By early march, Duke stood on the periphery of the Easy Rider set first day of shooting, he was on a simple, dusty olive shirt, denim, and a wide-brimmed hat that shadowed his face.
A few paces behind him, Steven Spielberg watched everything with happening around, a clipboard clutched tightly in his hands.
The set seem like an experiment in controlled and uncontrolled anarchy.
Dennis Hopper, was a whirlwind of manic energy.
He paced before the cameras, his arms flailing as he barked contradictory directions at a beleaguered Peter Fonda and the cinematographer, László Kovács.(love the guy but his name is horrible to write)
"No, man, the light's all wrong! It's too harsh!" Hopper shouted, his voice cracking with intensity.
Fonda, the calm, stoic center of the storm, tried to reason with him, his own frustration barely contained. "Dennis, we've got the location for three days. The trucks are here, the crew is here, the sun is here. We have to shoot. We can't just wait around."
Duke watched, silent and still, his arms crossed.
He honestly didn't want to intervene. He remembered the Easy Rider production in his previous life was a disaster riddled with drugs, overbudgeting, fights, recastings, etc.
Of course, It was also a huge box office hit.
This was the volatile creative process he had agreed to fund.
His job, as he saw it, was to observe the resource expenditure and the chain of command, not to mediate artistic temper tantrums.
He could feel Spielberg fidgeting beside him, the younger man's instinct screaming to fix the problem, to get things moving.
"Should we... maybe talk to the line producer?" Spielberg whispered, leaning in. "They're wasting time."
"Observe," Duke replied, his voice low and even. "This is part of the budget. Wasted time is a cost. I also don't want to yell at Hopper on the first day of shooting."
As Hopper stormed off toward his trailer to "re-conceptualize," a man with an improbably large grin and an even more improbable head of hair ambled over.
It was Jack Nicholson, a producer brought by Hopper who Duke remembered more from his time as the Joker and his role in The Departed.
"Rough gig, huh?" Nicholson said, his voice a friendly, raspy drawl.
He offered a canteen of water first to Duke, then to a grateful Spielberg. "Dennis is... passionate."
Duke accepted the canteen with a curt nod. "Passion is acceptable, but his inefficiency is not."
He took a long drink, his sharp blue eyes still scanning the disrupted set, cataloging the idle crew members, the parked trucks whose engines were cooling.
Nicholson chuckled.
"Yeah, well, you picked the right picture for it. This whole thing is a beautiful, inefficient mess. It's gonna be great."
His gaze, sharp and perceptive, swept over Duke's utilitarian outfit and then to Spielberg's nervous posture. "You're Hauser, right? And you must be the new kid. Didn't expect to see you two out here in the frying pan. Where's Jensen?"
"I wanted to see where my investment would be used. And Jensen is on the office." Duke replied, his gaze finally shifting to Nicholson.
"Smart," Nicholson said, his eyes twinkling with a knowing glint. "If i could i would also just hide in an air-conditioned office in Burbank." He gave a lazy, two-fingered salute and ambled back toward the craft services table.
Spielberg, meanwhile, just looked relieved someone had broken the tension, even if the cameras still weren't rolling.
(thoughts on the Jack Nicholson characterization)
(I once had a dream where a wizard Jack Nicholson taught me magic but I was too dumb to learn it)
---
Back in his office, Duke stood at his window for a long moment, watching the city below, but his mind was on the persistent, thorny problem of a script called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
It was too good to sit on, a potential commercial cornerstone of his company.
He needed it moving.
He also didn't want to change things in film history too much until he had some foundation to rise.
He turned and pressed the intercom. "Eleanor, ask Mark Jensen to come in, please."
Jensen arrived moments later, his youthful energy a tangible force, though today it was tempered by a hint of weariness.
He carried a thick folder under his arm, the physical manifestation of their current burdens.
"Duke," he said, taking his customary seat.
"We need to get the Butch Cassidy project moving," Duke stated, not as a suggestion, but as a directive.
He leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking softly. "I want to shoot it this year, ready for release next summer."
Jensen didn't immediately respond. He opened his folder, laying out several documents. "I've been running the numbers. Again. And looking at the schedule. Again."
He sighed, a rare sound of genuine concern from the ever-optimistic executive. "Duke, with all respect, it's a monumental amount."
