Part 10 (1/2)

”It hurts your eyes looking at the screen so long,” Peter replied. ”It makes you uncomfortable.”

”People sit in the movies that long now and it doesn't hurt their eyes,” Johnny said heatedly. He was getting a little angry at Peter's continued stubbornness. ”What's the difference if they look at one big picture or four little ones?”

Joe grinned. ”Maybe you need gla.s.ses, Peter.”

Peter exploded. His eyes had been bothering him, but he refused to wear gla.s.ses. ”My eyes got nothing to do with it. The picture is too long!”

Johnny turned to George; his voice was challenging. ”Well?”

George looked at him sympathetically for a moment before he answered. ”I like it,” he answered quietly, ”but I would like to see it in a theater before I would say more.”

Johnny smiled at him. ”I would too, but we can't do it.”

It reminded for Esther to put her finger on the weakness of the picture. ”It was interesting,” she said, ”but it wasn't complete. Something was missing. In a serial it is all right to have excitement in every chapter; when it's condensed into one picture it's too much. It's all excitement, and then it's too much to seem possible. After a while it seems like a joke.”

When Johnny thought it over he realized that she was right. The answer was not in cutting serials down to another size but in developing a new-size picture. He had viewed the condensed version of the serial several times and he had come to the conclusion that while the running time of the picture was not too long, the picture lacked other elements of appeal that were necessary to round it out. A story would have to be developed that would fit the size of the picture.

They left the projection room in a group, still talking about the picture. Only Johnny was silent. He slouched along, his hands in his pockets, his face glum.

Peter slapped him on the shoulder. ”Snap out of it. We're doing all right as it is, so why worry?”

Johnny didn't answer.

Peter took out his watch and looked at it. ”Tell you what,” he said, trying to cheer Johnny up. ”It's early yet. Supposin' we all have dinner and then go to a show?”

2.

”No!” Peter shouted. ”Positively no! I ain't gonna do it!” He strode angrily past Joe and up to Johnny. He stood in front of him and waved an excited forefinger in Johnny's face. ”I should have to be crazy to do what you want! For almost two years now, we struggle and slave day and night to get on our feet and now that we're making a dollar you want to throw the whole d.a.m.n thing away for another idea. I'm not crazy altogether yet. I won't do it!”

Johnny sat there quietly, looking up into Peter's face. Peter had been roaring ever since Johnny had come out with the idea of making a six-reel picture. Peter had listened quietly enough when Johnny proposed that they buy The Bandit, a play that was then running on Broadway, and make it into a picture. He had been quiet enough while Johnny told him he would hire the author of the play to write the screen version. He had been quiet enough while Johnny explained to him how they could capitalize on the play's already established market value. His interest in the idea was evident from the question he had asked Johnny: ”How much would it cost?”

Johnny had antic.i.p.ated the question. He had prepared a budget on the picture, and he figured it would cost around twenty-three thousand dollars. He gave Peter the budget.

Peter took one look at the budget and threw the whole thing back at Johnny. ”Twenty-three thousand dollars for one picture!” he yelled. ”A man's got to be meshuggeh! Buy a play and hire a man to write it for twenty-five hundred dollars? For the same money I could make a whole picture!”

”You'll have to start somewhere,” Johnny insisted, ”and some day you'll have to do it.”

”Maybe some day,” Peter replied hotly, ”but not now. We just got into the clear and now you want to put me in hock again. Where am I gonna get that kind of money? I'm not the United States mint yet.”

”Nothing ventured nothing gained,” Johnny quoted quietly.

”Neither do you lose your s.h.i.+rt,” Peter replied quickly. ”Besides, it ain't your money you want to put up.”

Johnny grew angry at that. ”You know d.a.m.n well I wouldn't ask you to put money into anything I wouldn't.”

”Your money!” Peter sneered. ”It ain't enough to buy toilet paper for the studio for a week.”

”It's enough to pay for ten percent of the picture,” Johnny yelled. His face was getting flushed.

