The morning of March 7, 1972, arrived in Los Angeles.
Duke sat alone in his expansive office, he held a ceramic mug of black coffee in one hand, the heat seeping comfortably into his palm, and a old copy of The Hollywood Reporter in the other.
He smoothed the paper flat against his desk, his eyes scanning the bold, black ink of the headline.
ACADEMY ANNOUNCES 44TH OSCAR NOMINATIONS
Duke leaned back in his leather chair, a slow, deeply satisfied smile spreading across his face.
In this timeline, under his meticulous restructuring, Paramount's 1971 slate was an absolute juggernaut.
His finger traced down the columns, checking off the victories he had engineered.
The French Connection. Eight nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Friedkin, and Best Actor for Gene Hackman.
In his past life, Duke knew this had been a 20th Century Fox triumph, a gritty masterpiece that redefined the police procedural genre. But here, under his watch, it was Paramount's crown jewel of the year.
Then there was Shaft. Nominated for Best Original Dramatic Score, and an absolute favorite for Best Original Song.
He moved further down the page. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Nominated for Best Original Song Score. It hadn't set the box office on fire the way French Connection had, but Duke knew its true value.
It was an investment in the future, a film that would run on television and sell home media for the next fifty years.
And finally, Klute. Best Original Screenplay nomination, and Jessica Lange was a newly recognized newcomer who earned her nomination for Best Actress.
Duke took a slow sip of his coffee. The liquid was bitter and strong, grounding him in the moment.
"Not bad for a year's work, Stanley," Duke murmured to the empty room, offering a phantom toast to Jaffe, wherever he was.
He felt a rare, profound moment of pure, unadulterated pride.
He was balancing prestige cinema with commercial viability. And it felt in Paramount.
By nine o'clock that evening, the serene quiet of the Paramount office had been entirely replaced by the deafening roar of a Hollywood power party.
The estate was located high up in Beverly Hills, Duke arrived alone. He stepped out of his sleek, midnight-blue Mercedes SL, tossed the keys to an eager valet, and walked through the massive double doors.
He wore a perfectly tailored charcoal italian suit.
He hadn't been in the party for more than three minutes, holding a scotch, when the sharks began to circle.
They were the good-natured kind of sharks, veteran producers, rival studio executives, high-powered agents.
"Here he is! The Boy Wonder himself!"
The voice belonged to Jay Kanter, a heavily tanned agent. Jay clamped a heavy, manicured hand onto Duke's shoulder, grinning broadly.
"Duke, my boy, I was just telling the fellas here," Jay gestured with a lit cigar to a small circle of executives holding highballs, "Paramount is cleaning up the nominations. Eight for French Connection?"
"It's a good list, Jay," Duke replied, his tone easy, trying to sound humble. He took a sip of his scotch. "But we're just giving the people what they want. Gritty streets and good music, you know thats what people want right now."
"Modesty!" laughed an executive from Columbia, a thin man with a nervous twitch. "Don't buy it for a second, Jay. The kid is a killer."
The conversation flowed, loud and overlapping, shifting seamlessly from box office grosses to union disputes, until it inevitably landed on the favorite currency of Hollywood, gossip.
"So, Duke," a sharply dressed talent agent leaned in, a sly, conspiratorial grin spreading across his face. "The magazines are having a field day with rumours of you."
The agent paused, taking a theatrical sip of his martini. "They're wondering why a guy who looks like you, with a bank account like yours, is so recluse, back when Howard Hughes was here, he used to handle 4 girls in the same week. They're whispering that maybe you're a 'friend of Dorothy,' if you catch my drift."
Duke didn't stiffen. He didn't look offended. He threw his head back and let out a genuine laugh.
He was aggressively pursuing the trashier magazines with his legal team behind closed doors to kill those exact rumors, not because he cared personally, but because in 1972, that kind of press could spook conservative investors.
But in the room, face-to-face with the rumor mill, he played it perfectly.
"Fellas, let me tell you," Duke smiled, his eyes glinting with good-natured amusement. "If being a workaholic who spends fourteen hours a day in a editing bay makes me gay, then half the men in this zip code are in serious trouble. I'm just waiting to find a woman who has the stamina to keep up with my schedule."
The men erupted into laughter, the tension evaporating. Duke had taken the punch, rolled with it, and turned it into a joke too.
"Well," Jay chuckled, waving his cigar expansively toward the crowded living room, where dozens of beautiful women in dresses were mingling. "We could introduce you to half the starlets in the room right now if you're looking for a distraction, Duke. Just say the word. I know three blondes over by the ice sculpture who would kill for a picture deal."
"I appreciate the offer, Jay, I truly do," Duke said smoothly, tapping his vase against the producer's. "But I like to do my own casting."
The topic quickly shifted, moving onto Duke's few perceived missteps.
"Speaking of casting, what the hell happened with the Zoetrope deal, kid?" the nervous executive asked, shaking his head. "I mean, we all like Coppola, but that THX 1138 picture? Warner Brothers really suffered with that one. It was a bit too 'high art' for the drive-ins, wasn't it? A critical disappointment, a commercial flop. Those kids must have love you for that distribution deal."
