to these alienating experiences is to slowly build a defensive "wall" around his feelings, to shelter him from further hurt. Pink marries his childhood sweetheart because she is conveniently available.

The boy has grown up and become a Rock and Roll performer, part of a band, attracted by power and fame which help to insulate him against his nagging fee1ings of separation, not only from his wife and friends, but also for himself. This in a life of diminishing returns. Like an addict with his junk, Pink needs bigger and bigger fixes of applause. But it's never enough. The endless separations build the wall still higher between Pink and his wife, until the inevitable happens - whilst he is away on tour, she falls in love with another man. The final brick in Pink's wall.

Pink locks himself in his room with a handfu1 of pills and a groupie. He destroys the furniture and frightens the girl away. Alone now, drugged and with only the TV for company, he retreats more and more into himself, the "wall" is now complete. Totally withdrawn from the real world, his imagination wanders into the further extremities of his nightmare, his worst feats, his probable madness.

He imagines himself as an unfeeling demagogue, for who all that is left is the exercise of power over his unthinking, uncaring audience. His manager, concerned as always about the forthcoming show1 breaks into the hotel and a doctor revives Pink enough to get him out of the hotel and into the limousine. But Pink has long gone. He hallucinates wildly as the real world vanishes, and he conjures up an evil spectacular, a Rock and Roll Nuremburg with him as its leader.


The story of THE WALL is told simply with the music of Pink Floyd, images and natural effects. There is no conventional dialogue to progress the narrative. Our story is about Pink, a Rock and Roll performer, who sits locked in a hotel room, somewhere in Los Angeles. Too many shows, too much dope, too much applause: a burned out case. On the TV, an all too familiar war film flickers on the screen. We shuffle time and place, reality and nightmare as we venture into Pink's painful memories, each one a brick in the wall he has gradually built around his feelings.

Slowly he withdraws from the real world and slips further into his nightmare as he imagines himself as an unfeeling demagogue, for whom all that is left is the demonstration of power over his unthinking audience, the culmination of the odious excess of his own world and the world around him. His internal self trial follows, as the witnesses of his past life, the very people who have contributed to the building of the wall, come forward and testify against him. - Alan Parker