my chauffeur picked up on the mat

a magnificently complete skunk!

- Five million for that, Sagamore, do you hear?

- Please, please, keep your temper.

- Keep your own temper.

Has he lamed you for life?

Has he raised a lump on your head?

Has he called you a skunk?

- No, but he might at any moment.

- (laughs) My Sagamore!

Mio tesoro!

Shall I give him five million on condition

that he turns it into a billion in six months?

- I will do what I like with it.

I will have it unconditionally.

- Mr. Blenderbland, it is a mistake to go into court

in the character of a man who has been called a skunk.

It makes the jury see you in that light from the very start.

It is also very difficult for a plaintiff to get sympathy

in the character of a fully grown man

who has been thrashed by another fully grown man.

If Mr. di Parerga had stabbed you, or shot you,

or poisoned you, that would have been quite in order,

it would not have compromised your dignity.

But Mr. di Parerga knows better.

He knows the privileges of his gender and his status

down to a hair's breadth and never oversteps them.

He will come into court impeccably dressed,

looking his best.

No man is more refined and more graceful

when it is his cue to play the perfect gentleman.

Long before we can even get your case on the books,

that bump on your head will have subsided,

your broken bone will have set,

and the color will have come back into your cheeks.

So unless you can provoke Mr. di Parerga

to assault you again the day before the trial,

which he is far too clever for,

the chances against you are a billion to one.

- That's right, Blenderbland.

You haven't a dog's chance!

Next time you see his fist coming in your direction,

duck and counter.

If you don't get that satisfaction, you won't get any.

- Alexander's right, Mr. Blenderbland.

But perhaps if you ask Mr. di Parerga nicely,

he'll pay your expenses.

- Is there any justice for a regular guy against a rich man?

- Believe me, no.

Not against a billionaire.

- And what justice is there for a billionaire,

I should like to know?

- In courts...

- I am not thinking of the courts,

there is little justice there for anybody.

My $2.3 billion is in itself an injustice.

I speak of the Justice of Heaven!

- Oh, Lord, now we're in for it!

- Alexander, how can you jeer at me?

Is it just that I, because I am a billionaire,

cannot keep my spouse, cannot keep even a lover,

cannot keep anything but my money?

There you sit before my very eyes,

snuggling up to that insignificant little nothingness,

who cannot even afford to pay for his own thongs,

and you are happy and he is happy.

Here is this suit of clothes on two sticks.

What does it contain?

- [Adrian] Leave me alone, will you?

- Something that once resembled a man,

something that liked lending me $5 notes

and never asked me to repay them.

Why?

Kindness to me?

Love of me?

No, the swank of a poor man lending to a billionaire!

In my divine wrath, I smashed him

as a child smashes a disappointing toy.

And when he was beaten down to his real self,

I found I was not a potential boyfriend to him,

but a bank account with a good cook.

- That's all very fine, deary,

but the truth is no one can live with you.

- And anyone can live with you.

And apparently you can live with anybody.

- [Alexander] What Hector says is God's truth.

Nobody can live with you.

- But why, why, why?

- Mr. di Parerga, be reasonable.

Can anyone live with a tornado?

An avalanche, an earthquake?

- Yes!

Thousands of people live on the slopes of volcanoes,

in the tracks of avalanches,

on land thrown up only yesterday by earthquakes.

But with a billionaire who can rise to his destiny

and wield the power his money gives him, no.

Well, so be it.

I will live in utter loneliness, and keep myself sacred

until I find the right man!

A man who can stand with me on the utmost heights

and not lose his head.

The mate created for me in Heaven!

He must be somewhere.

- (The Doctor) The manager says I am wanted here.

Who wants me?

- I want you!

Come here.

- Something wrong with your blood pressure, yes?

Wow, I had never heard a voice like yours before,

and I have never felt such a pulse.

It is like a slow sledge hammer.

- Well, is my pulse my fault?

- No.

It is the will of God.

All our pulses are part of the will of God.

- Now don't be silly, Doc.

I don't know what things are like in Europe,

but anyone in America will tell you

that Science and God simply don't go together.

I can assure you that a great many of your patients

over here would not want to hear you talk about God at all!

- That does not disconcert God in the least, my friend.

The pulse beats still, slow, strong,

just as your voice rang clear, steady, and strong

when you sang to me that day.

You are a terrible man, but I loved your voice,

and now I must say, I love your pulse.

I've never felt anything like that.

- Well, fancy that.

I can understand loving someone for his voice,

but he actually loves him for his pulse.

- I am a doctor.

Men as you fancy them are nothing

but bundles of ailments to me.

But the life, the pulse, is the heartbeat of God.

A beautiful voice is the gift of God.

- My pulse will never change. This is the love I crave for!

I will marry you.

And I will sing to you every day, if you want me to.

Mr. Sagamore, see about a special license

the moment you have got rid of Alexander.

- I am afraid it is not possible.

We are bound by our vows.

- Well, have I not passed your mother's test?

You shall have an accountant's certificate.

I learned in the first half hour of my search for employment

that the living wage for a single person is

approximately $350 a week.

Before the end of the week,

I had made enough to support me for a hundred years.

I did it honestly and legitimately.

I explained the way in which it was done.

- Had you added $1 an hour

to the wages of those sweated workers,

that wicked business would have crashed on your head.

You sold it to the man Superflew

for the last quarter of his savings

and those workers still work for him

for less than minimum wage an hour.

- You cannot change the market price of labor,

not the Lord himself can do that.

