Excerpt
Mr. Maximilian Untz regarded the monsters with a critical eye. Script girls, cameramen, sometimes even stars quailed under Mr. Untz’s critical eye—but not these monsters. The first had a globelike head and several spidery legs. The second was willowy and long-clawed. The third was covered with hair. The prop department had outdone itself.
“Get Jimsy,” said Mr. Untz, snapping his fingers.
A young earnest assistant producer with a crew cut turned and relayed the summons. “Jimsy—Jimsy LaRoche!” Down the line of cables and cameras it went. Jimsy ... Jimsy....
A few moments later, from behind the wall flat where he had been playing canasta with the electricians, emerged Jimsy LaRoche, the eleven-year-old sensation. He took his time. He wore powder-blue slacks and a sports shirt and his golden hair was carefully ringleted. He was frowning. He had been interrupted with a meld of a hundred and twenty.
“Okay, so what is it now?” he said, coming up to Mr. Untz.
Mr. Untz turned and glared down at the youth. Jimsy returned the glare. There was a sort of cold war between Mr. Untz and Master Jimsy LaRoche, the sort you could almost hear hotting up. Mr. Untz pointed to the monsters. “Look, Jimsy. Look at them. What do you think?” He watched the boy’s expression carefully.
Jimsy said, “To use one of your own expressions, Max—pfui. They wouldn’t scare a mouse.” And then Jimsy shrugged and walked away.
Mr. Untz turned to his assistant. “Harold,” he said in an injured tone. “You saw it. You heard it. You see what I’ve got to put up with.”
“Sure,” said Harold Potter sympathetically. He had mixed feelings toward Mr. Untz. He admired the producer’s occasional flashes of genius, he deplored his more frequent flashes of stupidity. On the whole, however, he regarded himself as being on Mr. Untz’s side in the war between Mr. Untz and the world and Hollywood. He knew Mr. Untz’s main trouble.
Some years ago Maximilian Untz had been brought to Hollywood heralded as Vienna’s greatest producer of musicals. So far he had been assigned to westerns, detectives, documentaries, a fantasy of the future—but no musicals. And now it was a psychological thriller. Jimsy played the killer as a boy and there was to be a dream sequence, a nightmare full of monsters. Mr. Untz was determined it should be the most terrifying dream sequence ever filmed.
Only up to now he wasn’t doing so good.
“I would give,” said Mr. Untz to Harold Potter, “my right eye for some really horrible monsters.” He gestured at the world in general. “Think of it, Harold. We got atom bombs and B-29’s, both vitamins and airplanes, and stuff to cure you of everything from broken legs to dropsy. A whole world of modern science—but nobody can make a fake monster. It looks anything but fake and wouldn’t scare an eleven-year-old boy.”
“It’s a thought,” agreed Harold Potter....