EXCERPTS OF THE SCREENPLAY "UNLUCKY ANGELS" 1.DRAFT 06/09/09 INT. LAURAS APARTMENT/ LIVING-ROOM - NIGHT Back in Berlin-Wedding. Laura is dancing in her apartment and sings to herself in a poetical rap style: She dreams of Sedal, the sex god in town. She can´t believe, that he seems to like her. What for a marvelous man has joined their varieté! She is calling her father in New York and takes up the phone. Her father Johnny in his loft. LAURA: I miss you. JOHNNY: Miss you even more. LAURA: It was your decision... JOHNNY: ..it was a mistake. LAURA: We open up a music hall. JOHNNY: So you need me as a singer,
not as your father? LAURA: We just love you. JOHNNY: Everybody loves me, but nobody loves me as a human being. LAURA: I do. JOHNNY: You don´t know me. LAURA: Yes, I do. Silence. JOHNNY: How much do you pay? LAURA: So you don´t want to support your daughter and her friends!? JOHNNY: I will think it over. LAURA: You can only think in terms of money and career. I know you. JOHNNY: You don´t know me. LAURA: Then come to Berlin and show me who you are! TWO DAYS LATER INT. BALLROOM - DAY Carefully Laura and Sedal enter the old ball-room, a
palace in an art déco style opens up. They feel like in a different time, the twenties in Berlin. Sedal starts the ghetto-blaster, takes the hand of Laura and they begin to dance. They seem to enter another world. But this time the two lovers don´t seduce each other but start to dispute in a poetical rap style while they dance in the dust of the day. Sedal is playing the lover. He throws Laura into the air, she falls down on the floor: "She fouls him, she cheats on him! Why!?" Laura pushes him back, while dancing, it is not true, it is the contrary: "He doesn´t respect her." She won´t squat, yes, she will, no, we won´t, he is crazy... The mise-en-scène of their dancing mixes with their reality as lovers "Laura + Sedal". EXT. BERLIN AIRPORT - DAY Johnny is standing with a suitcase at the airport in Berlin and gets into a taxi. Some people passing by look at him with interest. EXT. STREETS IN BERLIN-WEDDING - DAY The taxi passes by typical, old apartment houses from the end of the 19th century. Johnny is staring at them, memories come up... Fade to INT. JOHNNYS PARENTS APARTMENT/LIVING ROOM - DAY A little two-room apartment in 1959. His mother presents her three year old son, playing piano, to several aunts with grey hair and dark clothes. Johnny looks like a grown up man, drilled by his mother, already behaving like a gentleman. The aunts are delighted and pat his short hair, while his mother controls every movement of his playing. He looks sad and ill. EXT. JOHNNYS PARENTS APARTMENT-BUILDING - DAY Outside in the streets the 3 year old Johnny is standing alone and stares at the boys around him, teasing him. The kids don´t look as neat and tidy as Klaus in his Prussian style of clothes and his hair cut from the forties. KIDS: Mamas boy, mamas boy... Fade to INT. BALLROOM - DAY The light of the evening sun is falling into the dusty ball room of the twenties. Sedal is playing with Laura while dancing, gliding with his hand down her back. She is lost in his eyes like in a deep blue sea and enjoys his game. They seem like floating over the stage. Suddenly the door opens: Johnny. For a second he is shocked, but immediately controls his face. Laura stops dancing and runs towards him, falling into his arms. Tenderly Johnny is patting the hair of Laura and kisses her on her cheek. JOHNNY: It´s the last time. Then he realizes the ball-room. JOHNNY: (CONT'D) This place is in a worse state than me. LAURA: Do you join us, or do you leave in two hours? JOHNNY: When do you plan the first night? LAURA: In two weeks. JOHNNY: Are you crazy! LAURA: Only poor. They are going to pull down the building in two weeks. A DAY LATER EXT. ORANIENBURGERSTREET - NIGHT A street in the center of old Berlin with its cafés and restaurants. Laura is sitting on the back of Sedals bicycle. They are both laughing while driving in serpent lines on the rails of the tramway. They