
            Set in an undeterminate year of the 1940s, Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) is a nine year-old boy living in the small town of Hohman, Indiana. His older self (voice of Jean Shepherd) narrates his experiences and thoughts through the short weeks before Christmas. As he, a few friends, and his younger brother Randy (Ian Petrella) look into the display window of a local store, Ralphie has his eyes set on the only item he wants for Christmas; an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle, with a compass in the stock and "this thing which tells time" (a sundial).Knowing full well that he could never request this item openly to his parents, Ralphie sneaks advertisements for the gun into his parents' magazines the next morning. At the breakfast table, he fails to bring up the subject in casual conversation, and with less subtlety than was intended. He then accidentally lets slip his desire to his mother (Melinda Dillon) who immediately rejects the idea with the dreaded phrase: "you'll shoot your eye out."Disappointed, Ralphie enjoys a reverie about how he alone, armed with his gun, stands between his family and a gang of stripe-shirted ruffians in a Western-style standoff. Meanwhile his grouchy father (Darren McGavin) is forced to battle the temperamental house furnace in the basement amid a slur of inaudible curses.While walking through the frozen, snow-covered neighborhood on his way to school, Ralphie meets up his two friends, Flick (Scott Schwartz) and Schwartz (R.D. Robb), while Randy lags behind, heavily bundled under a thick, wool snow jumper that leaves his arms sticking straight out. Before class, Flick and Schwartz argue over what would happen should someone stick their tongue to a frozen flag pole, engaging in a delicate nuance of phrase during which Schwartz dares Flick to stick his tongue to the pole. Upon the dreaded triple-dog-dare, Flick puts his tongue to the pole to find it stuck tight. He starts screaming but the others run into school as the bell rings. Their teacher, Miss Shields (Tedde Moore), notices Flick's absence and, when she sees him outside, calls the fire department and local police and tries to comfort Flick. As the students watch with excitement, Ralphie feels a pang of guilt. Still, when Flick is escorted to his desk, a bandage around his tongue, and Miss Shields gives a brief speech on how whoever put Flick up to sticking his tongue to the pole should atone for their misdeed. But Ralphie explains that kids know better not to get caught. Miss Shields then gives them an assignment; to write a theme about what they want for Christmas. Ralphie sees this as an opportunity to write about the Red Ryder gun, hoping that his teacher will sympathize with him and secure a little reprieve with her authority as an adult.On the way home, Ralphie, Flick, Schwartz, and Randy are confronted by a local bully named Scut Farkus (Zack Ward) and his toadie Grover Dill (Yano Anaya). Poor Schwartz is subjected to a painful hammerlock before they all run away, screaming shrilly, while Randy lags behind unable to keep up wearing his thick winter clothing.Ralphie makes it home and finishes his theme just as his father comes home, shouting excitedly, before being surrounded by the neighbor's dogs. Ralphie watches from his window above and comments how his neighbors, the Bumpuses, owned dozens of bloodhounds that ignored everyone else on earth except for the Old Man. Mr. Parker exclaims that he won a grand prize in a local magazine sweepstakes, showing his wife the telegram that says it will be delivered that night.During dinner that night, Randy displays his typical dissent for food and refuses to eat until his mother playfully asks him how pigs eat. Randy dives into his food face first, laughing hysterically, while Mr. Parker and Ralphie watch with mild disgust. Then, the doorbell rings and everyone immediately stops. They run to the door where Mr. Parker allows the delivery men to wheel in a large box and opens it with fervor to reveal a lamp that's designed to look like a woman's leg, complete with stocking, high heel shoe, and a shade that looks like a skirt. While Mr. Parker gushes over it, Ralphie's mother is clearly uncomfortable, especially when her husband tells her to display it in the front window for the entire neighborhood to see. Only one thing draws Ralphie and his brother away from the glow of electric sex gleaming in the window, and thats their favorite radio program; Little Orphan Annie.The next day at school, Ralphie hands in his theme and has a momentary daydream where his paper is given the best grade in class before being brought out of it by Miss Shields. After school, he and his friends are once again chased through the alley by Scut and Grover.Upon arriving home, he checks the mail to see that his long awaited package from the Little Orphan Annie Secret Society with his secret message decoder pin has arrived. He listens to