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The John Batchelor Show

2/2: Season of the Gods: A Novel Paperback – October 3, 2023 by Robert Matzen (Author)

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

News, Arts, Books, Society & Culture

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary


2/2: Season of the Gods: A Novel Paperback – October 3, 2023 by Robert Matzen (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Season-Gods-Novel-Robert-Matzen/dp/1735273872

A woman in wartime Hollywood and her dream of the perfect motion picture. Renie Lee has climbed the ladder in a man's world to be head of the Story Department at Warner Bros. Studios. Renie is an idealist who believes that "the perfect film" can be created. When she pulls an unproduced stage play set in Morocco out of the slush pile, she has a feeling this one is special, maybe not perfect but special enough to secure her place as an equal to the studio's most powerful men. No one agrees with her until two brash young studio writers, Julius and Philip Epstein, decide to back Renie's gamble and bring the Morocco story to the screen. Their screenplay's name: Casablanca. Renie uses her charms on executive producer Hal Wallis until he finally agrees to her plan, but the problems seem insurmountable from the start, and Renie's gamble threatens to become a career killer for not only Renie but also her confederates, the Epsteins. Set against the backdrop of Pearl harbor and the first months of World War II, Season of the Gods careens across the Warner Bros. lot, from the Writers Building to the dressing rooms and sound stages to tell the spellbinding and unlikely story of Hollywood's greatest masterpiece through the eyes of all who made it happen.

1942 Casablanca

Transcript

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0:26.9

Robert Matzin. This is a novel, a work of fiction. However, the fiction is based upon the events of late 41 and June to July of 42, the making of the movie that we know is Casablanca.

0:43.0

Robert, we have to talk of this.

0:46.0

We have to talk of the Star.

0:49.0

I'm getting feedback.

0:51.0

We have to talk of Stars, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and at that point, Paul

0:59.4

Rains is a major character working with Humphrey Bogart and an unknown actor to me at the time,

1:08.0

the first time I ever saw him, the man who plays Victor Laslo.

1:12.4

Those four characters must carry the movie.

1:15.7

Those four characters.

1:17.3

And yet there's a sense of spontaneity about them

1:20.6

as if they're doing stand-up or ad lib.

1:25.2

How is it that they arrived at their roles, you know, getting a scene 105 or 269 and having to prepare for it.

1:35.0

That seems a magic that the Broadway theater doesn't match.

...

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