TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you will be shown an extract from a movie plot and a question. You need to provide the correct answer for it. Short answers containing words that are present in the passage are preferred.
PROBLEM: Dave Kovic runs a temporary employment agency in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and has a side job impersonating President Bill Mitchell. He is requested by Secret Service agent Duane Stevensen to make an appearance as the President at a hotel. Dave assumes it is a matter of security, but it is really to cover up Mitchell's extramarital affair with a White House staffer.Mitchell suffers a severe stroke during the rendezvous, leaving him in a coma. White House Chief of Staff Bob Alexander and Communications Director Alan Reed convince Dave to continue impersonating the President. They tell him that Vice President Gary Nance is mentally unbalanced, but the truth is that Bob does not want Nance in power because his honesty would get in the way of Bob's lies and corruption. Only Bob, Alan, the Secret Service, and the medical staff know of the switch. First Lady Ellen Mitchell leads a separate life, rarely seeing the President.The public is notified that Mitchell has had a "minor circulatory problem of the head." With Dave established as President, Bob and Alan send Nance on a 12-nation goodwill tour of Africa and implicate him in a savings and loan fraud. Once Nance is forced to resign, Bob plans for Dave to nominate him as Vice President, whereupon Mitchell will have a more serious stroke and Bob will ascend to the Presidency.Dave's enthusiasm revives Mitchell's popularity. He visits a homeless shelter with Ellen, who does not understand why he has taken a sudden interest. Bob forges Mitchell's veto of a funding bill that includes the shelter. Mitchell wanted to veto the bill because of budget issues, while Bob does it out of spite. When Dave is confronted about the veto by Ellen, he confronts Bob, who offhandedly tells him that if he can cut $650 million from the federal budget he can keep the shelter. Dave has his accountant friend Murray Blum help him rewrite the budget so that the project may be reinstated. To make sure that Bob doesn't stop him, Dave does it publicly in front of the press.Suspecting that he is not really her husband, Ellen tricks Dave into revealing the truth. Dave and Duane show her Bill on life support in the White House basement. She and Dave decide to leave the White House. However, after a night out, they realize all the good they could still do and decide to return.Dave blackmails Bob into resigning by threatening to go public with the switch, then announces a plan to find a job for every American who wants work. Nance returns from Africa and confronts Dave about the savings and loan scandal, insisting they both know there is no merit to the allegations. Dave talks to Alan, who reveals the whole plan was Bob's idea. Meanwhile, Bob reveals Mitchell's involvement in the savings and loan scandal while pushing his own candidacy for the presidency. Realizing that he can't go into hiding, Dave decides to take responsibility for Mitchell's actions.The scandal will make the jobs program difficult to pass, but Nance tells Dave that it is a wonderful idea. Dave tells Ellen that Nance is a good man and he would make a great president. Realizing what is planned, Ellen tells him that she does not want to lose him. The next day in a joint session of Congress, Dave admits to Mitchell's role in the scandal, but introduces evidence proving Bob was the mastermind and Nance is innocent. Bob realizes that Alan has betrayed him. Dave fakes a stroke and makes a switch with the real Mitchell in an ambulance en route to the hospital. Nance becomes Acting President under the terms of the 25th Amendment and is sworn in as President five months later when Mitchell passes away. Bob and eight other members of the Mitchell Administration are indicted and arrested on 34 charges of law violations and obstruction of justice two days after Dave's jobs initiative passes.Dave decides to run for city council and Ellen comes to the office to volunteer. As they embrace, Duane stands guard outside the office door., Question: What happens to Mitchell after he suffers a severe stroke ?

SOLUTION: Answer: He falls into a coma.