”Take it easy,” Joe said, stepping between them. ”All this hollering ain't going to settle anything.” He turned to Peter. ”I got enough for another ten percent of the picture. That leaves only eighteen thousand for you to get.”

Peter threw his hands in the air. ”'Only eighteen thousand,' he says. Like I can pick it up on the sidewalk.” He turned and slammed the top of his desk down and then looked up at them.

”No!” he shouted. ”Positively no! I ain't gonna do it!”

Johnny's anger had evaporated. He could understand Peter's reluctance to endanger what he already had accomplished, but Johnny was convinced that what he proposed must be done. He spoke slowly and quietly.

”Back in Rochester you thought I was crazy about this,” he pointed out, ”but we didn't do so bad, did we?” He didn't wait for Peter to answer. ”You got a nice apartment on Riverside Drive, eight thousand in the bank that's all clear, a paid-up mortgage, haven't you?”

Peter nodded his head. ”And I ain't going to risk it on one of your crazy ideas. We was just lucky the last time. This time it's different. This time it's not only money we have to risk, but also we'd have to fight the combine. And you know how far we'd get doing that.” He, too, had cooled off a little. He spoke more sympathetically now.

”I'm sorry, Johnny. Honest. Maybe your idea is good, for all I know, even if I don't think it is. But with things the way they are we can't take the chance. That's my final word on the subject.” He walked to the door. ”Good night,” he said, and shut the door behind him.

Johnny looked at Joe and shrugged his shoulders expressively. Joe grinned at him. ”Don't look so disappointed, kid. After all, it's his dough and he's got a right to his ideas.” He got to his feet. ”Come on out and have a beer and forget it.”

Johnny looked thoughtful. ”No, thanks. I'm gonna sit here awhile and see if I can figger some way to make him see it. This is one business you can't afford to sit still in. If you do, you're cooked.”

Joe looked down at him. He shook his head slowly. ”All right, kid, have it your way. You're beating your nut against a stone wall, though.”

For a while after Joe left, Johnny sat where he was; then he got up and walked over to Peter's desk. He rolled up the top and picked up the budget he had given Peter and looked at it.

He stood there almost ten minutes looking at it. At last he put it back and rolled the top of the desk down. ”All right, you old buzzard,” he said to the desk as if it were Peter, ”some day you'll do it.”

Johnny opened his eyes slowly. The air in the room was warm. Spring had come early this year, with a more than ample hint of the summer to come. It was only mid-March, but already winter coats had been shed and men were going to work in their jackets and s.h.i.+rtsleeves.

Lazily he got out of bed and walked through the parlor of the apartment and opened the door. The Sunday papers were lying on the floor in front of it. He bent down and picked them up. Reading the headlines, he went back into the parlor and sat down in an easy chair.

He heard the snoring coming through the open door of Joe's room. With a grimace he got up and walked over to Joe's room and looked in. Joe was curled up in a corner of the bed, sawing wood. Quietly Johnny shut the door and went back to his chair.

He turned the pages until he came to the dramatic section. Motion pictures were not covered regularly on the amus.e.m.e.nt pages of the daily papers as yet, but the Sunday papers devoted an occasional item to the new medium. This Sunday there were two items that made Johnny sit up suddenly in his chair.

The first was an item from Paris. ”Mme. Sarah Bernhardt to make four-reel motion picture based on the life of Queen Elizabeth.”

The second was from Rome. ”The famous novel Quo Vadis? will be made into an eight-reel film in Italy next year.”

The items were brief. They were hidden in the corner of the page, but to Johnny they were banner headlines proving he had been right. He stared at the paper for a long time, wondering if Peter would agree with him now. At last he gave it up and went into the kitchen and put a pot of water on the stove for coffee.

The smell of coffee brought Joe from his bed, sleepy and rubbing his eyes. ”Morning,” he grunted. ”What's for breakfast?”

It was Johnny's turn to make Sunday breakfast. ”Eggs,” he answered.