the encrypted message on the radio that night and rushes up to the bathroom to decode it, only to realize that the secret message is nothing but an advertisement for Ovaltine. Wiser, but nonetheless disappointed, Ralphie casually swears under his breath.Later that night, the furnace blows black smoke into the kitchen again and the Old Man rushes down to do battle. Mrs. Parker appears complacent as she strolls into the living room with a watering can before a loud crash is heard. Ralphie watches as his father rushes up the stairs and finds his wife holding his broken lamp. She admits it was an accident before shouting, after Mr. Parker claims she was jealous that he won it, that it was the ugliest lamp she's ever seen. Mr. Parker attempts to fix the lamp but it quickly falls apart, much to his wife's amusement. He musters all the dignity he can as he takes the remains to the back yard and buries them. At school, the students bring in apples as small gifts for Miss Shields before Christmas. Ralphie gives her a large fruit basket, hoping that it will help sway her final decision on his paper.That evening, the family goes out to pick a Christmas tree. On the way home, the car blows a tire and Mr. Parker goes outside to fix it. When his mother encourages him to help his father, Ralphie is only happy to do so, but when his father accidentally knocks the hubcap that Ralphie is using to hold the tire bolts out of his hands, Ralphie utters the big one that he heard his father say in private over and over again. Ralphie says: "oh, fudge!" (Actually the F-dash-dash-dash word).At home, his mother puts a bar of soap in his mouth, one that he dislikes in taste above all others he's had the opportunity to sample. His mother asks where hes heard that word and, although Ralphie admits to us that his old man used the word as fluently as an artist would use paint, he chickens out and blurts out his friend Schwartz's name. When Mrs. Parker calls Schwartz's mother and tells her, we hear her screaming maniacally and giving Schwartz a sound beating.Sent to bed early, Ralphie cries to himself and fantasizes about visiting his parents years into the future to reveal that all the soap sessions his mother gave him resulted in premature blindness, causing his parents to moan and grieve over their wrongdoing.At school, Ralphie is handed his theme back from Miss Shields. He looks in horror at the large C+ stamped across the top with the phrase "you'll shoot your eye out". He imagines his teacher clad in a witch's outfit, laughing at him next to his harlequin mother who must have surely gotten to her. Ralphie spends the rest of the day in class feeling depressed and hopeless that he'll never get the Ryder BB gun.On the way home, Ralphie walks alone and is suddenly hit in the face with a snowball. He takes his glasses off and sees Scut Farkus and Grover Dill approach him. Ralphie tears up until Scut starts to mock him and laugh, something that causes Ralphie, in all his disappointment and anguish, to snap and charge angrily at Scut, tackling him to the ground and beating him. Grover runs off as the neighborhood kids cheer Ralphie on. Randy picks up his discarded glasses and goes to get their mother who arrives just as Ralphie is finishing a rant of slurred curses. She gets a distraught Ralphie off of Scut and helps him walk home. Scut is left to pick himself up with a bloodied nose. Ralphie is inconsolable by the time he gets home, though his mother tries to calm him and puts him to bed until dinner. Meanwhile, Randy hides himself under the kitchen sink, crying that "Daddy's gonna kill Ralphie". When Mr. Parker does come home, Ralphie goes downstairs, fearing the worst and knowing full well the mix of bad words he'd said during the fight. However, his mother is sympathetic and downplays the fight to Mr. Parker, giving a grateful Ralphie a reprieve. As Ralphie goes to sleep that night, the "Scut Farkus Affair" behind him, he decides the best way to receive his BB gun is to ask Santa himself.The next night, (Christmas Eve) the family goes downtown to watch the Christmas parade. Ralphie is impatient and keeps asking to leave early so that they can see Santa Claus. As soon as Santa goes by in his float, his parents concede and take him and Randy to the department store where Santa (Jeff Gillen) sits atop a frosty mountain, a long line of kids on one side and a slide going down on the other. Ralphie's parents let him take Randy while they go off on their own. Stuck at the end of a very long line, and with a Santa enthusiast nicknamed Goggles (David Edward) to awkwardly content with, Ralphie can only wonder if he'll make it to see Santa before closing time. When they finally make it to the top, Goggles sits on Santa's lap and immediately starts screaming before being put on the slide. Randy follows suit and Ralphie is escorted by an irritable helper elf (Patty Johnson) to sit on Santa's lap. His perspective, as he's swung around, shows