Ralph Lauren stood in the center of the soundstage. He was younger, leaner, with dark eyes.
The racks behind him held what would eventually become one of the most recognizable silhouettes in American cinema.
Layers of tweed over cotton. Vests worn loose, over button-downs with the collars slightly askew. Wide-legged trousers that moved when you walked.
Men's hats on women. Ties knotted low and lazy.
Lauren said to Duke, holding up a vest made of herringbone. "The clothes are characters. The clothes tell you who this woman is before she opens her mouth. She's borrowed from every man she's ever loved and kept some parts."
Duke stood with his arms crossed, watching. He was dressed simply, dark slacks, a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the forearms, no tie.
He nodded at Lauren's explanation but said nothing.
The morning had been long already. Three auditions in, and Duke was already bored.
Blythe Danner arrived first.
She came through the stage door. Her blonde hair was pulled back loosely. She wore minimal makeup. She shook hands with Lauren, complimented the wardrobe with genuine enthusiasm, and then turned to Duke.
The air between them was subtle. Specially the way they looked at each other for half a second too long before they slid back into place.
They had a history, Blythe had been the lead in Duke's first film, and whatever had happened between them during and after that production had left feelings.
"Duke," she said warmly.
"Blythe," he replied. Just as warmly.
The audition was strong. She was technically impeccable, emotionally available, and intelligent enough to understand every layer of the script. She read the key scenes with a depth that made the dialogue sound in ways it hadn't on the page.
And it was wrong.
Duke knew it within the first five minutes, though he let her finish the full read out of respect.
When she finished, Duke thanked her with complete sincerity, walked her to the door, and promised to be in touch. She smiled, kissed him on the cheek and left.
Robert De Niro arrived forty minutes later, having driven himself from his house in an old taxi. Duke wondered if he had already expended all the Hacksaw Ridge money and now he needed to drive to make ends meet.
He walked onto the soundstage with energy, De Niro had been extraordinary in Duke's last project.
He was, by any reasonable measure, one of the most gifted actors of his generation, possibly of any generation, and Duke had the utmost respect for what he could do with a camera pointed at his face.
But he was wrong for this, too, and Duke knew it before the man even opened his mouth.
It was a chemistry problem. Annie Hall required a very specific male energy, neurotic, intellectual, self-defeating. The kind of man who overthinks his coffee order. That character needed to be funny.
De Niro was many magnificent things. He was not that.
He read the scenes with intensity, bringing his usual meticulous preparation to every line. But the comedy kept slipping away from him.
Duke thanked him, walked him out, and told him, honestly that they would work together again soon, on something that deserved what he specifically brought.
De Niro nodded, shook his hand, and left without fanfare.
Two brilliant actors. Two wrong fits. Duke stood in the middle of the soundstage, surrounded by Ralph Lauren's beautiful clothes and Mel Brooks's annotated script pages.
Then Gene Wilder walked in.(One of my fav actors).
Mel Brooks, who had been lurking in the back of the stage nursing his fourth espresso of the day, sat up straight and grinned.
"There he is," Brooks murmured. "There's my boy."
Duke watched as Wilder approached, shook hands with a grip that was surprisingly firm.
"Gene," Duke said. "Thanks for coming."
"Thanks for asking. I almost didn't come. I was having a very hars internal discussion about whether the invitation was genuine or a clerical error, and I'd decided it was probably an error, but then Mel called and yelled at me, so here I am."
He said all of this without taking a breath, his hands making small, involuntary gestures in the air as if he were conducting an invisible orchestra of his own anxieties.
Duke looked at Brooks. Brooks was beaming. They did the read.
Within two pages, Duke knew.
The jokes landed with the feeling of a man desperate hunger for connection, but kept sabotaging itself because connection meant vulnerability and vulnerability meant pain. You laughed at him and ached for him in the same breath.
"That's the guy," Brooks whispered to Duke as Wilder finished the last scene, standing in the center of the stage with his arms slightly raised. "That's your Annie Hall."
"That's my Alvy Singer," Duke corrected.
The invitation went out to Diane Keaton that afternoon.
She came in the next morning, and she was exactly right. From the moment she walked through the door, wearing what appeared to be an outfit she had assembled from six different decades and three different genders, she was the character.
When she read opposite Wilder, they were funny together.
