Stirling Silliphant: The Fingers of God Read Online Free PDF

preferred to work with women producers — they are more complex, more insightful, I have found, than ninety-nine percent of the male producers I’ve known. I can tell you, without any question, had it not been for Joan, Hitch’s show wouldn’t have stayed on the air ten minutes, for he had less to do with it than any of the several writers Joan used as her backstop for the scripts which she then produced. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Hitch probably didn’t even screen ninety percent of the episodes. Or that he never read a single script. Believe me, it was Joan and Lloyd who made that show. Hitch was their book-end. Nada mas.   [35]
    “I must tell you an amusing (though to me it wasn’t at the time) story about Joan and me. After I’d written several episodes for the extravagant sum of $500 for each half-hour Alfred Hitchcock Presents script, I heard that she’d paid one other writer, one of her New York stable — I forget his name, but I believe he wrote more episodes than I did for the show — $750. That did it. I demanded $750 hereafter, or else.
    “‘Or else what ?’ Joan asked with that sweet bitchiness which I so loved about her.
    “‘Or else I don’t write any more episodes for you.’
    “‘I’ll miss you,’ she smiled, and I was out the door. Seven — maybe more — months went by while I was busy elsewhere. Then she called. ‘I have a simply marvelous story for you,’ she told me. ‘It’s called “The Glass Eye” and you’re going to love doing it.’
    “‘For how much?’ I asked.
    “‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think in this instance I can probably scrape up the $750.’
    “‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘my price has gone up to $1,000.’
    “‘Please read the story, Stirling,’ she urged. ‘I’m sending it right over.’  [36]
    “I read it — I loved it — I called back. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I agree — it’s a fabulous story and I’m going to write your single best episode — but only for one thousand dollars.’ Well, happy ending — I got the thou — and from then a thousand for all subsequent half-hours. I think the price jumped to $2,500 for each of the one-hour Suspicion s I wrote for Hitch. Robert Stevens, the director of ‘The Glass Eye,’ won the Emmy that year for the episode. I won nothing — except the raise.
    “Now, my single meeting with Hitch: Joan told me the Master was actually going to direct one of his TV shows — this one his very favorite story — ‘The Voice in the Night’ — to be the flagship episode for his one-hour Suspicion series on NBC.  [37] Joan drove me to his home, up Bellagio Road, one of those canyon streets off Sunset Boulevard where you drive through a gate. Hitch was charming. Congratulated me on the scripts I’d done for the half-hour Alfred Hitchcock Presents shows, personally made me a Scotch and soda and sat me down with my yellow pad.
    “I wouldn’t trade the hour that followed for anything I can think of at the moment, except possibly — no, not even that. The man was brilliant. He fucking dictated the script to me, shot by shot, including camera movements and opticals. He actually had already seen the finished film. He’d say, for example, ‘The camera’s in the boat with the boy and the girl. The move in is very, very slow while we see the mossy side of the wrecked schooner. Bump. Now the boy climbs the ladder. I tilt up. I see him look at his hand. Something strange seems to have attached itself. He disappears on deck. Now the girl starts up and I cut to the boy exploring the deck. I’m shooting through this foreground of — of stuff — and I’m panning him to the cabin door. Something there makes him freeze. He waits. Now the camera’s over here and I see the girl come to him. Give me about this much dialogue, Stirling.’ He holds up his hand, thumb and forefinger two inches apart. I jot down, ‘dialogue, two inches.’
    “As I say, the whole goddamned film — shot by