Part 17 (1/2)
”Lite,” declared Jean with a positiveness that would have thrilled Lite, had he heard her, ”can put over anything he tries to put over.
And he'll do it, if I tell him he must!” Which showed what were Jean's ideas, at least on the subject of which was the master.
”What you going to call it a The Perils of the Prairie, say?” Burns abandoned further argument on the subject of Lite's ability.
”Oh, no! That's awfully cheap. That would stamp it as a melodrama before any of the picture appeared on the screen.”
Robert Grant Burns had not been serious; he had been testing Jean's originality. ”Well, what will we call it, then?”
”Oh, we'll call it--” Jean nibbled the rubber on her pencil and looked at him with that unseeing, introspective gaze which was a trick of hers. ”We'll call it--does it hurt if we use real names that we've a right to?” She got a head-shake for answer. ”Well, we'll call it,--let's just call it--Jean, of the Lazy A. Would that sound as if--”
”Great! Girl, you're a winner! Jean, of the Lazy A! Say, that t.i.tle alone will jump the releases ten per cent., if I know the game.
Featuring Jean herself; pictures made right at the Lazy A Ranch. Say, the dope I can give our publicity man--”
Thereupon Jean, remembering Gil Huntley's lecture on the commercial side of the proposition, startled his enthusiasm with one naive question.
”How much will the Great Western Film Company pay me extra for furnis.h.i.+ng the story I play in?”
”How much?” Robert Grant Burns blurted the words automatically.
”Yes. How much? If it will jump your releases ten per cent. they ought to pay me quite a lot more than they're paying me now.”
”You're doing pretty well as it is,” Burns reminded her, with a visible dampening of his eagerness.
”For keeping your cut-and-dried stories from falling flat, yes. But for writing the kind of play that will have just as many 'punches' and still be true to life, and then for acting it all out and putting in those punches,--that's a different matter, Mr. Burns. And you'll have to pay Lite a decent salary, or I'll quit right here. I'm thinking up stunts for us two that are awfully risky. You'll have to pay for that.
But it will be worth while. You wait till you see Lite in action!”
Gil would have been exuberant over the literal manner in which Jean was taking his advice and putting it to the test, had he overheard her driving her bargain with Robert Grant Burns. He would have been exuberant, but he would never have dared to say the things that Jean said, or to have taken the stand that she took. Robert Grant Burns found himself very much in the position which Lite had occupied for three years. He had well-defined ideas upon the subject before them, and he had the outer semblance of authority; but his ideas and his authority had no weight whatever with Jean, since she had made up her mind.
Before Jean left the subject of salary, Robert Grant Burns found himself committed to a promise of an increase, provided that Jean really ”delivered the goods” in the shape of a scenario serial, and did the stunts which she declared she could and would do.
Before she settled down to the actual planning of scenes, Robert Grant Burns had also yielded to her demands for Lite Avery, though you may think that he thereby showed himself culpably weak, unless you realize what sort of a person Jean was in argument. Without having more than a good-morning acquaintance with Lite, Burns agreed to put him on ”in stock” and to pay him the salary Jean demanded for him, provided that, in the try-out of the first picture, Lite should prove he could deliver the goods. Burns was always extremely firm in the matter of having the ”goods” delivered; that was why he was the Great Western's leading director. Mere dollars he would yield, if driven into a corner and kept there long enough, but he must have results.
These things being settled, they spent about two hours on the doorstep of Jean's room, writing the first reel of the story; which is to say that Jean wrote, and Burns took each sheet from her hands as it was finished, and read and made certain technical revisions now and then.
Several times he grunted words of approbation, and several times he let his fat, black cigar go out, while he visualized the scenes which Jean's flying pencil portrayed.
”I'll go over and get Lite,” she said at last, rubbing the cramp out of her writing-hand and easing her shoulders from their strain of stooping. ”There'll be time, while you send the machine after some real hats for your rustlers. Those toadstool things were never seen in this country till you brought them in your trunk; and this story is going to be real! Your rustlers won't look much different from the punchers, except that they'll be riding different horses; we'll have to get some paint somewhere and make a pinto out of that wall-eyed cayuse Gil rides mostly. He'll lead the rustlers, and you want the audience to be able to spot him a mile off. Lite and I will fix the horse; we'll put spots on him like a horse Uncle Carl used to own.”
”Maybe you can't get Lite,” Burns pointed out, eyeing her over a match blaze. ”He never acted to me like he had the movie-fever at all.
Pa.s.ses us up with a nod, and has never showed signs of life on the subject. Lee can ride pretty well,” he added artfully, ”even if he wasn't born in the saddle. And we can fake that rope work.”
”All right; you can send the machine in with a wire to your company for a leading woman.” Jean picked up her gloves and turned to pull the door shut behind her, and by other signs and tokens made plain her intention to leave.
”Oh, well, you can see if he'll come. I said I'd try him out, but--”
”He'll come. I told you that before.” Jean stopped and looked at her director coldly. ”And you'll keep your word. And we won't have any fake stuff in this,--except the spots on the pinto.” She smiled then.
”We wouldn't do that, but there isn't a pinto in the country right now that would be what we want. You had better get your bunch together, because I'll be back in a little while with Lite.”