“Okay, so what is it now?” he said, coming up to Mr. Untz.
Mr. Untz turned and glared 50 down at the youth. Jimsy returned the glare. There was a sort of cold war between Mr. Untz and Master Jimsy LaRoche, the sort you could almost hear hotting up. Mr. Untz pointed to the monsters. “Look, Jimsy. Look at them. What do you think?” He watched the boy’s expression carefully.
Jimsy said, “To use one of your own expressions, Max—pfui. They wouldn’t scare a mouse.” And then Jimsy shrugged and walked away.
Mr. Untz turned to his assistant. “Harold,” he said in an injured tone. “You saw it. You heard it. You see what I’ve got to put up with.”
“Sure,” said Harold Potter sympathetically. He had mixed feelings toward Mr. Untz. He admired the producer’s occasional flashes of genius, he deplored his more frequent flashes of stupidity. On the whole, however, he regarded himself as being on Mr. Untz’s side in the war between Mr. Untz and the world and Hollywood. He knew Mr. Untz’s main trouble.
Some years ago Maximilian Untz had been brought to Hollywood heralded as Vienna’s greatest producer of musicals. So far he had been assigned to westerns, detectives, documentaries, a fantasy of the future—but no musicals. And now it was a psychological thriller. Jimsy played the killer as a boy and there was to be a dream sequence, a nightmare full of monsters. Mr. Untz was determined it should be the most terrifying dream sequence ever filmed.
Only up to now he wasn’t doing so good.
“I would give,” said Mr. Untz to Harold Potter, “my right eye for some really horrible monsters.” He gestured at the world in general. “Think of it, Harold. We got atom bombs and B-29’s, both vitamins and airplanes, and stuff to cure you of everything from broken legs to dropsy. A whole world of modern science—but nobody can make a fake monster. It looks anything but fake and wouldn’t scare an eleven-year-old boy.”
“It’s a thought,” agreed Harold Potter. He had a feeling for things scientific; he had taken a B.S. in college but had drifted into photography and thence into movie production. He had a wife and a spaniel and a collection of pipes and a house in Santa Monica with a workshop basement.
“I got to do some thinking,” Mr. Untz said. “I believe I will change my clothes and take a shower. Come along to the cottage, Harold.”