But I came to this hotel to wash dishes,

the most incompetent scullery maid

that ever broke a dinner service.

(laughs)

I am now its owner

and there is no minimum wage an hour here!

- But what of those old people

whose natural home this place had become?

They've been cast out into the homeless shelters.

- I have to take the world as I find it.

- The wrath of God shall overtake those

who leave the world no better than they found it.

- I think God loves those who make money!

- All the evidence suggests that, certainly.

- But all this talk is idle.

This gentleman has easily fulfilled the conditions

imposed by my mother,

but I have not fulfilled the conditions imposed

by this gentleman's father.

- You need not worry about that.

The six months have not yet expired.

I will show you how to turn your $10,000 into 3 million.

- You cannot.

It is gone.

- Oh, you can't have spent it all,

you who live like a church mouse!

There must be some of it left.

- Not a dollar.

Not a quarter.

The Lord -

- Oh, bother the Lord!

What did you do with it?

- The Lord is never bothered.

On that afternoon after you left me to earn your own living,

I sat down and took in a newspaper.

While scanning the pages, I saw a familiar name.

It was that of the teacher who changed my whole life

and gave me a new soul

by opening up the world of Science to me.

I was his assistant for four years.

He would make his own apparatus for his experiments,

and one day he needed a filament of metal

that would stand a temperature

that melted platinum like sealing wax.

- Buy his patent for me if it has not been snapped up!

- He never took out a patent.

He believed that knowledge is no man's property.

The company he worked for made hundreds of millions

of dollars off his discovery

by people who care nothing about knowledge

and everything about money!

He left $30,000 and a widow.

The good woman was like a second mother to me.

$8 a day at most, which is less than minimum wage per hour.

- That comes of marrying an incompetent dreamer.

Are you going to beg for her?

I warn you I am tired of destitute widows.

I should be a beggar myself

if I took them all on my shoulders.

- Have no fear.

The Lord heard the widow's prayer.

I went to the president of the firm

and told him that it was the will of God

that she should have a widow's pension.

She received it.

But all this took time!

The illness, the nurse, the funeral

had left her without anything.

Between the pensions and the death,

there was a gap exactly $10,000 wide.

He who is just and exact supplied that sum

by your chauffeur's hands and then by mine.

It rejoiced my heart as money had never rejoiced it before!

- Well, man, you may have not done a lot for yourself,

but you have done damn well for the widow.

And you escaped Vicki.

He won't marry you with your pockets empty.

- Oh, really now?

$3 million must have been made

out of that discovery scores of times over!

The doctor, in putting my money

into the widow's necessary expenses,

may be said to have made a retrospective investment

in the discovery!

And he has shown the greatest ability in the affair,

has he not, Mr. Sagamore?

- Unquestionably.

He has settled the widow's affairs to perfection.

- My mind is made up. I will marry this doctor!

Ascertain his name and make the necessary arrangements.

- You take care, doctor.

He is unfaithful in wanting to marry you.

He flirted with me, brought me here,

and made me believe that I was to be Alexander's successor,

before he ever saw you!

And now look at what he's done to me!

And he will do the same to you

when the next man catches his fancy.

- What have you to say to that?

- You must learn to take chances in this world!

This disappointed gay philanderer tries

to frighten you with my unfaithfulness.

He has never been married. I have.

And I tell you that in the very happiest marriages

not a day passes without 1,000 moments of unfaithfulness.

You begin by thinking you have only one spouse...

you find you have a dozen.

There is the creature you hate and despise

and are tied to for life, and before breakfast is over,

the fool says something nice

and becomes the man whom you admire and love,

and between these extremes there are 1,000 degrees

with a different pair of spouses at each of them.

A husband is all men to his spouse,

he is everything that is devilish - the thorn in your flesh,

the jealous schoolboy, the detective dogging your movements,

the complainer, the scolder, the worrier.

But he has only to tell you an affectionate lie,

and he becomes your comfort, your helper,

at best your greatest treasure,

at worst your troublesome but beloved child.

All spouses, regardless of gender or sexual orientation,

are all these people in one!

What do the unmarried know

of this infinitely dangerous, heart tearing,

ever changing life of adventure that we call marriage?

Face it as you would face a dangerous operation.

Have you not performed hundreds of them?

- To be sure, there is no wit and no wisdom

like that of an individual ensnaring the mate

chosen for him by God.

Yet I am very happy as I am.

Why shall I change?

I should be a very happy old bachelor.

- Can you feel my pulse every day as an old bachelor?

- I had forgotten about the pulse.

- Or hear my voice every day as an old bachelor?

(instrumental track starts playing from Victor's phone)

(sings 2nd half Saint-Saëns' "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix")

- That voice!

The depth of feeling, those eyes!

And yes, the pulse too.

It is irresistible. It is a pulse in a hundred thousand, I -

I love it!

And you're right, I cannot give it up.

And that majestic voice has haunted me

since the first time I heard you sing.

At first, I thought you were a modern day siren,

a gay man's siren, sent to tempt me and lure me astray.

You've just stripped yourself of all conceit and pride

in front of all these people,

and borne your heart and soul to me with your singing!

- You just might turn out to be my heart and my soul.

My father used to be both,

and while his passing away broke my heart

and pierced my soul,

I think you may be the angel he sent me to heal both.

- And I suppose one can say

that you are the chaste and pure angel my mother sent me!

You certainly have the virtues and the voice of an angel,

if not always the temperament.

(laughs)

(kissing)

(The Billionaire Closing Theme)