[from trailer]
Michael Clayton: You are the senior litigating partner of one of the largest, most respected law firms in the world. You are a legend.
Arthur Edens: I'm an accomplice!
Michael Clayton: You're a manic-depressive!
Arthur Edens: I am Shiva, the god of death.
Arthur Edens: Michael, I have great affection for you and you live a very rich and interesting life, but you're a bag man not an attorney. If your intention was to have me committed you should have kept me in Wisconsin where the arrest report, the videotape, eyewitness reports of my inappropriate behavior would have had jurisdictional relevance. I have no criminal record in the
state of New York, and the single determining criterion for involuntary commitment is danger. Is the defendant a danger to himself or to others. You think you got the horses for that? Well good luck and God bless, but I'll tell you this: the last place you want to see me is in court.
Michael Clayton: I'm not the enemy.
Arthur Edens: Then who are you?
Arthur Edens: Yes! Here we are, all together. Is everyone listening? 'Cause this is the moment you've been waiting for, a very special piece of paper, so let's have a big, paranoid, malignant round of applause... for United Northfield Culcitate Internal Research Memorandum #229! June 19th, 1991. "Conclusion: The unanticipated marketing growth for Culcitate by small farms in colder
climates demands IMMEDIATE cost-benefit analysis." Hah. Would you like a little bit of legal advice? NEVER let a scientist use the words "unanticipated" and "immediate" in the same sentence. Okay? Okay. "In-house field studies have indicated small, short-season farms dependent on well water for human consumption are at risk for toxic, particulate concentrations at levels significant enough to
cause serious human tissue damage." Well, this is a long way of saying that you don't even have to leave your house to be killed by our product, we'll pipe it into your kitchen sink. "Culcitate's great market advantage that it is tasteless, colorless, and does not precipitate, has the potential to mask and intensify these potentially lethal exposures." Now, I love this. Not only is this a great
product, it is a superb cancer delivery system. "Chemical modifications of Culcitate product, or the addition of a detector molecule such as an odorant or a colorant, would require a top-down redesign of the Culcitate-manufacturing process. These costs, while assumed to be significant, were not summarized here." Which, loosely translated, means "it's going to cost a fortune to go back on this, and
I'm just an asshole in a lab, so could someone else PLEASE make the decision?" "CLEARLY, the release of these internal research documents would compromise the effective marketing of Culcitate, and MUST be kept within the protective confines of United Northfield's trade secret language." You don't need me... to tell you what that means. Goodbye!
Michael Clayton: Mr. Greer, you left the scene of an accident on a slow week night, six miles from a state police barracks. Believe me. If there's a line, you're right up front.
Mr. Greer: I can get a lawyer any time I want. I don't need you for that. We're not sitting here for forty five minutes for a god damned referral.
Michael
Clayton: I don't know what Walter promised you but...
Mr. Greer: A miracle worker. That's Walter on the phone twenty minutes ago. Direct quote, okay, "Hang tight, I'm sending you a miracle worker."
Michael Clayton: Well he misspoke.
Mr. Greer: About what? That you're the firms fixer? Or that you're any good at it?
[explodes in anger]
Mr. Greer: The guy was RUNNING. In the STREET! You take that, you add the fog, you add the light, you add the... the angle. What the fuck is he doing running in the middle of the street at midnight? You answer me that, huh?
[Mrs. Greer throws a glass across the room, there's a long pause]
Mr. Greer: What if someone had
stolen the car? Huh? Happens all the time.
Michael Clayton: Cops like hit and runs. They work them hard and they clear them fast. Right now there's a DCI unit pulling paint chips off a guard rail. Tomorrow they're going to be looking for the owner of a custom painted hand rubbed Jaguar XJ12. If the guy you hit, if he got a look at the plates? It won't even take that long.
[the phone rings]
Michael Clayton: There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple. The smaller the mess the easier it is for me to clean up.
Mr. Greer: [points to the phone] That's the police isn't it?
Michael Clayton: No. They don't
call.
Karen Crowder: Who's this guy they're sending here? Clayton? I never heard of him.
