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*****
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| Land Of The Big Con |
"What's not to get?" This from Al Godfrey, our new mentor and
exec-producer of Quincy M.E., starring Jack Klugman.
Chris said, "Okay, stop me if I get it wrong anywhere along the
line. Klugman orders Peter Thompson - the guy you replaced - to buy a script
from us. Right?"
Godfrey nodded. "You boys are two lucky sons of bitches."
"Yeah, yeah," Chris said. "But, what happens next is
that old Peter informs us that Klugman's been wanting to do something about
Pedophiles and how they bury themselves in the community to stalk our kids."
Godfrey said, "I'm with you so far. Still don't see anything to be
confused about."
Chris said, "Well, hang fucking tight because it gets a little
scary from here on in… We tell Peter, no problem. When do you want the story?
And how long should it be?"
I break in, getting steamed just listening to Chris' recital. "And
Peter tells us - 'Not to worry, boys. I have the story. You just do the research
and when you're ready call me."
"Never mind that," Chris said. "He didn't have a fucking
story. He lied to us. We had to come up with one on the fly. Then we go home,
write the story. Get your notes and Peter's notes. Then write the script.
Script's approved. Checks mailed to agent. Agent clips them for ten percent and
sends them on."
Godfrey nodded. "That's how it works."
Christ snorted. "Well, riddle me this, Mr. Godfrey, sir. How come
if we did all the damned work - with no help from Peter - that when the check
showed up from fucking Universal Studios that we got screwed for two thousand
dollars? And it turns out that the two grand went into the pockets of - guess
who - Peter Thompson."
Godfrey shrugged. "Easy," he said. "That was Peter 's
share. He had the story, remember?"
Chris was exasperated. So was I, but I kept my mouth shut. This was a
learning opportunity if ever saw one. A lesson, as it happens, that cost us two
thousand dollars so I didn't want to miss a word.
My partner persisted. He said, "It's not Peter 's story. He didn't
write - or think up a word of it."
Godfrey said, "Of course, it's his story." He jabbed a finger
at the stationary on his desk, headed MCA-Universal - Business Affairs. "Says
right here it's his story. Credit he generously shared with you and Allan. And,
pal, if fucking Business Affairs says so, it's So. Just ask them."
Chris made a noise of heart-felt disgust. "Peter 's the freaking
head of production for the largest studio in the whole freaking world. What's
he need two grand of our measly script money for?"
Godfrey said, "I'd like to say it isn't the money. But in This
Town money is always a major part of the story. Guys like me and Peter live way
over our heads. We have to drive the nicest cars. Live in the nicest houses.
Send our kids to the best private schools. Wine and dine and fuck the sexiest and
most expensive starlets… You know. Keep up appearances."
"Yeah, but two grand?" Chris said in a dismissive tone. "What's
two grand to him?"
Despite his protest, however, my partner's outrage was starting to
wane. Beating your head against the wall called Studio Business Affairs can be
weary work.
I said, "You mentioned that money wasn't Peter 's only motive. "What
other reasons are there?"
Godfrey leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. He said, "In
a word - Credit. And the bottom line is that Peter was more after the Above The
Line Story Credit than the money." (Above The Line on the End Reel are the
names of the producers, directors, writers, actors and other "creative"
personnel. The Below The Line credits are everybody else, from makeup to the guys
who provide the portable Johns on location.)
We gave our new mentor blank stares.
Chris said, "Credit? He's got fucking credit." He jabbed a
finger at the Business Affairs document. "Says right there he was fucking
Executive Producer."
Godfrey sighed - such innocents. "In this business," he said,
"there is nothing lower than a writer. But if a non-writer wants to go
places in the world of the Suits he'd better have some writing credits to go
along with his masters degree in pencil pushing and pissing on the peons."
"Peter claims he has a degree from the London School of Economics,"
I said.
Godfrey chuckled. "Yeah, and if you fucking believe that you'll
probably believe that he was classmates with Mick Jagger."
"He's too old," Chris said.
Godfrey raised a cautionary finger. "Never tell an old fart he's
too old," he said. "It will be the end of your career."
"Gotcha, boss," I said. Amused, because Godfrey himself had
claimed he was about our age, when he was clearly ten years or more older.
I steered back to the point. "Are you saying that Peter wants his
bosses to think that he's actually a writer, who got interested in production"
"Fuck no," Godfrey said. "But if he can flash a few
credits to The Guys With The Big Telephones, it'll show that he has a creative
streak. But not so much of one that he's gonna go sideways on them. Develop a
case of integrity. Or fucking honesty."
"Honesty?" I said. "Heaven forefend."
