Slice of life, sir. Highly topical not just in Germany, but overseas too . . . By the way, murder isn’t just a political phenomenon—but as you like! The good thing about this material is that it’s flexible. We can leave it open as far as the distributor is concerned: Scientifically psychological à la Tennessee Williams—what?—Esther’s husband, right—or espionage à la Bond, all kinds of thriller-type stuff. And if all else fails, you can always make it a social satire—No, not a screwball comedy, damn it, a satire, topical, realistic. With a KNOCKOUT part for Nadine . . .

Okay, agreed. You’ll have the treatment in four weeks. In two languages. German and also French for the worthy Mr. Copro-producer. Do you want it in English too? It makes no difference to me. My kind are as fluent in the main European languages as a grand-hotel clerk. We speak them, write them, sing them in the morning while shaving. At your service, my dear piglets. Naturally, I’ll keep Nadine informed.—What? Of course not. I certainly won’t let her interfere too much. What do you think! We want to get the work done. I mean: complete the project. Okay then. If necessary, I’ll go to bed with her. It won’t satisfy the lady’s need for literary expression, but it’ll calm her down for a while. Anyway, as I was saying, I’ll get back to you in four weeks—

with empty hands, needless to say (my name guarantees quality and absolute unreliability). With empty hands stretching out, demonstratively, to receive another advance:

for Nature creates rich and poor in the movie business too. With the vast amount of beauty and talent on offer, the rise of a star, for instance, can always be explained by many factors; but the ultimate reasons are always a very special aptitude and predestination for SUCCESS. Likewise, any reward is left to the workings of an Eros unique to the cinema: either you never get your money or you’re inundated with it like Danaë . . . And this cornucopia shower has nothing to do with quality or punctual delivery. It may be deserved or undeserved, but it’s never hit or miss, like in a game of chance, rather it always favors only the person of means, film-erotically preordained.

Here too we would have to apply the harsh biblical verse: FOR UNTO EVERY ONE THAT HATH SHALL BE GIVEN, AND HE SHALL HAVE ABUNDANCE, BUT FROM HIM THAT HATH NOT SHALL BE TAKEN EVEN THAT WHICH HE HATH . . .

Just as for more than two decades I have been fishing in the brackish waters of postwar German film (with little more than the bait of promise and God’s blessing), so would my outstretched hands be filled up again this time too—

and I would end up right back where I am now.

•

For this is precisely my situation. A screenplay is expected of me in eight weeks: a screenplay after a treatment that I delivered six months ago and that since then has been reworked by me and other screen-writers seven and seventy times. Waiting for it are not only my producer piglets, but also (hired by them and ready to start filming) an entire staff in Cannes. Chief among them, in the Negresco hotel, Nadine Carrier, an international star in the waning phase that is transfigured, if not completely lost from sight, by the nimbus of outstanding thespian ability.