Special priority call, Paris–Munich: Hello? Intercosmic Art Films? Hi there. May I speak to Herr Wohlfahrt.—Ah, it’s you! I didn’t recognize your voice.—What? All night? Who with? hahaha!—Who’d’ve guessed!—What? What project? Man, you’re obsessed! But listen, I’ve got a new one for you. No, not a package, for now. But it would be a piece of cake making one out of it.—Anyway, that’ll be your problem.—What? Imagine, well just let it . . . by the way, you really put one over on me with the last contract.—You certainly did! But, okay, that’s water under the bridge. Listen: just picture it, right?—so, a middle-aged man—okay?—let’s say early to midforties, close to fifty—so precisely the generation that’s now stepping up to the plate.—What?—That’s right, our generation, right on the nose. It’d be ridiculous if it weren’t, right? Anyway, a man in his best years, something for the female audience, okay?—No, I really mean it. Something a woman can identify with. Her guy, right? Postwar reconstruction man, head of the family, divorced, with a kid and so on, irreproachable life so far, right? Well, one fine day, let’s say on a business trip abroad—quite by chance, you see, this man suddenly comes to realize HE IS REPRESSING GUILT! He has COMMITTED MURDER AND KNOWS IT! But he doesn’t know who the victim was. Or how it happened. And—Ne coupez-pas, mademoiselle! Ah, merde!!—Hello.—Intercosmic.—Hello! . . . ah, there you are. Did you get it all? Well: HE NO LONGER KNOWS when and how and where. Suspenseful, right? But that’s only the beginning. I mean, the opening situation.—What? No, no! You know me. I don’t like flashbacks either. You know that. No way! Anyhow, that’s just the basic idea. Now, the point is: do you want the rest of it to be a genuine German problem film?—What?—Well, so who cares? No, no, don’t just wave it off as old hat. The times are changing again. Back in 1958 I wrote down something that says:

Highway rest stop near Karlsruhe. At the next table, they’re overcoming the past: “Oh, you people are always saying Hitler did this wrong and that wrong and so on. But I say: just try to do it yourselves!”