And I Mean That Sincerely!

"Grummit!" The sound, unlovely at best, gained no beauty by being spat out with surprise and glee into a glass of iced coffee. The spitter, Clayton Horne, wiped his chin and gazed with glittering eyes across the studio commissary table. "Sure I know Grummit. Why do you ask?"

Horne's lunch companion, a slightly younger man, new to Hollywood, replied, "Well, I have a chance of a job with him, and I don't know if I should take it or--"

"Take it, take it," insisted Horne.

"Then he's good to work for? He's a sensitive chap, a cut above the average producer?"

"Take the job."

"But tell me about him. You did a picture for him, didn't you?"

Horne signaled the waitress and pantomimed a request for more iced coffee. "Do you have a little time?" he asked his companion.

"Nothing but," was the reply, so Horne cleared his throat and leaped full-blown into his best elocutionary style.

• • •

You've heard this sort of statistic, I'm sure (said Home). Ninety-two percent of all actors in New York are unemployed. Or, only three-and-a-quarter percent of American writers know where their next meal is coming from. Well, to such pronouncements, I--being a writer myself--customarily respond that statistics are like bikinis: What they reveal may be enticing, but what they conceal is vital. I then ask how many of the "actors" in that unemployed percentage are capable of stepping onto a stage without falling flat on their faces, and how many of those mealless "writers" could construct a simple declarative sentence if their lives depended on it. Usually, I don't get any answers, so I offer a statistic of my own. Remember Jimmy Durante's catch phrase, "Everybody wansa get inna the act"? How true that is, and it's my contention (I reply to these armchair statisticians) that ninety-nine percent of that Everybody is possessed of the talent, energy and zeal of a sea cucumber. The remaining one percent get all the work, they get all the work because they can deliver, and they eat very high on the hog indeed.

But the gods take unkindly to such blatant expressions of self-confidence, and so, a couple of years ago, I found myself eating very low on the crow. My most recent screenplay had netted me an enormous wad of pelf, most of which had gone into the down payment on a big new house, and the rest of which had been steadily and insidiously drained by the daily expenses of living. One morning, when my bank balance was somewhat less than $500, I received two telephone calls. The first was from the attorney who stood between me and the vulpine monsters of the Internal Revenue Service. "Mr. Horne," said this attorney, "I've done all I can. You've had your last extension. They'll give you one month to produce the $10,000." (He didn't say $10,000, he said $9666 and some odd cents or something like that, but I'm giving you the round number.) I thanked him hoarsely, hung up, and sat heavily beside the phone, staring at the carpet, while visions of bankruptcy danced in my head. The phone rang again, and when I answered it my voice was a pallid parody of itself, faded and colorless like a bright book jacket left too long in the sun. Don't steal that simile, by the way, I'm using it in my next novel. "Hello," I said.

"Hello, is Clay Horne there?"

"Speaking. Hello, Marv."

Marvin Brod, writers' agent with offices on Wilshire Boulevard, expressed astonishment. "Kid? That you?"

"A piece of me," I said, numbly misquoting Horatio.

"You sound funny. Never mind. Now listen. You listening?"

"Yes."

"Listen. I got you an appointment, three-thirty this afternoon, with Ken Grummit. I don't have to tell you who he is. He's right up there with Kramer, Schary, Susskind, and all those culture-hound types. He's got something very big brewing. I don't know what it is, but when I was in his office yesterday, he said he was looking for a very good writer, not just a writer, an author, a literary man, someone out of the ordinary. I dropped your name. He picked it up. He's read your books, he likes your work, he is very interested. So listen. You listening?"

"Yes, yes."

"All right, listen. Go see the man. Play it cool. Find out what he's got on his mind. Roll with the punches. And, kid? Don't blow it. It's up to you now, understand? I've set it up, now you carry the ball. And listen--"

"I'm listening."

"Listen--if we work this right, I think I can stick him for two thou per week. And, kid? If we get the job, make it last. Know what I mean?"

"Yes, Marv, I know." I knew that, whatever the job, no matter how dreary the task or how loathsome the subject matter, I would have to make it last at least five weeks, for in front of my eyes swam a ghostly arithmetical equation: $2000 x 5 = $10,000.

