"All the concert scenes were shot by the second-unit director."

"What about these reaction shots?"

"Same thing. The kid had only a few lines. He did his bit and went home. Hey, I had my hands full making Mr. Nose Candy feel like the genius he thinks he is."

"There's the kid again," Jill said.

I was beginning to see what she meant now. The kid looked a lot like -

"James Deacon," the VP said. "Yeah, that's who he reminds me of."

Mr. Muscle Bound had managed to struggle through the speech. I'd recognized only half of it – partly because the lines he'd added made no sense, mostly because he mumbled. At the end, we had a closeup of his girlfriend, the singer, crying. She'd been so heartless clawing her way to the top that she'd lost the one thing that mattered – the man who'd loved her. In theory, the audience was supposed to feel so sorry for her that they were crying along with her. If you ask me, they'd be in tears all right, from rolling around in the aisles with laughter. On the screen, Mr. Beefcake turned and trudged from the rehearsal hall, as if his underwear was too tight. He had his eyes narrowed manfully, ready to pick up his Oscar.

The screen went dark. The director cleared his throat again. He sounded nervous. "Well?"

The room was silent.

The director sounded more nervous. "Uh… So what do you think?"

The lights came on, but they weren't the reason I suddenly had a headache.

Everybody turned toward the VP, waiting for the word of God.

"What I think," the VP said. He nodded wisely. "Is we need a rewrite."

"This fucking town." I gobbled Dy-Gel as Jill drove us home. The Santa Monica freeway was jammed as usual. We had the top down on the Porsche so we got a really good dose of car exhaust.

"They won't blame the star. After all, he charged eight million bucks, and next time he'll charge more if the studio pisses him off." I winced from heartburn. "They'd never think to blame the director. He's a God-damned artist as he keeps telling everybody. So who does that leave? The underpaid schmuck who wrote what everybody changed."

"Take it easy. You'll raise your blood pressure." Jill turned off the freeway.

"Raise my blood pressure? Raise my – it's already raised! Any higher, I'll have a stroke!"

"I don't know what you're so surprised about. This happens on every picture. We've been out here fifteen years. You ought to be used to how they treat writers."

"Whipping boys. That's the only reason they keep us around. Every director, producer, and actor in town is a better writer. Just ask them, they'll tell you. The only problem is they can't read, let alone write, and they just don't seem to have the time to sit down and put all their wonderful thoughts on paper."

"But that's how the system works, hon. There's no way to win, so either you love this business or leave it."

I scowled. "About the only way to make a decent picture is to direct as well as write it. Hell, I'd star in it too if I wasn't losing my hair from pulling it out."

"And twenty million bucks," Jill said.

"Yeah, that would help too – so I wouldn't have to grovel in front of those studio heads. But hell, if I had twenty million bucks to finance a picture, what would I need to be a writer for?"

"You know you'd keep writing, even if you had a hundred million."

"You're right. I must be nuts."

"Wes Crane," Jill said.

I sat at the word processor, grumbling as I did the rewrite. The studio VP had decided that Mr. Biceps wasn't going to leave his girlfriend. Instead his girlfriend was going to realize how much she'd been ignoring him and give up her career for love. "There's an audience out there dying for a movie against women's lib," he said. It was all I could do not to throw up.

"Wes who?" I kept typing on the keyboard.

"Crane. The kid in the dailies."

I turned to where she stood at the open door to my study. I must have blinked stupidly because she got that patient look on her face.

"The one who looks like James Deacon. I got curious. So for the hell of it, I phoned the casting office at the studio."

"All right, so you found out his name. So what's the point?"

"Just a hunch."

"I still don't get it."

"Your script about mercenary soldiers."

I shrugged. "It still needs a polish. Anyway, it's strictly on spec. When the studio decides we've ruined this picture sufficiently, I have to do that Napoleon mini-series for ABC."

"You wrote that script on spec because you believed in the story, right? It's something you really wanted to do."

"The subject's important. Soldiers of fortune employed by the CIA. Unofficially, America 's involved in a lot of foreign wars."

"Then fuck the mini-series. I think the kid would be wonderful as the young mercenary who gets so disgusted that he finally shoots the dictator who hired him."

I stared. "You know, that's not a bad idea."

"When we were driving home, didn't you tell me the only way to film something decent was to direct the thing yourself?"

"And star in it." I raised my eyebrows. "Yeah, that's me. But I was just making a joke."

"Well, lover, I know you couldn't direct any worse than that asshole who ruined your stuff this morning. I've got the hots for you, but you're not good looking enough for even a character part. That kid is, though. And the man who discovers him…"

"… can write his own ticket. If he puts the package together properly."

"You've had fifteen years of learning the politics."

"But if I back out on ABC…"

"Half the writers in town wanted that assignment. They'll sign someone else in an hour."

"But they offered a lot of dough."

"You just made four-hundred-thousand on a story the studio ruined. Take a flyer, why don't you? This one's for your self-respect."

"I think I love you," I said.

"When you're sure, come down to the bedroom."

She turned and left. I watched the doorway for a while, then swung my chair to face the picture window and thought about mercenaries. We live on a bluff in Pacific Palisades. You can see the ocean forever. But what I saw in my head was the kid in the dailies. How he held that beer can.

Just like James Deacon.

Deacon. If you're a film buff, you know who I'm talking about. The farm boy from Oklahoma. Back in the middle fifties. At the start a juvenile delinquent, almost went to reform school for stealing cars. But a teacher managed to get him interested in high-school plays. Deacon never graduated. Instead he borrowed a hundred bucks and hitchhiked to New York where he camped on Lee Strasberg's doorstep till Strasberg agreed to give him a chance in the Actor's Studio.

A lot of brilliant actors came out of that school. Brando, Newman, Clift, Gazzara, McQueen. But some say Deacon was the best of the lot. A bit part on Broadway. A talent scout in the audience. A screen test. The rest as they say is history. The part of the younger brother in The Prodigal Son. The juvenile delinquent in Revolt on Thirty-Second Street. Then the wildcat oil driller in Birthright where he upstaged half a dozen major stars. There was something about him. Intensity, sure. You could sense the pressure building in him, swelling inside his skin, wanting out. And authenticity. God knows, you could tell how much he believed the parts he was playing. He actually was those characters.

But mostly the camera simply loved him. That's the way they explain a star out here. Some good looking guys come across as plain on the screen. And some plain ones look gorgeous. It's a question of taking a three-dimensional face and making it one-dimensional for the screen. What's distinctive in real life gets muted, and vice versa. There's no way to figure if the camera will like you. It either does or doesn't. And it sure liked Deacon.