book.”
“Sal, I’m going to do this screenplay.”
“I’m not saying you’re not,” he said, “but you got to bear in mind a studio might buy a book for any number of reasons—as a star vehicle, because a director likes it, for its title value, or just as a rough outline for a film. They own it. You sold the rights to them. They’re not obliged to make a faithful rendition.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I like you, Gideon. Get through this alive and we’ll both make a lot of money together. But don’t go in there with any farcockta ideas of grandeur.”
T HE FIRST DAY at Pacific was awesome! I had passed through the gates of a place of glamour and power second only to the White House. I was assigned to an old-time staff producer, Kurt von Dortann, who had come over during the Lubitsch era when monocled Germans were all the rage.
Von Dortann had some great early successes. In a weak moment, after a big hit, the studio chief, Stanley Gold, gave him an ironclad ten-year contract worth millions, in order to keep him at Pacific.
When von Dortann started to bomb with one picture after another, Gold tried every which way to get rid of him. Von Dortann hung in there through public insults, humiliations, and degradations. Gold did everything but kick his shins and slap his face. Von Dortann would merely smile and bow crisply and pick up his paycheck.
What I met was a rag of a man, completely broken, in a haze of memories. Von Dortann still ripped around in a Porsche, but his old Spanish-style estate in Tarzana was like a haunted house, where he would get into his cups every night and bemoan the wife and daughter who had abandoned him. On weekends the place looked like a hookers’ convention.
At our first meeting von Dortann confirmed Sal’s warning that I was there for a long walk off a short pier.
“No hurry. Don’t rush,” he assured me. “Just write a treatment of what you think should go from the book into the film. An outline. Forget about the screenplay.”
Bullshit, little Eva. I was ready. Not that I was planning a Hollywood career, but after a lifetime in cheap sneakers the money, the office, the secretary, the new car, the power, the beautiful little home I was able to lease were like a stroll on the glory road.
You know what the hell it’s like taking your wife into a dress shop on Rodeo Drive and peeling off eighty dollars, cold cash, and not feel like you’ve been hit in the stomach? And not have to say for the first time in your life, “How much is this going to cost?”
I knew all about this place being a writers’ graveyard when I came. But dammit, as a poor boy, I wouldn’t have been human if I didn’t think I’d died and gone to heaven.
So, from day one, excuse me for repeating, I was ready.
“Can I get a film run for me?” I asked von Dortann.
“Surely.”
“I’d like to see High Noon and I want the final script as well.”
High Noon, for me, was the ultimate motion picture. It had a perfect, miraculous blend of script, acting, direction, music, art, sound, every element of film. As I watched the picture, I read the script simultaneously. Every few minutes I’d signal for the projectionist to stop and I’d dictate to my secretary the type of shot, what the camera was doing, how the film was scored and cut, sound effects, stunts. I broke it down almost frame by frame.
That was my entire schooling on film writing.
I knocked off a two-page treatment in twenty minutes and then went immediately into a first-draft screenplay. Von Dortann didn’t ask to see pages for the four weeks of my employment contract. When he did, I handed him a two-hundred-and-fifty-page screenplay. He gaped in disbelief.
Most of the other writers dragged ass to prolong their weekly salaries. They hated my guts. Tough shit, gentlemen; you sink, I swim. In the history of Pacific Studios they had never seen a novel of this size and scope turned into a screenplay so fast.
The golden
“Sal, I’m going to do this screenplay.”
“I’m not saying you’re not,” he said, “but you got to bear in mind a studio might buy a book for any number of reasons—as a star vehicle, because a director likes it, for its title value, or just as a rough outline for a film. They own it. You sold the rights to them. They’re not obliged to make a faithful rendition.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I like you, Gideon. Get through this alive and we’ll both make a lot of money together. But don’t go in there with any farcockta ideas of grandeur.”
T HE FIRST DAY at Pacific was awesome! I had passed through the gates of a place of glamour and power second only to the White House. I was assigned to an old-time staff producer, Kurt von Dortann, who had come over during the Lubitsch era when monocled Germans were all the rage.
Von Dortann had some great early successes. In a weak moment, after a big hit, the studio chief, Stanley Gold, gave him an ironclad ten-year contract worth millions, in order to keep him at Pacific.
When von Dortann started to bomb with one picture after another, Gold tried every which way to get rid of him. Von Dortann hung in there through public insults, humiliations, and degradations. Gold did everything but kick his shins and slap his face. Von Dortann would merely smile and bow crisply and pick up his paycheck.
What I met was a rag of a man, completely broken, in a haze of memories. Von Dortann still ripped around in a Porsche, but his old Spanish-style estate in Tarzana was like a haunted house, where he would get into his cups every night and bemoan the wife and daughter who had abandoned him. On weekends the place looked like a hookers’ convention.
At our first meeting von Dortann confirmed Sal’s warning that I was there for a long walk off a short pier.
“No hurry. Don’t rush,” he assured me. “Just write a treatment of what you think should go from the book into the film. An outline. Forget about the screenplay.”
Bullshit, little Eva. I was ready. Not that I was planning a Hollywood career, but after a lifetime in cheap sneakers the money, the office, the secretary, the new car, the power, the beautiful little home I was able to lease were like a stroll on the glory road.
You know what the hell it’s like taking your wife into a dress shop on Rodeo Drive and peeling off eighty dollars, cold cash, and not feel like you’ve been hit in the stomach? And not have to say for the first time in your life, “How much is this going to cost?”
I knew all about this place being a writers’ graveyard when I came. But dammit, as a poor boy, I wouldn’t have been human if I didn’t think I’d died and gone to heaven.
So, from day one, excuse me for repeating, I was ready.
“Can I get a film run for me?” I asked von Dortann.
“Surely.”
“I’d like to see High Noon and I want the final script as well.”
High Noon, for me, was the ultimate motion picture. It had a perfect, miraculous blend of script, acting, direction, music, art, sound, every element of film. As I watched the picture, I read the script simultaneously. Every few minutes I’d signal for the projectionist to stop and I’d dictate to my secretary the type of shot, what the camera was doing, how the film was scored and cut, sound effects, stunts. I broke it down almost frame by frame.
That was my entire schooling on film writing.
I knocked off a two-page treatment in twenty minutes and then went immediately into a first-draft screenplay. Von Dortann didn’t ask to see pages for the four weeks of my employment contract. When he did, I handed him a two-hundred-and-fifty-page screenplay. He gaped in disbelief.
Most of the other writers dragged ass to prolong their weekly salaries. They hated my guts. Tough shit, gentlemen; you sink, I swim. In the history of Pacific Studios they had never seen a novel of this size and scope turned into a screenplay so fast.
The golden
Similar Books
