finished, they learned that director John Milius was starting production on Dillinger, destroying their hopes of selling their script as a feature. However, their script was bought under a one-year option for $10,000 by producer Edward Lewis, who sold it to NBC as a possible television movie. In the end, the screenplay was never produced. Boam graduated from UCLA in 1973, with a Master of Fine Arts degree. He got a job as a film booker for Paramount Pictures, where he kept track of film prints and made sure the movies were distributed to the correct theaters. All the while, he was writing scripts, trying to land a screenwriting job. Of the work at Paramount, Boam said, "I was ... in the worst kind of Siberia in Hollywood." He switched from Paramount to the film distribution office at 20th Century Fox, where he earned $200 a week. In 1976, Froug helped him get an agent, and some of his scripts were shopped around Hollywood. He got a flurry of meetings with film studio executives and producers, eventually meeting producer Tony Bill. Bill offered to pay Boam the same $200 per week he was making at Fox, but instead write screenplays. Bill's stipulation was that he get a free option on whatever was written. Before Boam entered into that arrangement, one of his scripts was optioned by director-producer Ulu Grosbard. This became Boam's first Hollywood writing job. Career Straight Time Ulu Grosbard took on the directing job of the film Straight Time, after its original director, actor Dustin Hoffman, dropped out to focus on starring in the lead role. The film, based on the novel No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker, is about a thief who is released from prison and tries to live a straight life. Boam was asked to rewrite the script, and he quit his job at Fox to work with Grosbard. He received writing credit for the film, along with Bunker and Alvin Sargent. The Dead Zone As a film adaptation of Stephen King's 1979 novel The Dead Zone was being developed by Lorimar, producer Carol Baum gave the book to Boam, and asked him to write a screenplay. "I saw it had great possibilities and agreed to do it," Boam said. Boam developed a script with director Stanley Donen, who left the project before the film reached production at Lorimar. The company eventually closed its