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Sinners · written by Ryan Coogler · 2025
Scene 58 of 110 · ≈ 2 min on screen · Act one
In 1932 Mississippi, gifted sharecropper-bluesman Sammie Moore wants to make a life in the blues beyond his preacher father's rules, but the opening night of his cousins' juke joint becomes a siege by a vampire offering the community belonging at the price of its freedom.
The legend and prologue frame Sammie's segregated Delta life under his father's church and the twins' shadow.
Sammie wants the freedom, recognition, and musical life he imagines beyond the plantation.
He leaves the plantation with the twins, enters the wider Delta, and helps build their juke joint.
Pearline arrives with another guitarist, and Sammie flirts while claiming his place among the musicians.
Cornbread recognizes Mary, now able to pass as white, and lets her enter the juke.
Mary tells Sammie about her mixed family and accuses the twins of abandoning her mother.
This scene
On stage, Delta Slim switches to a new song with Sammie watching. (MY PREACHIN’ PIANO VERSION)
DELTA SLIM
I think she like the way I’m
preachin’.
Most of the patrons we have seen before along the road, in the shops and fields that we have passed.
Smoke whispers in Stack’s ear, pointing at Mary.
Mary eyes Stack who approaches her. He tries to walk her out of the door and she pulls away.
MARY
I’m not here for you.
STACK
Oh yeah? Why you here then?
MARY
I come to hear the blues.
STACK
They play the Blues just fine in
Arkansas.
(long beat)
What’s it gone take? How much?
Stack starts thumbing through money.
STACK (CONT’D)
How much to get you to get the
fuck on?
Mary chuckles at this.
MARY
You can’t pay me off.
STACK
I’ll pay one of these field
bitches in here to drag you out
then.
Mary laughs at this healthily.
MARY
Shit, you taught me how to fight.
I’ll beat up every bitch in here.
STACK
Taught yo ass how to walk away
when the money is up too. Got you
a rich white husband. Got you a
farm. Go home to it.
MARY
I ain’t ask for none of that. All
that shit was your idea.
MARY (CONT’D)MARY (CONT’D)
I ain’t want no white man. I
didn’t want to be white, I wanted
to be wit you.
STACK
Woman you know I ain't shit. You
know I can’t do nothing for you.
MARY
Maybe I ain't shit neither.
STACK
You think you don’t deserve what
you got out there? Land? Freedom
to go where you want?
(smiles wide, incredulous)
We all deserve it, but you was
born wit a paint job to give you a
shot at beating the system. And
y ou want me to feel bad for
showing you how to get it?
(beat)
You buried yo mama, now go home.
All it take is the wrong person to
see you here, word get back and
them crackas’ll kill you.
MARY
What would it matter to you?
STACK
Cause if somebody hurt you out
there me and my brother gon come
kill em all.
MARY
So you’ll kill for me?
STACK
That’s right.
MARY
But you still won’t tell me the
truth. I was yo ung enough to
believe you were coming back.
(alt)
But I’m grown now, Stack. And I
know you never planned to stay.
And you still can’t say it.
STACK
Say what? That I think about you
every day?
(MORE)(MORE)
STACK (CONT’D)
(beat)
I just wanted you to be safe. And
that was never gonna be here. And
that was never gonna be with me.
Stack walks to the front door, leaving Mary on the dance floor.
Smoke observes from the catwalk.