How I Got Laughed Out of Hollywood (First 6 Pages)

by Paul Briggs

Visible actor:
SCOTT, quite old — at least eighty — but quite sharp.
Voice-overs:
“JERRY,” a young man.
“ECKELBERG,” a man doing a very bad Bela Lugosi impression.
“ANNE,” a young woman.
“MELISSA,” a woman of no particular age.


SCOTT is sitting, front and center, with a glass of iced tea at a table next to him. He looks out at the audience with a rueful smile. “JERRY’s” voice comes on over the loudspeakers. Theremin music is playing in the background.
“JERRY”: The end of the world began, not in terror and darkness, but in innocence and light. It began here, now, at this place, with this conference of learned men.
The theremin stops.
SCOTT: The end of my career in Hollywood began, not in terror and darkness, but in 1957. I was planning to direct my first motion picture, and I wanted it to be a good one. I’d been looking through a lot of scripts, but none of them felt right.
Now I’d done a little writing myself. When I assistant-directed Werewolves of the Old West, I rewrote some of the dialogue to make it sound more natural. Also, I changed the setting a little so the werewolves would have a little more motivation. I fixed it so it was all happening in Nevada Territory and they were trying to stop the silver mines from opening up… for obvious reasons.
So I was trying to write my own script, and I got nowhere. The closest thing I had to an idea was a couple of nightmares I’d had.
In the first dream, there was a blind girl running through a parking lot. She was being chased by some kind of monster that I couldn’t get a good look at. I was calling out directions to her — “left,” “right” — so she wouldn’t crash into a parked car or a lamppost.
In the second one, I turned on the radio, and all I could hear was the announcer screaming. I tuned to another channel and it was another guy screaming. I kept moving the dial, but it was the same thing. Somehow I knew it was the end of the world.
Two nightmares. One where somebody’s life was in my hands, one where things were completely out of my hands. Don’t ask me what they meant.
But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to turn either one of them into a horror film. Anything can scare you for five minutes, but for 75 minutes, or 90 minutes… that’s not so easy.
Anyway, we’d just finished shooting on The Car that Ate Women — I was the assistant director. At the party after the wrap, Jenny… something — I forget her name now, she was one of our car chow girls — introduced me to her boyfriend. His name was Rex Greider, he was a screenwriter, and he wanted my help with something.
Rex had the first ten pages of a new screenplay called Prints of Darkness. That’s p-r-i-n-t-s. It was about a scientist who invents a new photo emulsion that’s a thousand times more sensitive to light and can take pictures in what looks like total darkness to the human eye. But when he develops the photos, there are ghosts in them. Since I’d gotten my start in photography, he thought I could help with some of the technical details.
As we got to talking, it turned out he needed a lot more help than that. See, what he had was a good idea for a short story — or a short film. “This man died three years ago!” “But I took this photo last week!” Ooooh, scary… roll credits.
But again, for a feature-length horror movie it just wasn’t enough. Okay, so there’s ghosts and you’re taking their pictures — what happens then? What do they do? See, he didn’t know where to take it from there. So a few days later I invited him over and we hashed out ideas until we had something we could turn into a screenplay.
Actually writing the thing took us both a couple of weeks. You had to have a finished screenplay before you made your pitch to Mr. Morton at Discernment Studios. He wouldn’t actually read the whole thing, but he’d check to make sure it was done.
Leonard Morton… funny thing is, up until then he’d been a good producer. He didn’t know a damn thing about art, but he could get whatever you needed — money, permission to use a locale… my mother would have said he could talk a cat into a Chinese restaurant. Ma probably shouldn’t have said things like that. I’ll put it this way — when we had a script for a movie where an evil alien comes to Earth disguised as a ’56 Thunderbird and swallows a bunch of screaming starlets, Morton was able to convince the Ford Motor Company that this would be good publicity. (Bear in mind we are talking about the people who at about this time were making and marketing the Edsel.)
Now I apologize in advance for what you’re about to hear.
“JERRY”: Dr. Eckelberg? I’m Dr. Gerald Heath. That was an excellent talk you just gave.
“ECKELBERG”: Thank you.
“JERRY”: You mentioned a chemical you had discovered that oxidizes instantly when exposed to light. Tell me, does it change visibly – change color, for example?
“ECKELBERG”: In theory, it should — but since the change is instantaneous, we cannot know. By the time we can see it, it has already oxidized. Why do you ask?
“JERRY”: I’m a research scientist with Lux Mundi.
“ECKELBERG”: I have heard of your company. It makes photographic film, yes?
“JERRY”: Yes. Of course, we’re always on the lookout for new photoreactive chemicals.
“ECKELBERG”: Well, you would be hard put to find anything more photoreactive than this. However small the exposure, however dim the light, you may be sure the change will happen. Of course, for this very reason you must be careful to prepare the formula in absolute darkness.
“JERRY”: That won’t be a problem. I’ve been blessed with a very good darkroom assistant.
SCOTT: I needed someone who could do some kind of foreign accent — German, Russian, Swedish… I wasn’t particular. Morton introduced me to his brother-in-law, Davis Jarrett. Davis was so proud of his Bela Lugosi impression he just had to share it with the world. (shakes head, sighs)
The other guy was Jonathan Almond. He and Larry Moore had been the two cops in The Car that Ate Women. They worked well together and had good screen presence, and — most important of all — they were both available. I decided I wanted Jon to play the hero.
Of course, I also needed a leading lady for the role of Anne Martine, our hero’s assistant and fiancée. Naturally the first girls I thought of were the car chow girls — they were all troopers, and I probably owed them something. So we sent out the usual announcements for the casting call, but we also made sure they all got the word.
And then… the day of the auditions, out of nowhere came a blonde like Raymond Chandler’s own wet dream. Susan Black. Pale skin, white-blond hair, dark brown eyes — a really striking look. Five foot seven, 122 pounds, 38-25-36. They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore. She’d come all the way from Maryland just last week to try and make it in Hollywood.
Her real name was Eloïse Loweree. Her friends back in Chestertown had nicknamed her “Black-eyed Susan,” like the flower. She decided it was as good a screen name as any.
Ah, but could she act? you ask. (You are asking, right?) The answer is, yes she could. In fact, she could do what none of our regulars could do — talk to somebody without actually focusing on their face.
“MELISSA”: I'm sorry! I forgot! Miss Martine, are you all right?
“ANNE”: I'm fine. (not angrily) But, Melissa… this is the third time you've left something out of place for me to trip over.
“MELISSA”: I'm not doing it on purpose, I swear. I just… keep forgetting exactly where things are supposed to be. (Pause.) I'm sorry, Miss Martine. I've never worked for anybody who's… who's…
“ANNE”: I think the word you're looking for is “blind.” I can manage well enough, as long as everything is exactly where it should be.