Chapter 002: Inspiration Born from an Argument
Chapter 002: Inspiration Born from an Argument
Eric gently placed the rather bulky secondhand typewriter on the desk and wiped the sweat from his forehead. In his heart, he missed the slim laptop from his previous life with incomparable longing.
This was the second day after he discovered his abnormal memory bank. After a full day of thinking, Eric already had a preliminary plan for his future.
Because of that, he specifically asked Jeff for a day off, spent more than half the day looking around, and bought this secondhand typewriter. It was an indispensable item for carrying out his plan.
After Ralph’s funeral affairs were settled, the Eric of that time only had a few hundred dollars in cash left. In Western countries with good welfare systems, people had never been in the habit of saving money. After his rebirth, Eric even felt lucky that the mortgage on the house he lived in had already been paid off. Otherwise, if he had been unable to pay the mortgage and the house was repossessed, he might have ended up sleeping on the street.
Even then, the money to buy the typewriter came from Eric asking Jeff for a month’s salary in advance.
To realize his ideal, he first had to break into Hollywood’s circle. Becoming a director directly was something he could forget about for the time being. Acting was also not a path suited to him. After thinking it over, the most suitable choice was still to become a screenwriter.
Although people always said that screenwriters in Hollywood during this era had low status, that was not actually the case. It was because the top gold-medal screenwriters had all switched careers to become directors and producers. In this regard, it was no different from the Hong Kong film industry, which was currently in full swing across the ocean.
Eric inserted a sheet of manuscript paper into the typewriter, raised his hands, and typed a line of letters on the keyboard: Jurassic Park.
That was right. It was the most profitable film series of the nineties.
Eric still remembered his previous life clearly. He had bought a pirated disc of Jurassic Park from a street vendor selling bootleg discs, then watched it together with a group of friends. When the lifelike dinosaurs appeared on the television screen, that feeling could only be described with one sentence: my friends and I were stunned.
In his memory, the novel Jurassic Park was published in 1990, and the novel was only a little over a hundred thousand words. That meant Michael Crichton definitely had not started writing it yet. Eric took it for his own with a clear conscience. If Heaven gave something and one did not take it, one would suffer the consequences.
As for Michael Crichton, well, a person whose life experience could practically be called fantastical would probably still have something like Cretaceous Park even without Jurassic Park, right?
The corners of Eric’s mouth lifted slightly as he recalled the past and tapped away at the keyboard. What he was writing was not the screenplay for Jurassic Park, but the novel. In his previous life, after watching the movie, he had become curious and found the Jurassic Park novel to read carefully. Now, with the memories of a high school student whose grades had been fairly good, translating the Chinese version from his previous life into an English novel was more than enough.
The reason he did not directly write the screenplay was, on one hand, that if he wrote the screenplay and submitted it to a film company, the most likely outcome was that it would be treated as wastepaper and thrown into the trash. The screenplays Hollywood film companies received every day could basically be measured by the pound.
On the other hand, Eric wanted to firmly keep the film rights to this series in his own hands. Even if he wrote it as a screenplay now, and some film company with a discerning eye recognized its value and turned it into a movie, the greatest benefit in the end would only go to those film companies. As for Eric, apart from a few tens of thousands of dollars in screenplay fees, the most he might receive would be an additional share of the profits.
Eric would definitely not do such a money-losing thing.
By publishing the novel first, Eric could firmly keep the film and television rights in his own hands, wait for the right opportunity, and sell them at the highest price possible, maximizing the benefits he could obtain.
Time always passed quickly when one was immersed in work. Only when the sky had completely darkened, and Eric could no longer make out the letters on the keyboard clearly, did he realize that, without noticing it, he had already been writing for four or five hours straight. His stomach also began to rumble.
Eric stood up and looked at the thick stack of manuscript pages on the desk, then stretched in satisfaction. At this pace, he could probably finish the manuscript in about a week. After all, at this stage, he still had to continue working at Jeff’s restaurant. Otherwise, he would go hungry.