pass by an old demolished department store, occupied by artists. People are strolling along the boulevard, while Laura nearly falls of the bicycle. They are both enjoying their freedom. EXT. MONBIJOUPARK - NIGHT They leave their bicycle behind and enter the lonesome Monbijou park, listening to the rustling of the trees. Sedal looks Laura into her eyes. But before he comes closer to her, she eludes him. LAURA: I should have stayed with my father. SEDAL: Don´t worry, he likes our project and will have a lot of fun with us and his old pal. Sedal tears her away along the old canal towards the huge dome from the 19th century. EXT. BRIDGE OVER CANAL - NIGHT Laura and Sedal walk onto the bridge which leads them to the island of museums with the antique national gallery. Slowly they are coming closer to each other, looking at the monuments of Berlin history. Suddenly they are standing at the edge of the old bridge, watching the sparkling water of the river "Spree". All the noises of the city are vanishing, while they are on their own. SEDAL: The first thing, I remember from school was, that Berlin has been founded at this place 768 years ago. LAURA: So the past is haunting us everywhere. SEDAL: No, the past gives us the strength to let beautiful blossoms flourish in our presence. Sedal tenderly touches her cheek. They are coming closer to each other but Sedal doesn´t dare to kiss her. Only their reflections are melting in the waves of the sparkling water, where all the lights of the night are shining at once. INT. BALLROOM - NIGHT Anton is dressing the bar, unwrapping glasses, while Johnny is sitting furious at the bar smoking for the first time. JOHNNY: I´m coming back into this devilish country, I invest in this Cabaret and she runs away. ANTON: Laura didn´t have a boy-friend for ages, constantly working, torturing her body up to a total burn-out. JOHNNY: When? ANTON: A year ago. She had a sinew contortion and couldn´t dance for 6 months. Johnny looks at him. ANTON: (CONT'D) You know, that she did always everything to please you! JOHNNY: Still she shouldn´t disappear with such a looser. ANTON: This looser still is pretty known among the kids here! He made mistakes but who didn´t!? JOHNNY: Perhaps I just want to have my daughter back in New York?! ANTON: When? JOHNNY: When she´s ready. ANTON: Will you take me with you? JOHNNY: So we will be one family again! Anton gets two glasses and opens a bottle of red wine. A week later... INT. LAURAS APARTMENT/ LIVING-ROOM - EVENING Johnny has prepared a beautiful diner table, flowers, candles, antipasti... He enters with a huge bowl of spaghetti "di frutta del mare". JOHNNY: You´re as beautiful as the sea, as wild as the Atlantic... Johnny wants to start singing an Italian love song. LAURA: Please, no. I am hungry. They start eating. LAURA: (CONT'D) It feels like Christmas. JOHNNY: But it´s summer. We could spend a week-end on the beach? Laura enjoys the spaghetti and smiles. JOHNNY: Do you realize, how much I have tried to make good to you!? She gives him a kiss. LAURA: You can´t make good in two days what got lost during 22 years. Johnny smiles seductively. LAURA: You know how much I admire you. JOHNNY: I have the impression as if I have never left you. Laura continues to eat the spaghetti. LAURA: I have to leave soon for the rehearsals. JOHNNY: Who´s "we"? LAURA: Me and Sedal. Johnny can´t hide his disappointment. JOHNNY: Do you realize, how much I love you? Laura is getting up. JOHNNY: (CONT'D) You have never time for us. Everything turns around money, work and sponsors. LAURA: That´s the only thing I learned from you. The only aims that had any value for you were money and success. JOHNNY: But I have changed. LAURA: That´s nice. But because we are sharing an apartment, you can´t claim your rights as a father. JOHNNY: Why not? LAURA: Did you forget in your ignorance, that I am already becoming 28. JOHNNY: Don´t reproach me ignorance! I have paid for your education, so you get unemployed. LAURA: Ah, You wanted to buy off your guilt...
