Plot
An insecure, unsuccessful gangster named Jackie Rhoades waits in a cheap, dirty hotel room for his boss, George. George orders Jackie to shoot a barkeeper, or else he will kill Jackie on his return. George then exits, leaving Jackie wrestling with his conscience. Terrified and frustrated, he starts talking to his reflection in the mirror. He puts a cigarette in his lips but finds no match.
A puff of smoke comes out from the other side of the mirror, and he sees a different version of himself in the reflection: a strong, self-assured, confident Jackie Rhoades. Jackie looks into the mirror and asks, "Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me?" Jackie and his reflection enter a lengthy argument about how badly his life has turned out as a result of his listening to others and never himself. Jackie stubbornly resists the alternate Jackie's request to take over, and tries to flee, but he sees more mirrors in the hallway, the closet and the bathroom, and his reflection continues to argue with him out of each one. Finally, Jackie backs away in terror from the doppelganger he cannot escape. Jackie's double goes closer and closer to the real Jackie, and the screen goes black.
George returns, furious that Jackie has not done his job. "Whattaya gotta say for yourself, Crumb?", he sneers. Jackie turns around, and responds confidently, "I resign! You can have your gun back plus the following." He then kicks and punches a surprised George, throwing him out of the room along with his gun. Ringing the room clerk to check out, he refers to himself as "Jackie—JOHN Rhoades." He then tells the nervous Jackie, now the one on the other side of the mirror, that they're going to make something of their life.
Read more about this topic: Nervous Man In A Four Dollar Room
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)