Voila! Finally, the Leolo
script is here for all you quotes spouting fans of the movie. This script is a transcript that was painstakingly
transcribed using the screenplay and/or viewings of Leolo. I know, I know, I still need to get the cast names in there and I'll be eternally
tweaking it, so if you have any corrections, feel free to
drop me a line. You won't
hurt my feelings. Honest.
This is my place
in the Mile-end neighborhood
in Montreal, Canada.
Everybody thinks
I'm French Canadian.
Because I dream,
that is not what I am.
Because I dream,
that is not what I am.
Those who trust only
their own truth,
call me Leo Lozeau.
They say he is my father,
but I know I'm not his son.
Because this man is crazy
and because I am not.
Because I dream, I am not.
SOMEWHERE IN A VALLEY
IN SICILY.
Because he was partly hidden,
I never saw the face
of my real father.
What are you doing
to my tomatoes?
I'm giving life
to your fucking tomatoes!
Stop it, asshole,
you're gonna ruin them!
Who gives a shit?
This load
is going to America.
A FEW DAYS LATER, IN AMERICA.
Faced with my mother's panic,
the doctor didn't dare tell her
she'd been impregnated
by a contaminated tomato.
Since that dream, I've demanded
to be called Leolo Lozone.
No one has the right to say
I'm not Italian.
Italy is too beautiful
to belong only to the Italians.
Between my room and Sicily,
there are kilometers.
Between my room
and Bianca's place,
there are meters.
And yet...
she's so much farther away
from me.
Bianca, my love...
It only takes three words
to write: Bianca, my love.
I took the shortest way.
Leo! Go to bed!
"Leolo!"
"Leolo Lozone!"
My name is Leolo!
Shuddup, bozo!
Shut the fucking door.
It's freezing.
I don't try to remember
what happens in a book.
All I ask of a book...
is to give me energy
and courage...
to tell me there's more
to life than I can take...
to remind me
of the need to act.
It was the only book
in the house.
I never wondered
how it got there.
It was thick.
The words were pushed together
and required enormous effort
and concentration
to yield their secret.
At home, I never saw
anybody read or write.
Television and billboards
cluttered my brain.
At the beginning, I read
the underlined passages
without really understanding.
I remember wanting to give up
because there were no pictures.
I find my only real joy
in solitude.
Solitude is my castle.
That's where I have my chair,
my table, my bed,
my breeze and my sun.
I sit in exile.
I sit in fake land.
Because I dream, I am not.
Because I dream, I am not.
I had started writing down
everything that crossed my mind.
My family had become characters
in a fiction.
And I spoke of them
as if they were strangers.
As far back as I remember,
it was the smells and the light
that solidified
my first memories.
My grandmother had convinced
my father
a shit a day
kept the doctor away.
Don't cry, my darling.
Do like mama.
Push, Leo.
Push, my love.
"As far back as I remember
it was the smells
and the light
that solidified
my first memories.
My grandmother had
convinced my father
a shit a day
kept the doctor away."
So, every Friday,
we got a laxative
shock treatment
to purify us from all the
diseases of this world.
Leo!
Come, Leo, come to Daddy.
Come, my boy, it won't hurt.
Shit had become
a family obsession.
As far back as I can remember,
there was a rat in the bathtub.
And then, one night,
there was also a turkey...
that my mother had won
at the movie theater.
It was fat and filthy.
Its remaining feathers
were damp and stinky.
Don't cry, my darling.
Do like mama.
Push.
Push.
Push, my love.
Don't cry, my darling.
Do like mama.
Do like mama.
Don't cry, my darling.
Do like mama.
He was the worm tamer.
The tamer spent his nights digging
in the garbage of the world.
Only letters and photographs
interested him.
He carried every smile,
every glance,
every word of love
every separation...
as if it were his own story.
The tamer believes
that images and words
must mingle with the ashes
of the worms to be reborn
in the imaginations of men.
You have to dream, Leolo.
You have to dream.
It took me a long time
to understand he was the
reincarnation of Don Quixote.
And that he decided
to fight isolation
and protect me from
the black hole of my family.
Because I dream, I am not.
Just the paper.
Leave the trash.
You can't do anything
with this, it's broken.
Even if the record was broken,
I remember I kept the album
for its cover.
Leo, I'm paying you to work.
Hi, Mo.
Hey, Mo...
You still buying from
the little frog brothers?
Listen. Listen, Mo.
I can get you all the paper
you need at a better price.
No. I'm serious, Mo.
Pick up the rest, Leo,
and put it in the car.
Kid's a good worker,
isn't he?