"Good," said Marvin Brod. "Three-thirty. Play it cool, don't blow it, and kid? Phone me the minute you leave his office."

"I will."

I made a point of climbing into the same suit and necktie I'd worn on my latest jacket photo (impress Grummit subliminally with my literary prestige, I figured) and went to see him. He was, and is, a chap in early middle age, slender, Easternly dressed, with close-cropped graying hair and what we novelists sometimes call an ineffable air of angst. His office was lined with books, and the few photographs on his walls were not of movie stars but of writers, and they were personally inscribed to him. Bertrand Russell, Hemingway, Maugham, Steinbeck, Cocteau, Abby Mann, all the greats. And Grummit himself, even in the privacy of his office, acted and talked as if he were conducting a TV panel discussion on the pros and cons of nonrepresentational art. We spoke in generalities for a while--Whither The American Novel? and like that--and he said some nice things about my own books. Then the conversation began to lumber leadenly in the direction of the movies, and I asked him what his next project was going to be.

He smiled. "Something unprecedented. Something wondrous. Something an artist like you can appreciate, Mr. Horne. Something men of our caliber can work on without feeling stained, degraded, prostituted. Something fine."

I wanted to say WHAT, WHAT? but I merely narrowed my eyes and thinned my lips and tried to look as much like the jacket photo as possible. Grummit went on talking:

"There's a fresh breeze blowing through the industry, Mr. Horne. A new freedom, a new awareness. The old taboos are being knocked over, one by one. Icons are being smashed by the dozen. The public isn't satisfied with pap anymore. They want to see life on the screen, life as it is lived, life as it has been painted with bold strokes by our greatest contemporary writers."

Flattered, I began to say, "Well, that's very nice of you--"

"Just think a minute, Mr. Horne," Grummit went on. "Think of some of the properties we're making films of these days. Stuff that ten years ago no one would dream of filming. Lolita. That French play, The Balcony. Even Tropic of Cancer. Do you read me, Mr. Horne? Do you know what manner of book I have reference to?"

"Uh, stylistically experimental ground-breakers which--"

"Dirty books!" roared Grummit. "That's what films are being made of these days!" He leaned back, triumphantly. "And you tell me, Mr. Horne. You tell me. What are the two most notorious dirty books of our time?"

"Not ..." I ventured, hesitantly. "Not the Mullens?"

Grummit slapped the desk. "Exactly! That pair of banned, condemned, controversial masterpieces by Blaise Mullen! And do you know who owns the motion picture rights to them, Mr. Horne?" He jabbed his own chest with an erect thumb. "Me. Kenneth K. Grummit."

"That's ... quite a coup, Mr. Grummit."

"It certainly is, Mr.--what do your friends call you? Clay? Do you mind if I call you that? And I want you to call me Ken. After all, we're both working for the same stern taskmaster: Literature. Now then. I don't have to tell you that these books constitute the hottest film property since, well, damnit, there just is no comparison! When I announce my acquisition of them, every producer in town--in the world!--will be green with envy. And it was all so easy. A few weeks ago, I happened to be reading a magazine article on filth in literature, William Burroughs' Naked Lunch and all that, and there was a passing mention of the Mullens, they just called them Mullen One and Mullen Two, which I understand is the way they're referred to in hip circles. Well, it wasn't the first time I'd heard of them, of course, but this was the first time something clicked in my head. Because the article just happened to mention that Mullen lived in Los Angeles. I picked up the phone book. Sure enough, there he was, Blaise Mullen. Lives in a ramshackle section of downtown L. A. Now, do you think I picked up the phone and called him? Not on your life. Why give him time to think about it, or shop around other producers, maybe get himself an agent or a lawyer? No. I had a contract prepared, a very legal, very short, very tight contract. I had a check made out, payable to Blaise Mullen. A check for five thousand dollars. Then I drove into L. A. and knocked on his door. He's a slight little (continued on page 122)Sincerely(continued from page 52) man, bald, about fifty, I'd say, very gentle and soft-spoken. Nice fellow. Lives all alone there. Made me a cup of instant coffee with powdered milk in it. 'Mr. Mullen,' I said, 'I am a great admirer of your books and I want to bring them to the screen.' He just blinked at that, as if he could hardly believe it. I showed him the check. He smiled. He laughed. Why, I'll bet he's never seen that much money all in one lump in his entire life. I showed him the contract. He read it, and he nodded, and I whipped out a pen, and he signed it. Then and there. I gave him the check, put the contract in my pocket, shook his hand, and left. As simple as that. But can you see their faces? The Mirisches, and Seven Arts, and Joe Levine, and Otto Preminger, and all of them, when they hear that Ken Grummit bought both Mullen books for a lousy five Gs?"

