The restaurant was a quiet, dimly lit Italian joint in West Hollywood where the waiters didn't ask much, the booths were big and nobody cared about you as long as you paid for your food.
Duke sat with Gary Kurtz, watching the door. His leg was stiff from a day of pacing, propped out into the aisle like a barricade.
"She's late," Gary noted, checking his watch for the third time.
"It's ok, she's an actress," Duke said, leaning back. "I wasn't expecting her to show up early."
Then, Blythe Danner walked in straight to their table.
(picture)
"Mr. Hauser," she said, sliding into the booth. "And Gary, I hope you haven't ordered yet. I'm famished."
"We waited," Duke said, a genuine smile breaking through his director's mask. "I'm Duke, you already know Gary. Let's order."
The next hour was a blur of easy, human conversation.
Blythe was pretty easy going and quick with her jokes
She mocked the melodramatical parts of the script which made Duke like her even more.
"It's unapologetically manipulative, isn't it?" she asked, twirling a fork expertly. "I almost cried reading it. l dont really know if people will even want to watch it."
"It's supposed to feel like emotional airlift," Duke joked, though his eyes remained serious.
"But I don't want it played like a soap opera, Blythe. I want it played like a comedy that turns into a tragedy so slowly the audience doesn't notice."
"I want it to feel like life, messy, funny, and then suddenly, short. Kind of like that Billy Wilder film "The Aparment""
Blythe laughed, a warm, husky sound that filled the booth. "I love that movie. So, tell me, Duke why write Jaws and then now do such a 180 spin to this? It feels weird"
"Well, I would like to tell more stories than just Jaws," Duke said, leaning forward, his hands clasped on the table.
"Fear, sadness, love, even disgust. All emotions could be the basis for a movie as long as you have a good story to tell."
By the time the coffee arrived, the talk was going without a hitch. Blythe was a very active listener and showed her genuine interest in film.
They spent the rest of the meal joking about the Gregory House pseudonym, Blythe thought it sounded like a man who collected rare stamps and Duke found himself genuinely relaxed for the first time in months.
She was perfect. She really felt like his impression of Jenny Cavilleri in everything but name.
Two nights later, the energy in the booth was entirely different.
If Blythe was a cool relaxing breeze, James Caan was a solar flare.
He arrived, all shoulders, charisma, and restless New York energy. He reminded Duke a lot of Timothée Chalamet attitude.
(ITS MARTY SUPREME)
"Duke! Gary! Pleasure to meet ya," Caan said, clapping Duke on the shoulder with some force.
He dove into a story about how a director on his last set, got fired for incompetence since he recorded actors talking over each other. He was funny, magnetic, and intensely nice.
"I read the script," Caan said, his eyes bright with a hungry sort of intensity.
"I love the kid, Oliver. He's got that stick up his ass, right? But he wants to be real. I get that."
"I can play the guy fighting his own family legacy, the guy who finally finds something worth losing his inheritance over."
He was enthusiastic. He was a powerhouse. He was exactly the kind of actor Duke respected.
But as the dinner wound down and they stood up to leave, the "shutter" in Duke's mind clicked.
Duke stood at his full six-foot-five, reaching for his cane. He looked down at James Caan.
Caan, audition papers said he was a solid five-foot-nine. But he looked more like a five-foot-seven guy.
Duke glanced at Gary, who was watching the exchange with a neutral, professional mask.
As Caan sauntered out to his car with a smile, promising to kill the screen test, Duke turned to Gary. The night air was cool, but Duke felt a headache brewing.
"He's too short, Gary."
"Yeah, but he's a hell of an actor, Duke and he has a movie to be released soon and he probably won't charge us much."
"If that was all that i was looking for I would hire Dustin Hoffman," Duke said, rubbing his temple.
"Blythe is five-seven or five- eight. In heels, she's five-nine. If they're the same height, the visual metaphor of the Barrett legacy, that looming, oppressive Ivy League stature evaporates."