clearly why most kids are afraid of Santa. In shock himself by Santa's intimindating face, Ralphie is unable to tell Santa exactly what he wants. Santa suggests a football to which Ralphie numbly agrees. He comes to his senses just as he's about to go down the slide and stops himself, struggling back to the top where he blurts out what he really wants. He gives his best smile, but Santa merely repeats what Ralphie fears, "you'll shoot your eye out, kid" before putting his boot to Ralphie's forehead and pushing him down the slide. Ralphie's parents collect him and Randy at the bottom and take them home where they decorate the tree (a task that results in blowing a dangerously packed outlet). The boys are then ushered quickly up the stairs to bed.The next morning, Ralphie wakes up to see that fresh snow has fallen overnight and goes downstairs eagerly with his brother, who claims that everything in sight is his. Their parents follow suit and presents are unwrapped with frantic excitement (except for socks). When all is said and done, Randy lies sleeping amid the wrappings with his toy zeppelin as Ralphie sits on the couch with his parents. His father asks if he got everything he wanted that year before pointing out a mysterious package behind the desk. Ralphie goes to unwrap it and finds what he thought he'd never get; the Red Ryder BB gun. His father chuckles as he fills it with BB pellets and asks to try it out. Mr. Parker explains to his wife that he had one when he was eight years old, though she still worries Ralphie will hurt himself. Ralphie runs outside and sets up his metal target board while his father drools over the Christmas turkey his mother is making.Ralphie takes aim, fires, and falls back; the pellet having bounced off the target and hitting him on the cheek, knocking his glasses off. Fearful for a second that he actually did shoot his eye out, the half-blind Ralphie collects himself and looks for his glasses but accidentally steps on them, breaking them. Despondent, he tries to think of a way to explain the accident to his mother and decides that an icicle falling off the garage would have to work. He fakes some tears and goes to his mother. She takes him to the bathroom upstairs to wash his face off (though Ralphie is ecstatic that his plan worked) and gives him an old pair of glasses to use.Meanwhile, the Bumpuses' street bloodhounds get into the house and run rampant through the kitchen, eating all of the turkey. Mr. Parker chases the dogs out, yelling at the top of his lungs, before announcing to everyone that they're going out to eat. They go to a Chinese restaurant where the family listens to the waiters' attempts to sing carols before the main course is brought out, with its head still intact. The owner (John Wong) casually takes out a butcher knife and chops the head off while the family claps and begin to eat.That night, Ralphie sleeps with his Red Ryder held close, the best Christmas gift he ever received, dreaming of hunting ducks and making spectacular shots.
    

A Christmas Story


            In what appers to be the Sonoran Desert; in or near Mexico, a cartographer named David Laughlin (Bob Balaban) is introduced to a French-speaking man named Claude Lacombe (renowned French director François Truffaut). Though David has been hired as Mr Lacombe's interpreter, he explains that he is actually a cartographer (a mapmaker). The two men along with a crew soon find a strange sight: a circular ring of airplanes in brand-new condition, with fuel still in the tank. The planes are identified as belonging to 'Flight 19,' a group of US Naval planes that were reported missing off the coast of Florida in 1945. The men soon after find a local who reported the planes. David and Claude find the man has red sunburned marks on the side of his face. Through an interpreter, the man claims the sun came out that evening, and talked to him.In an air traffic control tower in the US, some of the air traffic controllers receive reports of unidentified aircraft flying dangerously an commercial flight. When the tower requests that the pilots wish to report a 'UFO (unidentified flying object),' both planes decline, primarily because they're so confounded, they feel they wouldn't know what to report.In Muncie, Indiana, a strange power outage blackens the area. This incident affects two different families of people. The first is Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon). When she wakes in the middle of the night and finds her son Barry (Cary Guffey) missing, she wanders off into the countryside to find him.The second person is Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss). Roy gets a call from the power company he works for, and goes out to answer a service call. However, stopping at a railroad crossing, a number of metal objects in the vicinity (including Roy's truck) begin to act strangely. A strange craft appears overhead, and flashes bright lights at Roy before