"I warn you, Ken," I said, with a smile, playing it cool, "I intend to stick you for a lot more than five Gs."

Grummit laughed. "That agent of yours is already putting the squeeze on me. But don't worry about the money, Clay. I'll do very well by you. It's worth it to me to get the best possible screen adaptation. The Mullen books deserve to be dramatized by a first-rate author, a literary figure comparable in stature to Blaise Mullen himself. And I mean that sincerely! For this job, I don't want someone who's been grinding out Joan Crawford pictures for the past thirty years. Now tell me. Be completely honest. What do you think of the project?"

I heard in my mind--with an echo-chamber effect and muted brass playing occult chords--Marvin Brod's voice, se-pulchrally saying, "Don't blow it, kid. Don't blow it." Somehow, I felt that being "completely honest" to the extent of admitting I had never read the Mullen books would place me in grave danger of blowing it. So:

"Ken," I said, "it's sensational. And I mean that sincerely!"

"I'm glad you feel that way, Clay. I have a hunch we're going to see eye to eye all the way down the line. I'll talk to Brod this afternoon, and if we can agree on terms, then I'll expect to see you here Monday morning bright and early."

At the risk of blowing it, I felt this was the time to be clearly understood about certain small but significant matters. "That's fine, Ken," I said, "all except the bright and early part. I'm good for absolutely nothing--not to mention great writing--until about ten-thirty in the morning. Before that time, I'm puffy-eyed, nasty, uncommunicative, and thoroughly useless. So, if you don't mind, I'll roll in some time between ten-thirty and eleven A.M."

For a fraction of an instant, doubt hardened Grummit's eyes. Then he smiled broadly and said, "Fine. Any way you work best is fine with me. So I'll say goodbye to you for now, and I'll huddle with your agent, and then if all goes well, I'll see you Monday morning bright-- well, I'll see you Monday morning."

We shook hands and I left.

There was a pay phone in the lobby. I slipped a dime into it and dialed a number. "He's on the hook, Marv. Reel him in."

Monday morning, I awoke precisely at 8:15, took my time over breakfast, showered and shaved indulgently with an excess of lotions and talcums, and spent the better part of ten minutes choosing my clothes. Then I drove, at a leisurely speed and by the most circuitous route I could think of, to the studio. It was only 10:15 when I reached the parking lot, so I sat in the car and read the paper until 10:30, at which time I got out and shuffled casually into Grummit's office.

"Clay!" boomed Grummit. "It's good to see you! All ready to dive right in?"

"All ready," said I with a cheery smile.

"I'll show you your office." He did. It was sunny, commodious, cool, and contained--in addition to desk and typewriter--several heavily upholstered chairs, end tables, lamps and a couch. "To your liking?" he asked.

"It will do very nicely."

"Fine! Now, what would you say is the first order of business?"

"This week, Ken," I said easily, "I think I should do nothing more than read the two books."

"Oh."

I quickly added, "It's been years, you know. I barely remember them. And I think they deserve a very close rereading and careful study, don't you?"

Grummit perked up. "Definitely. I'll order some copies right away and you can get down to work as soon as they come in. Next week, I suppose you'll start in on the treatment?"

"Yes, although I think most of next week should be spent in meetings between us, don't you? I want to have the benefit of your thinking on the approach."

"Yes, yes ..."

"And if we have a little time left after our meetings, I think we should set up screenings of certain selected films that tie in directly with what we're doing. Lolita, The Balcony, that sort of thing. There was even a rather bad French film made of Lady Chatterley's Lover which I think we ought to see, if only as a guide-post to what to avoid."

