Marathe and Steeply: the anti-Entertainment rumor
Also, does this quote “anti”-Entertainment the film’s director supposedly made to counter the lethality: does it really also exist; this really could be some sort of game for you and the F.L.Q., to hold out the promise of the anti-Entertainment as a chip for concessions. As some kind of remedy or antidote.’ ‘Of this anti-film that antidotes the seduction of the Entertainment we have no evidence except craziness of rumors.’
Context
Both hit phrases, one exchange: the anti-Entertainment enters the book as a rumor neither side will vouch for. Steeply's version keeps the film-world framing — it's "the film's director" who "supposedly made" a counter-work — and Marathe's reply gives the theme its tidiest early formulation: an "anti-film that antidotes the seduction," cure and poison alike assumed to be cinema, the remedy for a cartridge necessarily another cartridge. That the samizdat's maker is rumored to have shot his own antidote seeds the master-copy and final-edit questions the roster scenes (064, 098, n024) carry later. Steeply's mid-sentence [n.47] is stripped from the quote per convention.