Queen Latifah credited as playing...
Penny Escher
- Penny Escher: And I suppose you smoked all these cigarettes?
- Kay Eiffel: No, they came pre-smoked.
- Penny Escher: Yeah, they said you were funny.
- Kay Eiffel: [Penny goes to answer phone] Don't answer that!
- Penny Escher: Didn't you say this phone never r - ?
- Kay Eiffel: Shh!
- [types another sentence; the phone rings and she runs to answer it]
- Kay Eiffel: Hello?
- Harold Crick: Is this Karen Eiffel?
- Kay Eiffel: Yes.
- Harold Crick: My name is Harold Crick. I believe you're writing a story about me.
- Kay Eiffel: I'm sorry?
- Harold Crick: My name is Harold Crick.
- Kay Eiffel: Is this a joke?
- Harold Crick: No. No, I work for the IRS. My name, Miss Eiffel, is Harold Crick. When I go through the files at work I hear a deep and endless ocean.
- Kay Eiffel: [gasps; drops phone in terror] Oh, G - !
- Harold Crick: Miss Eiffel?
- Penny Escher: [They are in a hospital ward surround by lots of sick and injured people] What are we doing here? I don't even think we're supposed to *be* in here.
- Kay Eiffel: You told me I needed visual stimulation.
- Penny Escher: Yeah, I meant a museum or something.
- Kay Eiffel: I don't *need* a museum. I need the goddamn infirm.
- Penny Escher: [slightly under her breath] You *are* the infirm.
- Penny Escher: Man in tweed?
- Kay Eiffel: There's nothing wrong with him, he just likes looking at sick people.
- Penny Escher: Oddly spoken with disdain.
- Kay Eiffel: ...It came to me.
- Penny Escher: How?
- Kay Eiffel: Well, Penny, like anything worth writing it came inexplicably and without method.
- Kay Eiffel: What's this?
- Penny Escher: It's literature on the nicotine patch.
- Kay Eiffel: I don't need a nicotine patch, Penny. I smoke cigarettes.
- Penny Escher: Well, it may help.
- Kay Eiffel: May help? Help what? Help what, Penny? Help write a novel?
- Penny Escher: May help save your life.
- Kay Eiffel: I'm not in the business of saving lives.
- [spits into tissue to Penny's disgust, and puts cigarette in tissue]
- Kay Eiffel: In fact, just the opposite.
- [wipes water out of eye]
- Penny Escher: I'm Penny Escher. I'm the assistant your publishers hired.
- Kay Eiffel: The spy.
- Penny Escher: The assistant. I provide the same services as a secretary.
- Kay Eiffel: I don't need a secretary.
- Penny Escher: Then I will have to find some other way of occupying my time.
- Kay Eiffel: Like watching me like a vulture in case I get distracted, because they, the publishers, think I have writer's block, isn't that right?
- Penny Escher: Do you have writer's block?
- [Kay doesn't answer]
- Penny Escher: [sitting on bench under an umbrella] May I ask what we're doing out here?
- Kay Eiffel: [sitting next to Penny without an umbrella] We're imagining car wrecks.
- Penny Escher: I see. And we can't imagine car wrecks inside?
- Kay Eiffel: No. Did you know that 41 percent of accidents occur in times of inclement weather?
- Penny Escher: So do 90 percent of pneumonia cases.
- Kay Eiffel: Really? Pneumonia. That's an interesting way to die. But how would Harold catch pneumonia?
- Penny Escher: Have you written anything new today?
- Kay Eiffel: No.
- Penny Escher: Did you read the poems I suggested, or make a list of words, buy new typing paper, anything?
- Kay Eiffel: No, none of it.
- Penny Escher: Sitting in the rain won't write books.