A karate flick was on the monitor.
Oriental men in black silk trousers sailed through the air, fists hissing like jet planes. Every time somebody got hit, it sounded like a cracking board.
One of the Chinese actors stepped toward a couple of rivals and spoke in a southern drawl. "Okay, you two, back outa here real slow and you won't get hurt."
Rune leaned back on the stool in front of the register at Washington Square Video. Squinted at the monitor. "Hey, you hear that? That is completely wild! He sounds just like John Wayne."
Tony held his blue deli coffee cup and cigarette in one hand and flipped through the Post with the other. He looked up at the screen critically. "And he's going to beat the shit out of those guys in ten seconds flat."
It took closer to sixty and while he was doing it Rune mused, "You think that's easy? Dubbing, I mean. You think I could get a job doing that?"
Tony asked, "Don't tease me, Rune. You quitting?… Or you mean when you get fired?"
Rune spun her bracelets. "They don't have to memorize their lines, do they? They just sit in a studio and read the script. That'd be so cool-it'd be like being an actress without having to get up in front of people and memorize things."
Frankie Greek was combing out his shaggy hair with a pick. He rubbed the mustache he'd started a month ago; it looked like a faint smudge of dirt. He stared at the TV screen. "Shit, look at that! He kicked four guys at once." He turned to Rune. "You know, I just found this out. A lot of music in movies, they do it afterward. They add it on."
"What, you thought they had a band on set?" Rune shut off the VCR. Tony looked at the TV. "Hey, what're you doing?"
"It stinks," she said.
"It doesn't stink. It's great."
"The acting's ridiculous, the costumes are silly, there's no story…"
Frankie Greek said, "That's what makes it so, like, you know…" The end of his sentence got away from him, as they often did. He prowled through the racks to find another film.
Rune looked over the store: the stained gray industrial carpet, the black strings-left over from promotional cards-hanging down from the air-conditioning, the faded red-and-green holiday tinsel that was stuck to the walls with yellowing glue. "I was at a video store on the Upper East Side and it was a lot classier than here."
Tony looked around. "What do you want? We're like the subway. We serve a valuable function. Nobody gives a shit we're classy, not classy."
Rune checked out two movies to a young man, one of the Daytime People, she called them. They'd rent movies during the day; they worked at night-actors, waiters, bartenders, writers. At first she'd envied them their alternative lifestyles but after she got to thinking about it- how they were always bleary-eyed or hung over and seemed dazed, smelled like they hadn't brushed their teeth-she decided aimlessness like that depressed her. People would be better off going on quests, she concluded.
She returned to her previous topic and said to Tony, "That place uptown? The video store? They had all these foreign films and ballets and plays. I'd never heard of most of them. I mean, it's like you go in there ask for Predator Cop, this alarm goes off and they throw you out."
Tony didn't look up from Dear Abby. "Got news, babe: Predator Cop makes us money. Master-fucking-piece Theatre doesn't."
"Wait, is that a real movie?" Frankie said. "Master… What?"
"Jesus Christ," Tony muttered.
Rune said, "I just think we could doll the place up some. Get new carpet. Oh, maybe we could have a wine-and-cheese night."
Frankie Greek said, "Hey, I could get the band to come down. We could play. Some Friday night. And, like, how's this? You could put a camera on us, put some monitors in the front window. So people, the ones out-side'd notice us and they'd come in. Cool. How's that?"
"It sucks, that's how it is."
"Just an idea." Frankie Greek slipped a new cassette into the VCR.
"Another one?" Rune said, watching the credits.
"No, no. This is different," Frankie said. He showed Tony the cover.
"Now you're talking." Tony folded up the newspaper and concentrated on the screen. Patient as a priest with a novitiate, he said, "Rune, you know who that is? It's Bruce Lee. We're talking classic.
In a hundred years people'll still be watching this."
"I'm going to lunch," she said.
"You don't know what you're missing."
"Bye."
"Be back in twenty."
"Okay," she called. Adding, once she was outside, "I'll try."
Richard's idea about the film school was a good one. But she didn't actually need to go to the film department itself.
She stopped at the Eighth Street Deli, which did a big business selling overpriced sandwiches to rich NYU students and professors.
She paused on her way inside, looked around. This was the deli where that guy with the curly hair-the one she sorta recognized/sorta didn't-had ducked into yesterday. She wondered again if he'd been checking her out.
Thinking, You've got yourself more secret admirers? First Richard, now him. Never rains but…
Get real, she reminded herself, and walked up to the counterman, who said, "Next… oh, hi."
"Hey there, Rickie," Rune said.
He was working his way through school. He was an NYU junior, a film major, and he could have been Robert Redford's younger brother. When Rune first started working at WSV, she'd spent a ton of money and many hours here, talking to Rickie about films-and hoping he'd ask her out. They'd remained good friends even after Rickie introduced her to his live-in boyfriend.