Godfrey cocked an eye at me. He said, "If you ever use the word 'forefend'
in a script you write for me you can look for it the next day at the County
Dump."
Just then we were joined by the new Quincy story editors - Chris Trumbo
and Jeff Freilich. Drinks were made, smokes fired up and we all settled back to
get to know one another.
It turned out that Chris Trumbo was the son of the legendary
blacklisted screeenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Spartacus, Exodus to name just two
- while Freilich - a medical school
dropout - hailed from the shores of Roger Corman, king of the down and dirty
drive-in movie makers.
"It was one hell of an education,' Freilich said - speaking not of
the medical school part, but of working for Roger Corman. "You only had a
few thousand bucks to make whatever flick Roger assigned you. Which meant you
really had to use your imagination and cheat like hell to shoot the movie. The
real beauty was that if you stuck to the few basics Roger required - 'I want
Women In Chains Meets Dracula - you could say or do pretty much anything you
wanted."
"Sounds like old Black Mask Magazine," my partner opined. "Stick
to the basic formula and you had a free hand. That's where the best writers in
the detective story business, like Raymond Chandler, got their start."
While they were all talking, I was thinking about the cheapo movies
that Corman and his ilk made, some of which were (accidentally) good. Most
turned a large profit and even the worst never lost a dime on the drive-in,
neighborhood movie circuit. (Today, it's DVD rentals and Streaming Video.)
Meanwhile, the studios regularly lost their silk shirts on Big Bucks
Productions, and had to count on one or two bonanza films every year or so to
pay the bills. These days they call them 'Tent Pole' pictures and they consist
of endless sequels of mindless movies aimed at teenage boys, who consume so
much popcorn and drink so much Coke that they keep the zillion dollar
entertainment business afloat.
I asked Jeff, "What if Corman gave you a million dollars. What
could you do with that?"
Freilich laughed. "Shit, with a million dollars I could have re-made
Ben Hur, complete with the chariot race. Of course, we'd have to shoot it in
Italy, or southern Spain, but hell, their prop masters probably have dozens of old
movie chariots on hand. And there's plenty of period footage we could buy for the
price of a pizza."
At the time, studio movies averaged ten million bucks or so, which shows
you how long ago this was. Currently, film budgets are hammering on the gates
of $500 million. Stars like Johnny Depp ring up paydays of $50 million or more.
(The most recent Pirates Of The Caribbean.)
I turned to Godfrey, "So tell me Al, if you can make a million
dollar movie - one that's guaranteed to turn a profit - why don't the studios
make ten, one million dollar movies that will all make a bundle… instead of one
ten million dollar movie that's probably going to lose money?"
Godfrey gave me a pitying look - oh, you poor putz. Then he proclaimed,
"Allan, the reason the studios make Ten Million Dollar Movies, instead of
One Million Dollar Movies, is that you can't fucking steal a million dollars
from a million dollar movie."
That was our first real money lesson in Hollywood and it pretty much
explained everything you needed to know about the business - including how
Peter Thompson ended up with some of our money in his pockets.
"It's like points on the project," Godfrey said. "You
are never going to see any, because the points are based on gross profits and
no studio in Hollywood will ever make a movie that shows an actual gross profit
that points can be levied against."
Godfrey told us that recently he'd been offered two points on a
multi-million dollar project and he'd said, "I'll swap those two points
for a flat ten thousand dollars cash."
The deal maker looked at him, hurt in his eyes. "Come on, Godfrey,"
he said. "Play fair."
As the conversation moved on, Chris sat there silently for a time.
Which was quite unlike him.
Finally, he piped up: "You know, if Cole and I had known that
Hollywood was like the plumber's, or the electrician's union, and that all you
had to do was grease somebody's palm to break in - well, fuck, man! We'd have
paid somebody two thousand dollars years ago."
Quincy Postscript: As time went by we met
every chance we could with Godfrey - so much that Scotty just waved us through
the gate and didn't bother to ask what we were up to. And we spent many an
evening pitching stories and shooting the breeze with Al, and Trumbo and
Freilich.
We even sold another script to Al - The Money Plague - which was about
anthrax-infected money getting into the system through a neighborhood bank. (A
greedy story editor managed to grab some of the credit on that one as well.)
Al lasted one season - a very successful season - and another producer
came on board. Several others followed. Klugman chewed through producers like he
chewed through dialogue. (Quincy scripts had to be twenty pages longer than
most because Klugman talked so fast.)
Godfrey was philosophic about what he knew would be his eventual demise.
