Connie Willis - Remake

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.

I don’t think so. I’ve promised the current A Star Is Born James Dean a lifetime supply of chooch to tell me if anybody touches the Digimatte, and Fred’s still in litigation. And I don’t know how far back in time the overlap goes. Six weeks before she did it was only when I saw her in Brides. There’s no telling how long before that her image was there. Under two years, because it wasn’t in 42nd Street when I watched it the first time, when I was first starting Mayer’s list, and yeah, I know I was splatted and might have missed her. But I didn’t. I would know her face anywhere.

So under two years. And Heada, who knows everything, says Fred will be out of litigation in three months.

In the meantime, I keep busy, doing remakes and trying to make them good, getting Mayer to talk ILMGM into copyrighting Ruby Keeler and Eleanor Powell, working for the Resistance. I have even come up with a happy ending for Casablanca.

It is after the war, and Rick has come back to Casablanca after fighting with the Resistance, after who knows what hardships. The Café Américain has burned down, and everybody’s gone, even the parrot, even Sam, and Bogie stands and looks at the rubble for a long time, and then starts picking through the mess, trying to see what he can salvage.

He finds the piano, but when he tips it upright, half the keys fall out. He fishes an unbroken bottle of scotch out of the rubble and sets it on the piano and starts looking around for a glass. And there she is, standing in what’s left of the doorway.

She looks different, her hair’s pulled back, and she looks thinner, tired. You can see by looking at her that Paul Henreid’s dead and she’s gone through a lot, but you’d know that face anywhere.

She stands there in the door, and Bogie, still trying to find a glass, looks up and sees her.

No dialogue. No music. No clinch, in spite of Heada’s benighted ideas. Just the two of them, who never thought they’d see each other again, standing there looking at each other.

When I’m done with my remake, I’ll put my Casablanca ending in Happily Ever After’s comp for the tourates.

In the meantime, I have to separate my star-crossed lovers and send them off to suffer assorted hardships and pay for their sins. For which I need a plane.

I put the “Anything Goes” number on disk and backup, in case Kate Capshaw goes into litigation, and then ff to the Ford Tri-Motor and save that, too, in case the biplane doesn’t work.

“High Road to China,” I say, and then cancel it before it has a chance to come up. “Simultaneous display. Screen one, Temple of Doom. Two, Singin’ in the Rain. Three, Good News… ”

I go through the litany, and Alis appears on the screens, one after the other, in tap pants and bustles and green weskits, ponytails and red curls and shingled bobs. Her face looks the same in all of them, intent, alert, concentrating on the steps and the music, unaware that she is conquering encryptions and Brownian checks and time.

“Screen Eighteen,” I say, “ Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” and she twirls across the floor and leaps into the arms of Russ Tamblyn. And he has conquered time, too. They all have, Gene and Ruby and Fred, in spite of the death of the musical, in spite of the studio execs and the hackates and the courts, conquering time in a turn, a smile, a lift, capturing for a permanent moment what we want and can’t have.

I have been working on weepers too long. I need to get on with the business at hand, pick a plane, save the sentiment for my lovers’ Big Farewell.

“Cancel, all screens,” I say. “Center screen, High Road to —” and then stop and stare at the silver screen, like Ray Milland craving a drink in The Lost Weekend.

“Center screen,” I say. “Frame 96-1100. No sound. Broadway Melody of 1940, ” and sit down on the bed.

They are tapping side by side, dressed in white, lost in the music I cannot hear and the time steps that took them weeks to practice, dancing easily, without effort. Her light brown hair catches the light from somewhere.

Alis swings into a turn, her white skirt swirling out in the same clear arc as Eleanor’s — check and Brownian check — and that must have taken weeks, too.

Next to her, casual, elegant, oblivious to copyrights and takeovers, Fred taps out a counterpoint ripple, and Alis answers it back, and turns to smile over her shoulder.

“Freeze,” I say, and she stops, still turning, her hand outstretched and almost touching mine.

I lean forward, looking at the face I have seen ever since that first night watching her from the door, that face I would know anywhere. We’ll always have Paris.

“Forward three frames and hold,” I say, and she flashes me a delighted, an infinitely promising, smile.

“Forward realtime,” I say, and there is Alis, as she should be, dancing in the movies.