"Blatty, William - The Exorcist (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blatty William P)

"Want some coffee?"

"Don't be fatuous. I want another drink."

"Have some coffee."

"Come along, now. One for the road."

"The Lincoln Highway?"

"That's ugly, and I loathe an ugly drunk. Come along, dammit, fill it!"

He shoved his glass across the bar and she poured more gin.

"I guess maybe I should ask a couple of them over," Chris murmured.

"Ask who?"

"Well, whoever." She shrugged. 'The big wheels; you know, priests."

"They'll never leave; there fucking plunderers," he rasped, and gulped his gin.

Yeah, he's starting to blow, thought Chris and quickly changed the subject: she explained about the script and her chance to direct.

"Oh, good," Dennings muttered.

"It scares me."

"Oh, twaddle. My baby, the difficult thing about directing is making it seem as if the damned thing were difficult. I hadn't a clue my first time out, but here I am, you see. It's child's play."

"Burke, to be honest with you, now that they've offered me my chance, I'm really not sure I could direct my grandmother across the street. I mean, all of that technical stuff."

"Come along; leave all that to the editor, the cameraman and the script girl, darling. Get good ones and theyll see you through. What's important is handling the cast, and, you'd be marvelous, just marvelous at that. You could not only tell them how to move and read a line, my baby, you could show them. Just remember Paul Newman and Rachel, Rachel and don't be so hysterical."

She still looked doubtful. "Well, about this technical stuff," she worried. Drunk or sober, Dennings was the best director in the business. She wanted his advice.

"For instance," he asked her.

For almost an hour she probed to the barricades of minutiae. The data were easily found in tests, but reading tended to fray her patience. Instead; she read people. Naturally inquisitive, she juiced them; wrung them out. But books were unwringable. Books were glib. They said "therefore" and "clearly" when it wasn't clear at all, and their circumlocutions could never be challenged. They could never be stopped for a shrewdly disarming, "Hold it, I'm dumb. Could I have that again?" They could never be pinned; made to wriggle; dissected. Books were like Karl.

"Darling, all you really need is a brilliant cutter," the director cackled, rounding it off. "I mean someone who really knows his doors."

He'd grown charming and bubbly, and seemed to have passed the threatened danger pointy.

"Beg pardon, madam. You wish something?"

Karl stood attentively at the door to the study.

"Oh, hullo, Thorndike," Dennings giggled. "Or is it Heinrich? I can't keep it straight."