Bull

Ladies and gentlemen,

Whitney Holland.

I grew up on a farm.

Couple hundred acres.

Every day,

my dad would go out to the field.

Bale hay,

feed slop to the pigs,

shovel cow dung.

I can still smell that cow dung.

And then the summer before my ninth birthday,

there was this amazing heat wave,

and with it, this unrelenting drought.

The kind of drought that just seems to go on forever.

And I remember my dad doing everything he could

to save the crops, save the animals,

but the crops dried up.

Animals started to die.

And then, one late August morning,

my father dropped dead in a cornfield.

Dehydration and heart failure.

He was 32 years old.

By the way,

I'm not talking about India

or Africa.

I'm talking 150 miles

up the New York State Thruway.

Less than three hours from this vast body of water.

Makes no sense.

In a world with so much water,

why are so many people without?

This...

...is the Freshwater Honeycomb.

It's a passive, nonelectrical desalination tool.

It acts like a chemical magnet,

separating salt from water on a molecular level.

It's inexpensive

and doesn't rely on any exhaustible energy sources.

Imagine this, ladies and gentlemen,

happening on a global scale.

An endless supply of water

provided by the world's five oceans,

hundreds of rivers, and thousands of lakes,

and purified by the Freshwater Honeycomb.

My tech team tells me we're only 90 days away.

Ah.

So who wants in?

Come on in.

I hear you told them 90 days.

To scale up to what?

25 million gallons a day?

That would be a good start.

You know that's not gonna happen.

Not in 90 days, maybe not in 90 years.

No, I don't know that's not going to happen,

and you don't either.

Whitney, not every problem can be solved

simply by adding enthusiasm.

Okay, Derek, it's 10:00 at night.

What do you need? Some new piece of software?

What-what new gizmo do you need?

What-what new biochemist do you want me to try to steal from...

It's none of that.

Whitney, I'm done. I'm just done.

You keep taking people's money, promising them the moon,

and I'm supposed to be your Neil Armstrong

and give it to them, and I'm telling you I can't.

What? Derek, we've been here before.

You're just tired. You're nowhere near done.

500 gallons is great for a demonstration,

but we need to prove we can scale up

the Freshwater Honeycomb to handle whole municipalities,

city water systems, state water...

I've been trying to tell you for a month.

It can't. You know it. We both know it.

And tomorrow the D.A. is gonna know it.

Psst.

How did he score vacation time?

He didn't, not that I'm aware of.

Beautiful.

I'm still using the ones I got in college.

Funny you should say that. They're for my daughter.

Your daughter? You guys are taking a trip together?

She called me last night. She won a scholarship,

a journalism scholarship,

to study abroad for six months in Jordan.

Jordan, ah, Middle East.

How do you feel about that?

Thrilled, excited, proud of her.

Scared for her.

The packet that they sent

keeps talking about how safe it is,

even though we know it's in a part of the world that,

you know, is a little scary.

But if you want to be a journalist,

a serious journalist, and she does...

My God.

1,500 students applied, and they picked her.

I mean, you're looking at a guy who didn't leave Georgia

until he was 18 years old.

It is obscene how proud I am.

Yeah.

I'm guessing you've read the papers,

seen the reports.

The federal government is taking me to court.

Criminal court. Uh...

Charging me with two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud,

nine counts of wire fraud,

some other, less consequential things

that I can't remember right now,

though all the charges do end with the word "fraud."

You're on the front page.

Oh, that's

pithy.

So, why do you think the government

is suddenly coming after you?

My friend...

my head of R & D,

he just became convinced we were chasing a ghost,

that there was no way we could get to where we needed to go,

so he went to the Feds.

But why do that?

If he was unhappy, why not just quit?

I think I became so good

at raising money that he got spooked.

And when it was just a lark, when we had no money,

no one to answer to,

there was no pressure.

But when people heard what we were up to,

they started throwing money at us.

I mean, it's been a wild couple of years.

But the more successful we got,

the more Derek just froze.

I'm guessing he thought that if he could

recast himself as the whistleblower

rather than the co-conspirator,

that he might be able to work again.

The government is claiming your water desalination technology

is incapable of being applied to anything other than

personal use application,

but that in your pitches and demonstrations and

investment prospectuses,

you've been selling it as the answer

to the global water shortage.

They say you're peddling a pipe dream.

Look, I'm not a nut.

I'm not a scam artist.

I'm not saying I've discovered something

that can help you lose weight or make your hair grow back.

I'm not saying I can help women

fill out their bikinis or men look more manly

in their Speedos.

I'm saying I can help quench the thirst of the world.

I can help water crops in a desert.

The ramifications are huge.

I mean... look, there are four things

every human being on this planet needs:

air to breathe, food to eat,

a piece of land to stand on,

and water.

You figure out the water part,

everything else falls into place.

You can grow more food,

you can plant more trees to help create more oxygen,

and people can live anywhere,

no matter the climate.

This is real. This matters.

I get that the guy choked,

but why sell her out to the government?

It just doesn't make sense to me.

Well, it's all about the money. As soon as he called the Feds,

he stopped being a disgruntled employee

and became classified as an SEC whistleblower.

And as an SEC whistleblower, if the government wins,

he gets a percentage of whatever cash judgment the court levies.

The plot thickens.

You're not gonna represent her, are you?

What's your issue, Benny?

First of all, you promised me

that I could have some say in the cases we take around here.

And second of all, we just sat with that woman

for a half an hour, and she didn't say a single thing

I can use to mount a defense.

Do you believe what she told you?

Do you believe she was lying to you?

I'm not sure that's relevant.

I think it's the only thing that is relevant.

If she believes what she's saying,

what she's selling, then there is no criminal intent.

And if there is no criminal intent,

then there is no crime.

But, Bull, how do we do that?

How do we prove what someone does or doesn't believe?

Especially if the thing that she believes in

doesn't actually exist?

Well, for what it's worth, I believe her.

You think she can change seawater into drinking water?

You believe she can change the world?

I believe she believes she can.

Of course you do. Well, I don't.