The Buddy System

The Buddy System - Rene Auberjonois/City of Angels Original Broadway Cast

Movies are shadows

They're light

They're dark

They're faces ten feet high

Close up of him close up of her

Cut to close up of husband watching

Close up of her watching close up of him

You'll get it you'll see

Sweetheart nobody gets a hole

In one their first time at bat

There's people make a fortune writing

Movies and they don't know how

I mean no offense

Everybody and his brother writes books

But a screenplay

Now that's a ballgame of a different color right

You know when buddy Fidler talks

You're not listening to someone else

I've got 12 nominations a half dozen Oscars

Nine cars and three ex-wives to show

That in this business of refuse

And nephews I know my stuff

You're a literary creator should've won a Pulitzer Prize

I would never cannibalize

Or impair a single hair or phrase of your amazing opus

Still a lot of scribblers soon discover

What they write for the screen

Isn't always right for the screen

So I intervene

I zipped through your book and the characters jumped

To life on the page

Now we're at the stage where

I bring them to life on the screen

Don't cling to the words to which you gave birth

Remember how many a picture is worth

The odds are a thousand to

One so get used to it Stine

The book may be yours baby

Trust me the movie is mine

Ya learn from von Sternberg

Ya grow from von Stroheim

And so I'm the heir to their skill

This town has more nuts than Brazil

Let's face it I've been through da mill

Authors unprepared to take a stab

At this collaborative art

Must suppress their egos and part

With the notion that in motion pictures

Words are carved in marble

Donna darling get this on a pad

And type it up for next week

I have an engagement to speak

At the writer's guild

You wouldn't want to upset buddy

This is advice not a threat buddy

Let's see how tough things can get buddy

When things get rough it can get bloody

Baby nobody says no buddy

So buddy you better concede

Let buddy be buddy pure buddy

And he'll be your buddy

The buddy you need

Next