Death of a Blue Movie Star

Walking out of the Times Square subway, Rune ignored her admirers, hefted the camera to her shoulder and walked along the platform. She passed a half-dozen beggars, shaking her head at their pleas for coins, but she dropped a couple of quarters into a box in front of a young South American couple giving a tango demonstration to the rattling music of a boom box.

It was eight p.m., a week after she'd first met with Shelly and Nicole. Rune had called Shelly twice. At first the actress had been pretty evasive about doing the film but the second time she'd called, Shelly had said, "If Iwere to do it would you give me a chance to review the final cut?"

From her work at L amp;R, and her love of movies in general, Rune knew that the final cut-the last version of the film, what was shown in the theaters-was the Holy Grail of the film business. Only producers and a few elite directors controlled the final cut. No actor in the history of Hollywood ever had final cut approval.

But she now said, "Yes."

Instinctively feeling that it was the only way she could get Shelly Lowe to do the film.

"I'll let you know in a day or two for sure."

Rune was now out looking for atmosphere footage and for establishing shots-the long-angle scenes in films that orient the audience and tell them what city or neighborhood they're in.

And there was plenty of atmosphere here. Life in the Tenderloin, Times Square. The heart of the porno district in New York. She was excited at the thought of actually shooting footage for her first film but remembered the words of Larry, her mentor, as she was heading out of L amp;rR studios that night. "Don't overdo it, Rune. Any frig-gin' idiot can put together ninety minutes of great atmosphere. The story's the important thing. Don't ever bleedin' forget that. The story."

She eased into the swirl and noise and madness of Times Square, the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Broadway and Forty-second. She waited at the curb for the light, looking down at the accidental montage embedded in the asphalt at her feet: a Stroh's bottle cap, a piece of green glass, a brass key, two pennies. She squinted; in the arrangement, she saw a devil's face.

Ahead of her was a white high-rise on the island of concrete surrounded by the wide streets; fifty feet up, the day's news was displayed along a thick collar of moving lights.

"… SOVIETS EXPRESS HOPE FOR…"

The light changed and she never saw the end of the message. Rune crossed the street and passed a handsome black woman in a belted, yellow cotton dress, who was shouting into a microphone. "There's something even better in heaven. Amen! Give up your ways of the flesh. Amen! You can win the lottery, you can become a multimillionaire, billionaire, get everything you ever wanted. But all that gain cannot compare with what you'll find in heaven. Amen! Give up your sinful ways, your lusts… If I die in my little room tonight, why, I'd praise the good Lord because I know what that means. That means, I'm going to be in heaven tomorrow. Amen!"

A few people chorused withamens. Most walked on. Farther north in the Square, things were ritzier, around the TKTS discount ticket booth, where one could see the huge billboards that any out-of-towner who watched television would recognize. Here was Lindy's restaurant, with its famous and overpriced cheesecake. Here was the Brill Building-Tin Pan Alley. Several glossy, new office buildings, a new first-run movie theater.

But Rune avoided that area. She was interested in the southern part of Times Square. Where it was a DMZ.

She passed a number of signs in stores and arcades and theaters: stop the times square redevelopment project. This was the big plan to wipe the place clean and bring in offices and expensive restaurants and theaters. Purify the neighborhood. No one seemed to want it but there didn't seem to be organized resistance to the project. That was the contradiction of Times Square; it was a place that was energetically apathetic. Busyness and hustle abounded but you still sensed the area was on its way out. Many of the stores were going out of business. Nedick's-the hot dog station from the forties-was closing, to be replaced by slick, mirrored Mike's Hot Dogs and Pizza. Only a few of the classic Forty-second Street movie theaters-many of them had been grand old burlesque houses-were still open. And all they showed was porn or kung fu or slasher fiicks.

Rune glanced across the street at the huge old art-deco Amsterdam Theater, which was all boarded up, its curvaceous clock stopped at five minutes to three. Of which day of which month of which year? she wondered. Her eye strayed to an alleyway and she caught a flash of motion. Someone seemed to be watching her, someone in a red jacket. Wearing a hat, she believed. Then the stranger vanished.

Paranoid. Well, this was the place for it.