Free Remake by Connie Willis Page A

boys in derbies and straw hats, and Alis stopped, breathing hard, and pulled the remote out of her high-buttoned shoe. She rewound, stuck the remote back in her shoe, and propped the parasol against her shoulder. The girls appeared again, and Alis pointed her toe and did a turn.
    She had piled the desks in stacks on either side of the room, but there still wasn’t enough room. When she swung into the second turn, her outstretched hand crashed into them, nearly knocking them over. She reached for the remote again, rew’d, and saw me. She clicked the screen off and took a step backward. “What do you want?”
    I waggled my finger at her. “Give you a little advice. ‘Don’t want what you can’t have.’ Michael J. Fox,
For Love or Money
. Bar scene, party, nightclub, three bottles of champagne.Only not anymore. Yours truly has done his job. Right down the sink.”
    I swung my arm to demonstrate, like James Mason in
A Star Is Born
, and the chairs went over.
    “You’re splatted,” she said.
    “‘Nope.’” I grinned. “Gary Cooper in
The Plainsman”
I walked toward her. “Not splatted. Boiled, pickled, soused, sozzled. In a word, drunk as a skunk. It’s a Hollywood tradition. Do you know how many movies have drinking in them? All. Except the ones I’ve taken it out of.
Dark Victory, Citizen Kane, Little Miss Marker
. Westerns, gangster movies, weepers. It’s in all of them. Every one. Even
Broadway Melody of 1940
. Do you know why Fred got to dance the Beguine with Eleanor? Because George Murphy was too tanked up to go on. Forget dancing,” I said, making another sweeping gesture that nearly hit her. “What you need to do is have a drink.”
    I tried to hand her the bottle.
    She took another protective step toward the monitor. “You’re drunk.”
    “Bingo,” I said. “‘Very drunk indeed,’ as Audrey Hepburn would say.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. A movie with a happy ending.”
    “Why’d you come here?” she said. “What is it you want?”
    I took a swig out of the bottle, remembered it was empty, and looked at it sadly. “Came to tell you the movies aren’t real life. Just because you want something doesn’t mean you can have it. Came to tell you to go home before they remake you. Audrey should’ve gone home to Tulip, Texas. Came to tell you to go home to Carval.” I waited, swaying, for her to get the reference.
    “Andy Hardy Has Too Much to Drink”
she said. “He’s the one who needs to go home.”
    The screen faded to black for a few frames, and then I was sitting halfway down the steps, with Alis leaning over me. “Are you all right?” she said, and tears were glimmering in her eyes like stars.
    “I’m fine,” I said. “‘Alcohol is the great level-el-ler,’ as Jimmy Stewart would say. Need to pour some on these steps.”
    “I don’t think you should take the skids in your condition,” she said.
    “We’re all on the skids,” I said. “Only place left.”
    “Tom,” she said, and there was another fade to black, and Fred and Ginger were on both walls, sipping martinis by the pool.
    “That’ll have to go,” I said. “Have to send the message ‘We care.’ Gotta sober Jimmy Stewart up. So what if it’s the only way he can get up the courage to tell her what he really thinks? See, he knows she’s too good for him. He knows he can’t have her. He has to get drunk. Only way he can ever tell her he’s in love with her.”
    I put out my hand to her hair. “How do you do that?” I said. “That backlighting thing?”
    “Tom,” she said.
    I let my hand drop. “Doesn’t matter. They’ll ruin it in the remake. Not real anyway.”
    I waved my hand grandly at the screen like Gloria Swanson in
Sunset Boulevard
. “AU a ’lusion. Makeup and wigs and fake sets. Even Tara. Just a false front. FX and foleys.”
    “I think you’d better sit down,” Alis said, taking hold of my arm.
    I shook it off. “Even Fred. Not the real thing at all. All those taps were dubbed in