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I will ask you simple questions.
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You will answer in short sentences,
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only what you believe
to be absolute truth.
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"Absolute truth."
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I can do that.
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Now, brief as you can,
what is your name?
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Stanton Carlisle.
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Nightmare Alley is something
that exists in a realm
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that I haven't accessed in the past,
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which is the great narratives
of American life that I have admired.
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Step right up and behold
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one of the unexplained
mysteries of the universe.
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Is he man or beast?
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Guillermo has typically had
fantasy elements in all of his movies,
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so this film is a first in that it's,
you know, a noir thriller.
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Mr. Carlisle.
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A doctor. How about that?
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Please lie down.
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Guillermo and Kim Morgan have written
a really unusual take on the story,
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that's gone down
a different rabbit hole.
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He beautifully mixes genres.
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That's what I like about his work.
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This one has horrific elements in it,
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but it's really a dark drama
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with very colorful worlds
being explored.
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If Shape of Water was about love,
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Nightmare Alley
is about loathing, greed, betrayal.
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It's about all of those
dark underpinnings
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to what seems to be
a very polite society.
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- Can you read minds?
- Yes, I can.
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Under the right circumstances.
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I was very much interested
in a tale about destiny,
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about a character
that could change his life,
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and yet his drive, his own hubris
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is so strong that it becomes destiny.
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I don't think it's like
anything Guillermo's ever made before.
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Every film that he makes, you see
this thing that never existed before.
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This one is very grounded,
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and yet it feels as though
it's very much, like, in his wheelhouse.
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Nightmare Alley
is one of the great American novels
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of the 20th Century,
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and it chronicles the sudden rise
and fall of Bradley Cooper as Stan.
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Just arrived last night, so I thought...
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Of course you did.
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It's about a man
who is finding himself
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through the world of
a traveling carnival
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and all the people that come with it.
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Folks here,
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they don't make no never mind
who you are, or what you done.
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My character takes him in,
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even though he recognizes there's
something not right about this guy.
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This guy's a little off.
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Everybody comes to this thing
with a different kind of life
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that they either are running away from
or had enough of.
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The problem with Stanton Carlisle
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is that he's not meant to fit in.
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I still got five good pounds
of meat and bone right here.
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Hurt that girl, you get 'em all.
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The carnival world
is a magnet for that type of person
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who doesn't feel that they
really belong anywhere else,
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and yet there's a real unity.
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This is a family.
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There's very much a camaraderie,
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a sense of the world
and then there's us,
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but of course like any family,
there's also betrayals.
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To me, it was very interesting
to show a carnival
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where you can have freaks
and all these characters
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that seem to be on the fringes
of society,
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but they are more human in many ways
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than the people handling
the high finance in the big city.
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What do I want?
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To be found out. Same as everybody else.
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The film exists
in two quite distinct worlds.
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The world of a carnival,
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which we understand is full
of trickery and deceit,
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but actually really has a beating heart,
like a community in it,
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and then a polite society
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that seems to be sort of functional
and everyone knows their place,
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but the darkness that exists
in that real world
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is actually far more threatening
and terrifying.
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Are you in contact
with the beyond?
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Well, we've had our share
of snake charmers in the past.
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We deal with them.
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Smoke on, Jay. And action!
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Doctor.
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This tale would only work
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if these great characters
are interpreted by great actors,
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and I think we have one of
the greatest casts ever assembled.
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All my heroes are in this movie.
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Bradley Cooper, Toni Collette,
Willem Dafoe,
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Rooney Mara, David Strathairn,
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Richard Jenkins and Cate Blanchett.
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It's like the '27 Yankees, man.
It's Murderers' Row.
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You had him!
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This is a group of actors
who are expert in what they do.
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He's put together a group of people
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who can express the eccentricities
of this world.
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Speak to him.
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Films are a symphony,
and each actor is a precise instrument.
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I believe you know to whom
I'm speaking now, do you not?
