When footlights dim in reverence to prescient passion.
Forewarned, my audience leaves the stage, floating ahead.
Perfumed shift, within the stammering silence.
The face that launched a thousand frames
Betrayed by a porcelain tear, a stained career.

You've played this scene before; you've played this scene before.
I, the mote in your eye.
I, the mote in your eye; a misplaced reaction... reaction.

The darkroom unleashes imagination in pornographic images,
In which you will always be the star.
Untouchable, unapproachable,
Constant in the darkness... in the darkness.
Nursing an erection; a misplaced reaction.
With no flower to place before this gravestone,
And the walls become enticingly, newspaper, thin.
But that would only be developing the negative view,
And you have to be exposed in voyeuristic color; the public act.
Let you model your shame on the mannequin catwalk... catwalk.
Let the cats walk.

I've played this scene before. I've played this scene before.
I, the mote in your eye.
I, the mote in your eye; a misplaced reaction; satisfaction.

You can't brush me under the carpet; you can't hide me under the stairs.
The custodian of your private fears; your leading actor of yesteryear.
Who, as you crawled out of the alleys of obscurity,
Sentenced to rejection in the morass of anonymity.
You, who I directed with a lover's will; you who I let hypnotize the lens.
You, who I let bathe in the spotlight's glare.
You, who wiped me from your memory like a greasepaint mask;
Just like a greasepaint mask.

But now I'm the snake in the grass.
The ghost of film reels past.
The producer of your nightmare,
And the performance has just begun; It's just begun.
Begun, It's just begun.

Your perimeter of courtiers jerk like celluloid puppet
As you stutter, paralyzed, with rabbit's eyes.
Searing the shadows, flooding the wings,
To pluck elusive salvation from the understudy's lips.
Retrieve the soliloquy; maintain the obituary.
My cue line in the last act, and you'll wait in silent solitude.
Waiting for the prompt. Waiting for the prompt. Waiting for the prompt.

You've played this scene before.

Copyright: LEN FREEDMAN MUSIC INC.
Writer(s): ALAN WILDER, DOUGLAS JOHN MC CARTHY, FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA