Early February had already arrived, and Duke was on his office at Paramount Studios, sitting in the center of the desk, was a disorganized pile of manuscripts.
This was the collection of horror scripts that Robert Evans had compiled and dumped on Duke's desk hours before fleeing to London for Barry Lyndon Post-production.
Duke sat back in his chair, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows as he looked for horror tprojects for Paramount planned horror label.
He knew the late 70s and early 80s will see a sort of golden age of the Horror Genre with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Gremlins and a bunch of other iconic characters taking shape.
Duke began to flip through the pile, most of the scripts were forgettable, amateurish attempts to cash in on recent trends without understanding the underlying themes of horror.
He quickly tossed aside a dozen highly repetitive stories about demonic possessions occurring in mundane suburban homes, rolling his eyes at the sheer lack of originality.
He couldn't help but remember at least 3 movies that would dominate if launched in this time period of mid-1970s.
-Sinister.
A 2012 horror movie, following a true-crime writer who moves his family into a home where a gruesome mass murder took place.
In the attic, he discovers Super 8 snuff films capturing various family murders, leading him to find himself involved with a pagan deity named Bughuul.
-Hereditary
A horror film abvout a demonic cult's efforts to orchestrate a grieving family's downfall, enabling the resurrection of King Paimon, a demon.
And finally, Late Night with the Devil
A 2023 horror film about a struggling late-night talk show host who in an attempt to bring ratings up, he accidentally plays with forces beyond his control during a live television broadcast.
'And thats without movies like Seklusyon or The Last Shift.' Duke streched as he lamented a little taking over this task.
Basically, all these films were of the occult, and threatened something normally considered to be a safe staple of american culture.
Films like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby had already shown that the average american movie goer, reacted strongly to religious or familiar matters to their everyday life being affected.
Family breakdown with divorce rates soaring, women's lib, the "death" of the nuclear family in the mid 70s and the fascination with Cults like the Mansons.
He discarded a handful of scripts set in haunted houses that relied on jump scares rather than build up atmospheric dread.
As the morning slowly progressed, Duke worn down the mountain of paper down to a much smaller pile.
He pushed the rejected scripts to the far edge of the desk, clearing the space in front of him.
Three specific projects had caught his eye, the first was Carrie, the debut novel by an unknown writer from Maine named Stephen King.
Robert Evans, in one of his late-night wild nights, had somehow managed to acquire the film rights for the low price of 5000$.
Duke certainly wasn't going to complain about the favorable contract, or the story. It was a beautiful story about high school alienation and female power.
The second project sitting in the approved pile was an script titled The Omen, that had already been aproved before.
It was a story about an elite American diplomat raising a young son who might literally be the biblical Antichrist. It possessed the exact tone that had made Rosemary's Baby such a massive phenomenon.
The project was already in the early stages of being greenlight, with Richard Donner attached to direct, but Duke was determined to fast-track it.
The third and final script was an outlier, a low-budget psychological horror film called Alice, Sweet Alice.
The unsettling narrative centered on a young, troubled Catholic girl who is suspected of murdering her own younger sister.
Duke picked up the receiver of his desk phone and asked his assistant to connect him to a rural residential number in Maine.
He sat back, when a young, slightly breathless man's voice answered the phone, sounding as if he had just sprinted up a flight of stairs. "Hello?"
Duke leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, "Stephen King? This is Duke Hauser calling from Paramount Studios in Los Angeles."
There was a psilence on the other end of the line. "Mr. Hauser? The... the author of Jaws? The studio... head? You're calling me at my house?" King asked.
Duke decided to cut through the time-wasting Hollywood pleasantries and go straight to the heart of the matter. "I read Carrie, Stephen,"
"And I have to tell you, it truly has something special. It is raw, it is honest, here at Paramount we would want you to personally write the screenplay for us."
King was stunned. He was a highly talented novelist, but he was currently just starting out, and he had absolutely zero experience navigating the complex world of feature film production.
"Mr. Hauser, I... I am incredibly honored, truly I am," King stammered gracefully, "But I don't know about writing a proper screenplay. I don't know the rigid formatting, I have no idea how to structure complex sce-"
Duke smoothly interrupted the young writer, "Stephen, stop. You wrote the book. You know the rhythm of the story, you understand the characters. The formatting is almost irrelevant right now cause of that."
Just recently, Mario Puzo wrote the screenplay for The Godfather without knowing the proper format, teaching himself on the job, but since he was the author he knew the story.
The script became a masterpiece and won an Oscars. Afterward, he bought a screenwriting book and the first lesson was to study his own script.
Duke continued, "We would assign a veteran screenwriter to assist you with the formatting and the know hows. Furthermore, Brian De Palma has interest in directing this picture."
King was silent for another long contemplative moment. "You''re serious about this," King said, stating it as an fact rather than a question.
