Remake

Dancers either, I thought, but didn’t say it. I was still hoping to get a pop out of this, if I could hang onto her till the next flash. If there was a next flash. I was getting a killing headache, which wasn’t supposed to be a side-effect.

“But if it’s all computer graphics,” Alis was saying earnestly, “then they can do whatever they want. Including musicals.”

“And what makes you think they want to? There hasn’t been a musical since 1996.”

“They’re copyrighting Fred Astaire,” she said, gesturing at the screen. “They must want him for something.”

Something is right, I thought. The sequel to The Towering Inferno. Or snuffporn movies.

“I said I knew it wouldn’t be easy,” she said defensively. “You know what they said about Fred Astaire when he first came to Hollywood? Everybody said he was washed up, that his sister was the one with all the talent, that he was a no-talent vaudeville hoofer who’d never make it in movies. On his screen test somebody wrote, Thirty, balding, can dance a little.’ They didn’t think he could do it either, and look what happened.”

There were movies for him to dance in, I didn’t say, but she must have seen it in my face because she said, “He was willing to work really hard, and so am I. Did you know he used to rehearse his routines for weeks before the movie even started shooting? He wore out six pairs of tap shoes rehearsing Carefree. I’m willing to practice just as hard as he did,” she said. “I know I’m not good enough. I need to take ballet, too. All I’ve had is jazz and tap. And I don’t know very many routines yet. And I’m going to have to find somebody to teach me ballroom.”

Where? I thought. There hasn’t been a dancing teacher in Hollywood in twenty years. Or a choreographer. Or a musical. CGs might have killed the liveaction, but they hadn’t killed the musical. It had died all by itself back in the sixties.

“I’ll need a job to pay for the dancing lessons, too,” she was saying. “The girl you were talking to at the party — the one who looks like Marilyn Monroe — she said maybe I could get a job as a face. What do they do?”

Go to parties, stand around trying to get noticed by somebody who’ll trade a pop for a paste-up, do chooch, I thought, wishing I had some.

“They smile and talk and look sad while some hackate does a scan of them,” I said.

“Like a screen test?” Alis said.

“Like a screen test. Then the hackate digitizes the scan of your face and puts it into a remake of A Star Is Born and you get to be the next Judy Garland. Only why do that when the studio’s already got Judy Garland? And Barbra Streisand. And Janet Gaynor. And they’re all copyrighted, they’re already stars, so why would the studios take a chance on a new face? And why take a chance on a new movie when they can do a sequel or a copy or a remake of something they already own? And while we’re at it, why not star remakes in the remake? Hollywood, the ultimate recycler!”

I waved my hand at the screen where ILMGM was touting coming attractions. “The Phantom of the Opera,” the voice-over said. “Starring Anthony Hopkins and Meg Ryan.”

“Look at that,” I said. “Hollywood’s latest effort — a remake of a remake of a silent!”

The trailer ended, and the loop started again. The digitized lion did its digitized roar, and above it a digitized laser burned in gold: “Anything’s Possible!”

“Anything’s possible,” I said, “if you have the digitizers and the Crays and the memory and the fibe-op feed to send it out over. And the copyrights.”

The golden words faded into fog, and Scarlett simpered her way out of it towards us, holding up her hoop skirt daintily.

“Anything’s possible, but only for the studios. They own everything, they control everything, they—”

I broke off, thinking, there’s no way she’ll give me a pop after that little outburst. Why didn’t you just tell her straight out her little dream’s impossible?

But she wasn’t listening. She was looking at the screen, where the copyright cases were being trotted out for inspection. Waiting for Fred Astaire to appear.

“The first time I ever saw him, I knew what I wanted,” she said, her eyes on the wall. “Only ‘wanted’ isn’t the right word. I mean, not like you want a new dress—”

“Or some chooch,” I said.

“It’s not even that kind of wanting. It’s… there’s a scene in Top Hat where Fred Astaire’s dancing in his hotel room and Ginger Rogers has the room below him, and she comes up to complain about the noise, and he tells her that sometimes he just finds himself dancing, and she says—”

“ ‘I suppose it’s a kind of affliction,’ ” I said.

I’d expected her to smile at that, the way she had at my other movie quotes, but she didn’t.