Remake (7 page)

“See?” she said wonderingly. “Even when you’re denying it, you do it.”

“Well, this has been fun, but I have to get back to work butchering,” I said, “and you have to get back to deciding whether you want to play Sadie Thompson or Una Merkel.” I turned back to the screen. Peter Lorre was clutching Humphrey Bogart’s lapels, begging him to save him.

“You said everybody’s playing a part, whether they know it or not,” Heada said. “What part am I playing?”

“Right now? Thelma Ritter in
Rear Window
. The meddling friend who doesn’t know when to keep her nose out of other people’s business,” I said. “Shut the door when you leave.”

She did, and then opened it again and stood there watching me. “Tom?”

“Yeah?” I said.

“If I’m Thelma Ritter and Alis is Ruby Keeler, what part are you playing?”

“King Kong.”

Heada left, and I sat there for a while, watching Humphrey Bogart stand by and let Peter Lorre get arrested, and then got up to see if there were any AS’s on the premises. There was klieg in the medicine cabinet, just what I needed, and a bottle of champagne from one time when Mayer brought a face up to watch me paste her into
East of Eden
.
I took a swig. It was flat, but better than nothing. I poured some in a glass and ff’d to the “Play it again, Sam” scene.

Bogart slugged down a drink, the screen went to soft-focus, and he was pouring Ingrid Bergman champagne in front of a matte that was supposed to be Paris.

The door opened.

“Forget to give me some gossip, Heada?” I said, taking another swallow.

It was Alis. She was wearing a pinafore and puffed sleeves. Her hair was darker, and had a big bow in it, but it had that same backlit look to it, framing her face with radiance.

Fred Astaire tapped a ripple on the polished floor, and Eleanor Powell repeated it and turned to smile at him—

I downed the rest of the champagne in one gulp, and poured some more. “Well, if it isn’t Ruby Keeler,” I said “What do you want?”

She stayed in the doorway. “The musicals you showed me the other night, Heada said you might be willing to loan me the opdisks.”

I took a drink of champagne. “They aren’t on disk. It’s a direct fibe-op feed,” I said, and sat down at the comp.

“Is that what you do?” she said from behind me. She was standing looking over my shoulder at the screen. “You ruin movies?”

“That’s what I do,” I said. “I protect the movie-going public from the evils of demon rum and chooch. Mostly demon rum. There aren’t all that many movies with drugs in them.
Valley of the Dolls, Postcards from the Edge
, a couple of Cheech and Chongs,
The Thief of Bagdad
. I also remove nicotine if the Anti-Smoking League didn’t get there first.” I deleted the champagne glass Ingrid Bergman was raising to her lips. “What do you think? Cocoa or tea?”

She didn’t say anything.

“It’s a big job. Maybe you could do the musicals. Want me to access Mayer and see if he’ll hire you?”

She looked stubborn. “Heada said you could make opdisks
for me off the feed,” she said stiffly. “I just need them to practice with. Till I can find a dancing teacher.”

I turned around in the chair to look at her. “And then what?”

“If you don’t want to lend them to me, I could watch them here and copy down the steps. When you’re not using the comp.”

“And then what?” I said. “You copy down the steps and practice the routines and then what? Gene Kelly pulls you out of the chorus—no, wait, I forgot, you don’t like Gene Kelly—Gene Nelson pulls you out of the chorus and gives you the lead? Mickey Rooney decides to put on a show? What?”

“I don’t know. When I find a dancing teacher—”

“There
aren’t
any dancing teachers. They all went home to Meadowville fifteen years ago, when the studios switched to computer animation. There aren’t any soundstages or rehearsal halls or studio orchestras. There aren’t any
studios
, for God’s sake! All there is is a bunch of geekates hacking away on Crays and a bunch of corporation execs telling ’em what to do. Let me show you something.” I twisted back around in the chair. “Menu,” I said.
“Top Hat
. Frame 97-265.”

Fred and Ginge came up on the screen, spinning around in the Piccolino. “You want to bring musicals back. We’ll do it right here. Forward at five.” The screen slowed to a sequence of frames. Kick and. Turn and. Lift.

“How long did you say Fred had to practice his routines?”

“Six weeks,” she said tonelessly.

“Too long. Think of all that rehearsal-hall rent. And all those tap shoes. Frame 97-288 to 97-631, repeat four times, then 99-006 to 99-115, and continuous loop. At twenty-four.” The screen slid into realtime, and Fred lifted Ginge, lifted her again, and again, effortlessly, lightly. Lift, and lift, and kick and turn.

