Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/370852
24 CINEMONTAGE / SEP-OCT 14 Unfamiliar with writer/director Quentin Tarantino at the time, he read the script on overtime and had no idea what to expect. Blown away by the story, its dialogue, twisted humor and especially its non-chronological, jigsaw-puzzle structure, the analyst began his coverage with unabashed enthusiasm: "This is the best script of its kind I've ever read." But Paramount passed. Tarantino was insisting on directing, and his directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs, apparently was not enough to convince the executive group that he could pull it off. Pulp Fiction, of course, became one of the runaway hits in 1994 for Miramax, scoring seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and winning for Best Original Screenplay. It also tallied a worldwide gross of $213 million. For Ehrlich, it was the big one that got away, or to use his own metaphor, his failure to open up that hole inviting enough for the running back to run through. HARRISON REINER Harrison Reiner has led many lives: a graduate of NYU and Columbia, a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, front office supervisor of the Waldorf- Astoria, an actor who trained with Stella Adler, a story editor at RKO, a production executive on the Academy Award-winning foreign language film Cinema Paradiso, a professor of screenwriting at UCLA, a producer and co-writer of an award-winning independent film, and currently, a story analyst at CBS where he has happily spent the last 17 years. His long experience in the world of show business has taught him that readers are often treated like second-class citizens and studios can be shark tanks where executives "eat their underlings for lunch." But he quickly learned that CBS is different. The executives there treat him with respect, give him the flexibility to engage in outside activities like mentoring young filmmakers from diverse communities and producing indie films, and encourage him to do long, thoughtful synopses and commentaries in place of the give-it-to-me-in-a-single-page approach that prevails in so many shops. "They don't have ADD [attention deficit disorder] at CBS; they want to be informed," he explains, and then adds, "I'd drag the curtains with me before I'd leave. I don't want to talk about it too much; someone might kill me to get my job." One of Reiner's most memorable experiences at the "Cinema Paradiso" of CBS came when Leslie Moonves, then president of CBS Entertainment, got him the 900- page manuscript of Mario Puzo's final novel, The Last Don, giving him just over a day to cover it and submit a 10-to-15- page synopsis with extensive commentary. The analyst went without sleep to complete the