New York City in February of 1972 was not a welcoming place.
The city was in the middle of what polite commentators called a "transitional period" and what everyone who actually lived there called a slow-motion catastrophe.
The crime rate was climbing, the subway system was clogged with graffiti, and broken windows, Times Square was a neon-lit square of pornography shops and three-card monte dealers.
The Bronx was burning, literally, in some neighborhoods, landlords torched their own buildings for insurance money because the properties were worth more as ash than as apartments. Central Park after dark was spoken with fear, you didn't go there unless you had no other choice, and if you did, you kept moving at all moments.
Mayor John Lindsay, was in the final stretch of an administration that had started with a lot of promise, yet the fiscal crisis that would officially arrive in 1975 was already casting its shadow.
City services were being cut. Cops were being laid off.
The sanitation workers had gone on strike twice in three years, leaving mountains of garbage on the curbs that became, depending on the season, either frozen monuments or breeding grounds for rats the size of an american football ball.
This was the city that Duke had come to film in and the city, true to form, was not cooperating.
The production trailer was parked on Central Park West, wedged between a fire hydrant and a delivery truck.
The trailer was cramped, overheated, and smelled like burned coffee and damp wool.
Duke sat at the fold-down table that served as his desk, staring at a stack of paperwork from the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting that was thick enough to qualify as a novel.
The permits were stalled. Three days now. Three days of phone calls that went to voicemail that were never returned.
The local precinct, the 20th, covering the Upper West Side was being what Duke's production manager diplomatically described as "difficult" about the street closures required for the Central Park shoot.
What this actually meant was that someone, somewhere in the chain of command, was waiting for an envelope. Not a large envelope.
Just a modest, tasteful envelope containing the customary consideration that accompanied the privilege of doing business in New York City in 1972.
Duke understood this. He had understood it the moment the permits stopped moving. The machinery of New York was not complicated, it was simply unwritten. The official channels existed to process paperwork.
The unofficial channels existed to make the official channels actually function.
You could spend weeks navigating the legitimate bureaucratic pathway, filing forms, attending hearings, negotiating with community boards, or you could make one phone call to the right person and have everything sorted in an afternoon.
Outside the trailer, a line of union workers stood with their arms crossed, tools idle at their feet, waiting for what had been described to them as "clarification" on the permit status.
They were the studio mechanics union, and they were costing Duke approximately twelve hundred dollars an hour in standby pay to stand there and do nothing.
Their shop steward, a fridge-shaped man named Sal had come to the trailer door twice already to ask, with increasing politeness, when work would resume.
Duke looked at the permit stack. He looked at his watch. He looked out the small trailer window at Sal, who was now eating a sandwich.
Then Duke picked up the phone.
He called a man whose name appeared on no organizational chart, whose title was listed on his business card as "Labor Relations Consultant," and whose actual function in the ecosystem of New York City production was something that everyone in the industry understood and nobody discussed in specific terms.
The man's name was Carmine. Duke had never met him in person.
He'd gotten the number from a Paramount file, specifically, from the production records of The Godfather, which had wrapped principal photography the previous year under circumstances that Duke had studied with professional interest and personal admiration.
Al Ruddy, the film's producer, had faced permit problems that made Duke's current situation look like a minor scheduling hiccup.
The Italian-American Civil Rights League, a organization with close ties to certain prominent figures in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan had threatened to shut down the production entirely unless their concerns about the portrayal of Italian Americans were addressed.
Ruddy hadn't solved the problem by arguing. He hadn't solved it by filing complaints or hiring lawyers or appealing to the better angels of anyone's nature.
He'd solved it by going to Brooklyn, sitting down with the right people, listening to their concerns, and reaching an understanding. The permits had materialized. The protests had evaporated. The film had been made.
"Carmine," Duke said when the phone was answered. "This is Connor Hauser from Paramount. I've got a production stalled on Central Park West. Permit issues with the Twentieth Precinct and some confusion at the Mayor's Film Office."
There was a pause. Duke could hear, in the background, what sounded like a television tuned to a horse race.
"Hauser," Carmine said. "The man from Paramount."
