Voiceover:
To all patients of Dr.Howard Mierzwiak
My name is Mary Spevo. We’ve met but you don’t remember me. I worked for a company you hired to have part of your memory erased. I have since decided this is a horrible practice and in order to correct this I am sending everyone’s file back to them.
Clementine pops in the cassette tape. Her voice comes out into the car from the tape. Joel and Clementine listen.
Clementine On Tape: My name is Clementine Kruczynski . I’m here to erase Joel Barish.
Joel: What is this?
Clementine: I don’t know.
Clementine On Tape: He’s boring. is that enough reason to erase someone? I’ve been thinking lately how I was before and how I am now and it’s like – he changed me. I feel like I’m always pissy now. I don’t like myself when I’m with him. I don’t like myself anymore. I can’t even look at him. That pathetic wimpy apologetic smile, that sort of wounded puppy shit he does …
Joel: What are you doing?
Clementine: I’m not doing anything.
Clementine On Tape: The bloom is certainly fucking off the rose at this point.
Joel: Are you screwing with me?
Clementine: No!
Joel: You are screwing with me.
Clementine: Joel, I’m not!
Joel: You clearly are!
Clementine: Okay. Let’s just take a minute and …
Joel pulls the car over. She gathers up her stuff and gets out. She walks away. We then see her crying in her apartment. Clementine drives over to his place and walks in. Joel is crouched on the floor, listening to his own cassette tape playing.
Joel On Tape: She’s not very educated. She’s smart, I think, but not educated. I couldn’t really talk to her about books, you know? She’s more of a magazine reading girl. Her vocabulary leaves something to be desired. Sometimes I was embarrassed in public. Liberry. Liberry. Liberry.
Clementine: Hi.
Joel On Tape: Liberry.
Joel: Look what I found.
Joel hands her a drawing he did of Clementine during their relationship.
Joel On Tape: There’s a truly seductive quality about Clementine. It’s that her personality promises to take you out of the mundane, but …
Clementine: [staring at the drawing] You made me look skinny.
Joel On Tape: … carry you to another world, a world full of things that are exciting … it’s really just a ruse …
Joel: I’m sorry I yelled at you.
Clementine: It’s okay. Joel, I really like you. I hate that I said mean things about you.
Joel: Let me turn this off.
Clementine: [stops him] It’s only fair.
Joel On Tape: Where’s the real Clementine? I mean, the whole thing with the hair. It’s all bullshit.
Joel: I really like your hair.
Clementine: Thank you.
Joel: I really like your hair.
Clementine: Thank you.
Joel On Tape: This world is a goddamn mess, and she’s changing her hair color. I mean …
Joel: You want a drink or something?
Clementine: Do you have any whiskey?
Joel On Tape: I don’t think her sex is motivated – I saw it clearly last night we were together. It wasn’t sex. It was just sad.
Joel: [holding up the nearly-empty bottle] Sorry, I thought there was more.
Joel On Tape: The only way Clementine thinks she can get people to like her is to fuck her. Or at least dangle the possibility of getting fucked. I think she’s so desperate and insecure that she’ll sooner or later fuck everybody.
Clementine: I don’t do that.
Joel: I wouldn’t think that about you.
Clementine: Because I don’t.
Joel: I know.
Clementine: Because it really hurts me that you said that –
Joel: I’m so sorry.
Clementine: Because I don’t do that.
Joel: I’m so sorry.
Clementine: I’m sorry about all this. I’m gonna go. I’m a litle confused. I really don’t think I can be here. [She goes to the door.] Bye.
Joel: Bye.
Clementine: It was nice meeting you and all.
Joel On Tape: … to spend that much time with anyone and then to find out that she’s a stranger.
Joel: [runs out into the hall after Clementine] Wait.
Clementine: What?
Joel: I don’t know.
Clementine: What do you want, Joel?
Joel: Just wait, I don’t know, I want you to wait for … just a … while.
There is then a long pause.
Clementine: Okay.
Joel: Really?
Clementine: I’m not a concept, Joel, I’m just a fucked up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind. I’m not perfect.
Joel: I can’t see anything that I don’t like about you.
Clementine: But you will.
Joel: Right now, I can’t.
Clementine: But you will. You will think of things. And I’ll get bored with you and I’ll feel trapped because that’s what happens with me.
Joel: Okay.
Clementine: Okay? Okay.
Joel: Okay.
Screengrabs/script excerpts from “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, directed by Michel Gondry, starring JIm Carrey and Kate Winslet (2004)