"True Grit isn't just a movie; it's a logistical mess. We have Wallis's team, yes, but that doesn't mean less work for us. It means more meetings, more approvals, more diplomacy even now during pre-production. It's a full-time job for me and Spielberg."
He tapped a spreadsheet filled with dense figures. "The budget for Butch Cassidy is comparable in size. The location scouting alone for a period Western is a nightmare."
"Costumes, props, horses, wranglers... it's a different beast from a modern picture. And Steve," he said, using Spielberg's first name, "he's a prodigy, but he's green. He's spending twelve hours a day between the True Grit pre-production, and the Easy Rider project and dailies."
"To take on Butch Cassidy at the same time, with the same level of oversight you demand... we'd be stretched thin. We'd be risking both projects. A single misstep on one could bleed into the other."
Duke listened, his gaze fixed on the Ithaca logo Odysseus, bow drawn on the wall behind Jensen.
He processed the information not as a complaint, but as a report from a trusted source, after all, Jensen was doing good in charge of production.
He hated the idea of a co-production. But he was a pragmatist above all else.
"Your assessment is that our current operational capacity is insufficient for two production of this scale," Duke summarized, his voice flat.
"It is," Jensen confirmed, his expression earnest.
"I think we have to seriously consider a co-production. Find a studio partner Fox, Warner or maybe Universal to share the financial risk and, just as importantly, the logistical burden."
"We keep creative control, we use our distribution arm, but we let their production infrastructure handle the heavy lifting. It's the only way to get it made next year without sacrificing quality or driving ourselves into an early grave."
A long silence stretched between them, Duke finally broke it, his voice low and decisive.
"Surrendering a share of the profits to a studio at the outset is a sign of weakness. It tells them we lack either the capital or the confidence. I won't negotiate from that position."
He leaned forward, his palms on the desk, his blue eyes sharp.
"Before we ever step into a studio head's office, we need leverage. Tangible, undeniable leverage. We need an asset so valuable that they come to us, and they do so on our terms."
Jensen nodded slowly, understanding dawning. "The star."
"Precisely. Paul Newman is no longer an option. So we find another. A name that guarantees box office. A name that shifts the entire power dynamic."
Duke's mind was already cycling through a roster of possibilities, a living database of 1960s film talent. "Who do we have? Warren Beatty?"
"Brilliant," Jensen said, "but a producer himself. He'd want too much control. He'd want to be Butch Cassidy and a large backend deal."
"Agreed. Too complicated. What about Redford? He has the looks, the charm. He's on the cusp of fame too."
"He is," Jensen conceded. "But he's not a guarantee. Butch Cassidy needs a star, not just a talented actor. We need a name that will convince a studio to give us a favorable deal."
They batted a few more names back and forth, each with a flaw too young, too associated with a different genre, not enough box-office clout.
The problem was the scale of the film; it required a certain magnitude of star to justify its cost and ambition.
Then, Duke said the name, almost to himself. "McQueen."
Jensen's eyes lit up. "Steve McQueen."
The name seemed to hang in the air, perfect and formidable.
"He's a box-office king," Jensen continued, the excitement returning to his voice. "The 'King of Cool.' He's got the anti-hero edge that would work for Sundance."
"He doesn't do period pieces often, which could be a challenge, but that's what makes the offer intriguing. And crucially, he's known for preferring a massive, fixed salary over messy profit participation. He's a known cost. A very high cost, but a known one."
Duke nodded slowly, a plan crystallizing. "McQueen. We get McQueen attached to play the Sundance Kid. With his name on the poster, the project is no longer as big of a risk. The studios will be more interested in partnering with us."
He looked at Jensen, the course now clear. "Drop everything else. Your primary focus, starting now, is Steve McQueen. Find out what he wants. What his schedule is. Who his people are. Get me a meeting. We get McQueen, and then we'll talk to the studios."
"Duke I can't drop things on the True Grit pre-production and the Easy Rider project. Spielberg can't handle projects on his own yet."
Duke mouthed a curse before responding. "I once meet Mcqueen, i'm going to contact him to see if he would be interested first"
---
I was writing about the Oscars on this chapter but i got recomended a book about the 40th Oscar that i surprisingly had never even heard of, so i rewrote the whole chapter
'Pictures at a Revolution' Book by Mark Harris and
'Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood' from the same author (Apparently this second one has a lot of Gossip)