Free Temptation by Douglas Kennedy

“purloining” of your script? Don’t you get it? Don’t you see what’s he’s trying to tell you?’
    ‘Of course I do: he wants co-credit on my screenplay.’
    She shrugged. ‘Yes – you’re right. That’s the price you’re going to pay if you let him make the script. And you should give him half-credit.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘You know why: because that’s the way the game is played. And also because – if truth be told – it’s not the best movie ever written . . . so why not give him partial credit?’
    I said nothing. Sally came over and kissed the top of my head.
    ‘Don’t sulk now,’ she said. ‘But I’m not going to lie to you. It’s a stale old product. And if the eighth richest man in America wants to buy it off you, take his big bucks . . . even if it means that he ends up with a co-writing credit. Believe me, Alison’s going to agree with me on this one.’
    ‘Well, you’ve got to hand it to the guy,’ Alison said whenI called to tell her about Fleck’s little stunt. ‘It’s a perversely original way of getting your attention.’
    ‘And of telling me that he expects to be the co-writer.’
    ‘Big deal. This is Hollywood. Even the valet parking guys think they deserve co-credit on a screenplay. Anyway, it’s not your best work.’
    I said nothing.
    ‘Oh dear, a
sensitive
silence,’ Alison said. ‘Is the
auteur
a little touchy this morning?’
    ‘Yeah. A little.’
    ‘FRT has spoiled you, David. You now think you’re Mr Creative Control. But remember: if this script gets made, we are talking about the big screen. And the big screen means the big compromises. Unless, of course, Fleck decides to turn your movie into some art house shit . . . ’
    ‘It’s a caper movie, Alison.’
    ‘Hey – in Fleck’s hands, it could still be a candidate for existential dread. You ever see
The Last Chance
?’
    ‘Not yet.’
    ‘Give yourself a laugh and go rent it. It’s probably the most unintentionally hilarious film ever made.’
    I did just that, picking up the movie from my local Blockbuster that afternoon and watching it alone before Sally got home. I slipped the DVD into the player, opened a beer, sat back and waited to be entertained.
    I didn’t have to wait long. The opening shot of
The Last Chance
is a close-up of a character named Prudence – a lithe, willowy babe, dressed in a long flowing cape. After a moment, the camera pulls back and we see that she’s standing on a rocky promontory of a barren island, staring out at a mushroom-cloud explosion on the distant mainland. As hereyes grow wide at the intensity of this nuclear holocaust, we hear her saying, ‘The world was ending . . . and I was watching it.’
    Hell of an opening. A few minutes later, we’re introduced to Prudence’s island companion, Helene – another willowy babe (albeit with horn-rimmed glasses) who’s married to a mad artist named Herman, who paints huge abstract canvases, depicting apocalyptic scenes of urban carnage.
    ‘I came here to escape the material bonds of society,’ he tells Helene, ‘but now that society has totally vanished. So we’ve finally gotten our dream.’
    ‘Yes, my love,’ Helene says. ‘That is true. We have gotten our dream. But there is a problem: we are going to die.’
    The fourth member of this jolly quartet is a Swedish recluse named Helgor, who’s doing a Walden Pond/Thoreau thing in a backward cottage on a corner of the island. Helene has the hots for Helgor, who has sworn off sex, not to mention electricity, electronically amplified sound, flush toilets, and anything that hasn’t been grown in organic soil. But, upon hearing that the world is ending, he decides to stop the fornication abstinence thing, and lets himself be seduced by Helene. As they slide to the stone floor of his hovel, he tells her:
    ‘I want to sup of your body. I want to drink your life force.’
    Of course, it turns out that Mad Herman is schtupping Prudence, and that she is with