Outtake #51:
Hector: I killed a boy today. He was young—too young. And far too attractive for his age…
Outtake #52:
Briseis: Stop! Too many men have died today! If killing is your only talent, that's your curse.
Achilles: Oh, it's far from my only talent, I assure you… What's yours?
Briseis: Don't touch me!
Achilles: Fine. Be a frigid bitch. See if my soldiers care because, believe me—at this point in the game—they don't.
Outtake #53:
Achilles: (removing his helmet) Now you know who you are fighting!
Hector: (squinting) A woman?
Achilles: FUCK YOU!
Outtake #54:
(Menelaus is toasting his Trojan guests.)
Menelaus: May the gods keep the wolves in the hills and the women in our beds.
Paris: (under his breath) Yeah, mine.
Menelaus: What was that, your highness?
Paris: I said, "That's fine."
Outtake #55:
Priam: I have endured what no one on earth has endured before. I just kissed the hands of the man who killed my son.
Achilles: Priam? Holy crap, I barely recognized you! Where'd you get that ratty cloak?
Priam: I looted it from the body of a dead Greek.
Achilles: (pleased) Ah, a king after my own heart…
Outtake #56:
Ajax: (to his shipmates, as they approach the Trojan beach) Row, you lazy whores, row! Greeks are dying!
Oarsman: Maybe less of us would be dying if you weren't working us to exhaustion!
(Ajax lashes the oarsman across his face.)
Ajax: Don't sass me, bitch! You just lost your rest period!
Outtake #57:
(During Patroclus's funeral.)
Odysseus: It's no insult to say a dead man is dead.
Achilles: But it's hardly a compliment to ravish a corpse.
Odysseus: (defensive) I wasn't going to ravish a corpse.
Achilles: (suspicious) I never said you were… Were you?
Odysseus: (covering) No, no! No…
(Awkward pause.)
Odysseus: Were you?
(Achilles looks up at the sky and does not respond.)
Odysseus: Eew.
Outtake #58:
(Menelaus and Paris are fighting a duel.)
Menelaus: See the crows? They've never tasted prince before.
Helen: (yelling from the wall) I'll bet they've never feasted on a usurping king, either!
Menelaus: (yelling back at her) You're next, bitch! You hear me?! You're fucking next!
Outtake #59:
(Achilles is setting the mood in his tent. Briseis is tied to a tent post, and Achilles does not look at her as he speaks and rubs oil on his naked body.)
Achilles: I'll tell you a secret—something they don't teach you in your temple. The gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
Patroclus: (oiling himself up) Oh, you are so hot when you blaspheme…
Achilles: Get ready.
Patroclus: I was born ready.
(Achilles and Patroclus embrace and kiss passionately, until the two touch foreheads.)
Achilles: Assume the position.
Patroclus: I'm on it.
Briseis: (plaintive) Do I have to watch this?
Achilles: (annoyed) Yes, you do, because when I'm done with him, he gets to work on you—and then I'm going to watch. Now shut your noise-hole and pay close attention.
Outtake #60:
Hector: (to priest) Bird signs? You want to plan out strategy based on bird signs?
Priest: Hasn't failed yet.
Hector: How many times have you used it?
Priest: Just this morning. The bird signs showed that my pupil would fetch water from the well—and he did.
Hector: Doesn't he do that everyday?
Priest: Well, sometimes he skips it on Tuesdays.
Hector: (to a soldier) Get him out of my sight.
Outtake #61:
Odysseus: My wife will feel much better knowing you're riding beside me—I'll feel much better.
(Pause, as Achilles sizes up Odysseus.)
Achilles: Is that your way of telling me Penelope's still angry with you about what almost happened to your son?
Odysseus: You heard about that, too?
Achilles: Agamemnon casually informed me of your feigning madness when he found me…
Odysseus: Great…
(Odysseus leans against a rock; Achilles leans against a tree across from him.)
Odysseus: (resentful) She should be angry with Agamemnon—he's the one who almost killed Telemachus, and just to strong-arm me into enlisting.
Achilles: Almost killed Telemachus? Shit, that's nothing. I heard he slit the throat of his eldest daughter.
Odysseus: You don't say? What did she do?
Achilles: Nothing. He sacrificed her to one of the gods for a safe journey to Troy. He's got two more children, sure, but who says they're any safer?
Odysseus: That cruel son of a bastard… How did Clytemnestra take it?
Achilles: Not very well.
Outtake #62:
(After Menelaus's death at the hands of Hector, Helen is sewing up Paris' wounds.)
Helen: Menelaus was a brave man. He fought for honor. And every day I was with him, I wanted to walk into the sea and drown.
Paris: Helen, with all due respect, you seem to be taking your husband's death awfully well.
Helen: Did you not want to kill him?
Paris: Honestly?
Helen: Yes?
Paris: Not really.
Helen: (gravely) What?
Paris: I bore him no ill will, aside from his treatment of you. He was king of Sparta and the father of your daughter, and I did not desire him to die, only to suffer a little—I just wanted to hurt him enough to make him think about how he hurt you—
(Helen yanks at the string.)
Paris: OW! What the—
Helen: (cruelly, in his ear) That's why you couldn't kill him dead? Because you "bore him no ill will"?
Paris: Helen, you're hurting me!
Helen: You will shut you mouth. Understand? I have gone two days without any satisfaction, just so you could prepare to fight my husband to the death—only to have your brother do it for you. You will shut your goddamned mouth, you will cease any and all mention of my family, and I will sew your wounds properly. And once you have healed, you will take me to bed and give me three days worth of satisfaction—including today—or, as the gods are in Olympus, I will rip out with my teeth every stitch I have sewn into your skin. Are we clear?
