Death of a Blue Movie Star

"Video's the wave of the future, luv. You buy your own friggin' tape. And I'm checking the Arris and the Bolexes every night. If one's missing, even for a half hour, you're fired. And you do the work on your own time. That's the best you're getting."

She smiled sweetly. "Would you like some biscuits with your tea, mate?"

As she turned to leave Larry called, "Hey, luv, one thing… This bombing, whatever 'appened, the news'll do the story up right."

Rune nodded, seeing that intensity she recognized in his eyes when he was on a set shooting or kicking around ideas with Bob or the cinematographer. She paid attention. He continued. "Use the bombing like a 'ook."

"A hook?"

"You want to make a good documentary, do a film that's about the bombing but not about the bombing."

"It sounds like Zen."

"Fucking Zen, right." He twisted his mouth. "And three sugars for me tea. Last time you bleedin' forgot."

*****

Rune was paying for the tea and coffee when she remembered Stu. She was surprised she hadn't thought about him before this. And so she paid the deli guy two bucks of her own money, which is the way she looked at Larry's change, to have somebody deliver the cartons to L amp;R.

Then she stepped outside and trudged toward the subway.

A low-rider, a fifteen-year-old beige sedan, churned past her. The horn sang and from the shadows of the front seat came a cryptic solicitation, lost in the ship's diesel bubbling of the engine. The car accelerated away.

God, it was hot. Halfway to the subway stop, she bought a paper cone of shaved ice from a Latino street vendor. Rune shook her head when he pointed to the squirt bottles of syrup, smiled at his perplexed expression, and rubbed the ice over her forehead, then dropped a handful down the front of her T-shirts. He got a kick out of it and she left him with a thoughtful look on his face, maybe considering a new market for his goods.

Painful hot.

Mean hot.

The ice melted before she got to the subway stop and the moisture had evaporated before the train arrived.

The A train swept along under the streets back up to Midtown. Somewhere above her was the smoking ruin of the Velvet Venus Theater. Rune stared out the window intently. Did anyone live down here in the subway system? She wondered. Maybe there were whole tribes of homeless people, families, who'd made a home in the abandoned tunnels. They'd be a great subject for a documentary too. LifeBelow the Streets.

This started her thinking about the hook for her film.

About the bombing but not about the bombing.

And then it occurred to her. The film should be about a single person. Someone the bombing had affected. She thought about movies she liked-they were never about issues or about ideas in the abstract. They were about people. What happened to them. But who should she pick? A patron in the theater who'd been injured? No, no one would volunteer to help her out. Who'd want to admit he'd been hurt in a porn theater. How 'bout the owner or the producer of porn films. Sleazy came to mind. One thing Rune knew was that the audience has to care about your main character. And some scumbag in the Mafia or whoever made those movies wasn't going to get much sympathy from the audience.

Aboutthe bombing but not…

As the subway sped underground the more she thought about doing the document the more excited she became. Oh, a film like this wouldn't catapult her to fame but it would-what was the word?-validateher. The list of her abortive careers was long: clerking, waitressing, selling, cleaning, window dressing… Business was not her strength. The one time Rune had come into some money, Richard, her ex-boyfriend, had thought up dozens of safe investment ideas. Businesses to start, stocks to buy. She'd accidentally left his portfolio files on the merry-go-round in Central Park. Not that it mattered anyway because she spent most of the money on a new place to live.

I'm not good with the practical stuff, she'd told him.

What she was good with was what she'dalways been good with: stories-like fairy tales and movies. And despite her mother's repeated warning when she was younger ("No girl can make a living at movies except you-know-what-kind-of-girl"), the odds of making a career in film seemed a lot better than in fairy tales.

She was, she'd decided, born to make films and this one-a real, grown-up film (adocumentary: the ground-zero of serious films)-had in the last hour or two became vitally important to her, as encompassing as the air pressure that hit her when the subway pounded into the tunnel. One way or another, this documentary was going to get made.

She looked out the window. Whatever subterranean colonies lived in the subways, they'd have to wait a few more years for their story to be told.

The train crashed past them or past rats and trash or past nothing at all while Rune thought about nothing but her film.

… but not about the bombing.

In the offices of Belvedere Post-Production the air-conditioning was off.

"Give me a break," she muttered.