“Does that kick look high enough to you?” I said, pointing at the screen. “Frame 99-108 and freeze.” I fiddled with
the image, raising Fred’s leg till it touched his nose. “Too high?” I eased it back down a little, smoothed out the shadows. “Forward at twenty-four.”

Fred kicked, his leg sailing into the air. And lift. And lift. And lift. And lift.

“All right,” Alis said. “I get the point.”

“Bored already? You’re right. This should be a production number.” I hit multiply. “Eleven, side by side,” I said, and a dozen Fred Astaires kicked in perfect synch, lift, and lift, and lift, and lift. “Multiply rows,” I said, and the screen filled with Fred, lifting, kicking, tipping his top hat.

I turned around to look at Alis. “Why would they want you when they can have Fred Astaire? A hundred Fred Astaires? A thousand? And none of them have trouble learning a step, none of them get blisters on their feet or throw temper tantrums or have to be paid or get old or—”

“Get drunk,” she said.

“You want Fred drunk?” I said. “I can do that, too. Frame 97-412 and freeze.” Fred Astaire stopped in midturn, smiling. “Frame 97—” I said, and the screen went silver and then to legalese. “The character of Fred Astaire is currently unavailable for fibe-op transmission. Copyright ownership suit
ILMGM
v.
RKO-Warner
…”

“Oops. Fred’s in litigation. Too bad. You should have taken that paste-up while you had the chance.”

She wasn’t looking at the screen. She was looking at me, her gaze alert, focused, the way it had been on the Piccolino. “If you’re so sure what I want is impossible, why are you trying so hard to talk me out of it?”

Because I don’t want to see you down on Hollywood Boulevard in a torn-net leotard. I don’t want to have to stick your face in a River Phoenix movie so Mayer’s boss can pop you.

“You’re right,” I said. “Why the hell am I?” I turned to the comp and said, “Print accesses, all files.” I ripped the hardcopy out of the printer. “Here. Take my fibe-op accesses and make all the disks you want. Practice till your little feet bleed.” I thrust it at her.

She didn’t take it.

“Go on,” I said, and pressed it into her unresponsive hand. “Who am I to stand in your way? In the immortal words of Leo the Lion, anything’s possible. Who cares if the studios have got all the copyrights and the fibe-op sources and the digitizers and the accesses? We’ll sew our own costumes. We’ll build our own sets. And then, right before we open, Bebe Daniels’ll break her leg and you’ll have to go on for her!”

She crumpled up the hardcopy, looking like she’d like to throw it at me. “How would you know what’s possible and impossible? You don’t even
try
. Fred Astaire—”

“Is tied up in court, but don’t let that stop you. There’s still Ann Miller. And
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
. And Gene Kelly. Oh, wait, I forgot, you’re too good for Gene Kelly. Tommy Tune. And don’t forget Ruby Keeler.”

She threw it.

I picked the hardcopy up and uncrumpled it. “‘Temper, temper, Scarlett,’” I drawled, smoothing it out. I tucked it in the pocket of her pinafore and patted it. “Now get out there on that stage. It’s show time! The whole cast’s counting on you. Remember you’re going out there a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star.”

Her hand clenched, but she didn’t throw the hardcopy again. She wheeled, skirt flaring like Eleanor’s white one. I had to close my eyes against the sudden image of Fred and Eleanor dancing on the polished floor, the phony stars shimmering in endless ripples, and missed Alis’s exit.

She slammed the door behind her, and the image receded. I opened it and leaned out. “Be so good you’ll make me hate you,” I called after her, but she was already gone.

SCENE:
Busby Berkeley production number. Giant revolving fountain with chorus girls in gold lamé on each level, filling champagne glasses in the flowing fountain. Move in to close-up of champagne glass, then to close-up of bubbles, inside each bubble a chorus girl in gold-sequined tap pants and halter top, tap-dancing
.

Alis didn’t come back again after that. Heada went out of her way to keep me posted—she hadn’t found a dancing teacher, the Viamount takeover was a done deal, Columbia Tri-Star was doing a remake of
Somewhere in Time
.

“There was this Columbia exec at the party,” Heada told me, perched on my bed. “He said they’ve been doing experiments with images projected into negative matter regions, and there’s a measurable lag. He says they’re
this
close”—she did the thumb-and-forefinger bit—“to inventing time travel.”