"If I do my job right," he said, "I can keep the numbers
up and the show a hit. But eventually, I'm going to make Jack mad. And then I'm
gone. No worries, though. I had that eventuality covered in my contract."
Meanwhile, over the following seasons we sold several more scripts, and
were such old pros at Quincy that the new producers used to call us - a couple
of freelancers - to ask vital questions, such as: What's Quincy's first name?
Answer: He didn't have a first name, just the initial "R."
Another: What was Sam's (Quincy 's sidekick, played by the multi-talented
Robert Ito ) last name? Answer: Fujiyama. And yes, he was a doctor too,
although few writers, except us, ever referred to him with that honorific.
Quincy M.E., ran for eight hit seasons, ending in 1982 - not because
the ratings were down. The show was always in the top ten or close to it. Jack Klugman
was worn out with the incredible effort he put into the program and was having
continuing problems with his voice. He called it a day, bowing out at the top
of his game. Last I heard he was still alive and giving them hell at age 89.
An interesting side note on Godfrey 's comment about the firewall he'd
built into his contract:
Glen Larson was the creator of Quincy - a guy I'll be telling you a lot
more about later on in greater and more horrific detail. Old Glen had a PhD in "borrowing"
other people's ideas and making them into (usually low brow) hits.
He probably would have ruined Quincy, one of the most honored shows in
TV history, with an impact that reached all the way to Congress. But he didn’t
stick around much past the first season.
Old hands on the show told us
that Klugman and Larson were butting heads before the cameras started to roll.
Klugman demanded quality. He wanted realistic stories based on fact.
Stories that meant something and that had decent dialogue for the actors to
speak.
Surely, Glen may have wondered - Is Jack fucking nuts?
As you may have gathered, Larson was an unlikely source for any of the
things Klugman demanded. Larson’s motto was: Whatever works, works. The rest is
bullshit.
Despite these problems, Quincy was a huge a hit. It started out as one
of the shows in the NBC "Mystery Wheel." The other members of the
wheel were "McCloud," "MacMillian and Wife, " "Banacek,"
and "Columbo." All good programs. Each getting two hours per episode
- just like a movie, with all the production values that a movie has.
When the Network - in its stupidity- broke up the wheel, Quincy became
a regularly scheduled one hour program and Klugman - we were told - said either
Larson was off the show, or he was.
Larson lost.
Well - not really.
Actually, Glen Larson probably never lost a dime of his own money in
his professional career. We were told that his payoff was in the neighborhood
of fifty thousand dollars an episode to stay away from the show. That's fifty
thousand dollars in 1979 money, which, according to my inflation calculator,
would be $145,846.11 today.
Which is one hell of a restraining order.
I’d take that deal, wouldn’t you?
Anyway, at this point in the game, Chris and I were all but made.
But two things had to occur before our success was assured.
One concerned Sten - the first novel in a series that what would turn
out to be an international science fiction hit.
The second had to do with a big fucking shark.
NEXT: THE SHARK THAT ATE BUNCH AND COLE
Here's where you can buy it worldwide in both paperback and Kindle editions:
United Kingdom ...........................Spain
Also: NOOK BOOK. Plus ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.
Here's where to get the paperback & Kindle editions worldwide:
Here's what readers say about Lucky In Cyprus:
- "Bravo, Allan! When I finished Lucky In Cyprus I wept." - Julie Mitchell, Hot Springs, Texas
- "Lucky In Cyprus brought back many memories... A wonderful book. So many shadows blown away!" - Freddy & Maureen Smart, Episkopi,Cyprus.
- "... (Reading) Lucky In Cyprus has been a humbling, haunting, sobering and enlightening experience..." - J.A. Locke, Bookloons.com
*****
THE SPYMASTER'S DAUGHTER:
A new novel by Allan and his daughter, Susan
After laboring as a Doctors Without Borders physician in the teaming refugee camps and minefields of South Asia, Dr. Ann Donovan thought she'd seen Hell as close up as you can get. And as a fifth generation CIA brat, she thought she knew all there was to know about corruption and betrayal. But then her father - a legendary spymaster - shows up, with a ten-year-old boy in tow. A brother she never knew existed. Then in a few violent hours, her whole world is shattered, her father killed and she and her kid brother are one the run with hell hounds on their heels. They finally corner her in a clinic in Hawaii and then all the lies and treachery are revealed on one terrible, bloody storm ravaged night.
*****
TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
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Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969
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In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself.
*****
STEN #1: NOW IN SPANISH!
Diaspar Magazine - the best SF magazine in South America - is publishing the first novel in the Sten series in four episodes. Here are the links:
REMEMBER - IT'S FREE!
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