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The Business of Screenwriting: “Everyone is here because of us”
It is late spring 1988. I am in San Diego where K-9 is being shot. It’s my first day on a movie set. Ever. The scene the crew is shooting is the one where Dooley (James Belushi) enters a seedy bar seeking information on a bad guy named Benny the Mule (Pruitt Taylor Vince). Things go from bad to worse for Dooley until Jerry Lee intervenes in his unique fashion.
So I meet Belushi. The director. A few of the other actors. Some crew members (including Gary Frutkoff, at the time an assistant art director, but for many years a production designer, and still one of my good friends). It’s all exciting, dizzying, and very, very cool.
As I’m standing there watching people buzz around, my writing partner says something that I had never considered before:
“Everyone is here because of us.”
That’s right, I think. If it hadn’t been for us cracking the story, me going away and writing it… if it hadn’t been for us, not one of these people currently going about their business would be here.
No producers. No director. No actors. No crew. No location. No nothing.