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… why, erm … what are you up to, Ferdinand?
    FERDINAND Right now? Actually, I’m collecting signatures.
    Ferdinand produces a single page. Jan reads it. It’s brief.
    JAN Right.
    Jan gives it back and resumes choosing a record.
    JAN (
cont.
) Fugs or Doors?
    FERDINAND What?
    JAN Fugs or Doors?
    FERDINAND I don’t care.
    JAN Right.
    FERDINAND Dubcek was shunted aside still telling us the reforms are on track. He said it again last week. Are you listening?
    JAN Yes.
    FERDINAND And now they’re stalling on the censorship thing just like they stalled on the trade (union thing) …
    A blast of music obliterates Ferdinand. He jumps up and stops the record.
    FERDINAND (
cont.
) What are you doing?
    JAN Listening to the Doors—what are
you
doing?
    FERDINAND Well, forget the Doors for a minute. This concerns you. You’re a journalist.
    JAN I’m a university lecturer. I just write articles.
    FERDINAND That means you’re a journalist.
    JAN Okay, I’m a journalist, but nobody’s censoring me.
    FERDINAND Not up front, and that’ll be next.
    JAN You’re such a defeatist!
    FERDINAND
I’m
a defeatist?
    JAN You can’t face life without a guarantee. So you convince yourself everything’s going to end badly. But look—when the Russians invaded, you would have bet on mass arrests, the government in gaol, everything banned, reformers
    thrown out of their jobs, out of the universities, the whole Soviet thing, with accordion bands playing Beatles songs. I thought the same thing. I came back to save Rock ‘n’ Roll, and my mother actually. But none of it happened. My mum’s okay, and there’s new bands ripping off Hendrix and Jethro Tull on equipment held together with spit. I was in the Music F Club where they had this amateur rock competition. The Plastic People of the Universe played ‘Venus in Furs’ from Velvet Underground, and I knew everything was basically okay.
    FERDINAND What the fuck are you (talking about)—?
    JAN I’m trying to tell you. For once this country found the best in itself. We’ve been done over by big powerful nations for hundreds of years but this time we refused our destiny.
    FERDINAND It’s not destiny, you moron, it’s the neighbours worrying about
their
slaves revolting if we get away with it.
    JAN Yes, and we scared the shit out of them—they thought they’d started World War Three. Because instead of some Czech stooge ready to take over like in Hungary in ’56, all there was was a handful of Stalinists in hiding from a reform movement that refused to roll over. Now they’re looking for the exit, and we’re still in charge of creating socialism with a human face.
    FERDINAND Except for Dubcek, you mean.
    JAN Dubcek’s a nice guy, but basically Cliff Richard—he had to go. Husák’ll keep the hardliners on the B side.
    FERDINAND I’m a bit—I feel a bit (dazed)—Let me tell you about defeatism. Defeatism is turning disaster into a moral victory.
    JAN (
getting angry
) Can’t you function unless you’re losing? Czechoslovakia is now showing the way—a Communist society with proper trade unions, legal system, no censorship—progressive rock …
    FERDINAND They closed down your paper!
    JAN And we protested, and now we’re publishing again.
    FERDINAND With conditions.
    JAN (
dismissively
) That’s only about not being rude to the Russians—Husák’s a realist, keep them off our backs.
    FERDINAND So you won’t sign.
    JAN No.
    Jan restarts the Velvet Underground record on the track ‘Waiting for the Man’. As Ferdinand walks out without a word …
    JAN (
cont.) (shouts
) What you need to do, Ferdinand, is cheer up.
    Blackout and ‘Waiting for the Man’ continuing through amps.
    Smash cut to:
    Exterior. Evening. February 1971.
    A man dressed for February, fur-capped and mufflered into anonymity, carrying