You don't listen.
Paper is my business.
You can't go on hurting me
like this, you know. Deal?
Lozeau...
Listen to me, Lozeau.
You'll have to pick
another alley,
'cause this one's ours.
Fernand!
Since that day, fear had
given my brother Fernand
a reason for living.
Kid, put some more rock.
It's gotta be heavy.
Pour it on. It don't matter
if it spills over.
Fernand would no longer fear
anyone.
And when my brother
becomes a mountain,
I too will no longer
be afraid.
And I shall walk the alleys
of the world
and tell the wretched of this
earth what I think of them.
Cursed be those
who will not bow as we walk by.
Even the Arabs and the Jews
will fear me,
so tall will I be
on my brother's shoulders.
I'm an early riser.
Awakening is brutal as I crash-land
from the kingdom of dreams
unto the runway of reality.
I sleep with Fernand.
I always have.
A large bed, my grandparent's bed,
Worn out by my parents
and abused by us,
my hand scratches wads of gum
under the mattress,
from the time when my father
was afraid to wake my mother
with his boozy, beery breath.
"Cursed be those who
will not bow as we walk by.
Even the Arabs and the Jews
will fear me,
so tall will I be
on my brother's shoulders."
If you wash your hands, you can
sit down and have some pie.
Don't worry.
It's like brand new.
Still wrapped in plastic.
My grandfather was not
a mean man.
Yet, he'd already tried
to kill me.
Children, be careful
not to splash grandpa.
Come eat some chips.
Grandpa!
I remember not being afraid.
And dreaming about
the beauty of the treasure.
Perhaps because I knew
I was already dead.
I mostly remember the whiteness
of that light
that I saw for the first time.
Albert! Let go of the kid!
Let go of him, Albert!
You're gonna kill'im!
It was a frightening cry,
a huge "I love you" that resonated
from the depth of her soul.
I love you, Ma.
My mother had the strength
of a frigate plowing
through troubled waters.
Albert! Let go!
Try to be nice,
this time, Leo.
"Leolo", Ma! Leolo Lozone.
Sure, Antonio.
But talk to the doctor,
it's for your own good.
Sometimes, at the hospital,
there were also
my sister Nanette...
my sister Rita...
my brother Fernand...
and my father.
As if my grandfather's legacy
had exploded within the family,
and that little extra cell
had lodged itself
in everybody's brain.
Good morning.
Who talks first today?
Why not you, Leo?
Because my name is...
Leolo Lozone.
And because you don't talk
about people you don't know.
Egged on by her mother,
she cried for Sicily.
Her plaintive voice
was close to good.
At the time, the few years
between our ages
seemed to me
an impassable frontier.
And I lived my desire...
in silence.
We were rarely together
at home.
And we looked like
a real family.
Will you stop day-dreaming?
You're better off studying
than scribbling.
My father was a man
like many others.
A dog that bit
his bitch of a life.
He was small, stout, jolly,
with red cheeks.
Wrinkles line his face
but reveal nothing
but the age
that dug them.
Somewhere between good morning
and goodbye,
an eternal, untouched moon
pricked by a sliver of time,
a forehead that stretched
beyond his chin
into a neck that clung desperately
to bulging shoulders.
Nanette...
My pretty Nanette.
I'm not mad at you.
At times, their lunacy
is harmonized.
And it was easy to visit them
in the ward on Sunday morning.
At other times,
you had to go everywhere
to see everyone.
And the corridors were immense.
Sometimes, it took
an entire day.
Leo...
They stole my baby, Leo.
They stole my baby.
Those were our beautiful
winter Sundays.
Strange...
harrowing...
stinking...
with no friends...
and no light.
Hidden in the bowels
of the earth,
my sister, Queen Rita,
had become the curator
of my bug collection.
Rita.
Rita.
Trois fois passera
La dernière la dernière
Trois fois passera
La dernière y restera.
I'm keeping your jar of bugs.
Oh no, Rita.
Not my deer flies. Here, take
this, but not my deer flies.
Leo!
Wait, 'pa!
Don't push, pa! Don't push!
You'll be pleased!
My father was as gung-ho
as a baseball coach.
My turd made him as proud
as if I'd come back from war.
My love!
My beautiful love!
She was warm and loving.
My only love.
I loved it when she pulled me
into her fat.
The smell of her sweat
soothed me.
One night, my father discovered
our hideout
and barred the door
to the cellar.
Trapped in the daylight,
alone...
without a kingdom,
without the teaming bugs
to calm her down...
my fragile little sister,
Queen Rita,
drifted away.
When he was younger,
Fernand had problems in school.