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You're correct again.
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What Bradley brings
is an incredibly moving performance,
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'cause he has all the goodness
and the physical beauty
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and an innate grace
to show what could be,
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and at the same time he brings the skill
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of one of the most superb actors
of his generation,
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to create and embroid
a character of deep, deep darkness.
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Eight, "trust."
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I want to shoot him
and design everything around him
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as you would with a movie star
in the 1930s.
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Everything will be carefully presented
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to make him look as powerful
as a presence would in classic cinema.
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An Electra complex, is it?
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I wouldn't know about that.
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But you're not as hard to read
as you think, lady.
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Cate Blanchett,
we are going to present her
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as one of the grand dames
of that period of cinema.
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Well, I play Dr. Lilith Ritter,
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who's a consulting psychologist.
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But what was really fascinating
about playing Lilith
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is that every day we'd discover
a new deep, dark secret.
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There's a lot of darkness there
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and a lot of damage to what seems to be
a quite pristine exterior.
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All right.
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I'll give you something.
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- In exchange for the truth.
- Truth about what?
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Yourself.
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I give you a little information
and you tell me the truth.
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In her scenes with Bradley,
watching those two work,
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I mean, it was really like
a Battle of the Titans.
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And I kept thinking
about Lilith and Stan's relationship
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as being a little bit like
a dance of death.
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There's a lot of destructive urges.
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"Never."
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That word again.
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We're going to work on that.
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Hurry, hurry, hurry.
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Find out what it feels like
right here on Earth.
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Let the mirrors show you who you are
and who you shall be.
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We made the conscious choice
of building the carnival
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but building it on location.
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There is nothing like going to a place
and shooting it.
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The carnival world,
every frame that I dare look at
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blows my mind.
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It's so exquisite.
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It's so rich and so saturated,
and yet so real.
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They just built it
and it was fantastic.
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It wasn't cut up into little areas.
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It was complete,
so you could shoot almost anywhere.
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Come on in. Come on in and find out.
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We have spent many months
researching and designing the carnival.
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We have been on the hunt
for real carnival props from the '30s.
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A real Ferris wheel,
a real merry-go-round.
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This carnival is funky.
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It's got color and it's got
attractiveness to it, like cotton candy,
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but it has a character of its own.
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It's got decay and eeriness,
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and, you know, if the walls could talk.
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Kind of like...
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...whoa, man, there's some dark stuff
took place here.
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It has a very magical atmosphere,
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but it's not mannered,
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it's not stylized to the point
of becoming too manicured.
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It's a reality that we will find
identifiable and immediate,
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and yet is visually
incredibly arresting.
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It's very Guillermo.
That's how I would describe it.
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I don't think anybody else
has his aesthetic.
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He just understands movies
on so many levels,
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that when he makes something like this,
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you feel like it must've felt back then.
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Guillermo's films
always have an otherworldly quality
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that it will allow people also
to be told a wonderful story,
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but then I think they'll be left with
a lot of unpalatable feelings
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about themselves
and the world in which they live.
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Sometimes you have dark thoughts
about yourself, don't you?
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There's something about
Guillermo's ability
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to visually unearth monstrosities
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that make this an amazing addition
to his body of work.
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As Stan sits down, we come behind.
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I want this
to be the modern equivalent
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of the movies that people complain
they don't do anymore.
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I'm not rendering a classic
in a classical way.
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I'm rendering a classic tale
in a very alive and modern way,
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but we're going to try to bring
the same craftsmanship
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and attention to detail
that classic cinema has always brought.
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You don't fool people, Stan.
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They fool themselves.
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Nightmare Alley,
it's a dark night of the soul,
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and it's driven and it's centered
by Stan's unrelenting desire
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to get to the top at whatever cost.
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I've given you a fortune!
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It's time that you delivered.
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When does it end?
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I want to know.
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If you displease the right people,
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the world closes in on you
very, very fast.