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"I don't want to blame it on the British director. It wasn't his fault. We all talked and we made a movie. That's all. We tried to make people laugh. No crime in that."
"Oh, hey, now look, don't get depressed. When I saw it alone I'm sure I heard laughter coming from the other cars, or it could have been someone choking on popcorn. I don't really know. It was a cold night. Everyone had their windows up. Comedy is rough in a closed- up car on a cold night in a drive-in. Are ya sure you don't want to go after the British director?"
'The director is brilliant." At this point I was pleading.
"I hear Gene Shalit did not want to interview him." How on earth did he ever hear a thing like that? I replied,
"Gene Shalit interviewed Donald Duck's voice." My father was quick even though it was 2 in the morning in the Midwest.
"Ah, yes, but Donald Duck has made a number of great classic films,"
"Not as many as the director."
"All I'm saying is that I don't think Gene Shalit related to the surrealism of your film. That's all." Dad was being patronizing.
"Then I think Gene Shalit should sit in his Critic's Comer, watch a tape of himself interviewing Donald Duck's voice, and write a review of the surrealism concerning that."
"Hey, hey, hey," Dad said, "let's not get acid now."
"Dad, stop throwing Janet Maslin's words in my face. She also called my screenplay lively. She said it was funny, or surprisingly funny, or something like that. And the word acid is not necessarily a bad thing."
"But it isn't box office. It hurts you both foreign and domestic. It is not a money review. And money is what counts. The problem with your picture is that it cost too much. Nothing is that funny. Your original draft started with a rabbit crossing a freeway. Where's that? On the cutting-room floor?" He had become a studio executive, snarling at the production overruns.
"The rabbit wouldn't go across the road. They tried and tried. They . . ."
"You imbecile! You twit! They got a rhino to play in snow and run inside of a truck! And you honestly believe they couldn't get a rabbit to cross the road? Raiders of the Lost Ark had 7,000 snakes doing whatever they wanted them to do. What's the problem with a rabbit, you twit?"
I began to fade out about then. I think it was the use of the peculiarly Brit ish word twit that did it. Suddenly anxiety flooded every pore and nerve ending. Twit echoed louder and louder in my mind. As Dad rambled on, all I could hear was twit, twit— water dripping from a faucet— twit, twit, twit.
"What do those limeys know? A coupla film students from USC," Dad was saying,
"woulda gone out there at night with a wind-up rabbit, and shot the whole thing night for day ..."
"Dad, what the hell are you talking about, night for day?” I bellowed.
"Night for day!" He bellowed back.
"Where they are shooting at night—they put a lens on the camera—and suddenly it's day. Read your Truffaut."
I think I almost threw up at that point. He had pronounced Truffaut Truffutt. I got my breath back, but he wasn't done.
"And whose idea was the water-skiing elephant?"
"Mine." My voice was shaky but defiant, like the woman who "done it" in a Perry Mason mystery. "I did it! All right? I did it! That was my idea." I was crying at this point, so Dad got compassion.
"You know they do have water-ski ing squirrels," he said. "I called them."
"You called water-skiing squirrels on my behalf?" I was still sniffling.
"The man who owns them. They're cheap and they don't eat much," Dad instructed me.
"It's not a spectacle, a squirrel. . ."
"That's the problem with your movie. It was a spectacle when it should have been a small film. You wrote a small film. Now right away you substitute a squirrel for an elephant and you're getting smaller. Do you know what it adds to the above-the-line costs to ship an elephant around?"
"That was a below-the-line cost."
"Why?"
"Because the line had already been drawn when we thought up the water-skiing elephant."
"Oh, that old trick! Draw the line, then bring on the water-skiing elephants!
It's a rough business. But a squirrel would have been cheaper to ship around. You put him in a shoe box with an acorn and hand it to an electrician. He puts it under his seat on the plane, and who's the wiser?"
"You can't do that."
"Why not?"
"It's against union rules. An electrician can't touch props or move scenery. So they are certainly not allowed to carry the talent around in a shoe box on a plane." I wanted to hang up.
"Hey, look, I know you want to get off, so I just have one more question. Why that title?"
"It was not my title."
"What was yours?"
"Anything but that."
"Whose was it?"
"The Scottish producer's. This entire thing was his idea, and he asked me to write it."
"A British director, a Scottish producer! Well, he certainly wasn't very Scottish when it came to the budget. It wasn't your title! And it wasn't your idea! And they turned your rabbit into a bulldozer building a freeway? I can't stand it! What a business! I can't stand it!" He moaned like Hamlet. I shouted: "Well, if you can't stand the heat, get outa show business. Dad."
"Hey, look," he said, "I still love you. I'll keep in touch. Don't get me wrong. You're beautiful. I love ya kid. This disaster does not change my opinion of you, but I got a call on the other line. Let me get back to ya," said Dad, finally, like an agent who no longer wished to represent me. Then he hung up.
I turned off the light, got under the covers, and the phone rang again.
"This is your sister." She was sobbing. "They pulled our movie, and I was sure it would do 50 million domestic at least. What am I to tell my friends?" She wept as though her friends were investors.
"Tell them to go to the movies," I answered. "But I've got a call on the other line. Can I get back to you?" I said. With that, I pulled the phone out of the wall. When I drifted off to sleep, all I could think of were the moviezzzzzzzzz. 1988 WRITER'S YEARBOOK
"Night for Day" originally appeared as a Chronicle in the March 1987 issue of Writer's Digest.
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