every time out

You knew him, too?




MARLOWE
Yes, In the old days, when he used to run rum out of Mexico, and I was on the other side.  We used to swap shots between drinks, or drinks between shots, whichever you like.




GEN. STERNWOOD
My respects to you, sir!  Few men ever swap more than one shot with Shawn Regan.











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In approximately 1991 I read a book by William Goldman called Adventures In The Screen Trade.  He's the one who made the statement about the movie business:  "Nobody knows anything." 


In this book, he recommended that a person who wanted to write screenplays should read the detective fiction in the "hard-boiled" style, by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain. 


So I got some books by those people at Waldenbooks or Barnes & Noble, and read some of them right away, and saved some of them for later.




"Twenty-five dollars a day and expenses" is what Philip Marlowe, the detective in some of Raymond Chandler's novels, asks for his services.






"Nobody knows anything.  Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work.  Every time out it's a guess -- and, if you're lucky, an educated one."


~~ William Goldman
_________________________________________





GEN. STERNWOOD
The orchids are an excuse for the heat.  You like orchids?


MARLOWE
Not particularly.


GEN. STERNWOOD
Nasty things.  Their flesh is too much like the flesh of  men.  Their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.   


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