Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert Read Online Free PDF

downtown Pittsburgh. Take the underpass. When you get to downtown Pittsburgh, ask for directions there."
    "How wide are we of the mark?" Mitchum said.
    "Buster," the man said, "you're thirty-eight or forty miles away from where you should be."
    "Holy shit," Mitchum said.
    "I'm telling you," the man said, "they shut the workhouse down back here six, seven months ago. You won't find anybody there."
    "Thanks just the same," Mitchum said.
    Tim drove back up to the expressway overpass and came down pointed toward Pittsburgh. "We should have taken Route 8," he said.
    "Sorry about that," Mitchum said. "There's the road to Monroeville. Ohio's around here somewhere."
    "Nice countryside," Tim said. "You ought to buy it and build yourself a ranch."
    "I could be the biggest rancher in Pittsburgh," Mitchum said. "Get up in the morning and eat ham and eggs in my embroidered pajamas. Some girl broke into the motel; did you hear about that? With a pair of embroidered PJs?"
    "Embroidered?"
    "A great big red heart right over the rosette area," Mitchum said. "I've got an idea. Maybe we should hire a cab and have it lead us to the Allegheny County Workhouse."
    "I don't even think we're in Allegheny County," Tim said.
    Mitchum hummed "Seventy-six Trombones" under his breath and filled his pipe again.
    This is your first picture since Ryan's Daughter, right? I asked him. The picture is Going Home, and Mitchum plays a man who murdered his wife years ago, gets out of prison and is confronted by his son.
    "There's a funny thing about that," Mitchum said. "At the same time I was reading this script, I was also reading a script about a jazz musician in San Francisco.

    "So I ask myself, do I want to play a jazz musician in San Francisco, or do I want to go out on location in some god-forsaken corner of McKeesport, Pa., and live in a motel for two months? No way. No way. So these two guys come in, and we have a drink or two, and I sign the contract. On their way out, I say I'll see them in San Francisco. I thought they looked a little funny. Do you know what I did? I signed up for the wrong fucking movie!"
    "Here's Route 8 right now," Tim said.
    "That's Exit 8, not Route 8," Mitchum said.
    "We're going to be real late," Tim said. "Real late."
    "They can rehearse," Mitchum said. "They can practice falling off stairs, tripping over lights, and shouting at each other in the middle of a take."
    The car was back in the tunnel again now, headed the other way. Tim came down through a series of cloverleafs and found himself back on Route 79, headed for the airport.
    "I'm lost," he said. "Baby, I am lost."
    In desperation, he made a U-turn across six lanes of traffic and found himself on an up-ramp going in the opposite direction with a cop walking slowly across the street toward him.
    Mitchum rolled down his window. "Roll down your window," he told Tim. "Let's get a breeze in here." He shouted to the cop: "Hey, chief! We're lost! We been forty miles out in the country, and here we are headed right back the same way again."
    "`What are you doing making a U-turn against all that traffic?" the cop said. "You could go to jail for that."
    "Hell, chief," Mitchum said, "that's where we're trying to go. We been looking for the Allegheny County Workhouse for the last two hours."
    "They closed that down back here six months ago," the policeman said.
    "We're shooting a movie out there," Mitchum said.
    "Hey, you're Robert Mitchum, aren't you?" the cop said.
    Mitchum pulled his dark glasses down on his nose so the cop could see more of his face and said: "We are so lost."
    "I tell you what you do, Bob," the cop said. "You take this underpass and follow the road that curves off on your left before you get to the bridge."

    "Thanks, chief," Mitchum said.
    Tim drove onto the underpass, followed the road that curved off on the left before he got to the bridge and groaned.
    "We're back on Route 79 heading for the airport," he said.
    "Jesus Christ," Mitchum said. "Screw that cop.