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“But do you like what I’ve written?” she asked, sounding a tad needier than intended.
“First of all, it doesn’t matter if I like it. It matters only if I love it. And if I love it, I’ll tell you. But if you must know, as of now, your script is in the category of fixable.”
“That’s a compliment,” Sean volunteered.
“I’m open to changes, of course,” said Kate. She drank through the lid of her go-cup and braced herself for the director’s feedback. An awkward minute of silence passed, then Bass seemed to digress.
“Do you know what I really hate?” he said. “I hate it when a waiter comes to my table, tries to memorize the order, and puts it in to the kitchen without ever writing it down. I just know it’s going to come back wrong.”
Kate took the hint, dug into her purse, and found a pen but no paper. Bass gave her the title page to write on.
“Now then,” he continued. “You’ve made the right decision to tell this story through the CEO. The audience won’t like Watson, but they’re not supposed to like him.”
“He’s so complex. I think there’s a lot to like about him.”
“We’ll get rid of all that.”
“Oh,” said Kate, making a note of major surgery number one.
“The key line is when Watson rationalizes his decision to ramp up production of his German subsidiary in 1937. Keep in mind that by the time he accepts the Merit Cross, the Nuremberg Laws have already been passed. Jews were no longer German citizens. They couldn’t marry an Aryan or even fly the German flag. Jewish doctors couldn’t practice in German hospitals. The same month Watson took tea with Hitler, another camp for political prisoners opened in Weimar. Buchenwald. And we know what became of that.”
Kate was writing furiously, getting it all down. The guide at the National Holocaust Memorial Museum, if she recalled correctly, had lost her family at Buchenwald.
“With all this going on,” said Bass, “Watson lands in Berlin touting world peace through world trade. ‘Ford sells a car,’ he says, ‘and someone might drive drunk. Smith and Wesson makes a gun, and someone might use if for something other than self-defense.’ That’s a great line.”
Kate didn’t tell him that it was a direct quote from her father. “I’m glad you like it.”
“Iloveit. But you need to expound on it to develop the real theme of the play: the evils of capitalism.”
Kate stopped writing, her ballpoint frozen to the page. “I didn’t see this as a play about capitalism. It’s the story of the world’s first personal information catastrophe.”
“Caused by capitalist greed,” said Irving. “Are those words a direct quote from Watson?”
“‘World peace through world trade,’ yes. The rest, no.”
“That’s fine. This isn’t a documentary. Watson could have said them. And any man whowouldsay them is the worst kind of capitalist. He’s Fagin.”
“OliverTwist’s Fagin?”
“Yes. ‘In this life, one thing counts / in the bank, large amounts.’ That’s what Watson is about.”
Kate paused. The words were her father’s, not Watson’s, and she’d never viewed her father as Fagin. She’d always thought of him as one of those lucky guys whose creative passion and intellectual pursuit proved financially rewarding. Like Patrick.
“Point two,” said Bass. “Too much humor. I want this play to be dense.”
Kate bristled. “I’ve never thought of ‘dense’ as a literary aspiration.”
“I mean dense in a good way. Dense likeOslo. Have you seenOslo?”
“No.”
“You need to.”
“Where’s it playing?”
“Nowhere,” said Sean, jumping in. “It’s too dense.”
Bass shot him a look of disapproval, which suddenly devolved into an almost gruesome expression. His eyes closed. He placed his palms flat on the table and drew a deep breath.