"That's me."
"What do you need?"
Duke explained the situation in plain, direct terms. Then he paused and said, carefully, the thing that needed to be said.
"I'd like to make a contribution to the Central Park West Neighborhood Improvement Fund. A charitable donation. Paramount believes in supporting the communities where we work."
Another pause. The horse race in the background reached some kind of high, the announcer's voice climbed to a fever pitch, then subsided.
"How much does Paramount believe?" Carmine asked.
Duke named a figure. 50k. The kind of number that wouldn't raise eyebrows on an expense report but would communicate, to anyone who understood the language, that Paramount was a respectful guest in someone else's house.
"I should also mention," Duke added, his voice taking on the conversational tone of a man making pleasant small talk over coffee, "that Paramount's New York production slate for the next three years includes at least six major features."
"That's thousands of jobs. Hotel rooms, catering contracts, equipment rentals, location fees. The city benefits enormously from our continued presence here. It would be a shame if logistical difficulties made us reconsider our commitment to New York production."
"Let me make a couple calls," Carmine said. "Give me two hours."
Ninety minutes later, a police sergeant from the 20th Precinct knocked on the trailer door. He was smiling. He was holding stamped permits. He shook Duke's hand with the warm familiarity of a man greeting an old friend, despite the fact that they had never met.
"Sorry about the delay, Mr. Hauser. Paperwork got stuck somewhere. You know how it is. You're all set for the park. We'll have officers on-site for traffic control starting tomorrow morning. Anything else you need, you call the precinct direct. Ask for Sergeant Holloway. That's me."
"I appreciate it, Sergeant. Paramount appreciates it."
"Happy to help. Love the movies, by the way. My wife's crazy about Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry."
Duke watched him walk away, then turned to find his production manager standing behind him.
"Get the crew working," Duke said. "We shoot Central Park tomorrow at dawn. I want the walking scenes done by noon."
___
Two nights later, Gene Wilder was drunk.
Not falling-down drunk. More like the kind where a man sits at a hotel bar at two in the morning.
Duke found Wilder in the corner booth.
He'd gotten a call from the night concierge, a man Duke had tipped generously on the first day of the New York shoot, precisely for situations like this.
Duke sat down across from Wilder without asking permission.
"Rough night?" Duke asked.
Wilder looked up. His eyes were red. He was still in his street clothes from the day's shoot, the wool overcoat, the rumpled corduroy pants. He looked, Duke thought, almost exactly like Alvy Singer.
"I'm ruining your movie," Wilder said.
Duke didn't respond immediately. He signaled the bartender, ordered a bourbon for himself and a glass of water for Wilder, and waited for both to arrive before speaking.
"What makes you think that?"
"Because I can see myself doing it. I can see it happening in real time, take after take, and I can't stop it." Wilder set down his scotch. "I keep pushing the comedy. And I know that's not what you want. But every time the camera rolls, some part of me-"
He tapped his temple. "Some part of me goes to the Mel style. The big, broad, get-the-laugh place. That's the acting I've trained for years. And this role it requires a different acting."
Duke listened to all of this without interrupting.
The last few days had been difficult.
Not every day, Wilder had stretches of brilliance that took Duke's breath away, moments where the actor disappeared entirely and only Alvy remained. T
But interspersed with those moments of genius were takes where Wilder's instincts pulled him toward the familiar physical comedy that Mel Brooks had spent years encouraging and rewarding.
Duke took a sip of his bourbon. Then he asked a question that had nothing to do with the script, or the film.
"Tell me about a time you felt completely inadequate in a relationship."
Wilder blinked. The question clearly wasn't what he'd expected. He opened his mouth, closed it.
"I don't-"
"Yes, you do. Everyone does. A relationship where you knew that you weren't enough. Not that you did something wrong. Not that you made a mistake. That you, as a person were insufficient."
He talked for twenty minutes. He talked about a woman, someone from the pre-fame days when Gene Wilder was still Jerome Silberman from Milwaukee and the idea of being a movie star was as distant and ridiculous as the idea of walking on the moon.