Maude: Michael Raymond Clayton. Born September 9, 1959 St. Joseph's Hospital, Bronx, New York. Father is NYPD patrolman Raymond Xavier Clayton. Mother, Alice Mary Clayton. Graduates Washingtonville Central High School, Orange County, New York in 1977. Graduates St. Johns
University 1980. Fordham Law, '82. Eighty-two through Eighty-six he's ADA with the Queens District Attorney's office. And 1986 he's with the Joint Manhattan Queens Organized Crime Task Force. And then in 1990 he starts with Kenner Boch and Ledeen.
Karen Crowder: So he's a partner?
Maude: No. He's listed as "special counsel." Says he specializes in
wills and trusts.
Karen Crowder: He goes from criminal prosecution to wills and trusts? He's been there seventeen years and he's not a partner? This is the guy they send? Who is this guy?
Karen Crowder: You don't want the money?
Michael Clayton: Keep the money. You'll need it.
Don Jefferies: Is this fellow bothering you?
Michael Clayton: Am I bothering you?
Don Jefferies: Karen, I've got a board waiting in there. What the hell's going on? Who are you?
Michael Clayton: I'm Shiva, the God of death.
Michael Clayton: What can I tell you? Don't piss off a motivated stripper.
Henry Clayton: What?
Michael Clayton: Your uncle Timmy, and I mean this, on his best day, is never as tough as you. I'm not talking about crying or drugs or anything like that. I'm talking about in his heart. In his heart. Do you understand me? And all this charming bullshit. This Big Tim, Uncle Boss bullshit... and I know you love him and I know why... but
when you see him like that you don't have to worry... because that's not how it's going to be for you. You're not going to be one of these people who goes through life wondering why shit keeps falling out of the sky around them. I know that. I know it. OK?
[Henry nods]
Michael Clayton: I see it every time I look at you. I see it right now. I don't know where you got
it from, but you got it. OK?
Michael Clayton: [phone rings] Hold on...
Arthur Edens: I look up and Marty's standing in my office with a bottle of champagne - he tells me we just hit thirty thousand billable hours on U-North and he wants to celebrate. An hour later, I'm in a whorehouse in Chelsea and two Lithuanian redheads are taking turns sucking on my cock. I'm laying there, I'm trying not to come, I'm trying to make it last, right? So I start
doing the math - thirty thousand hours, what is that? Twenty-four times thirty - seven hundred twenty hours in a month, eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours per year...
Michael Clayton: Arthur...
Arthur Edens: Wait! Because it's YEARS! It's lives! And the numbers are making me dizzy, and now I'm not just trying not to come, I'm trying not to
THINK! But I can't stop. Is that me? Am I just some freak organism that's been put here to eat and sleep and spend my days defending this one horrific chain of carcinogenic molecules? Is this my place?
Michael Clayton: You promised me, Arthur.
Arthur Edens: Is that it, Michael? Is that my grail? Two Lithuanian mouths on my cock? Is that the correct
choice to the multiple choice of me?
Michael Clayton: What if Arthur was onto something?
Marty Bach: What do you mean? Onto what?
Michael Clayton: U North. What if he wasn't crazy, what if he was right?
Marty Bach: Right about what? We're on the wrong side?
Michael Clayton: Wrong side, wrong way. Anything. All of it.
Marty Bach: This is news? This case reeked from day one. Fifteen years in I gotta tell you how we pay the rent?
Michael Clayton: But what would they do, what would they do if he went public?
Marty Bach: What would they do? Are you fucking soft? They're doing it! We don't straighten this settlement out in the next twenty four
hours, they're gonna withhold nine million dollars in fees. Then they're gonna pull out the video of Arthur doing his flashdance in Milwaukee, they're gonna sue us for legal malpractice. Except there won't be anything for them to win, because by then the merger with London will be dead and we'll be selling off the goddamn furniture!
[hands Michael an envelope]
Marty
Bach: That's eighty. We're calling it a bonus. You've got a three year contract, that's your current numbers, that's assuming this all works out.
Henry Clayton: It's really happening.
Arthur Edens: Yeah, It is happening, isn't it? Something larger than themselves and they're not ready, are they to hear it?
Henry Clayton: Yeah. But later they will.