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Mr. District Attorney and the Intimidated Jury, (Scene 5):
BUTLER: He says if he falls, I fall too.
Everything to lose:
The District Attorney has just informed Mr Taylor that a member of the jury, Mrs Clark, had charged him with swaying the jury into voting “not guilty”. He’s been warned. He could end up on trial. He could end up doing time in prison. By ‘doing time’, I mean serving a length of time in prison as punishment.
As soon as Taylor gets out of the DA’s office, he heads straight for Butler’s bowling alley. No, he doesn’t want to go bowling. He needs to see Butler, the guy who owns the bowling alley. Butler has got to hear about this. And when he hears it, Butler had better protect him!
Don’t jostle the kingpin:
In bowling, the pins are set up in a triangular shape. The one that is front center is the kingpin (五號瓶). Hit that one just a little off to one side or the other and all the pins will fall.
Butler, the owner of a bowling alley, is also the kingpin — the one manipulating the legal system. How the police and the whole legal system would love to knock him down! When he hears Taylor’s report, this new development doesn’t unnerve him at all. Taylor is like the pin on the extreme left or right. If he goes down, so what! It’s no big loss and he won’t affect anyone else.
When Taylor sees that Butler doesn’t care about him, he points out that by protecting him, Butler would also be protecting his own skin. Taylor says he won’t take the blame alone. Butler will go down with him.
No clout:
Butler doesn’t like being jostled by a nobody. He decides to put Taylor in his place — show him he doesn’t have that kind of authority, show him he has no clout. Then Mr Stanley comes into the room. Perfect timing! Stanley does the job for him.
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