The Eyes of Darkness

ventures into the High Sierras in winter, where she comes across a paved road, in the middle of the wilderness, that features heating coils under the pavement to prevent snow from sticking to it. The heating coils would probably have to maintain the road at about 38 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit to be sure that it remained free of snow and ice. This is obviously an expensive stretch of highway that must lead to something important and mysterious. In the script, Tina saw the narrow road initially as a strange light beyond a screen of trees. At first I thought the writers had put lampposts on this road, which would make no sense, as it is a secret route through restricted government property. But when I read further, I discovered that Tina comes to a glowing red road. The writers had envisioned a heated roadbed not as ordinary blacktop but as an arrangement of thousands of interconnected hot-plate griddles. When I wondered aloud how any vehicle could negotiate this surface, my question was not understood. By this time, we had passed the one-year mark in the development process, and I knew we were not going to wind up with a usable script, so I didn’t insist on discussing whether the rubber tires would melt off the vehicle within two hundred yards or three, or ponder at what point the gasoline tank might explode. I simply said, “Well, a red-hot glowing road is a great visual.” In fact, it would be such a fantastic visual that it would be visible at night from orbiting satellites, like a neon arrow pointing toward the secret installation that it served.

Ultimately, after months of interminable meetings, two of the scripts we developed were deemed filmable. The first was my script based on Darkfall, which I had written in two weeks. The second was my script of another book which, in a fit of frustration at this entire process, I wrote in three days after the assigned writer’s final — and umpteenth — draft was deemed inadequate. I had spent more time in useless development meetings than I had required to write both of those screenplays.

By this time, the head of the network got the boot, and a new head of network came aboard. After reviewing the chaos that he had inherited, the new head of network decided that even though Darkfall was an exciting script, he didn’t want to make a movie “about little creatures living in the walls.” He decided that we would film the other script I had done; for which I received primary credit but not sole credit because of Writers Guild rules virtually guaranteeing the first writer some kind of credit as long as that writer’s drafts had been composed in one of the languages spoken on Earth.

After all those months and all those meetings and all those network-approved writers, we had too little material to launch a series, regardless of whether it was titled From the Tormented Mind of Dean Koontz or Sitting in the Dark with Dean and Roachesor just Deaniac. One good TV movie was aired and did okay in the ratings. Considering the fearsome number of meetings I had to sit through, my per-hour wage penciled out at less than I would have made if I had taken a part-time job at McDonald’s.

The first network head is no longer in the business. The second network head is no longer in the business. The development executive in charge of the project is no longer in the business. I would not be surprised to learn that one of the network-approved writers is in prison for crimes of a particularly perverse nature committed against small woodland animals — and I know that at least a couple of them are no longer in the business. The studio executive who brought the project to the network is, I am told, no longer in the business. The legendary producer who brought the project to the studio is dead, probably because he was a beloved friend of the bad-luck writing duo.

I am still alive, thank God, and still writing books. I long ago wore out the three pairs of shoes that I was able to buy with my after-expenses and after-tax income from the project which, had it come to fruition, might have been titled I Think There’s a Rat Chewing My Foot in Dean Koontz’s Theater. Ah, the glamour of show business.