Didn´t you realize in your pampered cuckoos net, that the world has changed!? JOHNNY: Yes, that´s why I am worried about your relation to this Sedal. He is still an Arab. LAURA: He is an Alevite, born in Berlin. Laura is leaving the room, slamming the door. INT. BALLROOM - NIGHT Sedal and Laura feel like being in heaven. They dance as beautiful as ever, and they will never dance as beautiful again. LAURA: I think, I never really loved anybody except... Suddenly her father is standing in the door, walking towards the stage. JOHNNY: I admire your ardor to work, very German. Your dancing is getting acceptable, but... Sedal and Laura are looking at each other, Johnny is getting on their nerves. JOHNNY: (CONT'D) ...a police-car is standing outside in the street, waiting for you. I think you should stop working and go home. SEDAL: They are going to leave soon. I was already talking to them. Johnny looks at him with despise. JOHNNY: Ok. Then you know better than me. Johnny leaves, but suddenly turns around. JOHNNY: (CONT'D) I have just a last thing to say. Johnny goes back to the stage towards his daughter. JOHNNY: (CONT'D) I don´t want you to go out with a drug dealer, and... He points to Sedal with his finger and turns to him. JOHNNY: (CONT'D) I want you to leave this Varieté now and forever. Laura can´t believe what she hears. LAURA: Who gave you the right to determine!? Johnny is sneering about her naiveté. JOHNNY: I remember the day of my arrival, when you determined, what everybody had to do in the Varieté! LAURA: You with your authoritarian egocentrism try to undermine me and determine everything as usual. Did you forget that you made my mother sick. I was 19 when I found her dead at the telephone. You were just calling her. Johnny is laughing. JOHNNY: You exaggerate, as usual. You have much too much fantasy in the wrong direction. LAURA: That´s your common excuse. JOHNNY: Don´t play on victim. I am fed up of this game of yours and the entire German society. You are responsible for your acts. You got me here to Berlin out of pure calculation! You knew, that you can use my name to get publicity and money! LAURA: It´s not true. But you should think about going to a hotel and ask yourself if you want to continue working here. Johnny leaves the room, looking at them with even greater despise. Laura and Sedal are relieved. They are standing in front of each other, helpless, not knowing what to do, seeing this huge, still chaotic ballroom. LAURA: (CONT'D) I want to know the truth. Sedal looks at her. SEDAL: The truth?! Four days later INT. BALLROOM - NIGHT In the evening the final dress rehearsal of the Cabaret takes place. Some friends and family are invited to watch their performance. Laura is dancing a modern, Egyptian belly dance. Her way to dance is very eccentric, in a kind of avant garde style but traditional in the way, how she uses the sabre. A cone of light is following her. Laura remarks the indistinct faces, who stare at her full of expectations. Through her passion and erotism she electrifies any of the spectators fast and carries them away into a foreign world. But where is Sedal? Suddenly she remarks the eyes of her father, who looks at her with despise. She, the most exquisite belly dancer, is cutting the light with her sabre, as perfect, as anybody could do, but still suddenly she is stumbling and falling onto the floor. She looks, but Johnny is away. Laura is lying on the stage, paralyzed. Neco jumps onto the floor and performs another music hall song in the twenties: "Do you want to become rich!" by Otto Reutter. Applause, he is singing the songs of the twenties as good as Johnny Godsome! EXT. STREETS IN BERLIN-WEDDING - NIGHT Close to the Café Istanbul Sedal is chased by the three body-guards through the streets of Wedding. Despair is on his face. He just don´t know how to escape? Some hours later EXT. BALLROOM/ COURT - NIGHT Full of sweat and panicked Sedal arrives in the court of the ball-room. He seems to feel save. The three bodyguards must stop in the street, because two neighbors are standing in the street at the entry. Suddenly Sedals smells gasoline. Johnny comes out of the shadow with a lighted match. SEDAL: You are the reason... Johnny has a slight smile in his face. There is a madness in his eyes you rarely see, because he knows how to hide. JOHNNY: I knew, you would come back. SEDAL: Don´t do it. Neither for the kids nor for your daughter. JOHNNY: I think I am doing good to them. SEDAL: You have no right in playing God. JOHNNY: God is in everybody! Johnny is smiling and lets the match fall. Immediately the fire starts taking space in the court. The old lady and the old man are watching out of the window into the backyard and call the