Isaac Asimov - The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF

“Yesterday is when we want it,” snapped Johnson, and he rose. “Any ideas about music? No? We’ll try for Werner Janssen and his boys. Bernstein, you’re responsible for that print from now on. Kessler, get your crew in and have a look at it. Marrs, at their convenience, you’ll go with Mr. Lefko and Mr. Laviada through the files at Central Casting. Keep in touch with them at the Commodore. Now, if you’ll step into my office, we’ll discuss the financial arrangements—”

It was as easy as that.

Oh, I don’t say it was easy work, or anything. Because in the next few months we were playing Busy Bee. What with running down the only one registered at Central Casting who looked like Alexander himself (turned out to be a young Armenian who had given up hope of ever being called from the extras lists and had gone home to Santee), casting, rehearsing the rest of the actors, and swearing at the customers and the boys who built the sets, we were kept hopping. Even Ruth, who had reconciled her father with sorting letters, for once earned her salary. We took turns shooting dictation at her until we had a script that satisfied Mike, myself, and young Marrs, who turned out to be clever as a fox with dialogue.

What I really mean to say is that it was easy, and immensely gratifying, to crack the shell of the tough boys who had seen epics and turkeys come and go. They were really impressed by what we had done. Kessler was disappointed when we refused to be bothered with photographing the rest of the film. We just batted our eyes and said that we were too busy, that we were perfectly confident that he would do as well as we could. He outdid himself, and us. I don’t know what we would have done if he had asked us for any concrete advice. I suppose, when I think it all over, that the boys we met and worked with were so tired of working with the usual mine-run Grade B’s that they were glad to meet someone who knew the difference between glycerin tears and reality and didn’t care if it cost two dollars extra. They had us pegged as a couple of city slickers with plenty on the ball. I hope.

Finally it was over with. We all sat in the projection room and watched the finished product. Mike and I, Marrs and Johnson, Kessler and Bernstein, and all the lesser technicians who split up the really enormous amount of work that had been done. It was terrific. Everyone had done his work well. When Alexander came on the screen, he was Alexander the Great. (The Armenian kid got a good bonus for that.) All that blazing color, all that wealth and magnificence and glamour seemed to flare out of the screen and sear the mind. Even Mike and I, who had seen the original, were on the edge of our seats.

The sheer realism and magnitude of the battle scenes, I think, made the picture. Gore, of course, is glorious when it’s all make-believe and the dead get up to go to lunch. But when Bill Mauldin sees a picture and sells a breathless article on the similarity of infantrymen of all ages — well, Mauldin knows what war is like. So did the infantrymen throughout the world, who wrote letters comparing Alexander’s Arbela to Anzio and the Argonne. The weary peasant, not stolid at all, trudging and trudging into mile after mile of those dust-laden plains and ending as a stinking, naked, ripped corpse peeping from under a mound of flies, isn’t much different whether he carries a sarissa or a rifle. That we’d tried to make obvious, and we succeeded.

When the lights came up in the projection room, we knew we had a winner. Individually we shook hands all around, proud as a bunch of penguins, and with chests out as far. The rest of the men filed out and we retired to Johnson’s office. He poured a drink all around and got down to business.

“How about releases?”

I asked him what he thought.

“Write your own ticket,” he shrugged. “I don’t know whether or not you know it, but the word has already gone around that you’ve got something.”

I told him we’d had calls at the hotel from various sources, and named them.

“See what I mean? I know those babies. Kiss them off if you want to keep your shirt. And while I’m at it, you owe us quite a bit. I suppose you’ve got it.”

“We’ve got it.”

“I was afraid you would. If you didn’t, I’d be the one that would have your shirt.” He grinned, but we all knew he meant it. “All right, that’s settled. Let’s talk about release.

“There are two or three outfits in town that will want a crack at it. My boys will have the word spread around in no time; there’s no point in trying to keep them quiet any longer. I know — they’ll have sense enough not to talk about the things you want off the record. I’ll see to that. But you’re top dog right now. You got loose cash, you’ve got the biggest potential gross I’ve ever seen, and you don’t have to take the first offer. That’s important in this game.”

“How would you like to handle it yourself?”

“I’d like to try. The outfit I’m thinking of needs a feature right now, and they don’t know I know it. They’ll pay and pay. What’s in it for me?”

“That,” I said, “we can talk about later. I think I know just what you’re thinking. We’ll take the usual terms, and we don’t care if you hold up whoever you deal with. What we don’t know won’t hurt us.” That’s what he was thinking, all right. That’s a cutthroat game out there.

“Good. Kessler, get your setup ready for duplication.”

“Always ready.”

“Marrs, start the ball rolling on publicity… what do you want to do about that?” to us.

Mike and I had already talked about that. “As far as we’re concerned,” I said slowly, “do as you think best. Personal publicity, O.K. We won’t look at it, but we won’t dodge it. As far as that goes, we’re the local yokels making good. Soft-pedal any questions about where the picture was made, without being too obvious. You’re going to have trouble when you talk about the non-existent actors, but you ought to be able to figure out something.”

Marrs groaned and Johnson grinned. “He’ll figure out something.”

“As far as technical credit goes, we’ll be glad to see you get all you can, because you’ve done a swell job.” Kessler took that as a personal compliment, and it was. “You might as well know now, before we go any further, that some of the work came right from Detroit.” They all sat up at that.

“Mike and I have a new process of model and trick work.” Kessler opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it. “We’re not going to say what was done, or how much was done in the laboratory, but you’ll admit that it defies detection.”

About that they were fervent. “I’ll say it defies detection. In the game this long, any process work gets by me… where—”

“I’m not going to tell you that. What we’ve got isn’t patented and won’t be, as long as we can hold it up.” There wasn’t any gripping there. These men knew process work when they saw it. If they didn’t see it, it was good. They could understand why we’d want to keep a process that good a secret.

“We can practically guarantee there’ll be more work for you to do later on.” Their interest was plain. “We’re not going to predict when, or make any definite arrangement, but we still have a trick or two in the deck. We like the way we’ve been getting along, and we want to stay that way. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a date with a blond.”

Johnson was right about the bidding for the release. We — or rather, Johnson — made a very profitable deal with United Amusement and its affiliated theaters. Johnson, the bandit, got his percentage from us and likely did better with United. Kessler and Johnson’s boys took huge ads in the trade journals to boast about their connections with the Academy Award winner. Not only the Academy, but every award that ever went to any picture. Even the Europeans went overboard. They’re the ones that make a fetish of realism. They knew the real thing when they saw it, and so did everyone else.