A FAMILIAR VAPOROUS odor, mellowed by night sea air, wafts from the man at the rail. Jimmy recognizes the drummer from the cruise ship’s lounge act and decides to be sociable. Struck by the vastness of the ocean, Jimmy muses: “I’ve never seen so much water!” There is a long pause. The drummer passes the doobie and fixes his eye on Jimmy. In a sudden wheezing exhale he replies: “Yeah man, and that’s just the surface!”

It’s a major re-write, but this idea is ripped off from an anecdote Harry Belafonte relates in the book: “Robert Altman: The Oral Biography.” After hearing a version of this joke, it became a private thing between Altman and Belafonte. When someone or something got boorish, one of them would whisper: “And that’s just the surface."

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