The soundstage at Embassy Pictures was a pressurized oven.
It smelled of scorched dust on hot lights, and stale coffee.
Duke sat in a folding canvas chair, his dark wood cane hooked over the armrest.
To anyone passing by, he was just a nineteen year old in a crisp button-down and slacks, looking a bit too young.
But Duke wasn't just a visitor, he was acting as a "consultant" and screenwritter in the Graduate film.
In this last couple of days he had read The Graduate novel several times to understand the original plot.
Of course he also wrote down the Graduate film he remembered and use that more as a basis.
On the set, a young, intensely nervous Dustin Hoffman was playing Benjamin Braddock. He looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin from nervousness.
"Action!" Nichols called out.
Walter Brooke, playing a quintessential 1960s suburbanite, leaned into Hoffman's personal space. He looked at Benjamin with an earnestness of an experienced older man advising an inexperienced younger one.
"I just want to say one word to you. Just one word."
Benjamin looked trapped. "Yes, sir?"
"Are you listening?"
"Yes, I am."
"Plastics."
Duke felt a shiver go down his spine.
That line, it had already been in the script, but Duke had pushed for the delivery to be less of a joke and more of a "prophecy of the mundane."
He'd told Nichols to treat it like a death sentence delivered with a smile.
They thought the scene was weird. They thought Hoffman was too short, too awkward, too different.
Duke watched the situation while seated through the lens of history.
He knew this "experimental flop" was going to haul in seven Oscar nominations and redefine American storytelling.
"Cut! That's it," Nichols said, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke. He looked over at Duke, searching for a nod. Duke gave him a quick, deliberate thumb-up.
---
The air around the USC cinema department tasted like coffee and the chemical smell of 16mm film developer.
It was a sharp, acidic smell that Duke found strangely comforting.
(Film being developed smell is varied in reality, sharp, sweet, spicy or even vinegary)
Gary Kurtz led the way through the labyrinthine halls of the old cinema building. The walls were covered in tattered posters for Kurosawa films and French New Wave imports.
Students in thick glasses and thrift-store sweaters hurried past them, carrying heavy metal film canisters.
"You're going to like my friend, Duke," Gary said, his boots clicking rhythmically on the linoleum.
"He doesn't care about the parties or the Bel Air crowd. He just wants to know how to tell a good story."
They stopped in front of a heavy, soundproofed door. From inside came the muffled, high-pitched whine of a flatbed editing table.
Gary pushed the door open without knocking.
The room was tiny, cramped, and illuminated only by the flickering light of a Moviola screen.
A young man with a thick shock of dark hair and a flannel shirt was hunched over the machine, his eyes fixed on the moving strips of celluloid.
He looked like he hadn't slept in days.
"George," Gary said, his voice cutting through the mechanical hum. "I brought someone for you to meet."
George Lucas didn't look up immediately. He was carefully splicing two pieces of film together.
When he finally turned, he looked startled, like a forest animal caught in a spotlight. He was socially awkward, his gaze flitting from Gary to Duke and then back to the film strips.
"Hey, Gary," George muttered, wiping a smudge of grease from his hand onto his jeans.
"George, this is Connor Hauser. He goes by the pseudonym of C.H. Blackwell."
George's eyes widened behind his glasses.
He straightened up, nearly knocking over a stack of film cans. "The... the shark guy? Jaws?"
Duke smiled, leaning slightly on his cane. "That's me. People call me Duke."
"I bought the book," George said, his voice gaining a bit of nervous energy. "I haven't finished it yet, I'm about halfway through, but the pacing... it's incredible."
"Thanks, George. Gary tells me you're working on something a bit different."
George gestured vaguely at the Moviola. "It's a rough cut. Just a B-tier horror flick to pay the bills and satisfy a project requirement. It's... it's not very good."
Duke stepped closer, looking at the grainy image on the screen.
It was a monster movie, something about a creature stalking a group of teenagers in a swamp. The creature was a guy in a rubber suit that looked like it had been salvaged from a trash heap.
"The monster doesn't look scary," George admitted, his shoulders slumping slightly. "I'm struggling with the plot. I also can't get the tension right."