When he finished, the bar was even quieter than before, if such a thing was possible.
Duke tapped the bar top with one finger.
"That man you just were," Duke said. "Right now. The man who told me that story. That man is Alvy Singer."
Wilder stared at him.
"Stop trying to be funny, Gene. I'm not asking you to be funny. Fun It's something that arrives when you stop reaching. You need to relax. You need to trust that the character is enough. Because it is. I promise you it is."
___
February 5th arrived, Duke's twenty-fifth birthday.
He had not announced this fact to anyone on the production, because birthday celebrations on film sets were time-consuming and Duke did not have time to consume. He planned on having a big dinner with Barbara who was flying to New York to go have dinner for his birthday.
But someone had found out and by mid-morning, a cake had appeared in the production office with "Happy Birthday Boss" written on it in frosting.
Duke ate a slice, thanked the crew, and retreated to his hotel suite to review the next day's shot list. He was halfway through the Central Park sequence breakdown when there was a knock at the door.
George Lucas stood in the hallway, he was twenty-seven years old, though he looked simultaneously younger and older than that, and he was carrying a paper bag.
"Happy birthday," Lucas said, with a slightly awkward delivery.
"George. Come in."
They sat in the suite's small living area.
Duke knew why Lucas was in New York.
He was in pre-production on American Graffiti, the nostalgic coming-of-age picture set in 1962 that would, if everything went according to plan become one of the most profitable films in cinema history relative to its budget.
But the project was still fragile. The commercial failure of Lucas's debut THX 1138, a brilliant, but deeply uncommercial science fiction film, hung over him like a cloud he couldn't outrun.
He'd been told by multiple people in the industry that he was too allergic to conventional narrative to make films that actual human beings wanted to watch.
"I brought you something," Lucas said, nodding at the bag. "Birthday present. Sort of."
Duke opened the bag and laid the contents on the coffee table, one by one.
A stack of Flash Gordon comics, their covers bright and lurid with ray guns and rocket ships and women in impractical costumes.
A paperback copy of Frank Herbert's Dune, its spine cracked from multiple readings.
Tolkien's The Hobbit, a battered edition with a coffee ring on the cover.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars, the first John Carter novel, in a pulp reprint.
And at the bottom of the bag, placed with evident care, a hardcover copy of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Duke picked up the Campbell and held it for a moment, feeling its weight. He had read it, of course.
Campbell's thesis, that all myths, across all cultures, across all of human history, followed the same fundamental pattern, the same journey from the ordinary world to the extraordinary and back again was one of the foundational ideas of Duke's favorite creative philosophy.
The hero's journey. The call to adventure. The mentor. The ordeal. The transformation. The return.
It was the skeleton key that unlocked every great story ever told, from Gilgamesh to the Gospels to the tale of a farm boy on a desert planet who discovers he's destined for something greater.
"I read your book," Lucas said.
Duke looked up. "Which book?"
"You know which book. The Star Wars novel."
Duke had published the novel quietly, no marketing push, no publicity tour, no studio fanfare. It had appeared in paperback through a small Paramount-affiliated publishing imprint, credited to Connor Hauser, with a cover illustration of a robed figure wielding a beam of light against a field of stars.
The public had largely ignored it.
Science fiction novels were a niche market. The book had sold modestly, earned a handful of respectful reviews in genre magazines, and settled into the quiet obscurity of a work that had served its primary purpose establishing copyright without needing to achieve commercial success.
"I loved the story," Lucas said. "The farm boy. The old warrior. The princess. The dark lord. The magic weapon. It's all there. Every archetype, every beat, every turn of the hero's journey, and it's perfect. And you got there first"
Duke set the Campbell book down on the table.
"I didn't get there first," Duke said. "Campbell got there first. The first human who ever sat around a fire and told a story about a young person who left home and faced the darkness and came back changed, that person got there first. All I did was write it down in a way that works for this particular moment in history."
"Well, i came mostly to thank you for investing in American Graffiti," Lucas said. "I know it's not- I know it's a small film. I know it's not the kind of thing that Param-"
"Stop. The investment was the easiest decision I've made all year. The film is going to work."
