The party was at a Oscar winners house in the Hollywood Hills, a place of soaring glass walls, kidney-shaped pools, and the low, conspiratorial hum of deals being born.
Duke stood near a bookshelf that looked like it had been curated by a set decorator, a glass of ginger ale in his hand. His cane was more prop than necessity these days, a final, lingering echo of the injury that had set him on this path.
His success with Jaws had given him an entry into these rooms, but his silence and his calm vibe made him a normality in these parties.
He felt a presence beside him. "Hey, you're the author, right?" a voice said, dry and intelligent.
Duke turned. The man was younger than most in the room, with a sharp, thoughtful face and eyes that missed nothing. It was Mike Nichols.
"Yeah I'm the shark guy," Duke replied, a faint smile touching his lips. "I'm Connor Hauser, people call me Duke."
"Mike Nichols. Im a director of sorts. That book of yours scared the hell out of me, I now don't even ventured to the pool at nights." Mike mentioned while casually smiling.
Duke smiled "So you're a director?"
"I directed this film called 'Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf' last year and well it was sort of a success."
Quickly putting his ginger ale down, Duke coughed from the surprise. "Wait youre the owner of this house."
"No, not me. I rent" Mike laughed at his shock.
"So youre the Oscar winner, I watched that film of yours, loved Elizabeth Taylor on it" Duke calmed quickly, he didnt expect a man like this randomly in a party.
Mike nodded. "Yeah, I been pretty lucky since i came to America."
"Oh where are you from?" Duke asked trying to make some quick talk.
"Vienna, but I left when i was 7."
They fell into an easy conversation, drifting away from the crowd to a secluded corner sofa. They quickly bypassed the usual industry chatter and found common ground in a shared love for the structure of Billy Wilder films.
"The way he builds a joke, or a tragedy—it's like watchmaking," Nichols said, gesturing with his drink. "Every gear has a purpose. Some Like It Hot is like a Swiss watch of chaos."
"Double Indemnity is also good" Duke countered. "The entire tragedy is right there in the first five minutes. The narration, the lighting… it's way the story unfolds is just amazing, " He spoke with a clarity that surprised even himself, the film student from 2025 finding his voice through Connor's mouth.
Nichols looked at him, intrigued. "Most writers just want to a good story, Wilder has both meaning and entertaintment. What is your favorite Wilder film?"
"The Apartment," Duke said without hesitation.
Nichols leaned back, a slow, appreciative smile spreading across his face. "Really? Not Sunset Boulevard? Not Some Like It Hot?"
"The Apartment," Duke repeated, his voice firm. "It's his masterpiece. The others are brilliant, but that one... it's perfect."
"Tell me why," Nichols said, gesturing with his glass. "And don't give me the studio pitch. Why do you like it?"
Duke looked out over the shimmering pool for a moment, collecting his thoughts. "Because it's the quietest tragedy ever sold as a comedy," he began, turning his gaze back to Nichols. "It's about the cost of belonging. Baxter isn't just climbing the corporate ladder; he's renting out his soul for a key to the executive washroom. He's pimping out his own home, the one place that should be sacred, for a shot at a promotion. And Fran... she's not just a girl. She's the mirror he's too afraid to look into. She's just as broken, just as used by the same system, trying to fix herself with the very man who's breaking her."
Nichols merely smiled in aproval.
As the party wound down, their conversation continued in the driveway.
Nichols, loosened by whiskey and a genuine intellectual connection, began to speak of his next project.
Not with the polished pitch of a man seeking funding, but with the nervous, passionate energy of an artist.
"It's called The Graduate," he said, the words tumbling out. "It's this kid, Benjamin, just out of college, adrift. He's seduced by this older woman, Mrs. Robinson… but then he falls for her daughter. It's funny, but it's not a comedy. It's about… the silence between generations. The plastic, suffocating world they've built for us. And like i'll use the camera to suffocate the actor into the scene."
Duke listened, his mind racing. 'The Graduate'. The soundtrack. The shot of Benjamin at the bottom of the pool. The final, ambiguous look on the bus. It was all there, a perfect, crystalline memory. A landmark.
"It sounds like you're not making the average movie," Duke said quietly.
Nichols stopped, looking at him. "Well yeah. Warner said no to it even though they made so much money from my last project."
"You have a script? Storyboards?"
"A full shooting script. Buck Henry's a genius. The boards… they're in my head, mostly."
A week later, Duke sat in his sparse living room, the finished script for The Graduate in his hands. He'd read it in one sitting, the familiar dialogue and scenes feeling both new and inevitable. Next to it were Nichols' rough, energetic storyboards. The composition, the framing—it was all there, the birth of a new cinematic language.
