Free Remake by Connie Willis Page B

afterwards, and they aren’t really stars. In the floor. It’s all done with mirrors.”
    I lurched toward the wall. “Only it’s not even a mirror. You can put your hand right through it.”
    After which things went to montage. I remember trying to get out at Forest Lawn to see where Holly Golightly was buried and Alis yanking on my arm and crying big jellied tears like the ones in Vincent’s program. And something about the station sign beeping Beguine, and then we were back in my room, which looked funny, the arrays were on the wrong side of the room, and they all showed Fred carrying Eleanor over to the pool, and I said, “You know whythe musical kicked off? Not enough drinking. Except Judy Garland,” and Alis said, “Is he splatted?” and then answered herself, “No, he’s drunk.” And I said, “‘I don’t want you to think I have a drinking problem. I can quit anytime. I just don’t want to,’” and waited, grinning foolishly, for the two of them to get the reference, but they didn’t.
“Some Like It Hot
, Marilyn Monroe,” I said, and began to cry thick, oily tears. “Poor Marilyn.”
    And then I had Alis on the bed and was popping her and watching her face so I’d see it when I flashed, but the flash didn’t come, and the room went to soft-focus around the edges, and I pounded harder, faster, nailing her against the bed so she couldn’t get away, but she was already gone and I tried to go after her and ran into the arrays, Fred and Eleanor saying good-bye at the airport, and put my hand up and it went right through and I lost my balance. But when I fell, it wasn’t into Alis’s arms or into the arrays. It was into the negative-matter regions of the skids.
     
    LEWIS STONE:
[Sternly]
I hope you’ve learned your lesson, Andrew. Drinking doesn’t solve your problems. It only makes them worse.
    MICKEY ROONEY:
[Hangdog]
I know that now, Dad. And I’ve learned something else, too. I’ve learned I should mind my own business and not meddle in other people’s affairs.
    LEWIS STONE:
[Doubtfully]
I hope so, Andrew. I certainly hope so.
    In
The Philadelphia Story
, Katharine Hepburn’s getting drunk solved everything: her stuffed-shirt fiancé broke off the engagement, Jimmy Stewart quit tabloid journalism and started the serious novel his faithful girlfriend had always known he had in him, Mom and Dad reconciled, and Katharine Hepburn finally admitted she’d been in love with Cary Grant all along. Happy endings all around.
    But the movies, as I had tried so soddenly to tell Alis, are not Real Life. And all I had done by getting drunk was to wake up in Heada’s dorm room with a two-day hangover and a six-week suspension from the skids.
    Not that I was going anywhere. Andy Hardy learns his lesson, forgets about girls, and settles down to the serious task of Minding His Own Business, a job made easier by the fact that Heada wouldn’t tell me where Alis was because she wasn’t speaking to me.
    And by Heada’s (or Alis’s) pouring all my liquor down the drain like Katharine Hepburn in
The African Queen
and Mayer’s putting a hold on my account till I turned in last week’s dozen. Last week’s dozen consisted of
The PhiladelphiaStory
, which I was only halfway through. So it was heigh-ho, heigh-ho, off to work we go to find twelve squeaky-cleans I could claim I’d already edited, and what better place to look than Disney?
    Only
Snow White
had a cottage full of beer tankards and a dungeon full of wine goblets and deadly potions.
Sleeping Beauty
was no better—it had a splatted royal steward who’d drunk himself literally under the table—and
Pinocchio
not only drank beer but smoked cigars the Anti-Smoking League had somehow missed. Even
Dumbo
got drunk.
    But animation wipes are comparatively easy, and all
Alice in Wonderland
had was a few smoke rings, so I was able to finish off the dozen and replenish
my
stock of deadly potions so at least I didn’t have to watch
Fantasia
cold sober. And