Description
A King in Babylon
CHAPTER I
I am writing this story because Creel thinks it ought to be written in justice to ourselves and to Jimmy Allen. So do I, for that matter. The truth is bad enough, but it is mild as milk beside the outrageous tales which have been flying about the studios since we came back from Egypt without our leading man. And if the truth is to be told, it must be by either Creel or me. I have tried to convince Creel that it is his job — that his long and varied experience in k ripping scenarios open and turning them inside out. and upside down should give him a terse and vivid style. His spoken style, as I happen to know, is extraordinarily terse and vivid! But he has snorted indignantly, and accused me of trying to shirk a clear duty. Even with the best will in the world, how, he has demanded, could he find time for such a task ? And he has pointed out to me, with feeling, how a director has to sweat and slave all day trying to drive a glimmer of intelligence into a bunch of wooden actors, and then sit up all night laboring to inject some dramatic value into the rotten stuff passed out to him by the scenario editor; while a cameraman’s life was one of elegant leisure, untroubled by anxiety, and his hardest work nothing more exhausting than to turn a crank like Warren Creel. I like to work with him, for I consider him in many ways the best director in the business; but even he couldn’t have got me started on a job like this if it hadn’t been that, from the very first, I have had an uneasy consciousness that some day I should have to do it. There is nothing more disturbing to one’s peace of mind than a thing like that — a sort of impending fate which there is no escaping. It has robbed me of many hours of much-needed rest; it has interfered with my appetite and my amusements; it has even involved me in unpleasant scenes with Mollie, when a random answer betrayed th
Product ID: 9781776752966
Sku: 9781776752966
