Floating like a dream

Tony Kirby: [in the car on the way to the opera] I was just thinking about that family of yours. Living with them must be like living in a world of Walt Disney. Everybody does just as he pleases, doesn't he?

Alice Sycamore: Yes. Grandpa started it. He just suddenly left business one day. He started up in the elevator and turned around and came right down again and never went back. He could've been a rich man, but said he wasn't having any fun.

Tony Kirby: Oh that's wonderful.

Alice Sycamore: Then he started collecting stamps, because that's what he liked best. You know, he gets paid just to appraise collections. He's an expert.

Tony Kirby: That's marvelous.

Alice Sycamore: And my dad; he, he makes fireworks because, well, because he never grew up I guess. And mother, do you know why mother writes plays?

Tony Kirby: Well, she probably likes literature and good books and...

Alice Sycamore: [chuckles] Huh, nope. Because eight years ago a typewriter was delivered to the house by mistake.

Tony Kirby: Oh, no, but eh... If it'd been a plow, she'd have taken up farming, huh?

Alice Sycamore: I'm sure of it, if she'd liked it.

[they smile and chuckle as the scene fades out]

Tony Kirby: I remember in college another guy and I had an idea to... mind if I talk about myself?

Alice Sycamore: [smiles] If you don't, I will.

Tony Kirby: Well, this other guy and I had this idea.

[picks up a blade of grass and observes it while talking]

Tony Kirby: We, we wanted to find out what made the grass grow green.

[Alice smirks]

Tony Kirby: Well that sounds silly and everything, but it's the biggest research problem in the world today, and I'll tell you why: because, there's a tiny little engine in the green of this grass and in the green of the trees that has the mysterious gift of being able to take energy from the rays of the sun and store it up. You see that that's how the heat and power in coal and oil and wood is stored up. Well, we thought if, if we could find the secret of all those millions of little engines in this green stuff, we could, we could make big ones! And then we could take all the power we could ever need right from the sun's rays. You see?

Alice Sycamore: Well that's wonderful, I never knew that.

Tony Kirby: Yeah, yeah. We worked on it and we worked and... day and night; we got so excited about it we forgot to sleep. If, if we'd make just one little discovery, well we'd just walk on air for days.

Alice Sycamore: And, then what?

Tony Kirby: [starts to look disheartened] Well, then we left school... now he's selling automobiles, and I'm in some strange thing called banking. I saw him a couple weeks ago. Poor guy - Bob Smith's his name - got all excited again and wanted to talk about anything else.

Alice Sycamore: And?

Tony Kirby: Well, he's married; wife just had a baby. He didn't think it was fair to gamble with the future. Anyway, that's his excuse for lack of courage.

[acknowledges Alice's forlorn expression]

Tony Kirby: Yeah, it's sad. And what's my excuse, huh? Well, the Kirby's have been bankers for nine-thousand years, or something. That line just can't be broken, and that's been pounded into my head until I've had softening of the brain.

[tosses down the blade of grass]

Tony Kirby: That's my excuse.

Alice Sycamore: Tony that's kind of silly, you're pretty young to... besides I resent what you said about your brain - I think it's beautiful.

Tony Kirby: You do, huh?

Alice Sycamore: Mmhmm.