Connie Willis - Remake

Okay. The hackate had sent her to 1950 (scratch that — the copyright was for the release date — had sent her to 1949) and she had waited around for four years, dancing chorus parts and palling around with Virginia Gibson, waiting for her chance to clunk Virginia on the head, stuff her behind a set, and take her place in Brides. So she could impress the producer of Funny Face with her dancing so that he’d offer her a part, and she’d finally get to dance with Fred, if only in the same production number.

Even splatted on chooch, I couldn’t have bought that one. But it was her, so there had to be an explanation. Maybe in between chorus jobs Alis had gotten a job as a warmbody. They’d had them back then. They were called stand-ins, and maybe she got to be Virginia Gibson’s because they looked alike, and Alis had bribed her to let her take her place, just for one number, or had connived to have Virginia miss a shooting session. Anne Baxter in All About Eve. Or maybe Virginia had an AS problem, and when she’d showed up drunk, Alis had had to take her place.

That theory wasn’t much better. I called up the menu again. If Alis had gotten one chorus job, she might have gotten others. I scanned through the musicals, trying to remember which ones had chorus numbers. Singin’ in the Rain did. That party scene I’d taken all that champagne out of.

I called up the record of changes to find the frame number and ff’d through the nonchampagne, to Donald O’Connor’s saying, “You gotta show a movie at a party. It’s a Hollywood law,” through said movie, to the start of the chorus number.

Girls in skimpy pink skirts and flapper hats ran onstage to the tune of “You Are My Lucky Star” and a bad camera angle. I was going to have to do an enhance to see their faces clearly. But there wasn’t any need to. I’d found Alis.

And she might have managed to bribe Virginia Gibson. She might even have managed to stuff her and the Tea for Two redhead behind their respective sets. But Debbie Reynolds hadn’t had an AS problem, and if Alis had crammed her behind a set, somebody would have noticed.

It wasn’t time travel. It was something else, a comp-generated illusion of some kind in which she’d somehow managed to dance and get it on film. In which case, she hadn’t disappeared forever into the past. She was still in Hollywood. And I was going to find her.

“Off,” I said to the comp, grabbed my jacket, and flung myself out the door.

MOVIE CLICHE #419: The Blocked Escape. Hero/Heroine on the run, near escape with bad guys, eludes them, nearly home free, villain looms up suddenly, asks, “Going somewhere?”

SEE: The Great Escape, The Empire Strikes Back, North by Northwest, The Thirty-Nine Steps.

Heada was standing outside the door, arms folded, tapping her foot. Rosalind Russell as the Mother Superior in The Trouble with Angels.

“You’re supposed to be lying down,” she said.

“I feel fine.”

“That’s because the alcohol isn’t out of your system yet,” she said. “Sometimes it takes longer than others. Have you peed?”

“Yes,” I said. “Buckets. Now if you’ll excuse me, Nurse Ratchet…”

“Wherever you’re going, it can wait till you’re clean,” she said, blocking my way. “I mean it. Ridigaine’s not anything to fool with.” She steered me back into the room. “You need to stay here and rest. Where were you going anyway? To see Alis? Because if you were, she’s not there. She’s dropped all her classes and moved out of her dorm.”

And in with Mayer’s boss, she meant. “I wasn’t going to see Alis.”

“Where were you going?”

It was useless to lie to Heada, but I tried it anyway. “Virginia Gibson was in Funny Face. I was going out to try to find a copy of it.”

“Why can’t you get it off the fibe-op?”

“Fred Astaire’s in it. That’s why I asked you if he was out of litigation.” I let that sink in for a couple of frames. “You said it might just be a likeness. I wanted to see if it’s Alis or just somebody who looks like her.”

“So you were going out to look for a pirated copy?” Heada said, as if she almost believed me. “I thought you said she was in six musicals. They aren’t all in litigation, are they?”

“There weren’t any close-ups in Athena,” I said, and hoped she wouldn’t ask why I couldn’t enhance. “And you know how she is about Fred Astaire. If she’s going to be in anything, it’d be Funny Face.”

None of this made any sense, since the idea was supposedly to find something Virginia Gibson was in, not Alis, but Heada nodded when I mentioned Fred Astaire. “I can get you one,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. “It doesn’t even have to be digitized. Tape’ll work.” I led her to the door. “I’ll stay here and lie down and let the ridigaine do its stuff.”

She crossed her arms again.

“I swear,” I said. “I’ll give you my key. You can lock me in.”

“You’ll lie down?”

“Promise,” I lied.

“You won’t,” she said, “and you’ll wish you had.” She sighed. “At least you won’t be on the skids. Give me the key.”

I handed her the card.

“Both of them,” she said.

I handed her the other card.

“Lie down,” she said, and shut the door and locked me in.

MOVIE CLICHE #86: Locked In.

SEE: Broken Blossoms, Wuthering Heights, The Phantom Foe, The Palm Beach Story, The Man with the Golden Arm, The Collector.

Well, I needed more proof anyway before I confronted Alis, and I was starting to feel the headache I’d lied to Heada about having. I went into the bathroom and followed orders and then laid down on the bed and called up Singin’ in the Rain.

There weren’t any telltale matte lines or pixel shadows, and when I did a noise check, there weren’t any signs of uneven degradation. Which didn’t prove anything. I could do undetectable paste-ups with a fifth of William Powell’s Thin Man rye in me.

I needed more data. Preferably something full-length and a continuous take, but Fred was still in litigation. I called up the list of musicals again. Alis had been wearing a bustle the day I went out to see her, which meant a period piece. Not Meet Me in St. Louis. She had said there wasn’t any dancing in it. Showboat, maybe. Or Gigi.

I went through both of them, looking for parasols and backlit hair, but it took forever, and ff’ing made me dizzy.

“Global search,” I said, pressing my hand to my eyes, “dance routines,” and spent the next ten minutes explaining to the comp what a dance routine was. “Forward at 40,” I said, and took it through Carousel. The program worked okay, though this was still going to take forever. I debated eliminating ballet, decided the comp wouldn’t have any more idea than Hollywood did of what it was, and added an override instead.

“Instant to next routine, cue,” I said. “Next, please,” and called up On Moonlight Bay.

Bay was another Doris Day toothfest, so even with the override it took far too long to get through it, but at least I could “next, please,” when I saw there weren’t any bustles.

“Vernon and Irene Castle,” I said. No, that was a Fred Astaire. The Harvey Girls?

I got more legalese. Was everybody in litigation? I called up the menu, scanning it for period pieces.

“In the Good Old Summertime,” I said, and then was sorry. It was a Judy Garland, and Alis had been right, there wasn’t any dancing in Judy Garland movies. I tried to remember what else she’d said that night in my room and what movies she’d asked for. On the Town.