PROBLEM: Howard Roark (Gary Cooper) is an individualistic architect who follows a new artistic path in the face of conformity and vulgar mediocrity.Ellsworth Toohey (Robert Douglas), an architecture critic for The Banner newspaper, opposes Roark's individualism and volunteers to crusade in print against him. The wealthy and influential publisher, Gail Wynand (Raymond Massey), pays little attention, but approves the idea and gives Toohey a free hand.Dominique Francon (Patricia Neal), a glamorous socialite who writes a Banner column, admires Roark's work, and opposes the newspaper's campaign against him. She is engaged to be married to an architect herself, the unimaginative Peter Keating (Kent Smith). She has never met or seen Roark, but she believes that he is doomed in a world that abhors individualism. Wynand falls in love with Francon and exposes Keating as someone who values a big opportunity more than her.In the meantime, Roark is unable to find a client willing to build according to his vision. He walks away from opportunities that involve any compromise of his standards. Broke, he takes a job as a laborer in a quarry. The quarry belongs to Francon's father and is near their summer home. The vacationing Francon visits the quarry on a whim. As Roark drills into the stone, Francon spots him and watches him work. When he sees her they openly and repeatedly stare at each other.Francon contrives to have Roark repair the fireplace in her bedroom. Roark mocks the pretense, and after the first visit, sends someone else to complete the repair. Expecting Roark, Francon is enraged and returns to the quarry on horseback. She finds Roark walking nearby. He again mocks her and she strikes him with her horsewhip. In the evening he invades her bedroom, forcefully embracing and kissing her as the film fades to black, implying sexual intercourse.Back in his small room, Roark finds a letter offering him a new project. He packs up and leaves. Francon goes to the quarry and learns that he quit. The boss offers to find out where he went, but she declines. She has no idea that he is Howard Roark, the brilliant architect.Wynand offers to marry Francon, even though he is aware that she is not in love with him. Francon defers the offer until she feels a great need to punish herself. She learns Roark's true identity when they are introduced at the party opening the new building that Roark has designed which The Banner has campaigned against. Francon goes to Roark's apartment and offers to marry him if he gives up architecture to save himself from a hopeless struggle. Roark rejects her fears and says that they face many years apart until she overcomes the error of her thinking.Francon finds Wynand and accepts his previous marriage proposal. Wynand agrees regardless of her true feelings or motives. Wynand discovers Roark as an architect and hires him to build Francon a secluded country home. Wynand and Roark become friends which drives Francon to jealousy over Roark.Keating has been employed to create an enormous housing project. It is beyond his skill, so he requests Roark's help. Roark says that if Keating promises to build it exactly as designed, Roark will design the project while permitting Keating to take all the credit. With prodding from the envious Toohey, the firm backing the project decides to alter the design presented by Keating. Roark decides, with Francon's secret help, to rig explosives to the project and destroy it. Roark is arrested at the building site. In order to demonstrate Roark's guilt, Toohey pressures Keating into privately confessing that Roark designed the project.Roark goes on trial. He is painted as a public enemy by every newspaper apart from The Banner, where, breaking with previous policy, Wynand campaigns publicly on Roark's behalf. However, Toohey has permeated The Banner with men loyal to him. Toohey has them quit and uses his clout to keep others out. He leads a campaign against The Banner's new policy that all but kills the paper. Faced with losing the enterprise, Wynand saves The Banner by bringing back Toohey's gang to join the rest of the public in condemning Roark.Calling no witnesses, Roark addresses the court on his own behalf. He makes a long and eloquent speech defending his right to offer his own work on his own terms. He is found innocent of the charges against him. A guilt-stricken Wynand summons the architect to his office. He presents him with a contract to design the Wynand Building, to be the greatest structure of all, with complete freedom to build it however Roark sees fit. As soon as Roark leaves the room, Wynand commits suicide.In the final scene, Francon enters the construction site of the Wynand Building, and identifies herself as Mrs. Roark. She rides the elevator towards Roark, awaiting her atop his magnificent new building., Question: What does Wynand hire Roark to build?