Duke watched the footage for a moment. He saw the potential, the way George used light and shadow to hide the cheapness of the suit showed he knew the fundamentals.
"You want to know why it's not working, George?" Duke asked, his voice calm.
George nodded, looking at Duke with genuine curiosity.
"It's what i call the Cujo Strategy," Duke said.
"The what?"
"A monster, or a machine, or a shark is only scary if you care about the thing it's trying to kill. Right now, your characters are just meat."
"They're standing around waiting to get eaten. The audience doesn't care if they live or die, so the monster isn't a threat. It's just an inconvenience."
Duke leaned forward, pointing at a shot of a girl looking out into the dark. "Give her something to lose. Make the monster a violation of a world we actually like. That's how you create terror."
George stared at the screen, his mind clearly racing.
He began to nod slowly. "The violation of the familiar... I can try i guess."
"Exactly," Duke said, grinning. "Besides, if you can't make them love the characters, just make the monster faster, people are always scared of things that move faster than they do."
(This was an actual professor advice when i did a short film based on the 2004 thai movie Shutter.)
George laughed, a short, surprised sound that broke his awkward exterior. "I'll try that. Cut the reaction shots, focus on the speed."
"Now we're talking," Duke said.
As they walked out into the California sun, Duke felt a strange sense of satisfaction.
"He's got the will, doesn't he?" Gary asked as they walked toward the car.
"He's got it," Duke said, looking back at the cinema building.
Duke climbed into the station wagon, his mind already moving to the next move on the board.
"Where to next, Duke?" Gary asked, starting the engine.
"Can you drive me home, I've got a script to finish."
---
A package from Doubleday arrived on a Thursday, delivered by a kid on a motorcycle who looked bored out of his skull.
Duke signed for it, the thick manuscript envelope feeling like a lead weight in his hands. Back at his desk, he sliced it open with a steel letter opener.
Inside was his Cujo manuscript, but it wasn't a rejection.
Nestled between the pages was a letter from Aldrich, warm and praisy, and beneath it, a memo on crisp editorial letterhead from someone named Peter Grann.
He read Aldrich's note first. "Connor, we are all terrifically excited… raw storytelling power… undeniable…"
He set it aside and picked up the memo. Peter Grann's words were not warm, they were criticism if anything.
"While the visceral power is exceptional," he wrote, "commercial considerations must be addressed. The ending, as it stands, is nihilistic. After such a sustained ordeal, the reader requires catharsis, not devastation. Could the child, Tad, survive?"
"A last-minute rescue by the father or authorities would provide the necessary emotional release. Furthermore, the extended passages from the canine point of view, while technically proficient, risk alienating the reader's sympathy."
"The audience's empathy must remain anchored with the human protagonists, Donna and Vic. Suggest limiting internal perspectives to theirs alone."
Duke read it twice.
A cold, sharp anger settled in his gut.
They wanted to declaw the story. To turn his vicious, tragic study of bad luck and breaking points into a Saturday matinee where the dog gets put down and the kid gets ice cream.
He didn't call Jeffrey. His agent would have waffled, would have talked about market forces and reader expectations.
Duke picked up the phone and dialed Doubleday direct, asking for Aldrich.
"Connor!" Aldrich's voice was all forced cheer. "You got the materials?"
"I got the memo."
"Ah, Peter. He's a shark, but he's usually right about these things. A little hope, Connor. It's what people need."
Duke stared out his window at the hazy, smog-tinged light over Los Angeles. "No."
The silence on the line was so complete he could hear the faint hiss of long-distance wires. "I'm sorry?"
"No. The boy dies. The dog's perspective stays. That's the book. That is the point of the book. It's not a story about a rescue.."
Aldrich sputtered. "Connor, be reasonable. We're talking about potential sales here. Hundreds of thousands of copies. A ending like that… it'll get talked about, sure, but people might just not buy it."
"You bought Jaws," Duke said, his voice dropping, low and flat.
"Because it was a shark that ate people. You're buying Cujo because it's a rabid dog that kills a child. You take it as it is, or you don't take it at all."
He was gambling.
Throwing the full weight of the Jaws success onto the scale, betting that his name, or rather, C.H. Blackwell's name was now valuable enough to warrant a little artistic tyranny.