"I like your thinking, Clay. Very thorough. We'll set up those films for next week. But first things first. Those books. May I use your phone?"

"Please do."

Grummit dialed his secretary. "Honey, call Pickwick's or Martindale's and order some copies of the Mullen books. Have a special messenger deliver them here right away. What? Titles? I don't know--what are the titles, Horne?"

"Why ..." (You see, I had never heard the titles.)

"Doesn't matter, honey, everybody just calls them Mullen One and Mullen Two. They'll know what you mean. Right." He hung up. "Care to have a cup of coffee in my office while we're waiting for the books?"

"Great idea."

In Grummit's office, the secretary was waiting for us with a mask of bemusement and failure on her face. "Mr. Grummit, those books. They're not available."

"What do you mean, they're not available?"

"They're not published in this country."

"What? Not even by Putnam?"

"Not even by Grove Press!"

"You mean to say I bought rights to a couple of books that aren't even--well, where are they published, then?"

"The bookstore man said France."

"Cable France. Specify airmail. Sorry about this delay, Clay ... maybe we can schedule those screenings for this week instead of next ..."

"But Mr. Grummit--"

"Don't just sit there, honey, send that cable."

"It won't do any good, Mr. Grummit. The bookstore man says the U. S. Customs would impound them. They're not allowed in this country."

"That true, Clay?"

"That's what I understand, Ken. But I'm not without certain connections among the avant-garde. I think I can scare up some copies. I have a friend down in Mexico--"

"Good boy. In the meantime, let's get a little publicity rolling. We'll announce the project to the trades and the columns. Honey, take this down--Kenneth K. Grummit has signed the prominent novelist, Clayton Horne--that sound OK to you, Clay?"

"Prominent novelist is just fine."

"--the prominent novelist, Clayton Horne, to prepare the screen adaptations of the controversial Blaise Mullen books, uh, what are the titles again, honey?"

"I don't know, Mr. Grummit. The bookstore man wouldn't tell me."

"Wouldn't tell you! Why not?"

"Because I'm a girl, he said. All he'd tell me was that both books have one-word titles. And they rhyme with each other."

"What kind of nonsense is this! Get that joker on the phone again. I'll talk to him."

"Yes, Mr. Grummit."

As she dialed, Grummit shook his head eloquently. "Obstacles. Everywhere you turn in this business, Clay, obstacles. Even a little thing like ordering a couple of books."

"Hold on, please. Mr. Grummit? The bookstore man."

Grummit grabbed the phone. "Hello, this is Kenneth K. Grummit. Do you think you could bring yourself to tell me the titles of those Mullen books?" Grummit frowned. "What? What's that you said? Spell that." There was a pause. Grummit's voice was quieter: "I see. Well, what's the title of the second one?" Grummit visibly paled. "Thank you. Thank you very much." He returned the phone to his secretary, who cradled it.

"Clay," said Grummit, "step in here a moment, will you?" We entered Grummit's inner office and Grummit closed the door. "We have a problem, Clay. Why didn't you tell me what those books were called?"

"Well," I lied, anxious not to blow it, "actually, when I read the books, I borrowed them from an Army buddy, and they were in pretty bad condition. The covers were torn off. Also the title pages. So, to tell you the truth, Ken, I never knew the titles. Just Mullen One and Mullen Two, you know, the way they're referred to in hip circles." I coughed a little, and asked, "What are the titles?"

In a near whisper, with incredulity and horror stamped on his face, Grummit uttered a single word.

I said, "What?"

Grummit nodded. "And that's just the first one. The second one is called ..." He scribbled a word on a scrap of paper and crammed it into my hand. I looked down at it, gulped noisily, and handed it back to him. He placed it in an ashtray and burned it.

"I suppose they have a symbolic meaning," I said. You might say I said it lamely.

Grummit circled his desk. Hands behind his back, he gazed out the window. At length, he said, "What do we do, Clay? I mean, Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, Lady Chatterley's Lover ... at least the titles are decent."

"Well, Ken, I should think the obvious solution would be to change the titles. It's been done often enough before."

