“You can squeeze more people in during rush hour without seats. You don’t have to stand like that, you know.”
“I know,” she said, moving her feet together. “I just keep expecting us to move.”
“We already did,” I said, glancing at the station sign. It had changed to Pasadena. “For about a nanosecond. Station to station and no in-between. It’s all done with mirrors.”
I stood on the yellow warning strip and put my hand out toward the side wall. “Only they’re not mirrors. They’re a curtain of negative matter you could put your hand right through. You need to get a studio exec on the make to explain it to you.”
“Isn’t it dangerous?” she said, looking down at the yellow warning strip.
“Not unless you try to walk through them, which ravers sometimes try to do. There used to be barriers, but the studios made them take them out. They got in the way of their promos.”
She turned and looked at the far wall. “It’s so big!”
“You should see it during the day. They shut off the back part at night. So the druggates don’t piss on the floor. There’s another room back there,” I pointed at the rear wall, “that’s twice as big as this.”
“It’s like a rehearsal hall,” Alis said. “Like the dance studio in Swing-time. You could almost dance in here.”
“ ‘I won’t dance,’ ” I said. “ ‘Don’t ask me.’ ”
“Wrong movie,” she said, smiling. “That’s from Roberta.”
She turned back to the mirrored side wall, her skirt flaring out, and her reflection called up the image of Eleanor Powell next to Fred Astaire on the dark, polished floor, her hand—
I forced it back, staring determinedly at the other wall, where a trailer for the new Star Trek movie was flashing, till it receded, and then turned back to Alis.
She was looking at the station sign. Pasadena was flashing. A line of green arrows led to the front, and the tourates were following them through the left-hand exit door and off to Disneyland.
“Where are we going?” Alis said.
“Sight-seeing,” I said. “The homes of the stars. Which should be Forest Lawn, only they aren’t there anymore. They’re back up on the silver screen working for free.”
I waved my hand at the near wall, where a trailer for the remake of Pretty Woman, starring, natch, Marilyn Monroe, was showing.
Marilyn made an entrance in a red dress, and the Marilyn stopped practicing her pout and came over to watch. Marilyn flipped an escargot at a waiter, went shopping on Rodeo Drive for a white halter dress, faded out on a lingering kiss with Clark Gable.
“Appearing soon as Lena Lament in Singin’ in the Rain,” I said. “So tell me why you hate Gene Kelly.”
“I don’t hate him exactly,” she said, considering. “American in Paris is awful, and that fantasy thing in Singin’ in the Rain, but when he dances with Donald O’Connor and Frank Sinatra, he’s actually a good dancer. It’s just that he makes it look so hard.”
“And it isn’t?”
“No, it is. That’s the point.” She frowned. “When he does jumps or complicated steps, he flails his arms and puffs and pants. It’s like he wants you to know how hard it is. Fred Astaire doesn’t do that. His routines are lots harder than Gene Kelly’s, the steps are terrible, but you don’t see any of that on the screen. When he dances, it doesn’t look like he’s working at all. It looks easy, like he just that minute made it up—”
The image of Fred and Eleanor pushed forward again, the two of them in white, tapping casually, effortlessly, across the starry floor—
“And he made it look so easy you thought you’d come to Hollywood and do it, too,” I said.
“I know it won’t be easy,” she said quietly. “I know there aren’t a lot of liveactions—”
“Any,” I said. “There aren’t any liveactions being made. Unless you’re in Bogota. Or Beijing. It’s all CGs. No actors need apply.”
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?