Eric walked into the kitchen and made himself a simple dinner: rice with tomato and scrambled eggs, a typical Chinese home-style dish. As for the remaining bread, cheese, peanut butter, and other things in the refrigerator, Eric had usually been eating them as snacks these past few days. Although he had inherited the memories of the original guy, the Eastern eating habits in his bones were still deeply rooted.
After eating a simple dinner, Eric went to the balcony on the second floor and leaned against the railing, looking at the surrounding night scenery.
The apartment he lived in had a small yard of less than two hundred square meters and a two-story house. Some unknown flowers and plants were randomly planted in the yard. With no mistress of the house, and his cheap father Ralph also being someone who did not care about trifles, the father and son had always lived very roughly.
In his memories, when he was around seven or eight years old, father and son moved from London, England, to Los Angeles. Eric could not remember why Ralph had done that. He had still been too young at the time, and based on the clues in his current memories, Eric also could not sort out the reason, so he was too lazy to think about it.
After moving to Los Angeles, Ralph dragged little Eric around Los Angeles for only two days. Then, through a real estate agent’s introduction, he bought this small yard. Everything seemed very haphazard.
Eric smiled. It was once again the cautious Eastern concept of property ownership in his bones acting up.
After staying on the balcony for a while, he was just about to return to the study and continue writing Jurassic Park when he suddenly heard a crash, as if some glassware had fallen to the ground. Eric turned his gaze toward the neighbor’s house to the west.
That was the home of the Runkel couple, a couple in their forties. The husband and wife had three children. Their eldest son was already in college, their daughter was studying at a boarding school, and their youngest son was only seven years old.
The couple might have encountered a midlife crisis, because they had often been arguing during this period. Although Eric’s family and the Runkel family had a fairly good relationship, Eric did not plan to go over and mediate. The two of them were considered fairly restrained people, and there was no record of them ever coming to blows. If he rashly went over to mediate, it would only embarrass them.
After a burst of rapid, muffled arguing and the sound of several objects shattering, the door of the Runkel house was flung open with a bang.
The male owner, Charlison Runkel, wearing only a shirt and with his hair in disarray, rushed out the door. After taking a few quick steps, he turned his head and shouted at the woman inside, “Enough! I’ve had enough, damn it, you bitch! If I hadn’t moved to Los Angeles to marry you back then, I might already be an executive at General Motors now. Look at what you’ve become. God!”
“Go to hell!” Mrs. Runkel, who had always spoken softly and gently, now sounded shrill and sharp. “Among the three men who pursued me back then, one is already a California assemblyman now, and one is reselling oil in the Middle East. Oil, do you understand? The profit from one shipload is equal to a hundred years of your salary! I’m the one who should regret it. Now go sleep in your General Motors car, dear ‘General Motors executive’!”
After Mrs. Runkel finished speaking, she threw out a black coat and slammed the door shut with a bang.
Charlison Runkel picked up the coat and patted it off. As he stood up and raised his head, he happened to see Eric standing on the balcony.
“Sorry, Eric. I disturbed you,” Charlison said to Eric with an embarrassed smile.
“It’s alright, Charlison. Do you want to... come sit at my place for a while?” Eric asked.
Charlison shook his head and said, “No, thank you. I... I plan to go to a bar for a while. When I come back later, Mary should have calmed down.”
After Charlison finished speaking, he nodded to Eric, started his car, and drove off into the distance.
Eric returned inside the house. Thinking back to the scene of the Runkel couple arguing, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind.
He sat down by the desk and inserted a sheet of manuscript paper into the typewriter. The thought he had just had gradually became clear.
For the past two days, Eric had been thinking about what his first screenplay should be. Now, he already had the answer.
That screenplay was practically tailor-made for him.
Well, because the difference in era was fairly large, many details would need to be revised, but none of that was a problem. The selling point of the screenplay was not in those details anyway.