Rain on New Year's Eve

Quietly. Right out you can read a newspaper. They can't read a newspaper.

If you're taking a newspaper out in the yard and standing the moonlight, you might find a headline with my name in it. It's been a picture for two or three months. Writing it, that is.

They've been shooting for about three weeks. I was still on the picture because we had a producer that couldn't make up his mind. The director is one of those guys to sort of erode company Hitchcock, you know.

He makes the picture up as he goes along. One of those has to be a writer, if I lay someplace where he can find him when he runs out of ideas. Which is not more than eleven times a day.

So I'm dying. When I go on the set and I find actors there, I never heard of them. Speaking lines I never wrote in scenes I couldn't figure out. Then the director would get me in a corner and put the arm on me.

This thing doesn't seem quite jello, man. Time and the gin-army games go right out. I'm sitting in my office and the rain is on the roof and the gas heater is frying my ankles while the draft from the window is giving my neck to deal with my secretary comes in from her little cubby hole next to my window.

I get to do my Christmas shopping. You don't get to do your Christmas shopping. Mary Lou. Yes, I know. I didn't. Two days ago, Mr. Ramsay. We ever want to finish this picture for heaven's sake.

Well, I'll tell you, Angel. Mr. Doty, the great director is getting $3,500 a week. I owe it. And my dear, Mr. Doty has not got $3,500 a week for a long, long time, see? Uh-uh.