Four Play, And Other Stories

By Don Safran

Four Play

A film director has problems with actors who aren’t happy having their lines cut, a writer is under pressure to add new scenes for a female lead, and filming is delayed when two people are found murdered. How will it be resolved? It’s just a series of nuisances the director has to labor through.

The Art Heist

Carl Vesti’s life has gone sideways from his earlier dreams of one day opening his own upscale art gallery, working instead selling those cheap furniture store paintings imported by the car load from China. But he sees a way out – the valuable Max Beckmann self portrait that resides in the serious art collection of his wife’s employer. Can he lose a wife and gain a Beckmann? Well, that is the challenge.

Do You Have An App For That?

The news anchor for Seattle’s Channel 6 is fascinated with this planet, amused by its emotions, passion and vulgarity, and has become so concerned that his origins may be discovered he is contemplating doing away with a woman who is probing into his background. But she is killed in a mysterious attack, and her attackers soon come after him. Since he comes from a planet whose chief activity is technical expertise, he is well equipped to face those who have traveled from afar to kill him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Safran
• Release date: Jan 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465909596

Don Safran

Don Safran, author of the thrillers, “The Lies That Kill You,” “The Tenth Day” and the book of short stories, “Fourplay, And Other Stories,” was a journalist for the Dallas Times Herald before going to Hollywood where he worked on a number of films as screenwriter, marketing executive and producer. He wrote the film "Homework," wrote for TV’s "Blue Thunder" and "Happy Days." As Executive VP at Rastar productions he oversaw over thirty films, including “Steel Magnolias,” “Biloxi Blues,” “Annie.” A member of Writers Guild of America and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Book preview

Four Play,

And Other Stories

By Don Safran

Copyright © 2011 by Don Safran

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Four Play, And Other Stories.

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-936539-74-1

Smashwords Edition

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

Contents

Three short stories by Don Safran:

Four Play

The Art Heist

Do You Have an App for That?

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FOUR PLAY

By Don Safran

It was the twist that sold director Steve Coleman on the Evan Kitteridge screenplay, Four Play, certainly not the plot, given it needed a stronger female presence. And months later, as in the case of many films, they started production with director Coleman still looking over his shoulder for the promised script revises that would make for a compelling female lead.

The twist that had caught his interest resided in the script pulling together two imposing characters of early 20th century British literature, George Bernard Shaw’s overbearing linguistics professor Henry Higgins and Arthur Conan Doyle’s brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes, to solve a case of murder.

An additional problem Steve realized in the early moments of filming was there was too much damned chatter from the sidekicks, Higgins’ Col. Pickering and Holmes’ Watson. Instead of violence or action, there was, Is that so, Holmes? Or, well done, Higgins.

The writer kept promising the new scenes, but in the meantime he came to the aid of the director during the first week of production by cutting drastically some of the sidekicks’ lines, something that Steve felt he could manage by himself. What he desperately needed were those scenes of a commanding actress. We’ve discussed this long before we started shooting, he reminded Evan. We can hardly expect a dead body to carry that load. We need those flashbacks.

Evan, seething, slammed a cup to the floor of Steve’s trailer, wanting to know if Steve had been talking to Frank Madera; Steve said he hadn’t seen Frank since the early days of pre-production. Madera, the producer, had arranged the financing for this independent production. Calming down, Evan conceded, while ordinarily it would be late to start adding those scenes, in this instance it was easy enough to do since they were flashbacks that could be shot anytime. He blamed his delay on his concern for the film’s continuity, how the new scenes would blend in seamlessly to follow the storyline. That was how it went on Friday, ending the first week of shooting.

On this Monday morning, as the second week began, Steve approached the set, wearing his trademark white Cuban guayabera shirt, as each pair of actors sat quietly ignoring the other twosome: Holmes and Dr. Watson on one side, Higgins and Col. Pickering on the other. Steve nodded to all, and shouted his usual, cheerful Good Morning to actors and crew, using a tone that was at once democratic while showing a certain authority.

He was trailed by Tiffany, his assistant, a young English woman in her early 20s, whom he hired because she looked good at his side, despite his thoughtlessly flip remark to his agent that her figure and intellect were matched in their slim-ness.

The actors had received the new pages over the weekend, and Steve expected a certain amount of tension when he arrived on the set.

Damned early to be mucking about here in the provinces, greeted Steve from the Higgins camp.

Rather banal architecture in our building here, even if one cared to observe it, came the opposing response from the Holmes corner. Of course, neither observation made sense to Steve, since here they were in San Marino, not 20 miles away from downtown Los Angeles, some of the most expensive real estate on the West Coast. The house they were using had been built by an early railroad baron.

The actors had also become increasingly possessive of their characters, driving Steve crazy with idiosyncrasies gleaned from re-readings, respectively, of Pygmalion and the Holmes’ books. He was hoping, now that they had moved from the confining interiors of the sound stage to a few days on location, that matters might ease a bit.

He sat in his well-positioned director’s chair as Harvey Elston, the line producer walked over with the first assistant director, Lew Harris, to discuss the day’s selection of shots. Behind them was Sam Beniston, the director of photography. Steve had been hoping for a moment to himself – he’d had a hard night with some woman who had been seated next to him at his agent’s dinner party, and later wound up in his bed – and started to wave off the three men, but then realizing he didn’t have any choice he nodded as they approached.

As they spoke, he was trying to remember how the lady in question had made the transition from table partner to bedmate, half listening as the First A.D. droned on about the first scene, and Beniston about the first camera set-up. Steve glanced at his actors, Henry Armitage, whose career had a recent bounce from one of those TV detective series, and was now