The silence stretched.
He could picture Aldrich in his New York office, tie probably loosened, staring at the phone like it had bitten him. He heard a long, weary exhale.
"Look, Duke… I need something. Something I can take back to the sales conference. A bone to throw."
Duke thought fast.
He remembered the movie adaptation in his old life. The kid lived there.
A last-minute rush to the hospital, a desperate race against time. It had felt cheap.
But it was a compromise that got the story made. A compromise that kept the essential horror intact, even if it softened the final, brutal blow.
"The kid can live," Duke said, the words tasting like ash.
"But that's it. The dog's chapters stay. You get a medically improbable survival, not a happy ending. He's alive, but nothing's okay. Do we have a deal?"
Another pause, shorter this time. A deal was being recalibrated in Aldrich's head.
"We have a deal. Send the revisions. But God help us at the review boards and the book clubs."
"Let me worry about the reviews," Duke said, and hung up.
He sat for a long time in the quiet. The victory felt hollow, stained. But it was a victory.
The call from Mike Nichols came the next morning. "Duke. We're recording the church scene tomorrow. The one where Ben runs. I want you there at nine AM. Don't be late."
The set was in a real church in Santa Monica, a beautiful, sun-drenched building that felt utterly wrong for the claustrophobic panic of the scene.
Duke arrived in a simple button-down and slacks, leaning on his cane. He felt immediately out of place.
There were cables snaking across the ancient stone floor, massive lights on towering stands, and a crew of fifty people moving with a chaotic, purposeful energy.
Nichols saw him and waved him over.
He was dressed in a rumpled linen suit, talking rapidly to a cinematographer named Robert Surtees, a legend with an eye for composition.
"Duke, this is Bob. Bob, this is the shark guy I told you about."
Surtees gave him a skeptical, old-school look. "Youre the writer?"
"Consultant," Duke said. "Mostly here to fetch coffee and look worried."
Surtees grunted, apparently approving of this job description. Nichols clapped his hands. "Okay! Let's run it! Dustin! Katharine!"
Dustin Hoffman, smaller and more wiry than he seemed on screen, was pacing in a corner, muttering to himself.
He was Benjamin Braddock, vibrating with alienated anxiety.
Katharine Ross, luminous and calmly desperate as Elaine, stood by the altar, a statue of doomed compliance.
The scene was the climax.
Ben's mad, cross-country drive, the crashing of the glass church door, the grab for Elaine, the fight with the guests, the frantic lock of the door with a giant cross.
Duke watched, mesmerized, as they blocked the movement. Hoffman's run was all ungainly, frantic energy.
He didn't look like a hero; he looked like a man having a public nervous breakdown.
After the third take, Nichols called a break. He lit a cigarette and stalked over to Duke, who was leaning against a pew. "Well?"
"The run is perfect," Duke said. "It's not romantic. It's embarrassing. That's good."
"And the fight?"
"It's messy. But when he locks the door… it's too triumphant. The smile he gives her."
Nichols raised an eyebrow. "It's a victory. He got the girl."
"Is it?" Duke asked. "
Nichols stared at him, then at the bus, then back at Hoffman. He took a long drag. "Dustin! Come here!"
He had already suggested to Nichols the legendary ending of The Graduate that was achieved accidentally in his past life.
By lunch, he was exhausted, his leg throbbing. He found a quiet spot in the churchyard and sat on a low wall, eating a limp sandwich from craft services.
"You're not what I expected," a voice said. It was Katharine Ross, holding a cup of coffee. She sat down next to him, not waiting for an invitation.
"What did you expect?"
"I don't know. Someone older? You seem to really like the material."
Duke smiled faintly. "I just read the script a lot. Mike's trying to make something different. Have you ever heard the saying, Passion is contagious."
"I wish I liked the material as much as you do," she said, watching the crew.
"To me It feels more about people being terrible to each other and calling it love or ambition or something." She looked at him. "I heard from Nichols that you been writing a script."
Duke almost choked on his sandwich. "News travels."
"Sets don't have secrets. Is it sad story?"
"Tragic," Duke said. "But in a… commercial way."
She laughed, a bright, unexpected sound. "A commercial tragedy. Good luck with it. If there's a character fit for me, don't forget me."
