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15 One Last Fling That summer of 1971 I received a call from my agent telling me that Allen Courtney, the president of MGM Television , had a commitment for an ABC Movie of the Week he wanted me to produce. All he had to show me was a one-page treatment by a New York writer, Lewis John Carlino. Carlino’s story was called In Search of America. It was about an upper-middle-class American family who buys an old school bus, refurbishes it as a mobile home, and sets out with their teenage son to travel the back roads of America. Their first stopover was at a Woodstock-like rock festival where the son meets a pretty teenage girl. He falls in love with her, only to learn she has been diagnosed with leukemia. The theme of the story was how each member of the family, especially the son, copes with the harsh realities of life, including premature death. I was fascinated with the possibilities inherent in the concept and agreed to produce it. Courtney phoned to tell me how pleased he was and that Carlino would be in town in a few days. He would set up a meeting for us. 262 263 One Last Fling Courtney and I met for breakfast at the Beverly Hills Hotel where a hippie in bell-bottomed jeans, long hair, and beads joined us. The moment Carlino began talking it was clear this was not a pose. Carlino was the real thing. He lived on a farm in New Jersey with his wife and three children. They grew most of the food they ate. Carlino had won an Obie Award for his off-Broadway one-act plays and had written the screenplays for Seconds, The Fox, and The Brotherhood. His career as a writer, begun in the early sixties, was beginning to shift into high gear. We talked enthusiastically about the possibilities open to us from his premise. Carlino was willing to develop the story any way it struck our fancy. He wanted to explore his coming-of-age theme against the backdrop of the whole family’s eagerness to share their son’s experience as they began their odyssey in search of America. Born in New York City of poor Sicilian immigrants, Carlino still held the excitement of his parents’ sense of discovery in a new land. Carlino had hitchhiked across much of the United States and was eager to move out of the East Coast and into the home he was building in Colorado, “the frontier” as he called it. There was nothing phony or pretentious about this guy. He had been there and done that. I knew I liked Lewis John Carlino and his genuine enthusiasm for life. Courtney saw the chemistry between us and suggested I fly back to New York where we could continue our discussions and work out a story outline for ABC’s approval. A week later Luigi (as he liked to be called) and I were holed up in the Plaza Hotel talking story when we received a call from Courtney . “I told ABC about the chemistry between you two and how you’ve progressed with your story. You have a green light to write your outline. Oh, and there’s one minor thing. The girl must not die. ABC won’t have it any other way. No use arguing with them; their approval is contingent on it.” Surprisingly, Carlino was agreeable. However, I felt a large part of the dramatic underpinning had been cut from the story. In any event, we were back to square one. The structure we had been building no longer worked. More seriously, ABC had removed the theme of the story. In television you learn to roll with the punches or you find another game. Luigi and I decided to treat ourselves to the most elaborate lunch available in New York, sampling dishes from several Italian restaurants where Carlino knew the exceptional quality of the food, indeed , he was a connoisseur of fine New York restaurants. By the time we completed our luncheon orgy, we had worked out the story and, sadly, my time in New York was finished. There is nothing in this world that can equal a few days in New York City on an open-ended expense account. When I returned from New York I learned MGM had set up the production through Four Star Productions, an independent production company located in Beverly Hills, and...

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