The Pat Hobby Stories: Difference between revisions

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|colspan="5"|Hollywood is abuzz about the arrival of [[Orson Welles]]. Meanwhile, tightened security prevents Hobby from entering the studio. His frustration takes the form of a hatred of Welles, about whom Hobby knows very little aside from the fact that he has a beard, and is making a great deal of money. Hobby encounters an executive, Harold Marcus, leaving the studio and asks for a ride in his limousine, during which Hobby coaxes Marcus to issue him a studio pass and downplays the Welles phenomenon, suggesting that Welles will be expensive to work with. Later, while looking to borrow money from the studio wigmaker, Hobby is reluctantly fitted with a false beard to play up his resemblance to Welles and driven around the studio where he endures the stares of the crowds he passes. When his identity is mistaken by Harold Marcus, who remembers Hobby's earlier warning about Welles, Marcus has a heart attack and this time Hobby is the one asked to take on a passenger, to drive Marcus to the infirmary. Hobby rushes out of the car and off the studio lot to a local bar where he uses the money borrowed from the wigmaker to buy drinks for a group of bearded extras.

|colspan="5"|Hobby works on a short script about an American military figure, General [[Fitzhugh Lee]]. Between bouts of writer's block, he daydreams about his glory days as a well-paid writer. Hobby's memories become more and more fantastic, as he recalls a visit to the studio by the President of the United States, who later visited Hobby's neighborhood and complimented his swimming pool. Filled with self-loathing at what he has become, after being snubbed by an acquaintance in the hallway Hobby turns his frustration into dialogue for his script.

*{{cite news |title=The Last Buffoon |author=Andrew Turnbull | author-link = Andrew Turnbull (biographer) |date=1962-07-July 22, 1962 |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/24/specials/fitzgerald-hobby.html |accessdate=2008-02-09}}

*{{cite newsmagazine |title=Wire the Money |date=1962-08-03 |workmagazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896490,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110219070209/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896490,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=February 19, 2011 |accessdate=2008-02-09}}