Grummit shook his head emphatically. "Not with well-known properties. When you buy a well-known property like this, a big part of what you're buying is a famous title. We call it presold. You cash in on all the publicity the book has received. You simply do not buy Gone with the Wind and then change the title to Frankly, Scarlet, I Don't Give a Damn."

"No," I said. "No, you don't." I saw the job sinking like a torpedoed ship. I saw, as in comic strips, $1000 bills sprouting wings and taking to the air. I heard the hollow, ghostly voice of Marvin Brod again, saying, "You blew it, kid, you blew it ..." What, I asked myself, would Marv do in this situation? Well, Marv would, first of all, snap his fingers.

At the crisp sound, Grummit turned from the window.

"Ken," I said with soft excitement, "who knows those damned titles?"

"Huh?"

"Did you know them? Did I know them? Did your secretary know them?"

"No ..."

"That's right. No. Which proves they are not famous, presold titles like Gone with the Wind and Chatterley and Lolita!"

"I think," said Grummit, his eyes lighting up, "I think I'm beginning to get your drift ..."

"Of course you are! It's so simple! Mullen One and Mullen Two are the titles everyone knows. They are the titles that have received all the publicity."

"So we call the picture ...?"

"We call the picture Mullen. It's a notorious name, and the books are largely autobiographical anyway, I understand. The first half is labeled on the screen with a big Roman numeral one--" (I sketched it in the air) "--and there's an intermission at the halfway point. The second half is preceded by the Roman numeral two ..." (I sketched again.)

"Clay," Grummit said reverently after a moment, "I take my hat off to you. You have turned defeat into victory. We have fallen into a tub of sheep-dip and come up smelling like a rose."

I shrugged modestly and summoned a delicate blush.

Grummit glanced at his watch. "It's lunchtime," he said. "Will you do me the honor of being my guest?"

"The honor," I said gallantly, "is mine, sir."

We watched movies all that week. The following week, the books having arrived via the good offices of my friend, I spent supine on the couch, reading. Late on the Friday of that second week, having by that time made $4000 for doing precisely nothing, I walked into Grummit's office, the books in my hand.

"Ah," said Grummit. "All through?"

"All through. But I think you'd better read them, Ken."

"Certainly. I fully intend to." He took the books, which were bound in green paper covers, and he winced. "Those titles," he said. "How can they print something like that?"

"This publisher is very emancipated," I explained.

"Before I look at them--what's your candid opinion?"

"Well, Ken, having just finished reading them again, I'd like to let them settle in my mind and sort of marinate over the weekend, rather than form a hasty judgment."

"Good idea."

"Also, that will give you time to give them a quick glance, perhaps, so we can have a common frame of reference."

"Will do. Have a nice weekend, Clay."

"Thanks. You, too."

I roused my family early Saturday morning and carted them off to the beach. We stayed out all day, because I was expecting a call from Grummit, and I didn't want to be near a phone. We returned home just long enough to shower and change, at which time the sitter arrived and we beat a quick retreat to dinner at Ah Fong's and a movie. We got back at midnight to learn that Grummit had phoned twice. "He said be sure to phone him as soon as you came in," the sitter told me.

I didn't. But at ten on Sunday morning, I took a deep breath and dialed Grummit's private home number.

"Ken? Clay. I'm sorry I missed your calls last night, and I got home too late to return them. Did you get a chance to look at those books?"

"Did I!! Clay, what kind of books are these??"

"How do you mean?"

"They're positively filthy!!!"

"Well, you knew that, Ken ..."

"Hell, I thought they were a little racy like Lolita and Chatterley and Tropic--but there isn't a clean line in either one of these! They're nothing but filth from beginning to end! They make me want to throw up! And there isn't even a story--what is this, some kind of free verse or something they're written in?"

"I understand Mullen calls it free prose; a kind of Joycean stream-of-consciousness--"

"Stream of filthiness is what they are! I mean, I thought I knew a little something about life, I'm no kid, and I've lived among showbiz people as far back as I can remember, but this guy has invented some tricks I never even heard of before! Like this stuff right here on the very first page of the second book, where the girl--"

"I know the passage you mean, Ken. I must admit that it was news to me, too."

"Clay, what are we going to do? How can you even begin to build a story out of this mishmash?"

