Madame? Let's chat. I'm on a deadline, darling. You know, when I first moved to LA, you...

Jack Conrad: [enters her room as she is typing] Madame? Let's chat.
Elinor St. John: I'm on a deadline, darling.
Jack Conrad: You know, when I first moved to LA, you know what the signs on all the doors read? "No actors or dogs allowed." Yeah, I changed that. I helped build this place you call home. I've never had any illusions about us. I've never pretended we're friends. We're friendly. I scratch yours, you scratch mine. That's our work. But this?
[tosses the Photoplay magazine on Elinor's table]
Jack Conrad: This is something else.
[sits down on a chair in front of Elinor's desk]
Elinor St. John: [places her glasses on her desk] What do you want, Jack?
Jack Conrad: I want to know why you wrote it.
Elinor St. John: No, you want to know why they laughed. Would you like me to tell you?
Jack Conrad: Why they laughed. Sure, Elinor. Why?
Elinor St. John: There is no why. It wasn't your voice. It wasn't a conspiracy. And it certainly wasn't anything I wrote. There's nothing you could have done differently. There's nothing you can do. Your time has run out. There is no why. Stop questioning it.
Jack Conrad: I'm on a dry spell.
Elinor St. John: No. It's over. It's been over for a while. I'm sorry.
Jack Conrad: Elinor, you peddle gossip. You don't make anything. You don't know what it is to put yourself out there. You're just a cockroach. I've been counted out before. This isn't new to me.
Elinor St. John: Have you ever stopped to think why, when there's a house fire, the people die and the cockroaches all survive?
Jack Conrad: Jesus Christ.
Elinor St. John: What happened was you thought the house needed you. It doesn't. Doesn't need you any more than it needs the roaches. And the roaches, knowing this, crawl back into the dark, lay low, and make it through. See, but you, you held the spotlight. It's those of us in the dark, the ones who just watch, who survive.
Jack Conrad: A house fire.
Elinor St. John: And there'll be hundreds more like it, too. An earthquake could wipe this town off the map and wouldn't make a difference. It's the idea that sticks. There'll be a hundred more Jack Conrads. Hundred more me's. Hundred more conversations just like this one, over and over again, until God knows when. Because it's bigger than you.
[gets up from her chair]
Elinor St. John: I know it hurts. No one asks to be left behind.
[sits on her desk in front of Jack]
Elinor St. John: But in a hundred years, when you and I are both long gone, any time someone threads a frame of yours through a sprocket, you will be alive again. You see what that means? One day, every person on every film shot this year will be dead. And one day, all those films will be pulled from the vaults, and all their ghosts will dine together, and adventure together, go to the jungle, to war together. A child born in 50 years will stumble across your image flickering on a screen and feel he knows you, like... like a friend, though you breathed your last before he breathed his first. You've been given a gift. Be grateful. Your time today is through, but you'll spend eternity with angels and ghosts.
Jack Conrad: [sadly gets up from his chair, begins to walk away, and stops for a second to sigh] Thank you for that.
[continues to walk away as Elinor returns to her typewriter]