The Deer Hunter

EXT. PENNSYLVANIA STEEL MILL - LIGHT SNOW - DAY The plant is massive, grime-streaked, squatting in the valley under five massive stacks, each one trailing a black ribbon across the winter sky. Fires can be seen flickering through the windows and long flames weave and dance from the tops of guyed metal flues. Steam rises in clouds from vents and chimneys and the sound of it all -- the hissing, the clanging, the rumbling, the shrieking -- comes faintly, muted by the falling snow. In the foreground is a street -- COLUMBINE STREET -- which inhabits the bottom of a narrow ravine and plunges directly down the hillside, straight at the mill. Columbine is a sad looking street, a grim-looking street, a street hanging on by the skin of its teeth. Dilapidated stores hug the narrow sidewalks. Battered signs squeak in the wind. Sandwiched between the stores and scattered on twisting roads along the hillside are narrow Victorian houses. These houses, which run to three stories or more in height, all seem on the verge of toppling over, and undoubtedly would, except that they are all connected one to another by a mad arrangement of utility lines which cross and re-cross between them with occasional aid from a leaning pole. MUSIC COMES UP -- dissonant, rather frightening music -- as we watch a car come charging up through the slush on Columbine Street. As it nears CAMERA the car falters on the slippery grade and slides out of sight. A figure appears, huddled against the driving snow.