It’s been three years, during which time China has gone through four provincial uprisings and six student riots, and Mayer has gone through three takeovers and eight bosses, the next to last of whom moved him up to Executive Vice-President.
Mayer didn’t tumble to my putting the AS’s back in for nearly three months, by which time I’d finished the whole Thin Man series, The Maltese Falcon, and all the Westerns, and Arthurton was on his way out.
Heada, still costarring as Joan Blondell, talked Mayer out of killing me and into making a stirring speech about Censorship and Deep Love for the Movies and getting himself spectacularly fired just in time for the new boss to hire him back as “the only moral person in this whole pop-pated town.”
Heada got promoted to set director and then (that next-to-last boss) to Assistant Producer in Charge of New Projects, and promptly hired me to direct a remake. Happy endings all around.
In the meantime, I programmed happy endings for Happily Ever After and graduated and looked for Alis. I found her in Pennies from Heaven, and in Into the Woods, the last musical ever made, and in Small Town Girl. I thought I’d found them all. Until tonight.
I watched the scene in the Indy again, looking at the silver tap shoes and the platinum wig and thinking about musicals. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom isn’t one. “Anything Goes” is the only number in it, and it’s only there because one of the scenes takes place in a nightclub, and they’re the floor show.
And maybe that’s the way to go. The remake I’m working on isn’t a musical either — it’s a weeper about a couple of star-crossed lovers — but I could change the hotel dining room scene into a nightclub. And then, the boss after next, do a remake with a nightclub setting, and put Fred (who’s bound to be out of litigation by then) in it, just in one featured number. That was all he was in Flying Down to Rio, a featured number, thirtyish, slightly balding, who could dance a little. And look what happened.
And before you know it, Mayer will be telling everybody the musical’s coming back, and I’ll get assigned the remake of 42nd Street and find out where Alis is and book the skids and we’ll put on a show. Anything’s possible.
Even time travel.
I accessed Vincent the other day to borrow his edit program, and he told me time travel’s a bust. “We were this close,” he said, his thumb and forefinger almost touching. “Theoretically, the Casimir effect should work for time as well as space, but they’ve sent image after image into a negative-matter region, and nothing. No overlap at all. I guess maybe there are some things that just aren’t possible.”
He’s wrong. The night Alis left, she said, “After what you said the other night, I thought maybe I could use a data harness for the lifts,” and I had wondered what it was I’d said, and when I showed her the opdisk, she’d said, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? Are you sure?”
“It’s not on the disk,” I’d said, “it’s in litigation,” and it had stayed in litigation till the next day. And when I checked, it had been in litigation the whole time I looked for her.
And for eight months before that, in a National Treasure suit the Film Preservation Society had brought. The night I saw Brides, it had been out of litigation exactly two hours. And had gone back in an hour later.
Alis had only been working at A Star Is Born for six months. Brides had been in litigation the whole time. Until after I found her. Until after I told her I’d seen her in it. And when I told her, she’d said, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? Are you sure?” and I’d thought she was surprised because the jumps and lifts were so hard, surprised because she hadn’t been trying to superimpose her image on the screen.
Brides hadn’t come out of litigation till the next day.
And a week and a half later Alis came to me. She came straight from the skids, straight from practicing with the harness and the armature that she’d thought might work, “after what you said the other night.” And it had worked. ” — I guess,” she’d said. “I mean—”
She’d come straight from practice, wearing Virginia Gibson’s pink gingham dress, Virginia Gibson’s pantaloons, wearing her costume for the barnraising dance she’d just done. The barnraising dance I’d seen her in six weeks before she ever did it. And my theory about her having somehow gone back in time was right after all, even if it was only her image, only pixels on a screen. She hadn’t been trying to discover time travel either. She had only been trying to learn routines, but the screen she’d been rehearsing in front of wasn’t a screen. It was a negative-matter region, full of randomized electrons and potential overlaps. Full of possibilities.
Nothing’s impossible, Vincent, I think, watching Alis do kick-turns in her sequined leotard. Not if you know what you want.
Heada is accessing me. “I was wrong. The Ford Tri-Motor’s at the beginning of the second one. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Beginning with frame—”
“I found it,” I say, frowning at the screen where Alis, in her platinum wig, is doing a brush step.
“What’s wrong?” Heada says. “Isn’t it going to work?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “When’s the Fred Astaire suit going to be settled?”
“A month,” she says promptly. “But it’s going right back in. Sofracima-Rizzoli’s claiming copyright infringement.”
“Who the hell is Sofracima-Rizzoli?”
“The studio that owns the rights to a movie Fred Astaire made in the seventies. The Purple Taxi. I figure they’ll settle. Three months. Why?” she says suspiciously.
“The plane in Flying Down to Rio. I’ve decided that’s what I want.”
“A biplane? You don’t have to wait for that. There are tons of other movies with biplanes in them. The Blue Max, Wings, High Road to China—” She stops, looking unhappy.
“Do they have skids in China?” I say.
“Are you kidding? They’re lucky to have bicycles. And enough to eat. Why?” she says, suddenly interested. “Have you found out where Alis is?”
“No.”
Heada hesitates, trying to decide whether to tell me something. “The assistant set director’s back from China. He says the word is, it’s Cultural Revolution 3. Book burnings, reeducation, they’ve shut at least one studio down and arrested the whole film crew.”
I should be worried, but I’m not, and Heada, who knows everything, pounces immediately.
“Is she back?” she says. “Have you had word from her?”
“No,” I say, because I have finally learned how to lie to Heada, and because it’s true. I don’t know where she is, and I haven’t had word from her. But I’ve gotten a message.
Fred Astaire has been out of litigation twice since Alis left, once between copyright suits for exactly eight seconds, the other time last month when the AFI filed an injunction claiming he was a historic landmark.
That time I was ready. I had the Beguine number on opdisk, backup, and tape, and was ready to check it before the watch-and-warn had even stopped beeping.
It was the middle of the night, as usual, and at first I thought I was still asleep or having one last flash.
“Enhance upper left,” I said, and watched it again. And again. And the next morning.
It looked the same every time, and the message was loud and clear: Alis is all right, in spite of uprisings and revolutions, and she’s found a place to practice and somebody to teach her Eleanor Powell’s heel-and-toe steps. And she’s going to come back, because China doesn’t have skids, and when she does, she’s going to dance the Beguine with Fred Astaire.
Or maybe she already has. I saw her in the barnraising number in Brides six weeks before she did it, and it’s been four since I saw her in Melody. Maybe she’s already back. Maybe she’s already done it.