Another Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

opposed to commentary and facts), quiz shows had to have it (thus the need to rig them so the more appealing contestants won), drama had to have it, which is to say that it had to be about people the audience understood and, if possible, identified with. Television was an extension of the home, and the people who appeared on the screen had to be like family, not remote, glittering, and improbably good-looking, like movie stars, but familiar and unpretentious. All this the CBS executives knew by instinct; it was gospel, bred into their bones. If Sidney was pursuing human interest, he was on the right track.
    It was my turn now to put them at their ease. I read to them highlights from the binders, now displayed on Sidney’s desk. They didn’t look particularly interested, but it wasn’t my job to interest them. A veil of polite boredom settled on their faces, interrupted by one or the other of them glancing at his wristwatch. After about half an hour, they exchanged looks and stood up. Sidney, who had been listening to my recitation of facts, figures, and news items with Buddha-like contentment, looked concerned. Were they sure they had to leave? he asked. There was much, much more, all of it riveting.
    No, no, they protested, they would love to stay, but they had to be getting back.
    Sidney stood up and looked them in the eyes. What they had to understand, he said gravely, was that this —he made a sweeping gesture toward the binders—was the hard part; this was what had taken all the time and effort and—yes, let’s be frank about it—money.
    He stood in front of the window and pointed at the trees. Writing a play was like clearing a forest, he explained—a long, backbreaking job that made the plowing and the harvesting of the crops seem like nothing. He had now cleared the forest, his land was ready to be plowed, the harvest would soon be theirs.
    I recognized that these homey agricultural metaphors derived from The Patriots , a play Sidney had written about the Founding Fathers, which had disappointed the critics and his investors. He also owned an estate in New Jersey about which he had squirearchical pretensions, as if he had planted every tree and strand of poison ivy himself.
    Sidney accompanied his guests to the spiral staircase. “Go back and tell them,” he said in a commanding voice, “that the play is right here.”He slapped his forehead hard. “It’s just a question of getting it down on paper now,” he went on, beaming with confidence and goodwill.
    One of the executives cleared his throat. Will there be a love story? he asked. Television viewers, especially the women, were a whole lot more interested in love stories than in revolutions.
    Sidney positively beamed at him, as if he had just made a critical comment worthy of F. R. Leavis in Scrutiny . He was glad that the question had been raised, he said. A love story was exactly what they were going to get, he assured them. All good theater was about love. Look at Romeo and Juliet ! Look at Othello ! Look at his own plays! This would be a love story, of course, played out against the drama of a city on fire, besieged by the communist hordes, about a man and a woman who find each other in a moment of supreme drama, and who end up making the ultimate sacrifice.… But no, he didn’t want to spoil the play for them by giving away the ending now. They would read it, and, even if he said so himself, it would knock their socks off.
    They went up the stairs, apparently happy, while Sidney breathed a long, low sigh of relief. He poured himself a drink and sat down in his chair, brooding over his view. I put the binders back on the floor quietly. “ Is it going to be a love story?” I asked. Sidney hadn’t said much about the play, but I had the impression that what he was aiming at was something more like Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon , a strong, dramatic denunciation of communism. As a matter of fact, if there was one element missing from most