Remake

“He is, but he shouldn’t be. It’s all camera angles and stage sets. Fred Astaire always insisted his dances be shot full-length and one continuous take.”

“Frame ten,” I said so I wouldn’t have to put up with the mountain morph again, and started through the routine again. “Freeze.”

The screen froze her in midkick, her foot in the silver tap shoe extended the way Madame Dilyovska of Meadowville had taught her, her arms outstretched. She was supposed to be smiling, but she wasn’t. She had a look of intentness, of careful concentration under the scarlet lipstick, the penciled brows, the look she had worn that first night, watching Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire on the freescreen.

“Freeze,” I said again, even though the image hadn’t moved, and sat there for a long time, thinking about Fred Astaire and looking at her face, that face I had seen under endless wigs, in endless makeups, that face I would have known anywhere.

TITLE UP

Opening Credits

and Dissolve to

Pan Shot of Party Scene

MOVIE CLICHE #14: The Party. Disjointed snatches of bizarre conversation, excessive AS consumption, assorted outrageous behavior.

SEE: Notorious, Greed, The Graduate, Risky Business, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Dance, Fools, Dance, The Party.

She was born the year Fred Astaire died. Hedda told me that the first time I met Alis. It was at one of the dorm parties the studios sponsor. There’s one every week, ostensibly to show off their latest CG innovations and try to tempt hackate film-school seniors into a life of digitizing and indentured servitude, really so their execs can score some chooch (of which there is never enough) and some popsy (of which there is plenty, all of it in white halter dresses and platinum hair). Hollywood at its finest, which is why I stay away, but this one was being sponsored by ILMGM, and Mayer had promised me he’d be there.

I’d been doing a paste-up for him, digitizing his studio exec boss’s popsy into a River Phoenix movie. I wanted to give Mayer the opdisk and get paid before the boss found a new face. I’d already done the paste-up twice and fed in the feedback bypasses three times because he’d switched girlfriends, and this last time the new face had insisted on a scene with River Phoenix, which meant I’d had to watch every River Phoenix movie ever made, of which there are a lot — he was one of the first actors copyrighted. I wanted to get the money before Mayer’s boss changed partners again. The money and some AS’s.

The party was crammed into the dorm lounge, like always — freshies and faces and hackates and hangers-on. The usual suspects. There was a big fibe-op freescreen in the middle of the room. I glanced up at it, hoping to God it wasn’t the new River Phoenix movie, and was surprised to see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, dancing up a flight of stairs. Fred was wearing tails, and Ginger was in a white dress that flared into black at the hem. I couldn’t hear the music over the party din, but it looked like the Continental.

I couldn’t see Mayer. There was a guy in an ILMGM baseball cap and a beard — the hackates’ uniform — standing under the freescreen with a remote, holding forth to a couple of CG majors. I scanned the crowd, looking for suits and/or somebody I knew who’d give me some chooch.

“Hi,” one of the faces said breathily. She had platinum hair, a white halter dress, and a beauty mark, and she was very splatted. Her eyes weren’t focusing at all.

“Hi,” I said, still scanning the crowd. “And who are you supposed to be? Jean Harlow?”

“Who?” she said, and I wanted to believe that that was because of whatever AS she was doing, but it probably wasn’t. Ah, Hollywood, where everybody wants to be in the movies and nobody’s ever bothered to watch one.

“Jeanne Eagles?” I said. “Carole Lombard? Kim Basinger?”

“No,” she said, trying to focus. “Marilyn Monroe. Are you a studio exec?”

“Depends. Do you have any chooch?”

“No,” she said sadly. “All gone.”

“Then I’m not a studio exec,” I said. I could see an exec, though, over by the stairs, talking to another Marilyn. The Marilyn was wearing a white halter dress just like the one I was talking to had on.

I’ve never understood why the faces, who have nothing to sell but an original personality, an original face, all try to look like somebody else. But I guess it makes sense. Why should they be different from everybody else in Hollywood, which has always been in love with sequels and imitations and remakes?

“Are you in the movies?” my Marilyn persisted.

“Nobody’s in the movies,” I said, and started toward the studio exec through the crush.