"Oliver needs to be taller. He needs to tower over her so it's more meaningful when she's the one holding him up at the end. It's about the frame, Gary, we also are appealing to women, and they don't want a guy that is the same height as them."
Gary sighed, a long, weary sound. "So you're passing on a rising star because of a tape measure?"
"In film, those inches are a mile. Call Harrison Ford."
Gary stopped dead near the car. "Harrison? The guy doing the cabinets over at Goldwyn. Duke, he's barely worked. He's a carpenter who happens to have a SAG card."
"He has a great jawline," Duke countered.
"He's six-one, and looks like he belongs on a rowing team. Arrange a read. I want to see him and Blythe in the same frame."
The drive back to Duke's place became a debate, as they talked about the production of Love Story.
"I want to shoot it linear, Gary," Duke said, staring out the window at the passing neon of the Strip.
"I want them to start at the beginning of the relationship and end at the hospital. I want the exhaustion in their eyes to be real by the final week."
"I want the hair to be thinner, the skin to look paler. I want the actors to actually live through the loss."
"No," Gary said flatly. "Absolutely not. Not on this budget at least."
"Gary, think about the emotional-"
"Duke, listen to me. We have eight hundred thousand dollars. That's it. If we shoot linear, we're bouncing back and forth between the dorms, the hospital, and the New York apartment every other day."
"Let's say every move costs ten grand in logistics, trucks, permits, paid hours. We have to shoot in batches with locations. All the hospital scenes in one three-day stretch, all the Harvard scenes in another."
They were disscusing about shooting schedules, a detailed daily plan for principal photography, to sequences scenes for efficiency, time of day, lighting, and cast/crew availability, to manage resources and ensure a smooth production within the overall production.
During a 'cronological' Shooting Schedules, a crew would be filming a movie in the sequence the story/script unfolds, which is rare due to cost.
But they undeniably can enhance actor performances and character arcs, allowing genuine emotional progression, though most productions shoot out-of-order for efficiency.
"It kills the performance," Duke argued, his frustration bubbling up.
"How do I ask Blythe to die on Tuesday and then go on a first date on Wednesday? It's disjointed."
"You're the director," Gary said, his voice softening but remaining firm.
"You manage the performance. I manage the bank account. If we shoot linear, we run out of money somewhere in the middle of the second act and the movie ends with a title card saying 'And then they ran out of cash.'"
Duke stayed quiet for a long time, the rhythmic thumping of his cane against the floorboard the only sound.
Gary was right about the math, but Duke knew the emotional stakes. He was a time-traveler; he knew how many "okay" movies failed because they lacked that final, intangible emotion.
(Like Crazy suffers from this cause of its male lead and female lead performance and chemistry)
"Fine," Duke said eventually. "We batch shoot. But I want the hospital scenes at the very end of the schedule. I'll sacrifice the early stuff, but I won't have her 'dying' in week one."
"We save the heaviest lifting for when they're already tired from the shoot. We find a middle ground."
Gary nodded, satisfied. "That, I can work with.'"
They pulled up to Duke's house, the engine ticking as it cooled.
"Where are we shooting?" Duke asked. "Levine is pushing for the Columbia Ranch backlot for the New York street scenes, but it looks like a stage."
"Massachusetts is union-heavy, it'll bleed us," Gary warned.
"But the light there... that gray, Atlantic winter light. You can't fake that. We could always shoot on actual on-location spots around New York City rather than a dedicated studio backlot."
"What about George?" Duke asked. "George Lucas. He's got that eye for texture. He's obsessed with the way things look on the edge of the frame. He could help us find the best look for the Cambridge scenes."
"George is deep in his own world, but he's a friend. He might come up for a week or two to help us out," Gary said.
"Good. I need a team," Duke said, grabbing his bag. "And Gary? Set up that read with Ford. Tell him to put the hammer down for an afternoon."
That night, Duke sat at his desk, the "Gregory House" manuscript staring back at him.
