Fat Man and Little Boy
written by Bruce Robinson and Roland Joffé
Schoenfield: He wants to know whether you read the Chicago petition. It means a lot to him.
Oppenheimer: Yes I have.
Schoenfield: And then that’s it? That’s all? Yes I have and then now I wash my hands of it? Now wait a minute, god damn it, Oppenheimer. I got a friend falling apart in there who thinks you’ve got all the answers, because that’s what you let him think, you did. Now do you really know what the Christ is going on in this place, or is the whole thing out of control?
Oppenheimer: If you’re trying to make a particular point here, what is it?
Schoenfield: I have spent the last two years of my life putting up with all your security, and your secrecy, and control, and now I don’t think all that bullshit was to keep what’s going on in this place from the Germans or the Japanese or even the Russians. I think it’s to keep it from ordinary American Jacks and Jills because they may not happen to like what’s going on in this place.
Oppenheimer: Ordinary American people, they don’t want to know what’s going on here. The only thing they want to know is that their sons are coming home alive, and I’m doing everything in my power to see that they do.
Schoenfield: Like Oak Ridge? Where they’re injecting mentally ill and old uncomprehending people with huge doses of plutonium?
Oppenheimer: Look, I don’t know anything about Oak Ridge, but if you want to ask a question about what’s happening here, you ask this. Will it be big enough? Big enough to scare the hell out of all of us and make us stop and think. Big enough to stop all war forever. You want to ask a question, you ask that.
Schoenfield: Look, I’ve seen Oak Ridge, all right? And that place wasn’t built to make one or two bombs; it was built to make thousands of them. Thousands. And pretty soon everybody’s gonna have a bomb. They will. And what are they gonna do with them? Sit around and wait till they go off, until “boom”. And then we got ourselves one world full of Michael Merrimans, dying from the inside out. Is that what you’re looking for? Because that’s the future you’ve made for us. Hey, Oppenheimer!! Oppenheimer, you ought to stop playing God, because you are not good at it and the position is taken.
Kudos and many thanks to Alexander for this monologue, it is very much appreciated.