Don't blow it, I told myself. I took another deep breath. "It won't be easy, Ken. But it won't be impossible, either. Buried in all that free prose and raw sex are characters, people with flesh and blood on their bones, and in every one of those characters is a story. It will take some extracting--and it will be like pulling teeth, I grant--but, after all, that's what you're paying me for, isn't it?"

Grummit groaned. "But Christ Almighty, at least those other guys were able to cash in on some famous presold characters like Humbert Humbert and Lolita and Lady Chatterley, but in this stuff, even the characters' names are obscene!"

"We could change them slightly, Ken. Decontaminate them, just a little bit."

"Decontaminate them! How the hell are you going to decontaminate the name of the girl?"

"Ah, I'm glad you brought that up. That's a perfect example of how we can pull a slight switch. We could, for example, call her Kitty. See?"

"Hmm. That's not bad. It's clean, and yet everybody in the literary know will tumble and get a kick out of what we've done. Yes, that's good thinking."

"So you see, Ken, there's no need to panic."

"You may be right, Clay. This has been a fruitful conversation. We'll carry it a bit further bright and earl--we'll discuss it tomorrow."

We did. We discussed it the next day, too. We discussed it that whole week, by which time I was yet another $2000 richer. The following week, I started in on the treatment, working slowly and carefully, I assure you.

You know what a treatment is? A bastard form, in an unpublishable (and often unreadable) limbo between screenplay and narrative; a sell job, by which the writer tries desperately to hook the interest of the jaded, unimaginative illiterates he frequently works for; a synopsis before the fact. When you were a kid, did you ever know a really good movie-teller? I mean someone who could see a movie and then tell you all about it--so vividly, so selectively, so enthusiastically that you almost felt you had seen it yourself? I had a cousin like that. Well, that's what a good treatment writer has to be--not a writer at all, really, a movieteller. Except that he must recount a movie he's never seen, a movie that doesn't exist save on the silver screen of his mind. It's tough.

My treatment was 200 pages long. It was a novel in every way except its use of the present tense ("He slaps her face" instead of "He slapped her face"). It was about 5 percent Mullen and 95 percent me. The plot was mine, the dialog was mine, the style--what there was of it--was mine; only the characters were Mullen's (and even their names were mine, most of them, since Mullen's handles were censorable by the most liberal of standards). It was the most taxing drudgery I've ever been damned with, and during the course of it I began to steadily increase my quota of luncheon martinis, deliberately lunching off the lot for that purpose.

One afternoon when I was good and looped, I got angry with Blaise Mullen and decided to phone and ask. him a certain question. Have you read his books? No? Among other things, they constitute a veritable encyclopedia of sexual aberrations, all of which are described in minute clinical detail (and, I must admit, poetic brilliance)--all, that is, but one. That one he merely refers to as The Bulgarian Perversion, and does not deign to delineate further. When sober, I had no curiosity about this (after all, I couldn't use it in the treatment), but after one of my wet lunches, I always found his reticence intolerable. So, on this particular day, I pulled the L. A. phone book out of my desk and called him.

I was very polite. I told him who I was and what I was doing. I expressed admiration for his prose. I half hoped he would recognize my name and say something nice about my books, but I guess he lived in too rarefied a literary atmosphere to be aware of my little flyspecks. Then I asked my question: "Mr. Mullen, exactly what is The Bulgarian Perversion?"

His answer was astonishing: "Words fail me."

"Words," I said, "fail you?"

Abruptly, he asked, "Can you spare an hour this afternoon?"

"An hour for what?"

"Let me send Lulu Rats to your office."

"Lulu who?"

"A girl I occasionally see."

"Well, I don't know, I--"

"Lulu is Bulgarian," he explained.

She sure was. Dark, small, compact, olive skin writhing with dancer's muscles, enormous melons for breasts, eyes brown and cold as this iced coffee, a flat, broad, handsome-if-animal face. In a voice that would make Tallulah sound like Tweety-Pie the Canary, she said, upon entering my office 45 minutes later, "You Mizzder Hor-ren? I Lulu Raztzvetnizhiev." I started to mutter a hello, but she sternly said, "Not talk." Then she locked the door.