police immediately. Anton is running out of the ballroom towards Sedal and Johnny, who are fighting with knives. ANTON: Don´t make this mistake which will change everything for ever. Johnny is not reacting to him. ANTON: (CONT'D) Do you have the least respect for us? Or... our friend-ship is finished. Johnny is looking with disdain to him. Anton is deeply hurt. Then Laura comes down onto the court and sees them fighting. Johnny is better in fighting with a knife than Sedal. Laura is shouting and crying. LAURA: Stop, I do whatever you want. JOHNNY: Liar. You always did what you want. LAURA: You are worse. Do you think, your wife would have appreciated what you are doing now. JOHNNY: Your mother is dead and will never come back. Laura stares at him. The fight between Johnny and Sedal is getting heavily. While people try to stop the fire. For a moment Sedal looks at Laura full of love, he didn´t see her for a long time and regrets, when Johnny gets him. Sedal looses his knife and falls hurt on the floor. Johnny puts his knife on the throat of Sedal. Everybody is shocked. Sedal is finished. Laura succeeds in getting Sedals knife, but then they hear the sirens of the police and the fire-men. EXT. BALLROOM/ STREET - NIGHT Police cars and fire-men are arriving and stop at the entry of the court. The fire-men start to extinguish the fire, while the police arrests Johnny and Sedal. They are both revolting. JOHNNY: Don´t you see, that this Turkish drug dealer has set the fire. Sedal gets outrageous, but he is in the strong hands of two police-men. SEDAL: And you want to be respectable singer! You´re nothing! Johnny looks at him and smiles. JOHNNY: You are little piece of shit. The police-men are getting the two men into their cars and drive them away. Some times later INT. HYATT HOTEL/ PRESIDENT SUITE - NIGHT Laura is coming into the luxurary suite of her father for the first time. She feels the knife of Sedal in her pocket.
Slowly she moves around, going to the windows with an overwhelming view over Berlin with the skyscrapers of Potsdamer place, the Brandenburg gate, the government of Berlin. Johnny wants to come closer to her, but she avoids him. JOHNNY: I promise, I will change. LAURA: You will change to what!? JOHNNY: I will take responsibility and make good for everything I have done. LAURA: What do you mean this time?! You will burn the parliament for a change? JOHNNY: I didn´t want to burn the youth center, it just came over me. LAURA: Oh... "It just came over me..." that I tried to kill 30 people. It was fun! Johnny stares at her. JOHNNY: There was no other way to get you away from Sedal and this city. LAURA: That´s the reason why you destroyed the hope of 30 people, their families and more!? JOHNNY: I hate this country, I hate this city, I hate the narrow mindedness of the people... LAURA: You hate yourself, you hate my mother and still blame her for your own actions. JOHNNY: No. LAURA: Confront yourself finally with your lies and become an adult. JOHNNY: Please have some compassion. LAURA: Compassion!? What would have happened to the parents of the kids, finding the bodies of Sema, Neco, Yusuf... burned for the sake of an ego-maniac father!? Johnny looks into the eyes of her daughter. JOHNNY: Forgive me. LAURA: Then go to their parents and ask for forgiveness, but even this you would never dare! Tears want to come up in the eyes of Johnny. JOHNNY: I never wanted to come back, but then you asked me... Being here, I started to discover my life. LAURA: You were always running away from your past and now you blame me. JOHNNY: I was overwhelmed. LAURA: I was overwhelmed, too..., by the fact, that you didn´t want anybodies good. Johnny stares at her. LAURA: (CONT'D) I gave you all my love as a girl. I even defended you towards my mother. You were my ideal. Laura tries to suppress her tears. She looks at her father, who finds his charming posture again. JOHNNY: Come with me. LAURA: You will never make anything good. Laura is watching into his eyes. LAURA: (CONT'D) Everything I was longing for, is gone forever. A moment of silence. LAURA: (CONT'D) Why do I still love you...? Laura watches him and feels the knife of Sedal in the pocket of her jacket... JOHNNY: You can never tear your emotions out of your heart!? LAURA: Will you give me the freedom of Sedal back in exchange? Johnny smiles tenderly and holds his hand towards her. Slowly she goes towards her father, still watching deep into his eyes. But now her look is getting more seductive and catching. Standing in front of him, her hand starts to touch tenderly his chest, going down slowly towards his pants, into his pants. Laura keeps looking into the eyes of her father. They start to kiss. Johnny relieves and smiles...