Bungalow 2 Read Free Page A

the best ones, and a cut way above the other writers who write for them. And he loves your funny stuff. Apparently he reads everything you publish in The New Yorker. He seems to be a big fan.”
    “I'm a big fan of his, too,” Tanya said honestly. She had seen every movie he'd ever made. How could this be happening to her? she wondered. Douglas Wayne liked her work, and wanted her to do a screenplay for him? Holy shit! It was too good to be true.
    “Well, now that we've established that you two love each other's work, let me tell you about his picture. Eighty-to-one-hundredmillion-dollar budget. Three major stars. Academy Awardâ€winning direction. No crazy location shots. The whole picture is being shot in L.A. Screen credit for you, obviously. They go into preproduction in September. The film starts shooting November fifth, and they're figuring on a five-month shooting schedule, barring unexpected disasters. And six or eight weeks postproduction after. With luck, and a decent script, which I know you're capable of, working for Douglas Wayne, you walk away with an Academy Award.” He made it sound like her dream come true, or that of anyone who wrote for Hollywood. It didn't get better than this and they both knew it. It was what she had dreamed of all her life, and not yet achieved.
    “And I just sit here, write my little script, and send it off to them? How sweet is that?” She was smiling from ear to ear. It was what she did with her screenplays for the soaps, and they adlibbed them fairly liberally after that, but a lot of her material got used. She wrote scripts that worked for them, which made the producers she worked for constantly greedy for more. And the ratings ate up what she wrote, and skyrocketed. She was a sure thing.
    “It's not quite as sweet as that.” Walt laughed at her. “I forget you've never done a feature before. No, my love, you don't get to sit there and crank it out between car pools and taking your dog to the vet.” He knew her life for the past fifteen years. He always found it amazing that she led such a normal life, and prided herself on being a housewife in Marin, while turning out some truly excellent work, on a surprisingly regular basis. He had a steady income stream from her, and she had stuck with it over the years. Hers was a very solid middle-of-the-road career, and she had better reviews than most, which was why Douglas Wayne had asked for her. Wayne had said that he wanted her at any price, which was incredible, considering she'd never written a screenplay before. But the quality of her work was top-notch. And never having written a screenplay for a feature film before, it was an amazing vote of confidence from Douglas Wayne to seek her out, and Tanya was immensely flattered.
    “Douglas Wayne said he wanted someone fresh, who understood the book, and hadn't been a Hollywood hack for the last twenty years.” Walt nearly fell out of his chair when he got the call, and she was about to now. “You've got to be in L.A. for this. You can probably go home on weekends most of the time, during pre and post anyway. They're offering to pay all your living expenses for the run of the film. A house or apartment if you want, or a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and all expenses paid.” He told her what they were offering to pay her for the screenplay then, and there was dead silence at her end.
    “Is this a joke?” she asked, suspicious suddenly. He couldn't mean what he had just said. She hadn't made that much money in her entire career. It was more than Peter made in two years as a litigator, and he was a partner in a very important firm.
    “It's not a joke,” Walt said, smiling at his end. He was happy for her. She was a hell of a good writer, and he thought she could pull it off, even if it was new to her. She was talented and professional. The big question was going to be if she was willing to go to L.A. for nine months. But no one, in his opinion, could be so devoted to