Read Online Evening in Byzantium by Irwin Shaw - Free Book Online Page A

you?”
    “I don’t know,” Murphy said. “My politics is take the money and run for the hills.” He motioned to the bartender for another drink. “Well, then, if the Greek thing develops, do you want me to call you?”
    Craig swished the beer around in his glass. “No,” he said.
    “This is no time to be proud, Jess,” Murphy said somberly. “You’ve been out of it, so maybe you don’t realize. The movie business is a disaster area. People who were getting seven hundred and fifty thousand a picture are offering to work for fifty. And getting turned down.”
    “I realize.”
    “If you’re over thirty, it’s don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Murphy gulped at his drink. “Everybody is looking for some longhaired kid that nobody even heard of who’ll make another Easy Rider for them for under a hundred thousand. It’s like a sudden blight has fallen from the sky.”
    “It’s only movies, Murph,” Craig said. “Your best entertainment. Don’t take it so hard.”
    “Some entertainment,” Murphy said darkly. “Still, I worry about you. Listen, I don’t like to bring up unpleasant matters, especially on a holiday, but I know you must be worrying about dough just about now …”
    “Just about now,” Craig said.
    “Your wife’s got lawyers all over the country, practically, and a pair of them have been in with a court order to look at my books to make sure I haven’t smuggled any funds out to you that she can’t get her hands on, and I know she’s taking you for half, plus the house. And what you’ve got in the market …” Murphy shrugged. “You know what the market’s like. And you’ve been living for five years with almost nothing coming in. Goddamn it, Jess, if I can swing the Greek thing, I’m going to make you do it. Just for walking around money until something breaks. Are you listening to me?”
    “Of course.”
    “I’m making as much of an impression on you as on a stone wall,” Murphy said gloomily. “You took it too hard, Jess. So you had a couple of flops. So what? Who hasn’t? When I heard you were coming to Cannes, I was delighted. Finally, I thought, he’s coming out of it. You can ask Sonia if I didn’t say just that. But you just stand there giving me the fish eye when I try to talk sense.” He drained his martini and motioned for another. “In the old days, if you had a flop, you’d come up with five new ideas that next morning.”
    “The old days,” Craig said.
    “I’ll tell you what you have to do these days,” Murphy said. “No matter how much talent you have or how much experience you have or how nice you are to your mother, you can’t just sit back and wait for people to come to you begging you to take their ten million dollars to do a picture for them. You’ve got to get out and hustle up an idea. And develop it. Get a screenplay. And a damn good screenplay. And a director. And an actor. An actor somebody still wants to see. There’re about two left. And a budget this side of a million dollars. Then I can go in and talk business for you. Not before. Those’re the facts, Jess. They’re not nice, but they’re the facts. And you might as well face up to them.”
    “Okay, Murph,” Craig said. “Maybe I’m ready to do just that.”
    “That’s better. That girl says she saw a script on the desk in your room.”
    “At this very moment,” Craig said, “there are probably scripts on the desks of a hundred rooms in the Carlton Hotel.”
    “Let’s talk about the one on yours,” Murphy persisted. “What is it—a screenplay?”
    “Uhuh. A screenplay.”
    “She asked me if I knew anything about it.”
    “What did you tell her?”
    “What the hell could I tell her?” Murphy asked irritably. “I don’t know anything. Are you interested in a screenplay?”
    “I suppose you might say that,” Craig said. “Yes.”
    “Whose?” Murphy asked suspiciously. “If it’s been turned down by one studio, forget it. You’re just wasting your