There was still some time till Barbara was spposed to arrive, so Duke and Lucas went to the movies.
It was Duke's birthday, and he wanted to spend it the way he'd spent the best hours of every version of his life, in a dark theater, watching someone's dreams projected onto a screen.
The theater marquee advertised "Duck, You Sucker!", Sergio Leone's most recent and least celebrated epic, which had been released the previous year to mixed reviews and indifferent box office.
Leone, the maestro of the Spaghetti Western, the man who had turned Clint Eastwood into an icon and turned the American West into an Italian opera, had made a film about the Mexican Revolution that was too political for the action audience and too explosive for the political audience.
It had fallen between the cracks, unloved and underappreciated, which was exactly why Duke wanted to see it.
The lights went down. The Ennio Morricone score began. And for two and a half hours, Duke forgot about permits and production schedules and union standby costs the ego of Gene Wilder and the copyright implications of a space opera novel and the ten thousand other things he was holding in his hands.
The film was magnificent in the way that only Leone's films were.
Rod Steiger played Juan Miranda, a Mexican bandit who stumbles into revolution and discovers that idealism and survival are incompatible.
James Coburn played John Mallory, an Irish Republican Army explosives expert who has fled to Mexico with a suitcase full of dynamite and full of disillusionment.
Juan Miranda sees John Mallory not as a comrade, but as a "miracle" capable of blowing open the doors of the Mesa Verde National Bank.
John, haunted by memories of a betrayal back in Ireland, initially wants nothing to do with Juan's greed but eventually lures the bandit into the rebel cause by promising him the heist of a lifetime.
The duo successfully infiltrates the bank, but Juan's dreams of gold evaporate when he finds the vaults filled not with money, but with hundreds of political prisoners.
By blowing the doors, Juan inadvertently becomes a "Great Hero of the Revolution," a title he loathes.
The grit of the revolution turns tragic when the Mexican army, led by the ruthless Colonel Günther Reza, retaliates. Juan's large family is massacred in a cave by the military, leaving the boisterous bandit a broken man with nothing left but a shared, bitter bond with John.
As the rebel forces face a massive military train, John and Juan prepare a final explosive ambush and in the chaos.
John Mallory is mortally wounded after a standoff with the Colonel.
Juan Miranda executes the Colonel, fully embracing the violence of the struggle he once tried to avoid.
Realizing he is dying and wanting to go out on his own terms, John lights a final cigarette and triggers an explosion that takes his own life, leaving Juan alone.
The film ends with a stunned Juan Miranda staring into the camera, wondering how a simple bandit ended up a lonely revolutionary.
Lucas was quiet for a moment, fork suspended over his pie as they ate a sweet after the movie. Then he said, "Did you like it?"
Duke smiled. "Let's say that the people who said this is the worst Sergio Leone movie, well... they were trying to warn us."
"Oh, I'm having permit problems with Graffiti," he said. "The city of San Rafael is being impossible. They don't want us shooting on their streets at night. They're worried about noise complaints and traffic disruption but we need those streets, Duke. The whole film is set on those streets. The cruising, the drive-in, the whole culture of that specific time and place it doesn't work on a soundstage."
Duke set down his coffee. "How bad is it?"
"Bad enough that I've been losing sleep. Bad enough that Francis told me to start scouting backup locations in case San Rafael falls through entirely. If we lose the locations, I don't know if we have a film."
Duke looked at him. "George," Duke said. "Relax."
"That's easy for you to-"
"I got my New York permits cleared in ninety minutes, after three days of bureaucratic stalling. You know how? Because I let Paramount be Paramount."
"The studio has resources like Fixers and I use that word deliberately, because that's what they are, and there's no point pretending otherwise. You're a filmmaker, not a lawyer. You're not supposed to know how to navigate city councils and zoning boards and the ego of a small-town mayor who's worried about his reelection. That's not your job."
"You'd do that?"
"George, I invested in your film. That means your problems are my problems. And this particular problem is the easiest kind of problem to solve."
___
Will finish Annie Hall next chapter