flying off. Once the craft has disappeared, Roy races off, almost hitting Barry on a hillside road.As Jillian appears, several strangely-lit craft fly by, along with a bright red light at the tail end. Entranced by the strange objects, Roy gets back in his truck and gives chase, along with several local police cars, all of them passing through a toll booth at the border of Ohio. The strange objects fly off over the edge of a cliff, and as Roy and the officers watch, ascend into some thundering storm clouds overhead, as the darkened city underneath them regains power.Roy returns to his family eager to tell of what he saw, but his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) refuses to acknowledge her husband's flights of fancy. Even though Roy has red sunburns from being flashed by the craft he saw, she still doesn't 'believe.'Some time afterward, Roy meets up with Jillian and Barry, and Jillian relates how there seems to be a melody and an image of a mountain she cannot get out of her mind. Roy soon finds himself obsessing over the same mountain image, carving it in mashed potatoes as well as sculpting it out of putty or shaving cream.Meanwhile, Bob and Claude have gone around the world and observed other strange phenomenon: A group of people in India have been chanting a strange 5-note sequence that they claim came from the sky. A missing ship named the Coat Appoxi has appeared in another desert region. Information gleaned from the musical notation sequence and a message indicates that there appears to be plans for extraterrestrial life to descend to Earth. The military and NASA coordinate a plan to create a false scare in the landing region, northwestern Wyoming, that a toxic spill will make the area dangerous.Back in Muncie, Jillian is shocked one evening when the same lights as before descend towards her home, and soon after abduct her son Barry. Still in a state of shock, Jillian takes her story to the news outlets.Shortly thereafter, a person from the US Government sits down for a town hall chat with several locals in attendance (including Roy and his family), denying that there are UFO's, or that the government is covering up any such incidents.Roy is slowly losing his mind over the strange images in his head. One morning he begins to throw dirt, plants, bricks and chicken fencing into the kitchen window. His behavior finally drives Ronnie to take their kids and leave. After they have left, Roy constructs an enormous miniature of a flat-topped mountain in his family's living room. After an argument with his wife on the phone, he sees a news report on the television, showing Devil's Tower...the same structure he's been obsessed with.Roy heads off towards Devil's Tower, only to encounter everyone leaving in the wake of a (fake) chemical spill warning. Roy also finds Jillian there, and the two attempt to get to Devil's Tower, but are captured by some military men.Roy and Jillian are separated, with Roy brought before Bob and Claude. The two listen to Roy's story...a story that sounds similar to several other people who have been drawn to the mountainous structure nearby. The two make an impassioned plea to the Military Director at the base, but he refuses to believe their 'theory' that these people were 'invited,' and attempts to fly the civilians out.Jillian and Roy manage to escape with another man named Larry, making it to the other side of the mountain before night settles in. The Army sprays the area around the mountain with a sedative dust, putting Larry to sleep. Roy and Jillian evade the choppers, finding an enormous landing strip constructed on the east side of the mountain. The two secretly make their way down as several smaller lit ships appear, before a giant 'mother ship' hovers down. The scientists in the compound attempt to communicate with the aliens, first with the smaller ships and then with a much larger "mother ship" which dwarfs the mountain itself. After a few moments of musical exchange, the bottom of the ship opens and dozens of people abducted by the aliens are returned, seemingly unharmed and having not aged a day. Among them his Jillian's son. A few minutes later, the bottom of the ship opens again and the aliens reveal themselves to the scientists: they are humanoid in appearance, but very small, no larger than 3 feet, with large eyes. When Claude sees that Roy has witnessed the exchange, he asks if Roy would be willing to join the dozen people that have been selected to leave with the aliens. Roy willingly accepts. When they line up to enter the ship, one of the aliens walks down the line of volunteers and chooses Roy. (In a deleted scene, Roy enters the ship and sees a cavernous room with 1000s of the aliens and vegetation.) In a final exchange, one of the aliens gives the hand salute interpretation of the 5 note musical tone to Claude himself, who smiles. After Roy and several others board the ship, it takes off for distant space.Done by