She drifted away, leaving Duke with his thoughts.
He was writing Love Story.
The script was finished, a tight, 120-page tearjerker.
He'd polished every line, honed every bitter-sweet moment between Oliver and Jenny.
The following week, he and Jeffrey took it out around the town.
Jeffrey, for all his fluster, was a good agent when it came to the dance of the meeting. He set up the pitches.
First, Paramount.
An executive, a man named Evans with slicked-back hair and a perpetual squint, listened in a screening room as Jeffrey laid out the logline.
"It's Romeo and Juliet at Harvard. Young love, family conflict, ultimate sacrifice. The script will make every woman in America between 15 and 50 cry in a theater. It's also not expensive. A couple of young, pretty unknowns. Some snow. A hospital. It prints money."
"My client wants to direct it himself, and he's willing to write a complementary book to help advertisement."
Evans flipped through the script. "It's sentimental," he said, dismissively.
"It's about sentiment," Duke spoke up, his voice calm. He'd been silent until now.
"The '60s are about tearing things down. Anger, protest, cynicism. This is about what you build when there's nothing left. And now, when everyone's beginning to be tired of being angry, they're going to want to feel something else. This is that something else."
Evans looked at him, this young guy with a cane who'd written a book about a shark. "You're the Blackwell guy."
"I am."
Evans looked at him for a moment too long and didn't buy it. He passed. Too soft, too feminine, not for the current audience.
Next was United Artists. The meeting here was different.
The head of production, a weary-looking man named Picker who had greenlit risky, intelligent films, read the first thirty pages in front of them.
He closed the script.
"The dialogue is sharp," he said. "It's not dumb. The tragedy feels earned, not manufactured. But it's a downer. A real downer."
"It's a downer," Duke said. "People will go to feel sad, together. It's an event."
Picker tapped the script. "Who publishes the book?"
"Doubleday. It'll be huge."
"You're sure?"
"I'm writing the book," Duke said. "Under a different name. I'm sure."
Picker leaned back, a faint smile on his face. "You're packaging it. Book and movie, a simultaneous launch. That's smart. Risky, but smart."
He thought for a long minute. "I'll give you a number. It's not a big number. But if you believe in it, you'll take it and use it to make your movie. If it works, we distribute. You keep a bigger backend."
It was the deal Duke had hoped for. Not a sale, but a partnership. A test.
He looked at Jeffrey, who gave a tiny, frantic nod. "We're interested," Duke said.
"Good. Talk to my lawyers. Now, I have some other problems to deal with."
As they left the UA lot, Jeffrey was buzzing. "He bit! He actually bit! Do you know what this means? We can cast it cheap, shoot it fast…"
"We cast it," Duke interrupted. "Ithaca Productions produces it, Paramount distributes. I want to get a loan based on my future earnings of the book and put it all on the studio."
Jeffrey stared at him, his excitement cooling into realization. "You're really doing that. You're building a studio."
"I'm building a studio," Duke accepted, hailing a taxi.
He returned to The Graduate set the next day, the buzz of the UA deal still in his veins.
They were shooting the now-iconic scene of Benjamin adrift in the pool, scuba suit on, sinking to the bottom. It was a complicated setup, with Hoffman in the water and cameras in waterproof housings.
Nichols was in a foul mood. "It looks like a guy in a pool!" he snapped at Surtees. "It needs to feel like a metaphor! It needs to feel like drowning on dry land!"
Duke watched from the deck, his mind clicking.
He remembered the shot from the film, the eerie silence, the distorted perspective from inside the diving mask. But it was more than that.
He limped over to Nichols. "Mike. What if it's not just his POV?"
"What?"
"We see him from above, right? A weird, god-like shot. But what about from inside the house? Through the window. He's just a blurry, silent figure at the bottom of this perfect, blue rectangle. Isolated on display."
Nichols stopped.
A slow grin spread across his face. "Bob! Get a camera inside! Behind the glass! I want the reflection of the furniture, the perfect living room, overlaid on this idiot at the bottom of a pool!"
The crew scrambled. Duke stepped back, his job done.
---
Long chapter but I worked on the story hard today, I'm trying to write slow but with good quality to avoid burnout.