The chaos of the Los Angeles Zoo was a different beast from the controlled tension of the suburban pool set.
Animals shrieked, children cried, and the crew of The Graduate fought a losing battle to impose order on the Set.
Duke stood near a faux-granite wall, his cane tucked under his arm, watching Mike Nichols try to coax a genuine moment of romantic desperation from a bemused Katharine Ross and a visibly uncomfortable Dustin Hoffman.
He didnt remember much of the zoo scenes in The Graduate, only the meeting of Carl, Elaine's suitor and Benjamin.
The shoot felt different. The initial buzz had curdled into a low-grade anxiety.
Duke had heard the whispers, passed between the crew and the PAs with the grim reality this could be an impending disaster: Embassy Pictures was in trouble.
The parent company was looking to sell, and the new owners might not look kindly on an over-budget, artistically "difficult" picture from a director they didn't hire.
He saw Larry Turman, the producer, pacing near the tiger enclosure, his face a thundercloud as he spoke with a PA. Nichols, usually a bastion of sharp-witted control, had a new, frayed edge to his directions. The studio's cold feet were threatening to freeze the whole production.
The stench of wet hay and animal musk was overwhelming. Near the primate cages, a frustrated baboon slammed itself against the bars, its screeches a perfect soundtrack to the deteriorating mood on set.
Duke found Paul Meyers leaning against a production van besides the hippo enclosure, separated from the chaos, smoking a cigarette as if he were at a garden party. He watched the struggling crew with an expression of profound boredom.
"Paul, a word please," Duke said, his voice a low rumble that cut through the animal noise.
Meyers didn't turn, taking a long, slow drag. "Hauser. Come to bless us with more of your artistic wisdom? Here to tell me the baboon's performance isn't authentic enough?"
"I'm hearing noises," Duke said, ignoring the jab. "About a sale at Embassy. The word is the new owners might scrap anything that looks like a risk."
Meyers finally turned, a thin, contemptuous smile playing on his lips. "There's always noise. This town runs on it."
"Is this noise something we should be desperate about?" Duke pressed, his blue eyes locked on Meyers. "Mike is feeling the pressure. It's affecting the shoot."
"Mike is a big boy. He's got your checkbook to keep him warm, doesn't he?" Meyers exhaled a plume of smoke directly between them. "You worry about your three percent. Let the men who've been doing this longer than you've been shaving worry about the corporate structure. The film will get finished. Whether it gets released, or how it gets released… that's a little above your pay grade."
The condescension was a deliberate poison. Meyers had never forgiven him for the poolside confrontation, for being proven right by the dailies that were now, despite his protests, clearly brilliant.
"A film no one sees is just a very expensive home movie," Duke stated, his voice dangerously calm.
"Is that what this is all about for you, Hauser?" Meyers asked, his voice dripping with mock curiosity. "Legacy? Art?" He gestured vaguely toward the set with his cigarette. "You and Mike, you're so concerned with every little… subtext. The plastic pool, the alienated gaze. It's all very impressive."
"Tell me," he said, his eyes glinting with malice, "what's the deep, hidden meaning of that?"
He pointed a dismissive finger toward a giraffe in a distant enclosure, its long neck craning over the fence, its expression dopey and detached.
"You see it, don't you?" Meyers continued, not waiting for an answer. "The towering, awkward phallus, trapped behind bars, unable to reach what it truly desires. A perfect symbol of sexual anxiety in the modern age. Maybe we should get a shot of it. A quick cutaway. Benjamin looks at the giraffe, the giraffe looks at Benjamin… a moment of pure, unspoken understanding. Mike would love it. You could protect that shot, too. Make sure the studio doesn't cut the profound, symbolic giraffe."
He was openly mocking him now, using the language of artistic interpretation as a weapon. He was reducing Duke's defense of Nichols' vision to a pretentious joke.
Duke didn't rise to the bait. He let the silence hang, the baboon's screams filling the space. He took a single step closer, his height and stillness suddenly feeling less like a presence and more like a threat.
