The tidal wave of the cinema craze that in those years swept the world was rearing its golden crest to its giddiest height; and the people of the studios rode in glee where the aureate spindrift blew, reckless of the law that every wave that lifts must fall, too drunk with money, altitude and speed to know that already, beneath their very feet, the crest was curving in upon itself, the fanged rocks were waiting.
Zinn, wily campaigner that he was by instinct and training, shrewd reader of signs and portents illegible to the general, foresaw the coming débâcle and—when he had made every provision against being overwhelmed in it—assumed in private the prophet's mantle.
"Been a good game while it lasted," he observed to Lucinda one day, "but it's on its way now, all right. I was reading a piece in the paper last night, all about how California seen three big booms, that time when they discovered gold, next a real estate speculation craze, and now the movin'-pictures. The first two blew up, same as this will before long. I guess I and you are lucky fools to of got a look in while the going was good."
"Lucky?" Lucinda questioned dubiously.
A grin of indescribable irony glimmered on the swarthy, shrewd features. "Something to tell the kiddies about when they gather around your knee, Miss Lee: 'What Grandma done and seen in the wild old days in Hollywood.'"
"I don't know about that. And what makes you think times will ever be different?"
"Take it from me, little lady, things can't hold up much longer the way they been in pictures. Nobody with a brain in his bean would look for it. Trouble is, nobody like that would take the fillum business serious when it was learning to walk. Now it's wearing long pants and driving its own machine, it's no use expecting it to listen to what brains got to tell it. All the same, if it don't—good night!
"Ah, I see what's going on all the time! Audiences sick of punk pictures and putting up a howl for better, producers combing the world for authors, artists, dramatists, all the people what have got the stuff pictures need to make 'em good—and the old guard back here dug in and ready to die before they'll surrender the trenches to anybody that knows more'n they do. And why wouldn't they? It's meat and drink and gasoline to them to keep things going like they are. Where'd be the sense in them giving the glad hand to the guy who's got it in him to do them out of a nice soft job?
"Take authors, now. We're having a big run on authors just't present. The producer figures anybody who's got brains enough to write a novel that won't wobble if a person gives it a hard look, ought to have brains enough to do as good with a picture story. But does he get a chanst? Don't make me laugh. The poor simps come out here on every train with their eyes shining, full of joy and pep on account of what the producers promised they was going to let 'em do in pictures. And every train takes 'em back. What's the answer?
"The answer gen'ly's a bird in ridin'-breeches and a property high-brow, calls himself director-general or something gaudy like that—same bird's been making the pictures the producers want to make better. He gives Friend Author the glad smile and a hard look and starts right in telling him all what he can't do in pictures. Author wants to know how come. 'Because I say you can't, and I know everything they is to know about pictures.' Author asks producer what about it. Producer says, says he: 'If my director-general says you can't, stands to reason you can't. Say: how do you get this way? I brought you out here to learn you to make pictures, not for you to learn my director-general.' Author sees the point and fades back East. Director-general tells producer: 'Too bad about that poor fish, but he didn't savvy the picture angle, and I couldn't make him see it nohow.'