KrystelClaire:Strange events are happening all over the world: a UFO is said to have appeared in the Mojave desert in New Mexico, a long-ago lost ship appears in the middle of the Ghobi desert, many Indian people start to chant a tune they have heard coming from "above", and some airplanes have sights of flying saucers. A team of people are investigating all these phenomena, specially Claude Lacombe (renown French director François Truffaut) and his interpreter Jean Claude (Philip Dodds)In the USA, Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is trying to find his way at night. He's close to home, but is looking for the place he has to go to in a map. He is an electric company technician who has to solve a problem with an electrical blackout. While waiting at a railroad crossing, everything seems to go crazy around him -- his flashlight won't work, the radio in his truck goes haywire, and some mailboxes along the road open themselves. Suddenly, a bright light lands on the truck. Looking out of the window, he is flashed several times by what seems to be a UFO. Roy then attempts to drive after the three small flying saucers and a small red light.Mainwhile, Barry Guiler (Cary Guffey), a little boy of around 6, wakes up because all his toys start playing themselves and making noise in the middle of the night. He goes out of home on his own. He lives in a cheap home nearby a forest. Dressed in his pyjamas, he goes out. A toy police car wakes up his mother Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) as well. From her window, she calls out for him, but Barry enters the wood anyway, laughing alone. Jillian runs after him. When she catches up with him, Barry is standing up in the middle of a curvy town road. He seems stunned, dazed. Jillian arrives just in time to save him from being run over by Roy.The UFOs disappear among cloudy and stormy weather. Many people have seen them, and they wait all through the night in the same curve of the same road for the UFOs to appear again, hoping for a friendly sign. Roy, Barry and Jillian are among those people.During daylight, they all try to go on with their lives. However, it seems that they can't cope. Barry repeats a lullaby over and over again. Jillian tries to draw a mountain she has never seen, and Roy seems to have gone crazy. He makes all kinds of strange attemps to create a sculpture of the same mountain than Jillian. First with shaving foam, secondly with mashed potatoes. The three children of the couple, Brad, Sylvia and Toby (Shawn Bishop, Adrienne Campbell and Justin Dreyfuss), become silent and frightened as well, after a terrible row with plenty of shouting on everybody's part. As a higher level of Roy's brand-new eccentric behaviour, he starts pulling out some small trees from his home garden in a frenzy, and also he steals his neighbour's duck pond metal rail in plain daylight. His wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) is getting more and more frightened because of her husband's hectic behaviour. She cannot take it anymore and leaves him. She takes her children with her, while neighbours stop doing their everyday chores to look in amazement at the final row of the couple.Now Roy can create his mountain sculpture without being disturbed. He makes it so huge that it occupies all the kitchen. While he is talking on the phone, he finally realises what he is so obsessed about. The famous anchorman Howard K. Smith (himself) is announcing on TV that Devil's Peak is being evacuated, because there is a deadly gas leaked in the atmosphere. They show some images of the place, so Roy decides to make the journey there immediately.At the same time, Barry has disappeared. He had been kidnapped by the supposed energy of a UFO. Jillian had tried to prevent it, closing all doors, windows, and even the chimney place, but it is useles. Barry feels attracted by the lights and he goes into them through the dog trap in the main door. Newspapers will laugh about Jillian's evidence before the police, claiming that she alleges that "some clouds kidnapped my son", and treat her like a demented person.The following day, Roy is driving in the opposite direction. He arrives at the nearest train station to the mountain, where hundreds of people are boarding a train in panic, climbing into the wagons through the windows and even getting on top of some coaches. The military police are watching all the operation. There, Roy finds Jillian, who wants to go to the same place than him. They get out of the station quietly helped by the chaos. Jillian is carrying two pigeons in a small cage, in the hope that, if there is any poisonous substances in the air, the birds will die before she does so. They drive together across fields and empty roads with many cows and horses dead along the way. They get close to their destination, but they are stopped by the miliatry police and the two French investigators dressed in white, astronaut-like outfits and gas masks. One