"The film will be fine, Paul," Duke said, his voice barely above a whisper, yet carrying perfectly. "It's the people who try to sabotage it who should be worried about their jobs when it succeeds."
He held Meyers' gaze for a beat longer, letting the implication sink in—that Meyers, for all his experience, was on the wrong side of history.
Then, without another word, Duke turned and walked back toward the set, leaving Meyers with his cigarette and his simmering resentment.
Seeking a different kind of intelligence, he found Buck Henry, the film's writer, observing the set with a detachment as he smoked.
"They're scared of it, Duke," Buck said without preamble, his eyes twinkling with grim amusement. "The studio thought they were buying a sexy romance comedy about an older woman. The ending especially. They want Benjamin to get the girl, ride off into the sunset in his fully working car."
"I will make sure Mike's ending stays." Duke said, the memory of the final shot as clear in his mind as the zoo around him.
"You and Mike get that," Buck replied. "The men signing the checks? They're looking for a scapegoat if it fails, and they're already planning how to take credit if, by some miracle, it works."
A call came just as Duke was about to light a cigarrete.
It was one of Nichols' assistants, her voice breathless. "Mr. Hauser? Mike needs you. Urgently. By the monkey cages."
When Duke arrived, the scene was one of quiet catastrophe. Nichols was pacing, running a hand through his already disheveled hair.
The young actor originally cast as Carl Smith sat on an equipment crate, head in his hands, while a makeup woman ineffectually dabbed at his face. The kid looked green.
"He's got a fever of a hundred and one, or he's having a full-blown panic attack. I can't tell which and I don't care," Nichols said without preamble, pulling Duke aside. His voice was a low, frantic whisper. "The studio's trying to strangle this picture in its crib, I'm losing the light, and now this."
"Get a standby," Duke said, the practical experience in him taking over.
"There is no standby for this! It's one scene, but it's a key scene. He's the rival. He's everything Benjamin isn't: confident, connected, normal. And that kid," he jabbed a thumb, "looks like he's about to join the monkeys in the cage."
Nichols stopped pacing and fixed his desperate, intelligent eyes on Duke. "I need you to do it."
Duke stared at him, certain he'd misheard. "Mike. I'm a producer. I'm also 6'5 thats way too tall to act against Hoffman and I walk with a cane. I'm also not an actor."
"That's exactly why I need you!" Nichols insisted, a wild, conspiratorial light in his eyes. "The studio sent that boy. But you have the size, the bearing. You look like a man who was born to be a surgeon, a man who gets what he wants without ever raising his voice. You are the physical embodiment of the world that's crushing Benjamin Braddock."
He leaned in closer. "And besides, you owe me for helping you get into hollywood. Now come on. It'll be fun. Three lines. Just stand there and look at Hoffman like he's a stain on your father's yacht."
"Where's my cane?" he asked, his voice grim.
"We lose the cane. You're recovered. A miracle." Nichols was already pulling him toward the costume trailer, a triumphant grin spreading across his face. "Wait until Hoffman sees this."
Thirty minutes later, Duke stood in a borrowed blazer that was a shade too tight in the shoulders, feeling like an imposter. The cane was gone, and he focused on standing straight, suppressing the familiar ache in his leg. As he walked onto the marked-out path for the scene, he saw Dustin Hoffman, already in position as Benjamin. Hoffman did a double-take, his eyes widening almost imperceptibly. He saw not the producer from the sidelines, but a giant, looming stranger who radiated an unnerving, quiet authority.
Nichols called action.
The scene began. Hoffman, master of the fumbling, anxious energy, approached walking with Elaine.
"Here he comes." Hoffman character Benjamin nods at Duke.
Elaine interrupts with a soft spoken. "What"
Benjamin continues with. "I got a real feeling this is the fella."
Duke walks in as Carl Smith holding a coat on his arms and smoking a pipe that he takes off his mouth as he says. "Elaine" while raising his pipe with a smile.
Benjamin says. "He certainly is a good walker."
Carl holds hands with Elaine and looked at her with a smile and eye contact. "Am i late? I'm sorry."
