Duke sat on the edge of a cold bench, his breath a thick, white mist in the light.
Beside him, George Lucas was a shapeless mound of wool and parkas.
He was cradling the Eclair NPR, shielding the lens from the swirling grit of a New York morning. Gary Kurtz stood a few feet away, clutching a thermos with both hands and staring at his stopwatch.
They had eleven minutes of magic hour left before the sun broke over the skyline and turned the cinematic blue of the park into the harsh reality of a Tuesday morning.
Magic Hour in film is a short, warm and soft natural lighting periods just after sunrise and before sunset, lasting roughly 20-60 minutes depending on location.(The true magic hour is more like 15-20 minutes)
"Harrison's ready," Gary whispered.
Duke looked up.
Harrison Ford was sitting fifty yards away, his silhouette sharp against the snow.
He looked different than he had forty days ago, more thin, Duke atribbuted the change to the production pace and stress.
"The final shot," Duke said, his voice raspy from a month of shouting over New York traffic and freezing winds.
"George, I want it wide. I want him to look like a speck of dust in a desert of white."
"Rolling," George breathed.
"Action."
Harrison keep steady. It was the iconic ending of the 1970 film, a slow zoom out from Harrison's back. There were no permits for this.
They were just four guys and a camera, stealing the final image of a tragedy.
As Harrison became smaller as they zoomed out completely, Duke didn't shout "Cut." He just watched.
"That's it," Duke finally said, his voice barely a whisper. "That's a wrap on principal photography."
There was no applause. There was no champagne. The crew was too tired to celebrate.
George simply lowered the camera and started the delicate process of unloading the final roll of film, his hands shaking.
Gary checked his clipboard and exhaled a long, shaking breath.
"Forty days," Gary said. "Nine hundred and twenty thousand dollars spent. We actually did it, Duke. We're eighty grand under the ceiling."
Duke stood up, his cane sinking into the soft snow.
Jason Robards had helped them solve a lot of the sets taht they needed and he was the primary reason why the film picked up a faster pace of production.
Duke remembered the air in the room changing the moment Robards walked in.
He had arrived at 8:00 am sharp, fresh from a Broadway performance the night before, and sat in a chair that Gary had scavenged from an alley.
The scenes between Robards as Oliver III(the father) and Harrison Oliver IV(the son) had worked out great.
"I don't want you to play angry, Jason," Duke had told him in the dim light of the rehearsal.
"I want you to play 'correct.' You aren't a villain. You're just a man who believes the world has rules, and your son is the first person in your family to break them."
"You love him, but you don't know how to say it."
Robards had just nodded and put himself to work.
Now, forty days later, the film was done.
The wrap party was a pizza joint in the Village.
They sat in a back booth, Duke, Gary, George, Harrison, and Blythe. They looked a little messy and tired, with only Harrison and Blythe looking good cause they were wearing makeup that Duke applied.
"I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow," Blythe said, her eyes bright despite the exhaustion.
"I don't kknow about you, but im going to go to sleep for forty-eight hours," Duke answered.
Harrison was quiet, staring into his beer. "Is the film any good, Duke? Really?"
Duke looked at the faces of his pirate crew.
"It's good, Harrison," Duke said. "It's great actually."
Two days later, Duke found himself in a small, windowless room in Midtown.
It was an editing suite equipped with a Steenbeck flatbed.
George Lucas sat beside him, threading the "Snow Frolic" footage into the machine.
"Look at the light, Duke," George whispered.
As the film flickered to life on the small screen, Duke felt a lump form in his throat.
It was all there. The raw, handheld energy of the New York streets.
The intimate, warm amber of the under-the-table apartment.
"At least the shoots were good," George said, his eyes reflected in the glowing screen of the Steenbeck.
"It doesn't look like an Embassy Picture. It looks more like Goddard or some of the french guys."
"I'm very influenced by the French New Wave, George," Duke said. "I also would never shoot a standard B tier movie."
At least with his memories, if forced to, he would release a great B tier movie.
(Anyone has ever watched Night of the Comet?).
The production was now over. Now, all that was left was the heartbeat of the film the music and the edit.
"Gary," Duke said, without looking away from the screen.
"Call Joe Levine. Tell him the movie is finished, and tell him to get his checkbook ready."
"What are you going to do?" Gary asked.
Duke leaned his cane against the Steenbeck and sat back, watching the flicker of the film.
"I'm just going to sit here in the dark for a while," Duke said.
The screening room at Embassy Pictures was a plush, wood-panneled room.
Joe Levine didn't sit in a theater seat, he sat in a customized leather recliner.
Duke sat three rows back, his cane hooked over the armrest.
Beside him, Gary Kurtz and George Lucas, they had all spent the last week straight in the edit suite, fueled by black coffee and fast food, to get a rough cut to a state that would satisfy Levine.
"Alright, kid," Levine barked, the glow of his cigar the only light in the room. "Run it!"
The lights dimmed. The projector hummed into life.
There was no studio logo. No sweeping fanfare.
It started with a single, grainy shot of Harrison Ford sitting on a bench in the snow.
Then, the voiceover, the line Duke had labored over in the script hit the room.
"What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?"
Levine shifted in his seat.
The movie unfolded. The 16mm grain gave the footage a raw, documentary intimacy.
When Harrison and Blythe met in the library, the lack of artificial studio lighting meant their faces were half-lost in shadow, making Levine lean in, desperate to catch the flickers of emotion.
Then came the "Snow Frolic." on the big screen, the handheld energy of the Bolex camera was kinetic.
It didn't look like actors playing in snow; it looked like two people desperately in love.
Duke watched Levine's silhouette. For the first twenty minutes, the mogul didn't move. He didn't even puff his cigar.
As the film reached its final act, the quiet, clinical progression of Jenny's illness, the room became completely quiet, with Levine not even smoking.
The final shot flickered, Harrison sitting into the snowy field. The film ran out of the gate, the white leader flashing on the screen until the projector light became a blinding, empty square.
The lights came up slowly.
Levine didn't say a word. He sat in his chair, staring at the blank screen. His cigar had gone out, a long pillar of ash hanging precariously over his silk robe.
"Joe?" Jeffrey, the agent, whispered from the back, his voice trembling. "Joe, what do you think?"
Levine turned slowly.
He looked at Duke, then at the cans of film sitting on the floor.
"At least women will like it," Levine said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp.
"Is that a satisfactory review?" Duke asked.
Levine stood up, his short frame casting a shadow over the front row. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, It's an okayish movie for men, but great for women."
He walked over to Duke, his heavy hand landing on Duke's shoulder.
"The grain... the handheld stuff... it shouldn't work. It should look cheap," Levine mused, shaking his head. "But it looks great. We should discuss a new contract soon."
He turned to his assistant, who was standing by the door with a notepad. "Cancel my lunch with the Paramount guys, I want a group of women to watch this rough cut to gauge their opinion"
"Joe," Duke said, leaning on his cane. "We're eighty thousand under budget. I want that money put into the music. We need a piano score still."
Levine laughed, a booming, genuine sound that shook the room. "Keep the money, have the film ready for christmas. We're moving up the release."
As Levine marched out of the room, already barking orders into a telephone, George Lucas exhaled a breath he seemed to have been holding since day one.
"He liked it," George whispered, a look of pure shock on his face.
"I'm sure he loved it, George," Duke said, looking at the empty screen.
Duke felt a wave of relief so intense it made his knees weak.
"Come on," Duke said, gesturing with his cane. "I want to get some In-n-Out, and then we also have a score to conceptualize."
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Merry Christmas, Idk if i will be posting tomorrow cause my family has plans for all day things, Bye