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Authors: Douglas Kennedy
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does so, BUDDY slams the drawer on his hand and simultaneously pulls out a sawed-off shotgun from beneath the counter. Before LEON knows it, he has a shotgun at his head and his hand trapped in the cash register. He moans in pain.
BUDDY I think you should drop the gun, don’t you?
LEON does as ordered. BUDDY lets go of the drawer of the cash register, but still keeps the gun at LEON ’s head as he reaches over and pulls off his balaclava helmet. LEON is now revealed to be an African-American, also in his mid fifties. BUDDY stares at LEON , wide eyed.
BUDDY Leon? Leon Wachtell?
Now it’s LEON ’s turn to look wide-eyed. Suddenly the penny drops for him too.
LEON Buddy Miles?
BUDDY lowers the gun.
BUDDY Sergeant Buddy Miles to you, asshole.
LEON I don’t believe it.
BUDDY And I don’t believe you didn’t recognize me.
LEON Hey, it’s a long time since’Nam.
CUT TO:
I stopped reading. I put the script down. Immediately I was on my feet, heading towards the large closet off the entrance of our loft. After digging around assorted boxes, I found what I was looking for: a footlocker, crammed with my old scripts from all those years in Nowheresville. I opened the locker. I plunged into the deep pile of failed screenplays and never-produced television pilots and eventually I unearthed
We Three Grunts
– one of the first scripts I wrote after Alison took me on as a client. I returned to the sofa. I opened my script. I read page one.
INT. PORNO SHOP, NIGHT
BUDDY MILES, fifty-five, lived-in face, cigarette permanently screwed into the side of his mouth, sits behind the counter of a particularly scuzzy porno shop. Though pin-ups and the lurid covers of assorted magazines bedeck the area where he sits, we quickly notice that he’s reading a copy of Joyce’s
Ulysses
and the opening movement of Mahler’s Symphony 1 is being played on the boom box next to the cash register. He lifts a mug of coffee, tastes it, grimaces, then reaches below the counter and brings up a bottle of Hiram Walker bourbon. He unscrews the top, pours a shot into the coffee, replaces the bottle, and sips the coffee again. This time it passes muster. But as he looks up from the mug, he notices that a man is standing in front of the counter. He is dressed in a heavy winter parka. A balaclava helmet covers his face. Instantly BUDDY notices that the hooded figure is pointing a gun at him. After a moment, the hood speaks.
LEON That Mahler you playing?
BUDDY (nonplussed by the gun)
I’m impressed. Ten bucks says you can’t guess the symphony.
And the scene went on exactly as it was written in Philip Fleck’s screenplay. I grabbed Fleck’s script. I balanced it on one knee, while opening my own script on the other knee. I did a page-by-page comparison. Fleck had completely copied my original screenplay, written some eight years before the one he had registered with the Screen AndTelevision Writers Association last month. This wasn’t mere plagiarism; this was
word-by-word
,
punctuation mark-by-punctuation mark
plagiarism. In fact – given that the two scripts were printed in the same typeface – I was pretty damn certain that he simply had some minion type a new title page with his own name on it before submitting it to the Association.
I couldn’t believe it. What Fleck had done wasn’t simply outrageous; it was downright scandalous – to the point where, with SATWA backing, I could have easily exposed him publicly as a literary pirate. Surely someone as hyper-conscious of his privacy as Fleck would realize that the press would love to draw-and-quarter him on a plagiarism charge. And surely he also knew that, by sending the script to me, he was inviting (at best) my outrage. So what asshole game was he playing?
I glanced at my watch. Two forty-one. I remembered something Bobby once said to me: ‘I am here 24/7 if you need me.’ I picked up the phone. I called his cell number. He answered on the third ring. In the background, I
BUDDY I think you should drop the gun, don’t you?
LEON does as ordered. BUDDY lets go of the drawer of the cash register, but still keeps the gun at LEON ’s head as he reaches over and pulls off his balaclava helmet. LEON is now revealed to be an African-American, also in his mid fifties. BUDDY stares at LEON , wide eyed.
BUDDY Leon? Leon Wachtell?
Now it’s LEON ’s turn to look wide-eyed. Suddenly the penny drops for him too.
LEON Buddy Miles?
BUDDY lowers the gun.
BUDDY Sergeant Buddy Miles to you, asshole.
LEON I don’t believe it.
BUDDY And I don’t believe you didn’t recognize me.
LEON Hey, it’s a long time since’Nam.
CUT TO:
I stopped reading. I put the script down. Immediately I was on my feet, heading towards the large closet off the entrance of our loft. After digging around assorted boxes, I found what I was looking for: a footlocker, crammed with my old scripts from all those years in Nowheresville. I opened the locker. I plunged into the deep pile of failed screenplays and never-produced television pilots and eventually I unearthed
We Three Grunts
– one of the first scripts I wrote after Alison took me on as a client. I returned to the sofa. I opened my script. I read page one.
INT. PORNO SHOP, NIGHT
BUDDY MILES, fifty-five, lived-in face, cigarette permanently screwed into the side of his mouth, sits behind the counter of a particularly scuzzy porno shop. Though pin-ups and the lurid covers of assorted magazines bedeck the area where he sits, we quickly notice that he’s reading a copy of Joyce’s
Ulysses
and the opening movement of Mahler’s Symphony 1 is being played on the boom box next to the cash register. He lifts a mug of coffee, tastes it, grimaces, then reaches below the counter and brings up a bottle of Hiram Walker bourbon. He unscrews the top, pours a shot into the coffee, replaces the bottle, and sips the coffee again. This time it passes muster. But as he looks up from the mug, he notices that a man is standing in front of the counter. He is dressed in a heavy winter parka. A balaclava helmet covers his face. Instantly BUDDY notices that the hooded figure is pointing a gun at him. After a moment, the hood speaks.
LEON That Mahler you playing?
BUDDY (nonplussed by the gun)
I’m impressed. Ten bucks says you can’t guess the symphony.
And the scene went on exactly as it was written in Philip Fleck’s screenplay. I grabbed Fleck’s script. I balanced it on one knee, while opening my own script on the other knee. I did a page-by-page comparison. Fleck had completely copied my original screenplay, written some eight years before the one he had registered with the Screen AndTelevision Writers Association last month. This wasn’t mere plagiarism; this was
word-by-word
,
punctuation mark-by-punctuation mark
plagiarism. In fact – given that the two scripts were printed in the same typeface – I was pretty damn certain that he simply had some minion type a new title page with his own name on it before submitting it to the Association.
I couldn’t believe it. What Fleck had done wasn’t simply outrageous; it was downright scandalous – to the point where, with SATWA backing, I could have easily exposed him publicly as a literary pirate. Surely someone as hyper-conscious of his privacy as Fleck would realize that the press would love to draw-and-quarter him on a plagiarism charge. And surely he also knew that, by sending the script to me, he was inviting (at best) my outrage. So what asshole game was he playing?
I glanced at my watch. Two forty-one. I remembered something Bobby once said to me: ‘I am here 24/7 if you need me.’ I picked up the phone. I called his cell number. He answered on the third ring. In the background, I
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