of them forces Roy and Jillian to get into a white van, while taking the cage with the two birds, now completely dead. Jillian, Roy and another man jump off from the helicopter which was going to take them out of the area. They had taken off their masks, proving that there is no real danger in breathing the alledgedly deadly air. The three runaways make it to the mountain, being followed by armed soldiers and several helicopters. The third man gets gassed out and passes out so the two main characters are the only ones who make it to the other side of the mountain.There, Jillian and Roy find a kind of runway lane surrounded by scientifical devices and cameras by all sides except one. There are people all over the place, some of them armed with heavy weaponry, and the two Frenchmen are also there. Jillian and Roy look at the sudden weather changes hidden behind some mountain rocks. The UFO's appear, altogether with the smaller red light. They fly so close to them that they could have almost touched them.The UFO's and the official people maintain a kind of dialogue: they play the tune which Barry and the Indian people sang. They use a kind of huge keyboard and a screen with light and colours. Everything is successful. Roy goes down the mountain after having kissed Jillian but she prefers to stay hidden behind a rock. He thinks he is going to be captured by an army officer, but the man is running away, hiding himself on the portable toilet facility, a scene which will be repeated later on Spielberg's Jurassik Park film. The UFOs go away. The French people see Roy, but they let him be.The scientists are going to start to analyse all the materials they have recorded. All of a sudden, the hugest UFO of them all appear, and they all go back to their positions. Again, there is the tuned music conversation, accompained by coloured lights. The music moves faster and faster until it dies out. Everybody is watching, breathless.The UFO is opened. Through the below part of the device, several people (and a dog) who had previously disappeared, walk out of the UFO. They are all healthy and calm. One of the last ones is Barry. Jillian leaves her hiding place and goes running to him, hugging and kissing her son while crying tender tears. Barry does not look traumatized or hurt in any way.The UFO door opens again. First, a long-legged and long-armed creature appears. The next instant, some twenty grey-skinned aliens appear and get out of the UFO. They have got no hair, they are naked, and they are as tall as a child. One of the aliens repeats the hand movements which represent the music tune.Some volunteers, including Roy, decide to go into the UFO with the aliens. No aliens stay on Earth. The spacecraft and their occupants fly away from planet Earth into the million-starred celestial copola.--originally written by KrystelClaire
    

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Bound for Glory


            Headlines in Florida's 'Miami Standard' newspaper reveal that Joseph Diaz, a longshoremen union leader, has been missing for months and is presumed dead, although the police have no leads. Reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field) visits the FBI task force headquarters, but the offices are empty as its members are watching footage of the funeral for bootlegger Tommy Gallagher.In the screening room, Elliot Rosen, head of the task force, points out Tommy's brother, Santos Malderone (Bob Balaban), the head of local organized crime. He also focuses on Tommy's son, Michael Colin Gallagher (Paul Newman), a liquor supplier who is supposedly clean. However, Rosen is suspicious and orders his men, including Bob Waddell (Barry Primus), to work a case against Gallagher.Later, Megan asks Bob why the task force is interested in Gallagher and he warns her to stay away, but Megan reports to her boss, "Mac" McAdam, that the task force must be investigating Gallagher regarding Diaz's disappearance.Rosen agrees to meet Megan but deliberately places Gallagher's file on his desk before her arrival, then leaves the room when she appears. Megan reads the file and writes an article claiming that Gallagher is a suspect in Diaz's disappearance. The newspaper's lawyer vets the article and asks Megan to call Gallagher so they can protect themselves legally; since the paper has no knowledge that the story is false, they are "absent malice" and cannot be sued. When the article is printed, Gallagher demands to know Megan's source, but she refuses to answer and unsuccessfully interrogates Gallagher about Diaz's disappearance.Elsewhere, District Attorney Quinn (Don Hood) questions Rosen about the reason for Gallagher's investigation and Rosen argues that pressure on Gallagher might produce information from his uncle, Santos Malderone. Meanwhile, Gallagher's friend Teresa Perrone (Melinda Dillon), a shy, Catholic school secretary, worries about the article because she was with Gallagher when Diaz disappeared. Gallagher