This wasn't a gamble. This was archaeology. He was merely unearthing a masterpiece that already existed in the future.
When Nichols came over, he was visibly tense, awaiting the verdict of the reclusive author-producer.
"It's perfect," Duke said, before Nichols could speak. "The ending on the bus… you have to keep it exactly as it is. That uncertainty is the whole point."
Nichols exhaled, a weight lifting from him. "The studio is nervous. They see a comedy that stops being funny. They want a clearer ending, more jokes, no relationship between the Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin…"
"They're wrong," Duke stated, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Mike, this is going to define a generation. But you can't have the studio breathing down your neck, second-guessing every shot."
He leaned forward, his blue eyes intense. "Let me in. Let Ithaca Productions come on board. I'll provide a cushion. A hundred thousand dollars. Enough to give you the breathing room to make your film, not theirs."
Nichols was stunned. "A hundred thousand? Just like that?"
"In exchange for five percent of the gross. And a producer credit. Not to interfere, but to insulate. My job will be to run interference, to be a producer on set who tells the studio to back off and let the artist work."
That was the clincher. Nichols didn't just need money; he needed a shield. He needed someone with unshakable conviction in his vision. Duke, with his veteran's calm and his terrifying certainty, was that shield.
"You've only just met me," Nichols said, a last flicker of caution.
"I've read your script," Duke replied. "That tells me everything I need to know."
Nichols breathed out in anxiety. "I'll have to ask Joseph Levine and Lawrence Turman. They're my producer/investors for it first."
Duke noded and calmed him down, after sitting him.
After Nichols left. He returned to his true work: Eragon. The epic was his daily obsession, a vast and complex world he was building word by word.
He was deep in the halls of Tronjheim, describing the fraught politics of the dwarven clans, when his agent, Jeffrey, called.
"Duke! Doubleday. They've heard whispers."
"What whispers?" Duke asked, his mind still half in the glittering cavern-city.
"About your 'other' book. The dog one. Cujo. I might have let it slip to Aldrich's assistant that you had another monster manuscript, something… visceral. They're frothing. They want it."
Duke was surprised. He'd finished Cujo as a side project sometime ago, a brutal exercise in contained horror, never thinking it would be his immediate follow-up to Jaws. He'd envisioned letting Jaws settle before unleashing another story.
"I was thinking of holding it," Duke said. "Let Jaws have its time."
"Are you mad?" Jeffrey squeaked. "Strike while the iron is white-hot! Aldrich himself wants to meet. Today. At your place."
A few hours later, the polished Mr. Aldrich sat on Duke's modern sofa, looking out of place against the minimalist decor. He held the Cujo manuscript as if it were a live grenade.
"Hauser, this is… it's amazing, I havent looked at my dog the same since i read it," Aldrich began, his voice a mix of admiration and unease. "The slow descent of the dog, the mother and child trapped in that metal coffinn… it's a primal nightmare. It's brilliant."
"Thank you," Duke said, his tone neutral.
"We want to publish it. Next fall. The terms will be even better than for Jaws. We'll position it as the triumphant, terrifying follow-up from the master of suspense."
Duke was silent for a long moment, looking out his picture window at the sprawling city below. He had a blockbuster novel climbing the charts.
He had a major investment in a film he knew would be a cultural touchstone. And now, his publisher was begging for a book he somewhat knew would be another smash hit.
"Alright," he said, turning back to Aldrich. "But the terms are non-negotiable. We keep the same rights structure. All film, television, and dramatic rights remain with Ithaca Productions. As for the advance and royalty rate, negotiate with Jeffrey."
Aldrich didn't even flinch. "Of course. Absolutely." The film rights to a story about a rabid dog were, in his mind, still worthless. He was buying a bestseller.
After Aldrich left, contract in hand, the apartment was silent again. Duke walked to his typewriter, where the sapphire scales of Saphira and the grim fate of the dwarves awaited him. On the notepad beside it was the latest report for The Graduate, which still hasnt started shooting. Mike Nichols had scrawled a note at the bottom: "Told the producers to talk to you."
He picked up a pen. On a fresh sheet of paper, he drew two lines.
At the top of one, he wrote FILM. At the top of the other, he wrote BOOKS.
Under FILM, he wrote The Graduate.
Under BOOKS, he wrote Jaws, Cujo, and Eragon (in progress).
He wasn't a gambler. A gambler faced odds. He was redrawing the map of popular culture with a steady hand, plotting a course through a future only he could see.
Every move was a calculated step in a path he believed he had already won.