00:00What do writers do? They take a blank page and put something on it. What does the director do?
00:20He gets the page and makes them act. If the page is bad, the picture stinks. If it's a good page,
00:27the picture doesn't stink.
00:36Bezeridis, having been a truck driver, having been in the market, is able to bring that
00:41experience to know how these people think, how they walk, how they talk.
00:46The French writers write about reality, American writers don't because the studios don't understand it.
00:52They think people won't go to see it. So I wrote Juke Trove.
00:57Truffaut told me that was the first film noir picture written in the United States.
01:03The director gets so much credit. Very few of the screenwriters are remembered. It's not fair.
01:11I don't think the screenwriters have ever gotten the credits they deserve because you can't make a good picture without a good script.
01:19Bob Aldrich called me. He said, will you write a script for Book Kiss Me Deadly?
01:24My name is Mike Hammer, if it matters.
01:26So I called him up and I said, the book stinks. But if I write it, there's a way to make it work.
01:33His way of speaking of a script is always fixing. I know how to fix it, he said.
01:38He's not an artist by formation. He's an engineer. You have to understand this.
01:42Nobody shot realistic pictures. Jack Warner said, I can't understand why anybody would look at this picture because it was about folks.
01:52And I couldn't believe that theater was so filled that people were standing.
01:56A crippled woman came out of the theater and she spoke with Oklahoma accent.
02:02Whoever written this story sure knew his folks.
02:09And I tell you, I was so, so, so touched by that.
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