Love of the Last Tycoon: The Authorized Text (No Series) by F. Scott Fitzgerald Read Free Book Online

and has to be hauled up in a bucket.”
    He barked again and subsided.
    “Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. Boxley?”
    “What? Naturally not.”
    “You’d consider it too cheap.”
    “Movie standards are different,” said Boxley, hedging.
    “Do you ever go to them?”
    “No—almost never.”
    “Isn’t it because people are always duelling and falling down wells?”
    “Yes—and wearing strained facial expressions and talking incredible and unnatural dialogue.”
    “Skip the dialogue for a minute,” said Stahr. “Granted your dialogue is more graceful than what these hacks can write—that’s why we brought you out here. But let’s imagine something that isn’t either bad dialogue or jumping down a well. Has your office got a stove in it that lights with a match?”
    “I think it has,” said Boxley stiffly, “—but I never use it.”
    “Suppose you’re in your office. You’ve been fighting duels or writing all day and you’re too tired to fight or write any more. You’re sitting there staring—dull, like we all get sometimes. A pretty scenographer that you’ve seen before comes into the room and you watch her—idly. She doesn’t see you, though you’re very close to her. She takes off her gloves, opens her purse and dumps it out on a table—–”
    Stahr stood up, tossing his key-ring on his desk.
    “She has two dimes and a nickel—and a cardboard match box. She leaves the nickel on the desk, puts the two dimes back into her purse and takes her black gloves to the stove, opens it and puts them inside. There is one match in the match box and she starts to light it kneeling by the stove. You notice that there’s a stiff wind blowing in the window—but just then your telephone rings. The girl picks it up, says hello—listens—and says deliberately into the phone, ‘I’ve never owned a pair of black gloves in my life.’ She hangs up, kneels by the stove again, and just as she lights the match, you glance around very suddenly and see that there’s another man in the office, watching every move the girl makes—–”
    Stahr paused. He picked up his keys and put them in his pocket.
    “Go on,” said Boxley smiling. “What happens?”
    “I don’t know,” said Stahr. “I was just making pictures.”
    Boxley felt he was being put in the wrong.
    “It’s just melodrama,” he said.
    “Not necessarily,” said Stahr. “In any case, nobody has moved violently or talked cheap dialogue or had any facial expression at all. There was only one bad line, and a writer like you could improve it. But you were interested.”
    “What was the nickel for?” asked Boxley evasively.
    “I don’t know,” said Stahr. Suddenly he laughed. “Oh, yes—the nickel was for the movies.”
    The two invisible attendants seemed to release Boxley. He relaxed, leaned back in his chair and laughed.
    “What in hell do you pay me for?” he demanded. “I don’t understand the damn stuff.”
    “You will,” said Stahr grinning, “or you wouldn’t have asked about the nickel.”
     
    A dark saucer-eyed man was waiting in the outer office as they came out.
    “Mr. Boxley, this is Mr. Mike Van Dyke,” Stahr said. “What is it, Mike?”
    “Nothing,” Mike said. “I just came up to see if you were real.”
    “Why don’t you go to work?” Stahr said. “I haven’t had a laugh in the rushes for days.”
    “I’m afraid of a nervous breakdown.”
    “You ought to keep in form,” Stahr said. “Let’s see you peddle your stuff.” He turned to Boxley: “Mike’s a gag man—he was out here when I was in the cradle. Mike, show Mr. Boxley a double wing, clutch, kick and scram.”
    “Here?” asked Mike.
    “Here.”
    “There isn’t much room. I wanted to ask you about—–”
    “There’s lot of room.”
    “Well,” he looked around tentatively. “You shoot the gun.”
    Miss Doolan’s assistant, Katy, took a paper bag, blew it open.
    “It was a routine,” Mike said to Boxley,