From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

My guest, Wesley Strick, is best known for screenplays that include True Believer and Cape Fear, Martin Scorsese.

He's here today for his first novel.

The book is Out There in the Dark.

Wesley, thanks for being here.

Oh, yeah.

Thanks for having me.

First of all, tell us about the title where the title comes from.

Obviously, you can sort of explain the novel by talking about the title, too, but please.

The title comes from the Norma Desmond final psycho monologue at the end of Sunset Boulevard.

You know, she's come down the stairs.

She thinks she's talking to Cecilby DeMille, I guess.

And then she kind of breaks the fourth wall rather disturbingly and is kind of playing directly to the camera,

I think, in a close-up and starts to sing a love song to her audience, whom she calls all

you wonderful people out there in the dark.

What's interesting about the book, I guess, is that it's very much about people who are

in the dark in their own ways, aren't they?

Indeed. In the dark, you know, watching movies and also trying to make sense of what's going on around them and making terrible mistakes in the process.

If you could, just give us a sort of a brief precy of the plot.

The book concerns a German emigre director based very loosely on Douglas Serk, and I want to

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