___
Later that day, Duke found himself on the meeting room at the Paramount executive suite
It was in this room, on a Tuesday afternoon in January, that Duke's inner circle gathered to talk about the future.
Barry Diller arrived first, as he always did. He carried a leather portfolio stuffed with technical documents.
Frank Yablans came next, flanked by Robert Evans.
Stanley Jaffe arrived last, carrying a single manila folder and a cup of black coffee.
Duke sat at the head of the table, watching them arrange themselves. Diller on one side, leaning forward, ready to start the meeting. Yablans and Evans on the other, shoulder to shoulder, a united front. Jaffe at the far end.
Diller opened first.
"We're tenants," he said, putting his portfolio onto the table. "That's what we are right now. We make some of the best television content in this country, and we're renting shelf space from ABC, CBS, and NBC to sell it. We're paying them for the privilege of making them money. It's insane."
He flipped open the portfolio and spread a technical schematic across the table. It showed the orbital path of the RCA Satcom satellite, scheduled for launch in 1975, with transponder allocations marked in red.
"This," Diller said, tapping the schematic, "is our way out. We lease transponders on Satcom. We establish a direct satellite-to-cable pipeline. We won't need the networks. We don't need their ad salesmen or their standards and practices departments or their vice presidents of program-"
"Barry," Duke said mildly.
Diller took a breath. "We build our own network. A Paramount Cable Network. Every home in America with a satellite dish or a cable box that will get our content directly. No middleman. Just us, the signal, and the audience."
The room was quiet for a moment. Duke could see the wheels turning behind every pair of eyes at the table. They were all smart enough to understand what Diller was proposing, and they were all experienced enough to understand how massive it was.
This wasn't a business strategy. This was an infrastructure play. This was building your own highway so you never had to pay tolls again.
"And the cost?" Jaffe asked, because Jaffe always asked about the cost.
"Significant upfront. Transponder leases, signal distribution infrastructure, content programming. We're talking a couple of millions in the first three years."
"Millions," Jaffe repeated.
"Against a revenue model that eliminates network dependency forever," Diller countered. "Stanley, we're paying the Big Three a fortune to air our shows. And every dime we pay them is a dime we could keep. The satellite changes the economics of the entire business. First mover wins. If we don't do this, someone else will."
Evans shifted in his seat, and Duke could tell that his old friend was about to redirect the conversation.
"Barry's not wrong about the networks," Evans said, "but he's solving tomorrow's problem. I want to talk about a current opportunity."
He reached beneath the table and pulled out a leather tube, from which he extracted a rolled set of architectural renderings that he spread across the table. "Paramount Parks."
The renderings were gorgeous. Professional. Detailed. They showed a sprawling entertainment complex, rides, attractions, theaters, restaurants organized around themed zones that corresponded to Paramount's intellectual properties.
Duke could see areas dedicated to Star Trek, zones built around classic Paramount adventure films like The Crusaders, and prominently featured an entire section devoted to DC Comics characters.
"This is where the money lives," Evans said, his voice taking on a persuasive tone. "A theme park is a machine that prints money. You build it once, and it generates revenue for fifty years. Disney proved that. We have everything we need to do the same thing."
Yablans leaned forward, his first contribution to the meeting. "The real estate appreciation alone justifies the investment. We buy five hundred acres outside a major metropolitan area today, and in twenty years, that land is worth ten times what we paid. The park is the attraction. The land is an asset."
"DC Comics is selling extremely well," Evans continued, building momentum. "Blue Beetle is getting a premium animated series from MadHouse."
"Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, these are brands that children grow up with. Children who become teenagers who become adults who then bring their own children. The lifecycle of a theme park visitor is generational."
Jaffe set down his coffee cup with a small thud. "What you're describing," he said, "is a three-to-ten-year development timeline with a capital expenditure in the hundreds of millions of dollars."
"Land acquisition. Environmental permits. Construction. Staffing. Insurance. We would be diverting the majority of the company's free cash flow into a project that won't return a single dollar for half a decade at minimum."
"Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, Stanley," Evans replied.
"And sometimes you spend money and you just... spend money," Jaffe said. "I'm not opposed to the concept. I'm opposed to the timing. We have a model that works right now and it's called Atari."
He opened his manila folder and laid out a single sheet of paper. One page. Clean columns of numbers.