Duke's smile didn't waver.
"It was an experiment debut film." Duke conceded with a casual shrug, swirling the scotch in his glass. "And sure, maybe the market wasn't ready for dystopian sci-fi. But you guys shouldn't be laughing at American Zoetrope. I have high hopes for them."
"The Godfather premieres in New York in exactly eight days," Duke said.
Duke looked around the circle, meeting each of their eyes. "I've seen the final cut. I promise you, after next Wednesday, nobody in this town is going to remember THX 1138."
He delivered the line with a wink, softening the blow.
Leaving them to chew on that, Duke politely excused himself from the circle, citing the need for fresh air, and navigated his way through the crowded living room toward the massive glass doors that opened out onto the terrace.
The air outside was cooler, a gentle breeze coming. The terrace was less crowded, populated mostly by couples seeking quiet corners and people who had overindulged in the champagne and needed to look at the horizon.
Duke walked over to the heavy stone railing, resting his forearms against it and looking out over the Los Angeles basin. The city was a vast, shimmering carpet of lights, a grid of electricity and ambition stretching out to the black void of the Pacific Ocean.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed someone.
She was standing a few yards down the railing, holding a slender coupe glass, staring out at the city. She was stunning, long, dark hair cascading over her shoulders, framing a face of timeless beauty.
Duke squinted, his brow furrowing slightly. A strange, powerful sense of déjà vu washed over him. He knew that face.
He pushed off the railing and closed the distance between them, his footsteps silent on the stone patio.
"I have to admit," Duke said, his voice warm, "I feel like I've seen you in a dream. I'm Connor Hauser."
The woman startled slightly, turning to face him.
"Hello," she said, her voice carrying a soft, refined English accent. "I'm Jane. Jane Seymour."
"Jane Seymour," Duke repeated the name, "And what does Jane Seymour do when she isn't standing on balconies?"
Jane offered a small, hesitant smile. "I'm an actress. Mostly television back home. I've been doing a series in the UK recently. It's a period drama called The Onedin Line."
Duke shook his head with honest regret. "I have to confess, I don't know it. It's hard to keep up with British television when I'm buried in scripts all day. So, what brings an English rose all the way out to California?"
Jane seemed to relax a fraction, leaning against the railing and turning slightly toward him.
"I'm here for an audition, actually," Jane said, a note of excitement creeping into her voice. "It's quite a big one. For a film called Live and Let Die. They're looking for the new Bond girl. A character named Solitaire. She's a tarot card reader for a dictator."
The future-memory slotted perfectly into place. Solitaire. Live and Let Die. 1973. Roger Moore's first outing as James Bond.
But that wasn't the image that made Duke smile. The image that flashed in his mind wasn't of a young, twenty-something Bond girl.
It was a memory from a comedy movie that he watched in his previous life as a kid.
He remembered her as Kitty Sanchez in Wedding Crashers, the fiery red hair, and the legendary "Call me Kitty Kat" scene.
Wedding Crashers, an American R-rated romantic comedy about two best friends, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, who spend their free time crashing wedding receptions to meet and seduce women.
The duo follows a set of strict rules for their antics, treating the summer wedding season as a way to score one-night stands. However, their lifestyle is challenged when they decide to crash the wedding of an U.S. politician's daughter.
Jane Seymour played the mature mom of the female lead, and wife of the politician.
He feel a little strange remembering the movie, and looking at the twenty- something year-old girl who was terrified of her upcoming audition in front of him.
Duke couldn't help it, he let out a soft laugh, shaking his head slightly.
Jane looked taken aback. "Is it funny? The tarot card thing?"
"No, not at all," Duke said quickly, holding up a hand. "Solitaire, huh? It's a great role, but looking at you right now... I think you're going to be much, much more than just a Bond girl. You're going to surprise a lot of people down the line."
Jane blushed, a genuine flush of color rising to her cheeks. "Well. Thank you. That's a very kind thing to say, Mr. Hauser."
"Call me Duke."
"Duke," she amended, her smile widening. "If you really think so, perhaps you could put in a good word for me with the producers?"
He took a step closer, invading her personal space, a little.
"I could do that," Duke said slowly, letting his eyes lock onto hers. "Or... I could say that I have a few scripts sitting on the passenger seat of my car right now. Very early drafts of some projects I'm developing in Paramount. And frankly, I could desperately use a British perspective on the dialogue."
He paused, letting the idea hang in the air.
"Would you like to get out of here? Go somewhere a bit more private to... discuss thing?"
Jane's eyes sparkled in the dim light of the terrace. She was young, but she wasn't naive. She recognized the opportunity, and more importantly, she recognized that the man standing in front of her was entirely different from the sweaty, old producers inside the house.
She set her half-empty glass down on the wide stone ledge of the railing with a decisive little clink.
"You know, Duke," Jane teased, looking up at him through her lashes, "I've always been an incredibly fast reader."
Duke grinned. He offered her his arm.
"Excellent," Duke said, as she slipped her hand through his elbow. "Then let's get out of here. This party is starting to feel too much like a board meeting."
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Have had some issues so couldnt post yesterday
Im trying to add more personality to Duke