Winston K. Marks

“ Are you forgetting that you bought a sanitarium?—some eight hundred grand worth? And it's only half paid for?"
"Oh, that. The royalties will take care of the payments."
"Hillary, you keep forgetting about taxes."
"Then let them take it back by default. I'm through with it."
"Dammit," I said, "I looked into this deal. People don't take back sanitariums like over-ripe bananas, especially when they got you on the hook for more than it's worth. They'll hold you to the contract. And you can't get your equity out if you don't protect it by keeping up your payments. ”

“ Hillary was keeping four secretaries busy taking dictation and transcribing. He never researched, never revised, never even glanced at the copy. I've known some prolific writers, but none could grind it out like Hillary Hardy.
And it was good! Every piece was better than the last. His characters were strictly 3-D right on paper, and word pictures! When he mentioned bedbugs, you itched and bled; when the villain slugged the hero a low-blow, you felt it in your guts; and when boy got girl—brother, turn up the house-lights, quick. ”

“ Consider the potential for creating drama, alone! Every word ever read or spoken, every emotion ever conveyed, every gesture of anger, love, jealousy, pain, pleasure—all this raw material glittering brightly, ready to pour out in new conflicts, dramatic situations, sharp pungent dialogue—"
He made me sense his enthusiasm, but I couldn't quite feel it. Would such a tremendous ability necessarily be good? ”

“ Hillary Hardy showed up next morning at my request, and he did, indeed, appear in good spirits. I demanded, "What's this business of locking yourself up in a looney-bin? Don't you realize that's bad public relations?"
He chuckled. "I thought of that. So I'm going under an assumed name. Your girl said you had something very important to tell me."
"Sure. I want another play," I told him. "Updraft won't run forever, you know."
"Oh, I have plenty of money now, so I won't have to bother. The people at the sanitarium have become interested in my project, and all I'm spending is board and room there. ”

“ With nothing more than last-minute newspaper notices we opened the box-office to a completely uninformed public, and did it knock the critics for a loop! Only a couple showed up for the first performance, along with less than a third-full house of casual first-nighters.
People wandered out stunned. A substitute drama-critic from the Times looked me up after the show, and there were tears of gratitude in his eyes. "My review of this play will establish my reputation," he told me. "If the boss had had any notion of what you were pulling, he'd have been here himself. ”

“ Updraft had a dash of humor, a bit of adventure, a dollop of romance and a gentle little heart tug at the conclusion, but damned if the critics could put their fingers on its money-making essence. They gave it pleasant little reviews and mild compliments, but no more. The cash customers, however, came and kept coming and kept coming!
The morning after the 100th performance I told Ellie to hunt up Hardy and see what he was doing about another play. I could stand to have another hit ready when Updraft petered out.
That afternoon my secretary reported, "He's in a sanitarium over in Hoboken." ”

“ Six months passed, and Hillary was still wallowing in glory, too busy sopping up plaudits to bother turning a hand.
Finally I sent a goon squad after him and dragged him to my office. He arrived in a four-hundred dollar suit and a fifty-dollar tie. Each cuff was decorated by a diamond link and a Hollywood starlet. I shooed out the excess and came to the point.
"Recess is over," I said gently. "Now we settle down for a few months of patty-cake with your secretaries. They're here in my offices now where I can keep an eye on things. Okay?" ”

“ Then when we need a certain name or factual bit of information we can't quite dig it up, or it comes up in distorted approximations.
"The same holds for calling on experience to help us with new problems. We may grasp the general lesson of experience, but most of the specific incidents of our lives are dulled in time. The lessons we paid dearly to learn are largely useless. ”

“ Parodisiac would make Hillary Hardy so much money that not even taxes could force him to produce another for a great while.
What promised to be a major irritation, fending off the press from Hardy and protecting his anonymity, was converted into a master publicity-stroke by Hec Blankenship. He swore the few of us who knew about Hardy's youth and whereabouts, to complete secrecy, then he proceeded to build his publicity around the "mystery-author."
"But he's got a past!" I objected when Hec first presented the scheme. "Old friends and relatives will spill the beans." ”

“ What good does it do to keep pouring in information when most of us are forgetting old things almost as rapidly as we are learning new ones? Of course, we don't really ever forget anything, but our power of exact recall grows fuzzy through disuse. ”

“ Gradually we will reduce sedation until he can control his memories again, but never ask him to write another dramatic work. Another attack like this one could drive him irretrievably insane."
It wasn't too hard to understand. After all, what is creative writing but setting down little bits of yourself? And the demands of literature are for human problems, conflicts, struggles.
Young as he was, Hillary was no different from the rest of us. ”

“ Before I got into second gear on Beach Boy, however, Hillary sends a messenger over with Madame President, a satire so sharp I knew it would make Call Me Madame look like Little Women.
What do you do? There are just so many legitimate theaters in the city.
While I'm pondering this and negotiating with a Hollywood agent to maybe take Beach Boy off my hands, along comes Red Rice, an epic novel of Communist China that out-Bucked Pearl a hundred heart-wrenches to one. ”

“ As a truly thinking animal, man considers he has reached some acme of perfection because his brain is so superior to the lower animals. Actually, the real gulf is between what man has achieved and what he can achieve with his brain. ”

“ I need money, lots of it, to continue my research. Psychiatrists come high."
Well, I suppose good plays have been written for screwier reasons, and I was in no mood to look a gift-author in the mouth. I did pass Updraft around to a brace of critics, and none of them could hang a plagiarism charge on Hardy. So I wrote out his check and started the wheels going on the production.
The boy prodigy dropped out of sight for the time being, taking no further interest in his brain-child. Updraft did all right in the sticks, but it was when we opened on Broadway that it began to coin money. ”

“ Well, I made a mental note to pass the script around a bit before I signed the contract myself. After all, he might have cribbed the whole thing somewhere.
He finished reading, signed the contract and handed it back to me with an air of expectancy. I stalled, "I, uh, will have the check for you in a few days. Meanwhile, you'd better get yourself an agent and an attorney and fix up that affidavit of authorship. Normally, I don't deal with free-lance playwrights, you see."
"But I don't need any agent," he protested. "You be my agent, Mr. ”