In grade he was put
into a class of retards
with schizophrenics,
psychopaths,
a set of epileptic twins,
a transvestite and an albino.
Even there, he'd failed his exams
three years in a row.
Mme. Lozeau.
One day, a visiting counsellor
asked him to draw something.
After an hour, Fernand
gave him a blank page,
insisting he'd drawn
a white rabbit in the snow.
In the snow.
On both sides.
But it's here!
Can't you see? Right here!
But, Mr. Principal...
Counsellor, madam.
Not Principal.
Mr. Counsellor.
Then counsel me
about a -year-old
who won't go to school.
I'm sorry, madam,
it can't go on like this.
Sorry.
Come, let's go home.
Three days later, he started
working at Dominion Glass.
Asshole!
You went to school but
you shit and stink like me.
I could've gone
till I was .
If the old man hadn't
fucked me bucks for rent.
Who'd they think they were?
Shoving me in a class
for dildoes.
Didn't think I was normal.
Anyone hassles me
today,
I'll hit'em
between the eyes.
Don't get smart, punk.
We come from
the same shit hole.
And I got here before you.
Don't play with the food.
It'll soon be spring.
The birds are endlessly bitching
about winter.
Fernand pipes in
with a snot-filled snore.
My stomach turns
every time he breathes.
He lies in the fetal position,
his little nightshirt
barely guarding his decency.
He rests, oblivious as usual.
Two hundred pounds of muscle,
a beautiful little baby
got too big.
The room is split in half.
My side, and Fernand's.
His side swells
as his biceps bloom.
There's his radio
and my record-player.
Fernand's radio has priority
since he pays rent.
And his muscles mute my music
when he gets angry.
Bianca my love.
My beautiful love.
My only love.
My Italy.
No... Not that.
Not like that.
I don't like that.
You know what I want.
One last time.
-No.
Please!
-No.
Bianca...
Bianca... For me.
Leolo!...
Leolo!... Come...
One night, I finally understood
where that light came from.
It was Bianca who,
for a long time now,
had been singing to me
from the back of the closet.
All I had to do was
take the time to write.
Bianca my love.
My beautiful love.
My only love.
My Italy.
John has one nose.
John has two ears.
John has two legs.
John has ten fingers.
John has two arms.
John has two legs.
John has ten fingers.
John and Mary were our guides
through English.
They were models of propriety.
John has one mouth.
At school, I thought I was
the only one upset...
They only one anxious because
some details were missing
on John's and Tintin's bodies.
At I knew what nose meant
in English.
And that the Congo was a former
Belgian colony in Africa.
But nobody talked about that tail
that swelled between my legs.
It was absent on the chart
of John's organs.
I didn't know the English
or the French word for this thing.
And for a long time, I believed
the Anglos didn't have any.
Casablanca.
Capital?
Dakar.
Country?
Senegal.
Dammit.
I'm coming!
Open the door or...
I'm coming!
Wait!
Wait!
Enough!
I'm coming!
Now!
Just a minute!
I'll bust the fucking lock!
Open the fucking door!
Open up!
-Coming!
What's going on?
Nothing.
I was taking my bath.
The water was hot,
I fried myself.
Smells funny in there.
No...
Well...
Anyway,
shit, or make it shoot!
I stopped seeing pink.
Dirty pink, dead pink.
I don't feel my flesh.
I'm not there.
Submerged more and more
in pleasure,
I forgot about Tintin,
I forgot about the Belgian Congo
becoming Zaire in .
I was obsessed.
Fernand couldn't wear himself out
doing his pushups.
So he paid me
to sit on his shoulders.
That's how I began
to enjoy reading.
You don't want it?
No. I don't like
dead animals.
Look at your brother,
he likes it.
And it's got iron in it.
He's strong.
What's this?
I don't know.
Maybe the pig had gallstones.
As far back as I remember
having a hard-on,
Bianca was there.
It was the name of a beautiful
Sicilian neighbor
who'd never seen Italy
and occasionally baby-sat me.
My grandfather helped her
make ends meet.
Not with scissors.
Do it with love.
I told you no.
I don't want to.
Here.
Take
everything you want.
It's all yours.
But do it one more time.
No.
Please.
Just once.
Do it one more time.
Do it to me.
When I was small, I liked
to hide under the water.
The bottom of our pool
was sky blue.
There was a pirate's treasure
in a gutted wreck.
I started stealing to buy
my first diving mask.
Your titties.
Show me your titties.
I never knew whether to puke
or jerk off.
Hate the girl,
or envy my grandfather so much
I'd want to kill him.
