Execs at Universal Pictures had reviewed the screenplay and come to a decision: They could not abide the dead cat.

See, in the movie’s climax the protagonist, pushed beyond his rational limit, enters his enemy’s derelict loft apartment on the West Side Highway, gun in hand, and starts shooting. After an hour-plus of anxiety and whispers of gunplay, here it is, the eruption the picture was always racing toward: Shots ring out in the dismal studio, whizzing past the chemical toilet, punching drywall, shattering glass into twinkling pieces. And then the shot that mows the cat down, the pet caught in the crossfire and struck dead. Imagine the screech and the bloody fur. Inside the meeting, Universal demurred. It was the sole note offered to the first-time screenwriter and his producing partners, who had flown from New York to Hollywood just to hear the studio’s assessment of this new project, entitled Game 6. We don’t think the cat should get killed.

Of course, this particular screenwriter was a Guggenheim fellow and a recipient of the National Book Award. A Bronx native in his 50s, critically acclaimed for his novels of uncanny consumerism and nuclear-age malaise, he had an outsized reputation for his low profile. He sat for only as many interviews as he had to, refused to appear on TV, and would never be a regular on any Los Angeles lot. In an interview conducted a few years before this meeting, when asked about the film producers who inevitably came calling after his work, he replied, “Usually someone in a borrowed office phones up and says, ‘You know, Great Jones Street, boy that’s somethin’. Wow, let’s have lunch.’” In other words, this was an improbable occurrence. All the same, Universal had its convictions. The cat had to live.

[Read Ross Scarano's piece detailing the troubled history of Don DeLillo's only screenplay.]