Brown is an enigmatic, popular screenwriter who pumps out comedies and fluff for a large paycheck. Nonetheless, his earlier Pulitzer win and years of writing chops make him feel entitled to write the studio's biggest productions. He's furious when the biggest budget of the year gets handed to an Austrian foreigner by producers claiming Brown can't depict "that real Viennese Schmalz." The new author works tirelessly, desperately, rejecting Brown's attempts at providing him with cliche plots and easy storytelling structures. The producers become impatient when he fails to turn in any pages of work, at last demanding the full manuscript, which he turns in after a harrowing night of work. The producers hate it immediately, claiming they requested a lighthearted work that truly captured the essence of Vienna and this screenplay doesn't depict the city at all. The foreigner is sent away without the paycheck he desperately needed to save his family from Austria, and Brown gets the job he wanted all along. As Brown sits down to write his own screenplay for the work, he decides to read what the Austrian wrote. The screenplay is dark rendition of his own final night in Vienna, complete with watching Nazis shoot his son to death and ending as he sits in a cafe, listening to a pianist slowly drowned out by Nazi drums and firearms. Brown is in awe, knowing the producers have just passed on a work that would revolutionize Hollywood. He briefly considers demanding they produce the script, but instead stuffs it into his drawer and writes the lighthearted comedy expected of him.