Do it one more time.
No.
Yes.
They're old, and yellow
and dry.
Even washed, they stink.
Do it.
Bastard! Pig!
My mother offered us
a beautiful rose made of plastic.
Supposedly to brighten up the room
because a flower is an image,
or rather, an idea of nature.
The scarlet red is muted
by the dust
that buries it more and more
every day.
If only someone in the family
would realize
How unnatural this flower is
with its little golden
"made in Hong Kong" tag
glued under a petal.
Yet, all it takes is an
effortless gesture from me
to take off the tag
and begin to believe
in the illusion.
But I refuse to touch it.
I don't want to rest in the
cemetery of the living dead.
And now, my toes remind me
I'm still here...
sticking out a hole
in the blanket.
Day after day,
without realizing
I've slipped one toe more
than the day before.
Tomorrow, it'll be
my whole foot,
then, my leg,
and soon, my entire body.
I feel I must leave this life
before the rip becomes a noose.
Hey, don't run in the hall.
-Sir?
Are you Mr. Deguire,
Leolo's teacher?
Leon who?
Leo. Leo Lozeau.
Oh yes. Are you his father?
No. Just a friend.
Have you read
Leolo's writings?
You should have a look.
I've got pupils.
If I gave each
an hour more a week,
I'd never leave this place.
And he's like all of them
heading for tech school.
The brains'll write parking
tickets, if they're lucky.
Poetry won't fix a piston.
But you're his teacher.
You could tell him
what to read.
I'm the third teacher this
year to take Lozeau's class.
The first two were beaten up.
My specialty isn't French,
it's fucking judo.
And I plan to get
thru the year.
Leo, come to dinner.
"Leolo!"
"Leolo Lozone!"
I loved Fernand
for his sweet ignorance.
Because I dream, I am not.
We'll make money, Leo.
We'll catch tons of fish.
And big fat eels. Hiya!
Look at those idiots!
The nerve of those guys.
Hey! Scram!
This is our spot.
It's too tight, dammit!
I don't wanna
ride a bus again
to pick you up
in hell and gone.
I haven't even
finished my sandwich!
You're never gonna buy
a bike sitting on your ass
eating and watching
boats go by.
Gimme a hand?
Listen, if your prices
were better, I'd take'em all.
You always break
my ass over cents!
As if should give it away!
It's bucks for the pail.
It's all rusty, Fernand.
Fucking expensive.
Have you ever worked
in your entire life?
Got one.
Rewind and pull.
Shit, I lost it.
I told you to rewind.
-You said "pull".
I said "rewind and pull".
-You said "pull" first.
It's great
you don't feel the cold.
You'll soon be able
to buy your bike.
Gimme a good deal, Fernand,
bucks is too much.
He could catch pneumonia
diving in this fucking shit
and it's "too much"?
bucks.
And I'll throw in eels.
Deal?
Okay, I'll take it.
Okay, let's see your cash.
Aw... Now get the hell
out of my sight, okay?
Go! Go on.
Well, if it ain't
the frog brothers themselves.
Hey, Fernand!
Ben Weider's
been good to you, eh?
It still pays to put
little Leo to work.
You won't scare us today.
Want him to smash your face
and have you eat the street?
Hold this, Leo.
ls this for real?
Took your nose vitamins?
Oh, that's beautiful,
Fernand.
Can I touch?
Wanna see something
really great?
Check this out!
Now that's gorgeous!
Come on, Fernand,
come and fight me.
Come on, Fernand, fight me.
What are you, chicken shit,
Fernand?
Come on.
Let's go, Leo.
Fernand?
Come on, Fernand!
Fight me, you fuck!
Drop your bike.
Fernand!
Stand up, fight me!
Fight me !
That day,
I understood fear lived
in our deepest being...
and that a mountain of muscles
or a thousand soldiers
could not change a thing.
Tried and found guiIty for all
the problems in my family,
in a moment of utter despair,
I had decided to kill
my grandfather
whom I liked.
Leo, come to supper!
Leo?
Albert!
Leo!
Leo!
Do you know what
"attempted murder" means?
You were never violent.
You'll destroy yourself
if you keep thinking
your grandfather
is totally to blame
for the family.
Your mother is strong.
Very strong.
She's a force of nature.
She never caved in.
In spite of everything
she went through.
You're a lot like her, Leo.
I know your fear.
But there's nothing I can do
if you refuse to talk to me.
To do my homework,
I use half of a small desk
unless Fernand needs it
to count and recount
the fortitude box he makes
at Dominion Glass.
Twenty-seven.
Expenditures.