SOLUTION: Answer: A secluded country home

PROBLEM: One morning, hit men Charlie (Lee Marvin) and Lee (Clu Gulager) enter a school for the blind and terrorize the principal until she reveals the whereabouts of a teacher, Johnny North (John Cassavetes). As the hitmen walk toward North's upstairs classroom, the teacher receives a call warning him of their arrival. Johnny sadly responds, "It's okay. I know them." As he calmly waits at his desk, Charlie and Lee enter and shoot him multiple times.As they depart by train, Charlie is bothered that North refused to flee, and that they were paid an unusually high fee for such a simple hit. He and Lee run through what they know about the man they have just killed. Johnny was once a champion race car driver whose career ended in a violent crash. Four years before his death, he was involved in a million-dollar robbery of a mail truck. Tempted by the missing million, Charlie and Lee visit Miami to interview Johnny's former mechanic.Earl Sylvester (Claude Akins), who considers himself Johnny's only friend, is devastated to learn of his death. In between sobs and gulps of whiskey, he tells the story as he remembers it. Johnny North was at the top of his profession when he met the beautiful Sheila Farr (Angie Dickinson). Johnny fell in love and planned to propose marriage after winning his next big race. However, Johnny's late nights with Sheila had left him disoriented from lack of sleep. His racing career ended with a fiery crash.At the hospital, Earl revealed to Johnny that Sheila was the mistress of mob boss Jack Browning (Ronald Reagan). Known for her extravagant taste, Sheila has already cheated on Browning with several other sports figures, all of whom met bad ends. Enraged and heartbroken, Johnny rebuffed Sheila's attempts to explain and cut his ties to her.Intrigued, Charlie and Lee approach a former member of Browning's crew, who also reveals his memories. After the crash, Sheila found Johnny working as a pit mechanic. She says a much better job might soon be his for the taking. Browning was planning the robbery of a U.S. postal truck. On Sheila's recommendation, he agreed to Johnny as his getaway driver.Although Johnny still felt betrayed, Sheila said that she had always regretted losing him. Johnny forgave her. He also helped Browning by souping up the getaway car. Browning, however, was enraged when he learned that Sheila had returned to Johnny. In a deliberate provocation, Browning brutally slapped Sheila in front of Johnny, after she defied him. Johnny punched Browning and threatened to kill him if he ever hurt Sheila again. They agreed to "settle this" after the robbery.Browning and North placed a phony detour sign to send the mail truck onto an isolated mountain road. When the truck stopped, the gang held it up at gunpoint, loading more than $1 million into the getaway car. Johnny then forced Browning out of the moving car, driving off alone with the money.After listening to this story, Charlie and Lee pay a visit to Browning, who is now a real estate developer in Los Angeles. Browning insists he is now an honest businessman and has no idea what happened to the money. He reveals that Sheila is staying at a hotel and arranges a meeting with her.To deprive Browning of time to plan an ambush, Charlie and Lee call at Sheila's hotel several hours earlier than agreed. At first Sheila denies all knowledge of Johnny or the money. Charlie and Lee beat her and dangle her by the ankles out a seventh-story window. Terrified, she tells them the truth.The night before the robbery, she told Johnny his life was in danger. Browning, she said, was planning to kill him and pocket his share. Johnny wanted to kill Browning on the spot. Sheila insisted she had a better idea. On her advice, Johnny threw Browning out of the car and drove the money to Sheila.As the two lovers met in a hotel room, Browning showed up. Sheila asked Browning to "do it quickly," and the gangster shot Johnny, severely wounding but not killing him before Johnny escaped. It turned out Sheila and Browning were husband and wife. Sheila expressed fear that Johnny would seek revenge, so Browning hired Charlie and Lee to murder him.Charlie now understands at last why Johnny refused to flee. The only man who refuses to run is a man who considers himself to be already dead. Sheila's betrayal had already killed Johnny long before the bullets ever touched him.Charlie and Lee, with Sheila in tow, intend to confront Browning, but he is waiting nearby with a sniper rifle. He kills Lee and wounds Charlie.Browning and Sheila return home, where they prepare to flee with the money. A mortally wounded Charlie makes it there in time. Sheila, at last revealing her sociopathic nature, frantically denies any role in Johnny's death, insisting that her husband alone was responsible. Charlie calmly shoots Browning dead. He turns his revolver toward Sheila. When she again pleads for her life, Charlie snarls, "Lady, I don't have the time!" He kills Sheila with a single bullet and staggers out the door. Charlie falls dead on the lawn while still gripping the money, as a police car in the background makes its way towards the house., Question: Who was once a champion race car driver?

SOLUTION:
Answer: Johnny