Another Side of Paradise by Sally Koslow

Author:Sally Koslow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

Scott applies himself to the task of mastering screenwriting as if he were solving an algebraic equation. If X is characterization and Y is dialogue, what is the square root of plot? Almost every night, we find ourselves at a film. He prefers obscure theaters to splashy premieres, because—I suspect—he finds it humiliating to go unrecognized as I forage for the rare mushrooms a gossip columnist craves. In fairness, however, his interest is in analyzing what makes the hoi polloi laugh, cry, or offer their harshest critique, the thunder of silence, and a premiere’s audience wouldn’t dare be mute with studio fat cats in the next row.

Scott is never silent. On our rides home, he loves to talk shop and so do I, because the film industry may be the one area where I know more than he.

Bringing Up Baby , or at least Katharine Hepburn’s bone structure, earns praise from both of us. The razzle-dazzle of Comet Over Broadway also rates a gold star. I mention that John Farrow directed after Busby Berkeley fell ill, but only Busby received a credit. “Half the heroes in this town are unsung,” Scott grumbles.

Scott allows that Louis B. Mayer got it right in hiring Josef von Sternberg, one of many refugees fleeing Germany, for The Great Waltz, though he calls the script for Test Pilot “dreck.” I bite my tongue at his Yiddish. We chew over other films MGM should not, in his opinion, have produced— A Christmas Carol (“Dickens is already dead, fortunately”), The Girl of the Golden West (“Get me out before Nelson Eddy yodels”), and the complete Andy Hardy oeuvre (“Not at all how boys think”). Scott, at forty-two, is the authority on what boys think. We even endure A Yank at Oxford, finished after he was dismissed as a writer. “Drivel.” Scott also appraises actors: Ronald Reagan (“plank of wood”) and Olivia de Havilland (“born without oomph”).

Scott is spending long days working on Three Comrades, but his greater ambition is to move forward on his novel. Constantly now, I see him scribble phrases and whole conversations he overhears, because “a writer wastes nothing.” I am flattered when one of my remarks—“if only I could walk into your eyes”—merits the notebook.

Since there is not a movie to see every evening, plenty of nights we stay home, insulated by love’s narcotic pleasures, which make me feel that his other goal—not necessarily in third or even second place—is to please me. I own barely enough vases for the flowers that arrive, and the phone rings every hour. “What are you wearing?” “When will I see you?” “What are you thinking of?” During the evenings at my apartment we jitterbug or fox-trot to the radio, gorge on homemade fudge, or I listen as Scott declaims poetry from memory in the melodramatic tenor he reserves for T. S. Eliot or Swinburne. He is not always reverent, and may shuffle off to Buffalo as he recites. But sometimes he wants to see his friends, and then it becomes New York all over again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.