A fictional account of director Frank Capra speaking at a Los Angeles film school in the early 1970s. Surrounded by eager students with 16mm cameras and borrowed idealism, Capra doesn’t lecture—he remembers. He answers questions with a mixture of humility and theatrical flair. He talks not only about filmmaking, but about America, memory, and the immigrant’s lens.

Scene: A small lecture hall at a Los Angeles film school. Afternoon light filters in through dusty windows. The students are quiet—but not reverent. They’ve seen Easy Rider. They’re skeptical.
Enter Frank Capra, late 70s, bow-tied, shoulders still squared like a soldier of the screen. He steps up to the podium and places a worn copy of The Name Above the Title beside a glass of water.

CAPRA:
I don’t claim to have invented the movies, kids. But I will say—I treated 'em like they were worth inventing.

The students laugh—tentatively. Some are flipping through paperbacks of It’s a Wonderful Life screenplays. Others just want to ask about Orson Welles.

CAPRA (pointing to the book):
Everything’s in there. The Name Above the Title. I wrote it myself. No ghost. No committee. Just me and a typewriter and a few gallons of black coffee.
But since you’re here—and I’m here—let’s talk.

Sylvester Stallone meets Marilyn Monroe.

Scene: A diner somewhere outside time.
The kind of joint that never closes, where the ketchup bottle sweats like it’s seen things, and the jukebox doesn’t ask for quarters anymore.
Red leather booths. A chrome counter that reflects more ghosts than faces.
Enter Marilyn Monroe, radiant like starlight dipped in sadness. Across from her: Sylvester Stallone, muscles and mumbling, with eyes like two tired fists.
STALLONE (digging into a cheeseburger like it owes him money):
You sure you want fries? I mean, they go straight to the hips.
MARILYN (smiling like a secret):
Darling, my hips are national landmarks. Men have tried to scale them and fallen in love on the way down.
STALLONE (chuckling, mouth full):
Fair enough. You know, I never thought I’d be having lunch with the Marilyn Monroe. You’re kinda like… if dreams had legs.

An imagined encounter between William Holden and Gloria Swanson—two actors forever fused by one film, Sunset Boulevard, crossing paths by chance at a sun-drenched hotel pool in the spring of 1951. The movie is still smoldering in Hollywood’s memory, but the reel has long since ended. He’s tan, taut, halfway between leading man and a bottle of bourbon. She’s regal in a turban and sunglasses, still Norma Desmond to waiters and strangers.

An imagined encounter between Dustin Hoffman and Mae West—two forces of cinematic nature seated next to each other by fate, scandal, or poor planning at a film festival screening in Palm Springs. He’s all nerves wrapped in intellect, an actor’s actor with a stammering soul. She’s velvet dynamite in rhinestones, a woman who turned desire into dialogue and lived like double entendre was a birthright.

An imaginary conversation in a diner between Humphrey Bogart and James Dean.

Scene: A booth in a 1950s diner.
Red vinyl cushions. Neon humming outside like a moth caught in a jazz riff. The waitress is young, too young to know the weight of the names in the booth.
It’s 3:17 AM.
The kind of hour that belongs to cats, drunks, insomniacs, and actors too dead to die.
BOGART (lighting a cigarette, match flaring like a gunshot in a coal mine):
So you’re the new kid. The Rebel. Mister Without-a-Cause. You drive fast and mumble your lines. That it?
DEAN (stirring a milkshake with the wrong end of the spoon):
I don’t mumble. I… internalize. Big difference. Besides, you didn’t exactly enunciate your way through Casablanca.

An imagined diner conversation between Clark Gable and Goldie Hawn.

Scene: A neon-lit diner caught between decades.
Red booths that have heard confessions. A jukebox spinning nothing. Ketchup bottles like lonely grenades on every table.
Clark Gable leans back, thumb hooked in his waistband, grin cocked like a pistol. Across from him sits Goldie Hawn, hair like sunlight with a sense of humor, eyes that sparkle like they’re constantly playing poker with the universe.
GABLE (lighting a cigarette with unnecessary flair):You know, sweetheart, in my day, dames didn’t laugh during the love scenes. They swooned. They sighed. They fell apart like chiffon in a heatwave.
HAWN (smiling like she knows where all the landmines are):
In my day, we laughed first, then decided if you were worth kissing after. It saved time and bad marriages.

An imagined conversation between Jack Nicholson and Anne Bancroft—two ferocious legends seated next to each other at a high school basketball tournament in Los Angeles. He’s all grin and grin and trouble, sunglasses on indoors. She’s elegance with brass knuckles in her handbag, a voice like velvet over razors.

An imagined reunion between Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway—ten years after Bonnie and Clyde rewrote the rules of Hollywood cool. The year is 1977. They meet by accident at a quiet coffee shop in Beverly Hills. The steam is real. So is the history. What follows is half flirtation, half forensic dissection of a film that made them immortal—and made them impossible for each other.

Scene: A corner table at The Daily Grind, Beverly Hills. Late afternoon.
The coffee shop has the usual suspects: producers in sunglasses, screenwriters with unfinished novels, and an old actress holding court by the muffins, pretending she didn’t recognize her own reflection in the chrome espresso machine.
The door opens.
Warren Beatty, ever the reluctant legend, steps in wearing aviators and a haircut that cost someone else’s rent. He’s scanning the menu like it just offered him a three-picture deal.
Then he stops.
Faye Dunaway is already seated. No entourage. No fuss. Just a tall black coffee, a copy of Le Monde, and a look that says she’s been waiting for this moment whether she admits it or not.
He grins. She doesn’t. Not yet.

An imagined conversation between Robert De Niro and Elizabeth Taylor—two living contradictions meeting in the most fragile of places: the waiting room of their shared analyst. He’s quiet storm, all method and masks. She’s violet eyes behind armor, a walking opera of beauty, diamonds, and damage.

An imagined conversation between Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren—two icons seated side by side in First Class on a transatlantic flight to Madrid. He’s myth unraveled, a smirk wrapped in bruised poetry. She’s elegance with iron bones, beauty that has nothing left to prove.