He realized that directing wasn't just about the vision he carried from the future; it was about the daily, grinding compromise of the present.
It was about the three inches James Caan didn't have and the thousands of dollars he couldn't spend on even doing a linear schedule.
He was starting to realize that his memory of the future wasn't a map, it was just a compass.
He knew where he wanted to go, but he still had to hike through the mud to get there.
---
The smell of burnt espresso and stale pastry filled the small, nondescript coffee shop on the corner of Sunset and Gower.
Duke sat in the far corner booth, his frame folded awkwardly into a small plastic seat.
Beside him, Gary Kurtz was nursing a lukewarm black coffee, looking stressed over a series of budget spreadsheets.
The door opened, and a man walked in who didn't look like an actor at all.
He wore a faded denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing forearms dusted with fine sawdust.
"Gary," Harrison said, nodding to Kurtz. His voice was a low, resonant rumble.
He turned to Duke, his expression respectful but guarded. "Mr. Hauser. Thanks for seeing me. Mike Nichols told me I'd be a fool if I didn't come talk to you."
"Sit down, Harrison," Duke said, gesturing to the seat across from them. "And it's Duke. Mr. Hauser is for the lawyers."
Harrison sat, placing his tool belt on the floor with a heavy clank. He didn't lead with a joke or a smile. He just waited.
"Mike tells me you're a hell of a carpenter," Duke began.
"It pays the bills," Harrison said simply. "And a client doesn't care if you've got a good headshot. But this is a temporary thing."
"I like that attitude," Duke said. "As you may know, I'm building a movie. Have you read the script?"
"I have," Harrison said. He leaned back, his eyes narrowing slightly as he processed the story.
"It's a quiet piece. Oliver... he's a man who's been built by other people. His father, his name, his school. He's a finished person that's never had any light in it in a sense."
Duke felt a spark of interest. "Go on."
"He doesn't talk much because he's afraid of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person," Harrison continued, his hands calloused and stained with wood glue resting steady on the table.
"Then he meets this girl, and she starts teaching him new things. He doesn't know how to be a person without the architecture of his family and she changes that."
Gary looked up from his spreadsheets, impressed. "That's a very good take, Harrison."
"I've spent a lot of time working," Harrison said, a ghost of a smile touching the corner of his mouth.
"Sometimes you find a beautiful structure underneath a lot of bad things. That's Oliver. He's a good structure that's been buried."
Duke watched him closely.
It wasn't just the height, although Ford's six-foot-one frame would look perfect opposite to Blythe Danner, it was the calm.
"The studio wants a star," Duke said, playing devil's advocate. "They want someone who's going to wink at the camera and make the girls swoon."
"You're playing him very internal. How do you keep the audience from thinking he's just... boring?"
Harrison met Duke's gaze, unflinching. "If I'm doing my job, they won't think he's boring. I'll showcase the pressure he's under, thelove and then the tragedy of it all."
Duke looked at Gary. Kurtz gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
"We're shooting in the cold, Harrison," Duke said. "In Massachusetts and New York on a skeleton crew. It's going to be miserable, fast, and you'll probably be overworked, we also can't guarante you a large payment either."
Harrison Ford picked up his tool belt and stood. He looked at the sawdust on his shirt, then back at Duke.
"I don't mind being in the cold," he said. "And I've worked for people who didn't pay. At least with you, i cant still act and i'm not just a carpenter."
He shook Duke's hand, a firm grip and walked out the door.
Duke watched him go through the window. "Call the studio, Gary. Tell them we found our Barrett."
"He's a carpenter, Duke," Gary said, though he was already reachng for his briefcase. "Embassy is going to be pissed."
"Then tell them to relax," Duke said, leaning back in the booth. "We're not making a movie for Levine, we're making it for the audience."
---
Long chapter but i had to rewrite things after finding out James Caan is 5'7- 5'8.
Anyone planning to watch Marty Supreme? The marketing is kind of working on me