Duke leaned back in his leather chair, "I do not make jokes when it comes to the business of movies, Stephen. We are offering you a 50.000 dollar development deal. You go into your office, you write the first draft of the script, and we work from there."
"My wife, is going to freak out when I tell her about this," King said.
"Good. I will have our legal department send overnight the official contract paperwork directly to your house by tomorrow morning. Welcome to the Paramount family, Stephen." Duke hung up the phone.
He wondered for a moment, if he had a monopoly to all of King's stories whether that was enough to support his horror label.
After ending the call, Duke picked up his pen again and stared intently at the yellow pad resting on his desk.
Previously, he had scribbled the name "Paramount Nightmare" across the top of the page, but he had already completely crossed it out.
It was far too basic and generic.
He slowly wrote "Paramount Nightmare" again just to see how the letters looked on the page, but he hated it all over again and crossed it out for a second time.
He began to try out a multitude of other options.
He wrote down "Grave-In Cinema." a clever wordplay. It was a direct intentional play on the concept of the traditional "Drive-In Cinema," which was where independent horror movies lived and thrived.
He wrote down "Stage 13." and smiled.
Everyone who worked on the Paramount lot knew that there was no physical Stage 13, the studio executives had intentionally skipped the number decades ago out of superstition.
Naming the horror division after the missing soundstage was an inside joke.
He moved on to the next concept, "Dark Summit." This was a reference to the Paramount mountain logo.
Frustrated but undeterred, Duke picked up his desk phone and dialed Barry Diller, whose office was just down the hallway.
Diller, picked up the ringing line on the very first ring.
"Barry," Duke stated, skipping any polite introductions. "The new horror label is going to be called 'Paramount Grave-Ins' for the moment. It is a temporary placeholder title, and I will likely change it before we officially launch to the press, but I do need you to get the creative art department to start mocking up a series of potential logos."
He hanged up, and notice the hour was already 5 pm, he had been working since 7 am so around 10 hours.
Duke picked up the phone one more time and dialed the ranch in Idaho.
The line rang three times before it was answered by the Norland nanny with her british accent. "Good morning, Mr. Hauser, I shall immediately fetch Mrs. Hemingway for you. Please hold the line for a moment."
Duke waited as he debated in his mind, why british accent sounded so much different than American, their clearly superior cousin.
A short moment later, Margaux finally came on the line.
The very sound of her voice causing an involuntary smile to spread across Duke's face, erasing the stressful lines of corporate pressure from his face.
She launched into a detailed description of the morning at the snowy ranch. Bradley had successfully woken up right at 6 am, she reported happily, he had been eating without any fuss, and then he had fallen right back into sleep.
Babies when they a month old, dont really do much other than eat and sleep. They sleep about 14 to 17 hours a day, waking up every few hours just to eat a little, since their tiny bellies can only hold a little amount of milk
"This afternoon, while we were sitting by the living room window watching the snow, I swear to you that he actually smiled at me." She paused briefly, "The pediatrician insist that it was just a passing bout of infant gas, but I don't believe him."
Duke laughed loudly in his office, "If you are calling it a smile, Margaux, then it is definitively a smile," Duke agreed.
Margaux happily changed the subject, she had spent the last few days plannning out expansion plans for the Idaho ranch.
She wanted to break ground on the project in the early spring, the moment the winter frost thawed from the ground.
"Whatever you need we can easily get," Duke promised her, his voice devoid of any financial hesitation. "Go ahead and hire local contractors in the county. Russell can vet them to ensure discretion."
In his past life, he once listened to a podcast where the people were talking about how breaking a wall on their house and not caring feel like endgame.
Duke though having an artificial lake and maybe one of those german playground with the complex rope designs in his property was the endgame for him at least.
There was a pause on the other end of the line, Margaux finally spoke again, "We truly miss you here, Duke."
Duke closed his eyes tightly, feeling a pang of longing at the center of his chest. "I miss you too, both of you. More than I could explain."
Before he had left Idaho several days ago, Duke had taken a Polaroid photograph of tiny Bradley sleeping in his wooden bassinet, Duke had been watching every day for a moment, he truly did love his baby.
He also asked Margaux about potentially sending a professional portrait photographer to the remote ranch, someone discreet, to secure a few high-quality portraits of young Bradley for a family album.
Margaux happily agreed. "I have been actively thinking the exact same thing," she told him. "These early weeks are already flying by so fast. I want to remember every single tiny detail of his beautiful face."
Duke nodded. "I will have Russell locate someone. We will probably hire a woman and make her sign an NDA."
After hanging up the phone, Duke saw the three horror scripts were still sitting on his desk.
Carrie, The Omen, and Alice, Sweet Alice.
He called Diller back, "I'm planning a triple feature for the horror label, we aren't taking this lightly, we also need candidates to run the label."
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more creative stuff, less politics
thoughs on chapter