tells her to be honest if questioned, but to refrain from revealing her whereabouts.A day or two later, Megan arranges a meeting with Gallagher, who offers to take her to lunch. Wearing a wire, Megan boards Gallagher's sailboat as the newspaper photographer who is following them tracks down a police helicopter for assistance. Gallagher reveals that he knows Megan is wired and demands information about her sources, but Megan remains uncooperative.Making his case, Gallagher insists that if Megan writes about his guilt, everyone believes her, but if he is proved innocent, the story will be buried in the paper and no one will know the truth. As a police helicopter flies overhead, the lunch ends and Gallagher returns to his warehouse where he finds workers on strike. Gallagher tries to convince the union representative that he was not involved in Diaz's disappearance, but the man does not believe him and insists that longshoremen cannot work there.Later, Gallagher takes Megan to dinner and asks for her consideration, but he soon realizes that Malderone's henchmen are following them. Gallagher meets with his uncle and promises that he will not help the task force.Sometime later, Teresa arranges a meeting with Megan and explains Gallagher's alibi; Teresa was pregnant from her former boyfriend and Gallagher took her to an Atlanta, Georgia, abortionist on the day Diaz disappeared. Although Teresa is a staunch Catholic and begs Megan not to write about the abortion, Megan insists the information will clear Gallagher. When the story makes headlines, Teresa commits suicide.Upset, Megan goes to Gallagher's warehouse but they argue and Gallagher rips Megan's blouse. Before she leaves, Megan admits that Rosen leaked the story. Meanwhile, Rosen meets with Bob and insists that the investigation must continue despite Gallagher's alibi. Elsewhere, Gallagher buys an answering machine and orders a bank check for $3,000, payable to District Attorney Quinn's non-profit political organization. Gallagher then calls Quinn to set up a deal, promising to look into Diaz's disappearance if Quinn makes a public statement clearing his name. Giving Quinn his phone number, Gallagher tells the District Attorney to call when the statement has made front-page news. Later, Gallagher brings a new blouse to Megan's apartment and concedes that it was not easy for her to reveal Rosen's name.Sometime later, Quinn orders Rosen to terminate the investigation and holds a news conference, clearing Gallagher. However, Rosen demands that Bob put both men under surveillance and orders an illegal wire tap on their phones. Megan brings Gallagher a proof of her article that clears his name, and, later, they are photographed as they enter her apartment building.The next morning, Gallagher leaves Megan's building and returns to his warehouse, where he listens to a message from Quinn suggesting that they meet. That day, Gallagher disguises his voice and leaves incriminating messages on his own answering machine about the meeting. Gallagher also orders another check for Quinn's non-profit organization.Meanwhile, Rosen and Bob discover the checks and study transcripts of the calls to conclude that Gallagher is bribing Quinn. When Bob tells Megan the news, she does not believe him, but Bob shows her the checks and photographs, including images of herself with Gallagher, and insists that she cannot print the story.That night, Megan cooks dinner for Gallagher and asks why Quinn made the public statement. Although Gallagher refuses to answer, Megan cannot let the subject drop and Gallagher leaves. Later, Quinn is shocked when Megan asks if he is receiving bribes and denies her claim, but Megan writes a story anyway, announcing that the task force is probing a link between Quinn and Gallagher.U.S. Assistant Attorney General James J. Wells (Wilford Brimley) assembles Gallagher, Megan, the newspaper's lawyer, Quinn, Rosen and Bob for a formal inquiry into the Quinn-Gallagher article. Rosen fails to make his case, as Gallagher claims that he only promised Quinn to look into Diaz's disappearance and argues that he donated money because he supported the organization. When Wells demands to know Megan's sources, she admits that Rosen deliberately leaked the story about Gallagher but she refuses to implicate Bob. Wells realizes that Gallagher set up Quinn and the task force, but sympathizes with Gallagher regarding Teresa's death. Wells dismisses Gallagher, Megan and Bob, but orders Quinn to resign. When Rosen refuses to leave the FBI, Wells fires him.Sometime later in the final scene, Megan stops by Gallagher's boat and learns that he has sold his home to sail North. Defending journalism as an honorable profession, Megan admits that she failed as a reporter but hopes to do better in the future.
    

Absence of Malice


            
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Melinda Dillon

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