“Great,” I said. “Alis can go back to the thirties and take dancing lessons from Busby Berkeley himself.”

Only she didn’t like Busby Berkeley, and after taking all the AS’s out of
Footlight Parade
and
Gold Diggers of 1933
, neither did I.

She was right about there not being any dancing in his movies. There was a glimpse of tapping feet in
42nd Street
, a rehearsal going on in the background of a plot exposition scene, a few bars in “Pettin’ in the Park” for Ruby, who danced about as well as Judy Garland. Otherwise it was all neon violins and revolving wedding cakes and fountains and
posed platinum-haired chorus girls, every one of whom had probably been a studio exec’s popsy. Overhead kaleidoscope shots and pans and low-angle shots from underneath chorus girls’ spread-apart legs that would have given the Hays Office fits. But no dancing.

Lots of drinking, though—speakeasies and backstage parties and silver flasks stuck in chorus girls’ garters. Even a production number in a bar, with Ruby Keeler as Shanghai Lil, a popsy who’d done a lot of hooch and a lot of sailors. A hymn to alcohol’s finer qualities.

Of which there were many. It was cheap, it didn’t do as much damage as redline, and if it didn’t give you the blessed forgetfulness of chooch, it stopped the flashing and put a nice soft-focus on things in general. Which made it easier to work on Mayer’s list.

It also came in assorted flavors—martinis for
Topper
, elderberry wine for
Arsenic and Old Lace
, a nice Chianti for
Silence of the Lambs
. In between I drank champagne, which had apparently been in every movie ever made, and cursed Mayer, and deleted beakers and laboratory flasks from the cantina scene in
Star Wars
.

I went to the next party, and the one after that, but Alis wasn’t there. Vincent was, demonstrating another program, and the studio exec, still pitching time travel to the Marilyns, and Heada.

“That stuff wasn’t klieg after all,” she told me. “It was some designer chooch from Brazil.”

“Which explains why I keep hearing the Beguine,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” I said, looking around the room. Vincent’s program must be a weeper simulator. Jackie Cooper was up on the screen, in a battered top hat and a polka-dot tie, blubbering over his dead dog.

“She’s not here,” Heada said.

“I was looking for Mayer,” I said. “He’s going to have to pay me double for
The Philadelphia Story
. The thing’s full of alcohol. Sherry before lunch, martinis out by the pool, champagne, cocktails, hangovers, ice packs. Cary Grant, Katharine
Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart. The whole cast’s stinking.”

I took a swig from the crème de menthe I had left over from
Days of Wine and Roses
. “The visuals will take at least three weeks, and that doesn’t include the lines. ‘I have the hiccups. I wonder if I might borrow a drink.’”

“She was here earlier,” Heada said. “One of the execs was hitting on her.”

“No, no, I say, ‘I wonder if I might borrow a drink,’ and
you
say, ‘Certainly. Coals to Newcastle.’” I took another drink.

“Should you be doing so much alcohol?” Heada, the chooch queen, said.

“I have to,” I said. “It’s the bad effect of watching all these movies. Thank goodness ILMGM’s remaking them so no one else will be corrupted.” I drank some more crème de menthe.

Heada looked at me sharply, like she’d been doing klieg again. “ILMGM’s doing a remake of
Time After Time
. The exec told Alis he thought he could get her a part in it.”

“Great,” I said, and went over to look at Vincent’s program.

Audrey Hepburn was up on the screen now, standing in the rain and sobbing over her cat.

“This is our new tears program,” Vincent said. “It’s still in the experimental stage.”

He said something to his remote, and the screen split. A computerized didge-actor sobbed alongside Audrey, clutching what looked like a yellow rug. Tears weren’t the only thing in the experimental stage.

“Tears are the most difficult form of water simulation to do,” Vincent said. The Tin Woodman was up there now, rusting his joints. “It’s because tears aren’t really water. They’ve got mucoproteins and lysozymes and a high salt content. It affects the index of refraction and makes them hard to reproduce,” he said, sounding defensive.

He should. The didge-woodman’s tears looked like Vaseline, oozing out of digitized eyes. “You ever program
VR’s?” I said. “Of, say, a movie scene like the one you used for the edit program a couple of weeks ago? The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers scene?”

“A virtual? Sure. I can do helmet and full-body data. Is this something you’re working on for Mayer?”