Paris: Yes! Ow! Stop it, already!
Outtake #63:
Achilles: (to Briseis) Trojan soldiers died protecting you. Perhaps they deserve more than your pity.
Briseis: High talk—coming from a violent barbarian who cares nothing for the gods that gave him life.
Achilles: If you knew the gods as I do, you would not speak so highly of them.
Briseis: Blasphemy!
Achilles: Don't you give me that, you arrogant little hussy.
Outtake #64:
Agamemnon: Achilles is one man!
Odysseus: Hector is one man! Look what he did to us today!
Agamemnon: Hector fights for his country! Achilles fights only for himself!
Odysseus: I don't care about the man's allegiance—I care about his ability to win battles!
(Pause, as Agamemnon narrows his eyes at Odysseus.)
Agamemnon: Good gods, he's been buggering you, hasn't he?
Odysseus: Not that it matters, but no, he hasn't.
Outtake #65:
Briseis: Would you leave this all behind?
Achilles: Would you leave Troy?
Briseis: Unless it gets completely and utterly destroyed, no.
Achilles: Then you are a bigger idiot than I first suspected.
Outtake #66:
Achilles: You were brave to fight them. You have courage.
Briseis: To fight back when I'm attacked? A dog has that kind of courage.
Achilles: You're right. But, after a while, a dog at least knows when he is about to be punished…
Outtake #67:
Agamemnon: Achilles can't be controlled!
Odysseus: (coughs into his hand) Says you.
Agamemnon: What was that?
Odysseus: I said, "Achoo."
Agamemnon: Please refrain from getting sick. We're going to be in this country for a very long time, and your dying from some unforeseen illness would really put a damper on things.
Odysseus: (sarcastic) I'll do my best.
Outtake #68:
Achilles: He killed my lover!
Priam: He thought it was you. How many lovers have you killed? How many fathers and brothers and sons and husbands, how many, brave Achilles?
Achilles: I don't know or care! All I know is that I never killed Patroclus, because he was special and I loved him!
(Priam sighs heavily.)
Outtake #69:
Achilles: At night I sometimes see them—the faces of the men I killed. They're waiting for me on the far bank of the Styx. They say, "Welcome, brother. You're in for the spanking of an after-lifetime…" (he shudders) It's horrible, I tell you—horrible. Gives me the willies.
Outtake #70:
Achilles: I told you how to fight but I never told you why to fight.
Patroclus: I fight for you.
Achilles: Yes, but who will you fight for when I'm gone? Soldiers fight for kings they've never even met. They fight when they're told to fight—they die when they're told to die.
Patroclus: Soldiers obey.
Achilles: Patroclus.
Patroclus: (coyly) What?
(Achilles kisses Patroclus deeply, who goes limp for a moment and embraces Achilles around his chest.)
Achilles: (petting Patroclus' hair) You are obedient almost to a fault. But if you are to obey anything, obey this: be prepared to save yourself. I don't know what I would do if anything were to happen to you.
Patroclus: I love it when you do that…
Outtake #71:
Briseis: Do you enjoy provoking me?
Achilles: If by "provoking," you mean of course "torturing," then yes. Yes, I do. You're a very observant girl. Now hold still.
Outtake #72:
Agamemnon: I almost lost this war because of your little romance.
Achilles: You're just jealous because Patroclus never polished your bone.
Outtake #73:
Agamemnon: (to Briseis) You'll be my slave in Mycenae. A Trojan priestess scrubbing my floors… And at night...
Briseis: (sarcastic) You'll put me in a three-way with your wife?
Agamemnon: What-now?
(Briseis rolls her eyes and stabs him in the neck.)
Outtake #74:
Helen: I can't ask anyone to fight for me. I'm no longer queen of Sparta.
Hector: That's kind of too bad as I was hoping to, you know, barter you with Menelaus as a last resort…
Helen: You wanted to send me back to him?
Hector: (rhetorically) You're the mother of his child. Honestly, what's the worst he can do? Beat you? Slit your throat? Hang you for treason?
Helen: Stop it.
Outtake #75:
Agamemnon: He's going to take the beach of Troy with 50 men?
Odysseus: Fifty men who haven't eaten or slept with anyone in several days. The Myrmidons. They're quite ravenous, you know—I heard they once publicly skull-fucked and cannibalized an entire army three times their number.
Agamemnon: You don't say.
Odysseus: Oh, but I do say.
Agamemnon: But it's true?
Odysseus: Well, I didn't say that…
Outtake #76:
Achilles: Things are less simple today.
Odysseus: Women have a way of complicating things.
Achilles: (bitterly) That bitch in my tent, especially…
Odysseus: Interrupted you and Patroclus, did she?
Achilles: Shove it.
Outtake #77:
Odysseus: The men believe we came here for Menelaus' wife—he won't be needing her anymore.
Achilles: You were right. Women do complicate things.
Outtake #78:
Odysseus: (voiceover; epilogue) If they ever tell my story, let them say that I walked with giants. Men rise and fall like the winter wheat, but these names will never die. Let them say I lived in the time of Hector, tamer of horses. Let them say I lived in the time of Achilles—who killed Hector, dragged his corpse for several miles, and desecrated the Trojan prince's corpse before dying three days later. And all because Hector killed Achilles' young lover, Patroclus—before any of the rest of us could have gotten some of that.
THE END