LEONARD MICHAELS
375
opening scenes, but Howard didn't think they would do. They
lacked a quality he was after. I wasn't permitted to read the scenes
for fear of legal complications later. Howard approached other
screenwriters, but all were busy writing movies. I asked him to let
me try a few sketchy pages . "For free ." Howard liked them. I was
hired . My agent, very shocked, said, "You gave him pages?"
The word seemed exceedingly literal. What else could I give
him? When I mentioned it to Howard, he said,
"It
isn't always called
'pages .' It's sometimes called 'shit.' A studio executive says, 'The
writer turned in some shit.'"
The writer - me - believed Hollywood paid well for "shit" and
the work entailed no personal sacrifice, it was pure play, innocent
and lucrative happiness.
It
would be good for his soul to join the
humble community of screenwriters. He didn't believe their stories
of anguish and humiliation since they were attached to nothing a
screenwriter could control and for which he could feel responsible.
Lawyers and agents created a contract. I'd turn in a first draft
of a screenplay in twelve weeks. Six or seven months later, when
much of the novel had been thrown out , and the intimacy and den–
sity of the male landscape was dissipated , "opened out" for the sake
of a movie, Howard said, "This is it. I feel it in my
kishkas,
a great
movie,"
Once, when I had lost faith in the new material- broke down,
couldn't continue - I flew to New York to talk to Howard. He was
receptive, enormously encouraging, confident of the screenplay . My
feelings for it were increasingly vicarious . The creature of my con–
tract, a writer for hire, I was always asking, "What do you think?" A
surge of relief rose in me when Howard was pleased. By the end of
the meeting in New York, I was high, full of ideas, anxious to get
back to work. Be pleasing. "See," said Howard, "when you walked in
that door, you had nothing."
It
was embarrassing, but writers better than I had done this,
exactly for money and the satisfaction of another person. I assumed
that is how movies are written. Until then writing had been lonely,
occasionally joyous but mainly miserable, with no financial reward
for months and months . Now it was a social activity , a thousand
phone calls and meetings, incessant talk. I'd read fresh pages over
the telephone. Not one word was let stand without immediate
evaluation . I felt sometimes like a secretary of the occult. When my
ideas and dialogue were pleasing, it was because they struck an un–
canny chord, in Howard, of rightness.
