Hollywood Tales

“I was dreading yet another enervating and hopeless studio meeting, this one at Fox about developing a vehicle for a Brat Pack actor (one not that hot at the time, and since even colder). My writing partner, Mike Ferris, and a college friend of his turned director were also involved. Two weeks before, a Fox D-girl had pitched the three of us a tale of an ennui-drenched, born-rich playboy drawn into a web of nuclear blackmail and espionage… a sort of Notorious, with the Brat Packer as Ingrid Bergman. Complete shit, but we were all hungry enough to eat it and say it tasted good. An audience with the boy king actor himself was now scheduled for the upcoming week. So, I asked myself, what might transform a dissolute Monte Carlo jet-setter into a conscientious Uzi-toting defender of democracy? I know! I’ll tell them I have pneumonia and blow it off.”

 — John Brancato (from “Why We Write”)