My friend, heed the earnest counsel of a man not much older but a great deal sadder and wiser than you. Never ask what The Bulgarian Perversion is. The knowledge of it, gained at first hand, will darken your soul yet streak your hair with silver. After she left, I made out an expense slip which I later handed in: L. Raztzvelnizhiev, Research: $25.

But I was speaking of the treatment. Grummit loved it (with a few minor reservations). He gave me the green light and I went ahead with the first-draft screenplay. Which he also loved (with a few more minor reservations), and he gave me the green light into the second-draft screenplay. He didn't have a few minor reservations about that one. He had a great many major reservations--which just about brings me to the end of my chronicle. And a good thing, too. I can't take much more of this iced coffee.

• • •

Horne caught the eye of the waitress and motioned for the check. "This story has no moral," he singsonged. "This story has no end. This story only goes to show that very few producers know what they want until we tell them and sometimes not even then." He reverted to straight speech. "I see the question in your eye: How come Grummit approved the treatment and the first draft, only to frown upon the second draft? The man who will answer that will have delved to the core of this industry's riddle, an achievement I cannot boast of. All I know is that the second draft had Something Missing. That elusive, indefinable Something Missing. I was on that project half a year. Twenty-five weeks. I took fifty thousand dollars away from Grummit--paid off the Feds, kept up the house payments, got a new car, a new wardrobe, socked away a little in the bank, learned about Bulgar Arts & Crafts--but I never roped and tied the Mullen books to Grummit's complete satisfaction. We parted quite amicably, though. And, after me, he tried other writers, good ones, Johnny Sturtevant, Saul Nathan, the late Bill McGraw, maybe a few others. I hear he finally got a script that was filmable."

Horne signed the check and they walked toward the commissary's exit. His companion asked. "When is he going to start shooting it?"

"Shooting? You mean the Mullen project?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good Lord, don't you know the kicker to all this? I thought everyone knew."

His companion shook his head.

"Well, after tremendous Sturm und Drang, Grummit succeeded in getting a script and announced his starting date, at which point he received a letter. A very short letter. From Paris. Informing him that the moment he shot his first frame of film, a squadron of lawyers would descend upon him and sue his ass off. You see, Grummit bought the film rights from Mullen. But they weren't Mullen's to sell. Mullen's manuscripts had been rejected all over the world for something like ten years, so when this French publisher offered him a flat sum for all rights, Mullen grabbed. The publisher owned the film rights--and still does--not Mullen."

"Why won't the publisher sell?"

"Oh, he will. He wants to. His price is four million, eight hundred thousand francs. Those crisp new francs. That's roughly one million clams of the realm. Which Grummit is not about to fork over--not after spending, let's see, five to Mullen, fifty to me, say maybe a hundred and seventy to the other fellows, what's that come to, around a quarter of a million bucks? And now somebody is asking him to add a cool million to that? Just for story costs? Uh-uh. Good money after bad? Not a chance."

"So the Mullen project--?"

"Is dead for a ducat, dead. A quarter of a million ducats, that is. One of our more expensive corpses. Say, how did I get started on Grummit, anyway?"

"I asked you about a job I may have ..."

"So you did. Take a job. Grummit's not a bad guy to work with and his money is like satin to the touch. What assignment are you up for? He has so many irons in the fire ..."

His companion frowned. "That's what worries me. I hope he really has the screen rights to this one. He says he's got William Burroughs' Naked Lunch."

Horne suddenly stopped talking. "What? That's what I'm doing for him right now!"

"You mean--you and Grummit--after all that--"

Horne was preoccupied, pensive. "Sure, sure. He loves me. Par for the course. Nothing unusual in that." Then he laughed. "So I'm getting the ax again? How beautiful. How classic. How right." He clapped his hand upon the younger man's shoulder. "Take the job. Go in. See the man. Play it cool. Don't blow it. Oh--and you'd better have this, for when the seas get choppy ..."

He scribbled something on the inside of a matchbook and pressed it into his companion's hand as he walked off.

"What's this?"

Clayton Horne was already waving, on his way into the Writers' Building. "The phone number of a very good researcher," he said. "She's a lulu."