Crimes happen all across this country and Mrs. Toni made note of them day and night all the way to Reno, where she slept through our stop and missed her opportunity to buy a fresh newspaper. At this point, after having spent almost three days together, she finally asked me my name and where I was going and why, and I told her that my name was Don and that I was going to the Los Angeles area to make a name for myself in the motion picture industry, and she looked at me and said, “You’ve got to be kidding — You?” Then she turned to the man across the aisle and pointed at me and said, “This one thinks he’s going to be some kind of a movie star.” And she put her hands on her stomach and bent over laughing and I just sort of . . . punched her. I jabbed her real quick with the bathroom key I’d gotten at the last station. I just sort of . . . poked her with it just real . . . quick and, ha ha, she made just the biggest stink about it. She made the bus driver pull over and she lifted her sweater and showed everybody the little mark on her side — just a little nick, and she was pointing at me and saying, “I think this is terrible. I mean it. Here I get on this bus to visit my daughter who is clinically exhausted and I’m practically stabbed to death in broad daylight. This is the sort of thing that makes the papers as far as I’m concerned. 'Woman Stabbed on Bus.' This is terrible.”

So the bus driver threw me off onto the dusty highway. No refund or anything, just tossed me out. By this time I had only two dollars left so I stuck out my thumb and was picked up by a man named Enrique Moldonato and tonight, standing onstage here at the Academy Awards, I would like to thank him publicly. As luck would have it he was going all the way to Los Angeles and dropped me off at a Laundromat close to his home. Luckily, the Laundromat had a phone book and I had a quarter so I put two and two together and phoned Paramount Pictures. When the receptionist answered I said, “Let me speak to the per-son in charge there.”

She said, “One moment, please.”

Then, in the background I heard her say, “Mr. Tartikoff, you have a phone call.”

And I heard him say, “Oh, good.”

He came to the phone and I said, “Mr. Tartikoff, my name is Don Singleton and I’d like to make a motion picture.”

He said, “Hmmmm. A motion picture about what?”

And I looked over and saw someone empty the lint tray from one of the dryers and I said, “A motion picture about my life.”

“I’m all ears, Don,” Mr. Tartikoff said.