Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1188730
62 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E Dalton Trumbo started his career as a story analyst before moving to fame as a screenwriter. P H O T O : P H O T O F E S T Warner Bros. shield appears on screen.) Today, as in 1941, raw material comes to producers and studio executives in many forms: screenplays, plays, novels, graphic novels, short stories, comic books, non-fiction books, magazine or newspaper articles, or a foreign film with English-language remake potential. It's a story analyst's job to filter the wheat from the chaff. And in the modern era, story analysts are far more than filters. They routinely write the development notes (aka comparison coverage) on drafts of screenplays in development, notes busy producers and executives rely on to help screenwriters shape the material before it gets on screen. 35 year-old story analyst Stephen Karnot covered Murray Burnett & Joan Alison's "Everybody Comes To Rick's." Karnot, who was making $1.12 per hour, identi- fied it as an ideal vehicle for Humphrey Bogart. It was Karnot's boss, Warner Bros. story department head Irene Lee, who convinced producer Hal Wallis to buy it and assign screenwriters Julius & Philip Epstein and Howard Koch to turn it into a screenplay. But no doubt Karnot's savvy coverage helped shepherd it on its journey. He knew that when it comes to good storytelling, "the fundamental things apply," as the song from CASA- BLANCA goes. (The tune is still played before present-day releases when the history is little known inside, let alone outside, the industry. Even less has been shared about the vital role they played in Hollywood's early labor movement. Story analysts organized and fought battles from which today's union story analysts, as well as members of all Hollywood IA locals, still reap benefits. Both these threads -- their funda- mental role in the movie business and the f ight for what Hollywood unions established and work to maintain -- are interwoven in a compelling, behind-the- scenes tale that continues to unfold. It was December 9, 1941, two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when