"Atari arcades," Jaffe said. "The overhead is minimal, the revenue per square foot is higher than any retail business in the country. And the Atari home unit, the Pong console launches by the end of the year."
"Every unit sold drives awareness of the arcade brand, which drives foot traffic, which drives revenue. It's a virtuous cycle, and it costs us almost nothing to maintain. Not to mention that soon Atari Japan will use its production capabilities to expand internationally and we must expand too."
"Stanley wants to be a shopkeeper," Evans said to Yablans , loud enough for the table to hear. "We need to be like Walt Disney."
"Walt Disney nearly bankrupted himself several times, he even went bankrupt once i think," Jaffe replied calmly. "I'd prefer if we had a different role model."
The argument continued for another hour. Voices rose and fell.
Diller accused Evans of thinking small. Evans accused Diller of overstepping his role as Head of TV. Yablans sat back and watched.
Through all of it, Duke said almost nothing. He let them fight.
What Duke heard was this, Diller believed in infrastructure. He wanted to create Paramount Cable Network.
Evans believed in Theme Parks and Jaffe believed in counting every dollar and make sure profit was achieved.
And all of them were right in their own ways.
___
The room emptied slowly, the executives retreating to their respective corners to refine their arguments and prepare for the next meeting.
Diller left first, portfolio under his arm, already dictating notes to an assistant. Evans and Yablans left together, speaking in low tones.
Jaffe stayed.
Duke poured two glasses of scotch from the bottle he kept in the bottom drawer of the desk.
He handed one glass to Jaffe and settled into the chair at the head of the table.
"Long day," Jaffe observed.
"They're all long," Duke replied.
"The work versus the business. They're pulling in opposite directions, and I can feel myself stretching." Duke took a sip of scotch. "I want to direct Annie Hall. I even found my cast today, Wilder and Keaton. They're perfect. The script is right. The schedule is tight. I can make something that matters, something that lasts. That's my goal."
"And the business?"
"The business is satellites and theme parks and Atari and MadHouse and Gene Roddenberry and a hundred other things that need my attention every hour of every day. The business is what pays for the work. But the business also eats the work if you let it."
Jaffe swirled his scotch. "What else?"
"I want to publish two books this year. I've been writing. And I need the Pong launch to go well. That's not optional. The home console is the future of the Atari business, and if we fumble it, we lose first-mover advantage to a dozen companies who will be trying to reverse-engineer the technology."
"So you've got a film, two books, and a consumer electronics launch," Jaffe said. "Plus the ongoing operations of a major motion picture studio. Plus the establishment of DC Studios. Plus the animated series. Plus managing whatever hell Roddenberry tries to create this week."
"That about covers it."
Jaffe took a long drink of his scotch. "You know what your problem is, Duke? You think sleep is optional."
Duke almost smiled. Almost. "Here's what I want to do. Diller's satellite plan I like it. He's right about the infrastructure. Owning the distribution pipeline is the single most important strategic move we can make in the next few years. First mover wins, and I believe him when he says someone else will do it if we don't."
"The cost-"
"Is manageable if we phase it. We don't need to launch a full network on day one. We need to lease the transponders and secure the capacity. The programming build-out can happen over time. Start with movies, then series, then original content. By the time we're fully operational, let's hope the cable subscriber base will have grown enough to justify the investment."
Jaffe nodded slowly. "And the theme park?"
"I like it as a concept. I like it as a long-term play. Evans is right about DC being a generational property, and is right about the real estate. But we can't bet the company on a ten-year development cycle. Not now. Not when we have so many other things to do."
"So?"
"So let them fight. Let Diller build the satellite infrastructure, because that's urgent. Let Yablans and Evans draw up the theme park blueprints, site selection, feasibility studies, the whole package."
"But we don't break ground until revenue is secured."
Jaffe considered this. "And in the meantime, we keep the Atari money flowing."
"Every quarter. Every location. I want more arcade installations by the end of next year. And I want the Pong launch on schedule, on budget, and in every department store in America by Christmas."
"That's a lot of plates."
"I know."
"You're going to drop one."
"Probably. But I'd rather have ten plates in the air and drop one than have two plates sitting safely on the table while everyone else is juggling."
Jaffe finished his scotch, set the glass down, and stood. He straightened his jacket. "Get some sleep, Duke."
___
I had a problem so couldn't publish at my usual schedule