Benjamin claims from behind Elaine. "We though you said by the monkey house."
Carl looks at Benjamin for a moment before looking at Elaine again in search of answers.
Elaine quickly says "This is Benjamin Braddock." and turned to look at Benjamin and introduce Carl to him too. "Carl Smith. Benjamin rode here with me on the bus."
Carl puts an arm protecting Elaine around and held her a bit closer.
Carl quickly streches his hand and shakes benjamin's hand with a "Glad to meet you Ben." before leaving with Elaine.
Benjamin answered with a "Nice meeting you Carl" and a "Swell seeing you" as Carl took Elaine away.
The sheer physical contrast was cinematic—the 6'5" titan of calm assurance against the 5'6" bundle of neurotic energy.
When Nichols finally yelled "Cut!", the silence on set was profound. Then, Nichols burst out laughing, a sound of pure, unadulterated joy.
"Perfect! My God, Hauser, you're a natural-born bastard!" he crowed, striding over. "You didn't act it, you were it!"
Of course the fact that the scene lasted for around 30 seconds also mean his performance didn't need to be perfect
A week later, the scent of the zoo had finally faded from his clothes, replaced by the familiar smell of coffee and paper in his home office.
There was a knock on his door. His agent, Jeffrey, stood there with a young, intense-looking man with a wild beard and furious, intelligent eyes.
"Duke, this is George Romero. He's a filmmaker. From Pittsburgh."
Romero shook his hand with a firm, earnest grip. He didn't have the polished desperation of Hollywood; he had the raw energy of a revolutionary.
"Mr. Hauser, I saw a piece in Variety about you. You backed Nichols. You're not afraid of something different."
"Different is the only thing that interests me," Duke said, gesturing for him to sit.
Romero launched into his pitch, his hands carving shapes in the air. "It's called Night of the Living Dead. It's about the dead returning to life. But it's not vampires, it's not ghosts. They're… shambling. Hungry. They eat the living. And it's not about the monsters, not really. It's about the people trapped in a farmhouse. It's about how society breaks down under pressure. The class divisions, the sheer, stupid panic… it all comes out. It's a nightmare of the American family, torn apart from the outside and the inside."
As Romero spoke, describing the gore, the terror, the bleak, nihilistic ending, Duke's mind reeled. He was seeing it again, the grainy black-and-white footage, the iconic images from a future he remembered. This wasn't just a movie; it was a raw, independent movie that defined hoorror that also made a lot of money.
"The budget," Duke interrupted, his voice quiet.
Romero stopped, swallowing. "We can do it for eighty thousand. Maybe a hundred. We've got a crew, we've got a location. We just need the film stock, the lab costs, the food…"
Duke was silent for a long moment, calculating. It was a pittance compared to The Graduate, but the risk was different. This was a film that could be dismissed as schlock, buried by distributors. But he knew it wouldn't be. It would become a landmark.
"I'll give you a hundred twenty," Duke said. "But i want the whole project for Ithaca Productions. You can stay as a director, of course."
Romero's face exploded in relief and joy. "Yes! Of course! Thank you, Mr. Hauser!"
"There's one more thing," Duke said, leaning forward. "The protagonist. Ben. The resourceful one who boards up the house."
"Yeah, we havent casted yet," Romero said a little nervous.
Duke held up a hand. "I think it's a masterstroke. But I want to audition for the role."
Romero blinked, his brain struggling to process the request. The wealthy, tall, author-producer from Hollywood wanted to audition for the lead in his gritty, independent horror film in Pittsburgh.
"I… I don't mind," Romero stammered, confused. "But… why?"
Duke allowed a rare, genuine smile. "Let's just call it research. I want to understand the process from the other side of the lens. Don't worry, I'm not demanding the part. I just want a shot. If your other actor is better, just cast him. No hard feelings."
The confusion on Romero's face melted into a grin. This was the most bizarre and wonderful meeting of his life. "Okay. Yeah. Sure. You got it. We'd be happy to have you read for it."
After Romero left, practically floating out the door, Duke reclined himself on his chair in happines.
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Long chapter