NightScape

The producer said he wanted more humor and a less expensive budget. Well, by making the hero sympathetic, I added the jokes the producer wanted. By restructuring the sequence of stunts, I managed to eliminate some of the weaker ones, thus giving the star his request for less action and the producer his request for holding down the budget since the preponderance of action scenes had been what inflated the budget in the first place.

I explained this to Ric as I made notes. "They'll all be happy."

"Amazing," Ric said.

"Thanks."

"No, what I mean is, the ideas you came up with, I could have thought of them."

"Oh?" My voice hardened. "Then why didn't you?"

"Because, well, they seem so obvious."

"After I thought of them. Good ideas always seem obvious in retrospect. The real job is putting them on paper. I'm going to have to work like crazy to get this job done in four days. And then there's a further problem. I have to teach you how to pitch these changes to Ballard, so he'll be convinced you're the one who wrote them."

"You can count on me," Ric said.

" I want you to…" Suddenly I found myself yawning and looked at my watch. "Three a.m.? I'm not used to staying up this late. I'd better get some sleep if I'm going to get this rewrite done in four days."

"I'm a night person myself," Ric said.

"Well, come back tomorrow at four in the afternoon. I'll take a break and start teaching you what to say to Ballard."

Ric didn't show up, of course. When I phoned his apartment, I got his answering machine. I couldn't get in touch with him the next day, or the day after that.

But the day the changes were due, he certainly showed up. He phoned again from his car outside the gate, and when I let him in, he was so eager to see the pages that he barely said hello to me.

"Where the hell have you been?"

"Mexico."

"What?"

"With all this stress, I needed to get away."

"What have you done to put you under stress? I'm the one who's been doing all the work."

Instead of responding, Ric sat on my living-room sofa and quickly leafed through the pages. I noticed he was wearing yet another designer jacket. His tan was even darker.

"Yeah," he said. "This is good." He quickly came to his feet. "I'd better get to the studio."

"But I haven't coached you about what to say to Ballard."

Ric stopped at the door. "Mort, I've been thinking. If this partnership is going to work, we need to give each other more space. You take care of the writing. Let me worry about what to say in meetings. Ballard likes me. I know how to handle him. Trust me."

And Ric was gone.

I waited to hear about what happened at the meeting. No phone call. When I finally broke down and phoned him, an electronic-sounding voice told me that his number was no longer in service. It took me a moment to figure out that he must have moved to the condo in Malibu. So I phoned Linda to get the new number, and she awkwardly told me that Ric had ordered her to keep it a secret.

"Even from me?"

"Especially from you. Did you guys have an argument or something?"

"No."

"Well, he made it sound as if you had. He kept complaining about how you were always telling him what to do."

"Of all the…" I almost told Linda the truth-that Ric hadn't written the script she had sold but rather / had. Then I realized that she'd be conscience-bound to tell the studio. The deception would make the studio feel chilly about the script. After all, as far as they were concerned, an old guy couldn't possibly write a script that appealed to a young generation. They would reread the script with a new perspective, prejudiced by knowing the true identity of the author. The deal would fall through. I'd lose the biggest fee I'd ever been promised.

So I mumbled something about intending to talk with him and straighten out the problem. Then I hung up and cursed.

After I didn't hear from Ric for a week, it became obvious that Linda would long ago have forwarded to him the check for the rewrite on The Warlords. He'd had ample time to send me my money. He didn't intend to pay me.

That made me furious, partly because he'd betrayed me, partly because I didn't like being made to feel naive, and partly because I'm a professional. To me, it's a matter of honor that I get paid for what I write. Ric had violated one of my most basic rules.

My arrangement with him was finished. When I read about him in Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter-about how Ballard was delighted with the rewrite and predicting that the script he had bought from Ric would be next year's smash hit, not to mention that Ric would win an Oscar for it -I was apoplectic. Ric was compared to Robert Towne and William Goldman, with the advantage that he was young and had a powerful understanding of today's generation. Ric had been hired for a half-million dollars to do another rewrite. Ric had promised that he would soon deliver another original script, for which he hinted that his agent would demand an enormous price. "Quality is always worth the cost," Ballard said. I wanted to vomit.

As I knew he would have to, Ric eventually came to see me. Again the car phone at the gate. Three weeks later. After dark. A night person, after all.

I made a pretense of reluctance, feigned being moved by his whining, and let him in. Even in the muted lights of my living room, he had the most perfect tan I had ever seen. His clothes were even more expensive and trendy. I hated him.

"You didn't send me my money for the rewrite on The Warlords."

"I'm sorry about that," Ric said. "That's part of the reason I'm here."

"To pay me?"

"To explain. My condo at Malibu. The owners demanded more money as a down payment. I couldn't give up the place. It's too fabulous. So I had to…Well, I knew you'd understand."

"But I don't."

"Mort, listen to me. I promise -as soon as the money comes through on the script we sold, I'll pay you everything I owe."

"You went to fifteen percent of the fee, to fifty percent, to one hundred percent. Do you think I work for nothing?"

"Mort, I can appreciate your feelings. But I was in a bind."

"You still are. I've been reading about you in the trade papers. You're getting a half-million for a rewrite on another script, and you're also promising a new original script. How are you going to manage all that?"

"Well, I tried to do it on my own. I handed Ballard the script I showed you when we first met."

"Jesus, no."

"He didn't like it."

"What a surprise."

"I had to cover my tracks and tell him it was something I'd been fooling with but that I realized it needed a lot of work. I told him I agreed with his opinion. From now on, I intended to stick to the tried and true – the sort of thing I'd sold him."

I shook my head.

"I guess you were right," Ric said. "Good ideas seem obvious after somebody's thought of them. But maybe I don't have what it takes to come up with them. I've been acting like a jerk."

"I couldn't agree more."

"So what do you say?" Ric offered his hand. "Let's let bygones be bygones. I screwed up, but I've learned from my mistake. I'm willing to give our partnership another try if you are."

I stared at his hand.

Suddenly beads of sweat burst from his brow. He lifted his hand and wiped the sweat.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Hot in here."

"Not really. Actually, I thought it was getting chilly."

"Feels stuffy."

"The beer I gave you. Maybe you drank it too fast."

"Maybe."

"You know, I've been thinking," I said.