Duke parked his nondescript Ford sedan in the gravel lot of a dive bar.
He checked his watch. 2:00 PM.
Inside, the transition was jarring windowless, dark
There, in the back booth, sat the most reluctant movie star in America.
Harrison Ford was hunched over a beer. He was wearing a t-shirt stained with wood stain and a pair of jeans.
Duke slid into the booth opposite him. Harrison didn't look up.
"You're late," Harrison grumbled.
"Traffic on the 405," Duke said, signaling the bartender for a scotch. "It's the great equalizer, Harry. It doesn't care if you just won an Oscar for Best Score."
Harrison finally looked up. His eyes were weary. The fame that Love Story had dumped on his doorstep was not sitting well.
In the months since the ceremony, Harrison had become a public figure. Teen magazines were plastering his face on covers.
"I had to punch a guy yesterday," Harrison said flatly.
Duke paused, his drink halfway to his lips. "Please tell me it wasn't a journalist."
"It was a contractor," Harrison sighed, taking a long pull of his beer. "The homeowner on this gig brought his friends out. They start asking me to recite lines."
"What did you do?"
"I told them to get off the job site. The contractor got mad. Said I should be grateful the customers were interested." Harrison's jaw tightened. "I walked off."
Duke looked at the man across from him. He saw the struggle.
In the original timeline, Harrison Ford had drifted in and out of acting for years, sustained by his carpentry, until George Lucas found him.
Duke had accelerated that process by a decade.
"You aren't a carpenter anymore, Harry," Duke said gently. "You're an actor, did you get an agent already?"
Harrison scoffed, wiping foam from his lip. "I have gotten some offers but none I personally like. They all feel slightly fake."
"You seem bored Harry," Duke diagnosed. "And you're bored because you dont have a job."
Harrison's eyes narrowed. "And so what? Tell me, you got something on your new film for me?"
"No, my lead needs to be an innocent guy type of guy," Duke said.
He leaned forward, lowering his voice.
"Although I do have a supporting role for you. I finally decided on my next movie and its gonna be a movie about a pacifist."
"Is that good?" Harrison asked. "You want to make a protest movie? Another one like Midnight Cowboy?"
"No," Duke said. "I want to make the opposite. I want to make a war movie. A violent, bloody war movie."
Harrison rolled his eyes. "Don't you think it's strange how you were a soldier and now youre making a war movie, won't you get accuse of glorifying war by people here?"
"It's a war movie without a gun," Duke said.
Harrison paused. He tilted his head, his mind trying to figure out the structural integrity of that statement. "What?"
"The hero doesn't touch a rifle," Duke said. "He refuses. He goes into the worst hell on earth, the Pacific Theater and he doesn't fire a single shot."
"His unit hates him. They call him a coward. They beat him in the barracks. But when the shit hits the fan... when everyone else is retreating... he saves people."
"He saves them?" Harrison asked.
"Yeah, he stays, alone, unarmed and he drags them out. One by one. All night long. While the Japanese are hunting him, while the mortars are falling, he's lowering men down a rope."
Harrison sat in silence for a long moment. He traced the grain of the wood on the table with his thumb.
"I mean wont it be a little unrealistic?" Harrison asked.
"Everything on it happened. His name is Desmond Doss. He's still alive and lives in Virginia."
Harrison took a slow breath.
"It doesn't sound like an easy role," Harrison murmured.
"No," Duke agreed.
Duke finished his scotch and placed the glass on the table with a definitive clink.
"I'm going to write it, Harry. I'm going to lock myself in my office and I'm not coming out until the first draft is done."
"But," Duke added, standing up, "if you decide you're done with complaining and you want to do some actual work... let me know."
Harrison didn't say yes. He just grunted and signaled the bartender for another beer.
Duke got out and drove to his office.
Duke rolled the windows down, letting the hot wind blast away the stale air of the bar.
He pulled into the driveway of his home. It was an old wooden house with vegetation on it's sides, isolated and quiet.
He entered the house, ignoring the pile of letters on the entry. There were notes from Robert Evans, from Nolan Bushnell, and from Jeffrey, his agent wanting to pitch him movies.
He walked straight to his study.
It was a sparse room. A desk, a chair, a shelf of books, and a window that looked out over the canyon. On the desk sat his typewriter.
Duke took off his watch. He took off his shoes. He poured a glass of water.
He sat down.
He inserted a fresh sheet of white paper into the roller.
He stared at the blank page.
TITLE: THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
(Working Title)
He typed it out. Then he backspaced.
TITLE: HACKSAW RIDGE
He began to type. The keys clacked with a rhythmic, percussive force.
A young man is under a car. Grease on his face. He is tightening a bolt with a wrench. This is Desmond Doss (20s).
Duke paused. He thought about the actor. Was it Redford? But Doss needed an innocence, a wide-eyed purity that Redford may not be able to acomplish. Maybe he needed someone unknown.
Duke shook his head. Cast it later. Write it now.
He wrote for hours. The sun dipped below the horizon, turning the sky a bruised purple, and still, Duke typed.
He reached the Battle of Okinawa.
This was the hardest part.
Hell opens up. It's a meat grinder. The air turns red with mist.
A soldier explodes. The ground is churning mud and intestines.
Doss is in the middle of it. He is moving through the fire.
He wrote the moment of the retreat. The Americans falling back down the net. The panic. The abandonment.
And then, the quiet.
The smoke clearing. The dead lying in heaps. And Doss alone still rescuing.
This was the soul of the movie. This was why he was writing it.
Duke stopped typing. He sat back in his chair.
He thought about 1969. He thought about the cynicism.
He thought about Easy Rider, which was about to come out and tell the world that the American Dream was dead, blown away by a shotgun on a southern road.
Hacksaw Ridge was a rebuttal. It said, The Dream isn't dead. It's just hard. It requires a spine.
___
Had writer block today so chapter is kind of short