Movies...
Two bucks.
Had some fries.
Fries:
Ten cents.
Bus...
All I had to do
was read or write,
and she'd come back
and sing for me.
The tamer was right.
There was a secret
in words strung together.
Bianca my love
my only love
my sweet love.
Bianca my love
my sweet love
my only love.
A peddler shouts in the void.
There's enough blood this morning
to stain a hundred pages.
And enough people to buy them,
to appease their rage.
I pull out my rifle
and shoot at cars.
I look down
the barrel and aim
at my father.
I want to stick a firecracker
as big as the universe
up his ass.
Just because I'm waiting
for the bus,
and I'll be waiting next week.
I'll still be waiting.
Every Sunday, we take the bus
to picnic on lle Ste-Hélène.
As my father doesn't have a car,
it's our bit of the country
in the city.
At the docks, we get bored
watching ships sail away.
Ships we will never sail on.
And we eat cucumbers
on the grass.
Maybe I should stick the barrel
up my nose
and blow my thoughts
all over the place.
The bastards...
It sure would shock them to see me
blow myself up before I retire.
Although instinct would
have led me directly,
I still asked
for her room number.
I felt strange
after I said her name
because it was also mine.
Trois fois passera
la dernière la dernière
Trois fois passera
la dernière y restera.
Rita.
Here, I brought my flies.
You can keep them.
Rita?
That was the only time
I dared caress my sister.
And all I could think of
was a wonderful seen in a movie.
And as always,
I was a spectator
of my own life.
Leo Lozeau,
I don't want to see you
bring live animals
in the hospital.
Don't keep that
in your room, it stinks!
Coward! Coward!
I wouldn't dare?!
Put bucks on the table
and I'll do it. You guys
don't have the balls.
bucks on the table
and I'll do it.
None of you's man enough.
Not you, not you.
None of you.
Put bucks on the table
and I'll do it.
Tonight, Buddy Godin
will be late for home.
His mom will check his fingers.
She's worried her son
might be smoking on the sly.
No, Mme. Godin.
Your son fucks
anything that moves,
his dick is eaten by bugs,
he swallows any pill he can
just to forget you.
That bath you force him to take
before church on Sunday,
just serves him
to prostitute himself
with his hockey coach.
White meat sells better.
But no, don't worry,
he doesn't smoke.
It makes him choke.
Sex I discovered between
ignorance and horror.
Deep down,
we all knew money
was just a pretext...
and that he'd do it anyway.
For betting just defanged
the fear.
The poor cat didn't defend herself.
She'd been declawed.
Mme. Ouimet took good care
of her curtains.
How lucky you are, Milou,
Tintin didn't have Buddy Godin
for a neighbor.
I didn't have the courage
of my love for Bianca.
So I settled for getting it off
with Regina.
I'm coming...
You smell good... Keep on.
Faster, faster.
Sometimes I spent entire nights
reading and writing
dozens of pages
without seeing her.
Bianca had become
very demanding.
She knew I'd cheated on her
with Regina...
and she decided to punish me.
Bianca!
Bianca!
Leo!
Ma!
Leo is sick!
Leo!
Don't do this to me!
Not you!
You're too strong!
Get up!
Don't go!
Leo!
Don't do this to me.
Leolo!
Because I dream, I am not.
Because I dream...
I dream.
Because at night, I abandon
myself to my dreams...
before I'm left the day.
Because I don't love...
because I was afraid to love...
I no longer dream.
I no longer dream.
"Because I dream, I'm not.
Because I dream. I dream...
Because at night I abandon
myself to my dreams,
before I'm left the day...
Because I don't love...
Because I was
afraid to love...
I no longer dream.
I no longer dream."
Reduce the Largactil
to mg. intramuscular.
I no longer dream.
I no longer dream.
Tomorrow put him
in the ward with the rest
of his family.
"You my lady
Bold melancholy
Solitary cry
piercing my flesh,
Offering it to ennui,
Haunting my nights
when I don't know
Which way my life should go,
I have paid you back
a hundredfold."
You my lady
Bold melancholy
Solitary cry
piercing my flesh,
Offering it to ennui,
Haunting my nights
When I don't know
which way my life should go,
I have paid you back
a hundredfold.
The ambers of the dream
Left behind the ashes
of a shadow of a lie
you told me to hear.
The white serenity
Minute of eternity
was a dark-haired wicked waif
who pierced my sorrow
with a sharp
and sacred breast
leaving only the remorse
of seeing the sun
rise on my solitude.
"And I shall rest my head
between two words,
in the Valley
of the Vanquished."
"Leolo."