Which Lie Did I Tell? Read Online Free Page A

down the corridors of power? They are there, all right, and worse than you can imagine.
    But Hollywood is one of the last of the handshake businesses. I don’t think I have ever signed a contract before my work was finished. You just know you are going to be reimbursed whatever you were told you would be. Studios may have their creative accounting, sure, but they don’t rob you up front.
    Mark Canton was head of production then and he flipped when Ivan and I quit, but Ivan was much too powerful for him to do anything about. I wasn’t, and he refused to pay me for work handed in. His message was essentially this: Sue us, we’ve got lots of lawyers, how many do you have?
    I remember being shocked when this happened. Pissed, too. Finally a settlement was made, not even remotely a fair one. When you hire me, you are hiring my work and my time. Never happened since.
    The second memory is something I think I said. (I read in a magazine that I did, although I have no real recollection of it.)
    Chevy and Bodner tried to bring me back after the fiasco. For one final whack at the material. To write into the script what was so important to them. (Class, repeat after me: the loneliness of, riiiiight, invisibility.)
    They were both gentlemen and I listened. Then I got up, said this: “I’m sorry, but I’m too old and too rich to put up with this shit.” And left.
    Wouldn’t that be neat if it was me … ?

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    Bill the Virgin
    This is the opening of the first movie I was ever hired to do, thirty-five-plus years ago. (The movie becameCliff Robertson’s Oscar winner, Charley. ) In other words, I am letting you read my very first words as a screenwriter. This is clearly one of the brave acts of my young life.
    It’s pretty clunky stuff.
    The only sign of talent I can find is this: the scene appears nowhere inDaniel Keyes’ glorious short story, “Flowers For Algernon,” on which the whole enterprise is based. We knew it must have taken place, but we don’t see it or talk about it.
    When I was fired immediately after turning in the screenplay, I remember feeling so failed, wanted desperately to have another chance. Looking back now, I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to the screen trade.
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GOOD OLD CHARLEY GORDON
First Draft
Screenplay by:
April, 1964
William Goldman
 
Based on the short story
 
Flowers For Algernon
 
ByDaniel Keyes

FADE IN ON:
    A MACHINE.
    This particular machine is the most modern and up-to-date model yet manufactured for the use of anesthetists. It has gauges and tubes and a black, bladder-like bag with which an anesthetist can control a patient’s breathing, and it has tanks of gas labeled Nitrous Oxide and Oxygen and Cyclopropane. This machine, in other words, is an anesthetist’s dream of heaven and it would only be used in operations of major import.
    CUT TO:
    A surgeon’s face. (It is DOCTOR STRAUSS.) Now it is clear that we are in an operating room and that an operation is very much in progress. And now the camera begins to move.
    A SLOW CIRCULAR SHOT begins, taking in all the people around the operating table. They are deadly serious and terribly concerned. Among the people we pass are:
    ANOTHER DOCTOR (this is DOCTOR NEMUR), TWO SCRUB NURSES, then a CIRCULATING NURSE, another CIRCULATING NURSE, then one ANESTHETIST, then another ANESTHETIST and then finally, we are back on the face of the SURGEON. He pauses, closes his eyes while a gloved hand dabs the perspiration from his forehead. Turning, the glances at the operating room door, or more specifically, at the round window in the center of the door.
    CUT TO:
    The window. Behind it, staring through the glass, is MISS KINNIAN. As it registers on her face that DR. STRAUSS is watching her, she nervously tries for a smile, doesn’t quite make it, then holds up two fingers and crosses them slowly, as a child might.
    CUT TO:
    DR. STRAUSS. He nods, turns back to operation, very, very serious. And so is everyone in the room,