She lifted the cello-wrapped apple pie for him to see, opened it, began eating. He handed her usual-coffee with milk, no sugar. They talked about movies for five minutes, while he made tall sandwiches out of roast beef and turkey and tongue. Rickie knew a lot of heavy-duty stuff about movies and even though he always said "film" or "cinema," never "movies," he didn't get obnoxious about it. She finished the pie and he refilled her coffee.
"Rickie," Rune asked, "you know anything about a film called Manhattan Is My Beat?"
"Never heard of it."
"Came out in the late forties."
He shook his head. Then she asked, "Is there like an old film museum at your school?"
"We've got a library. Not a museum. The public library's got that arts branch up at Lincoln Center. MOMA's probably got an archive but I don't think they let just anybody in."
"Thanks, love," she said.
"Hey, I don't make the rules. Start working on a grant proposal or get a letter from your grad school adviser and they'll let you in. But that's pretty heady stuff. Experimental films. Indies. What do you need to know?"
"I need to find the screenwriter."
"What studio made it?"
"Metropolitan."
He nodded. "Good old Metro. Why don't you just call 'em up and ask?"
"They're still around?"
"Oh, they're like everybody else nowadays, owned by some big entertainment conglomerate. But, yeah, they're still around."
"And somebody there'd know where the writer is now?"
"Be your best bet. Screen Writers Guild probably won't give out any information about members. Hell, I were you, I wouldn't even call; I'd just go pay 'em a visit."
Rune paid. He charged her a nickel for the pie. She winked her thanks. Then said, "Can't afford to fly out to L.A."
"Take a subway, it's cheaper."
"You need a hell of a lot of transfers," Rune said.
"The Manhattan office, darling."
"Metro has an office here?"
"Sure. All the studios do. Oh, the East Coast office wants to rip the throat out of the West Coast office and vice versa but they're still part of the same company. They're that big building on Central Park West. You must've seen it."
"Oh, like I ever go uptown."
Awesome.
The corporate office building of the Entertainment Corporation of America, proud owner of Metropolitan Pictures.
Forty stories overlooking Central Park. A single company. Rune couldn't imagine having twenty stories of fellow workers above you and twenty stories below. (She tried to imagine forty stories of Washington Square Video, filled with Tonys and Eddies and Frankie Greeks. It was scary.)
She wondered if all the Metro employees ate together in a single cafeteria? Did they all go on a company picnic, taking over Central Park for the day?
Waiting for the guard to get off the phone, she also wondered if someone would see her and think she was an actress and maybe pull her onto a soundstage and throw a script into her hand…
Though as she flipped through the company's annual report she realized that that probably wouldn't be happening because this wasn't the filmmaking part of the studio. The New York office of Metro did only financing, licensing, advertising, promotion, and public relations.
No casting or filming. But that was all right; her life was a little too busy just then for a career change that'd take her to Hollywood.
The guard handed her a pass and told her to take the express elevator to thirty-two.
"Express?" Rune said. Grinning. Excellent!
Her ears popped in the absolutely silent, carpeted elevator. In twenty seconds she was stepping off on the thirty-second floor, ignoring the receptionist and walking straight to the ceiling-to-floor window that offered an awesome view of Central Park, Harlem, the Bronx, West-chester, and the ends of the earth.
Rune was hypnotized.
"May I help you?" the receptionist asked three times before Rune turned around.
"If 1 worked here I'd never get any work done," Rune murmured.
"Then you wouldn't be working here very long." Reluctantly she pried herself away from the window. "This is the view you'd have if you flew to work on a pterodactyl." The woman stared. Rune explained, "That's a flying dinosaur." Still silence. Try being adult, Rune warned herself. She smiled. "Hi. My name's Rune. I'm here to see Mr. Weinhoff."
The receptionist looked at a chart on a clipboard. "Follow me." She led her down a quiet corridor.
On the walls were posters of some of the studio's older movies. She paused to touch the crisp, wrinkled paper delicately. Farther down the hall were posters of newer films. The ads for movies hadn't changed much over the years. A sexy picture of the hero or heroine, the title, some really stupid line.
He was looking for peace, she was looking for escape. Together, they found the greatest adventure of their lives.
She'd seen the action movie that line referred to. And if the story had been their greatest adventure, well, then those characters'd been leading some totally bargain-basement lives.
Rune paused for one last aerial view of the Magic Kingdom, then followed the receptionist down a narrow hallway.
Betting herself that Mr. Weinhoff's would be one totally scandalous office. A corner one, looking north and west. With a bar and a couch. Maybe he'd be homesick for California so what he'd insisted they do to keep him happy was to put a lot of palm trees around the room. A marble desk. A leather couch. A bar, of course. Would he offer her a highball? What was a highball exactly?
They turned another corner.
She pictured Weinhoff fat and wearing a three-piece checkered suit, smoking cigars and talking like a baby to movie stars. What if Tom Cruise called while she was sitting in his office? Could she ask to say hello? Hell, yes, she'd ask. Or Robert Duvall! Sam Shepard? Oh, please, please, please…
They turned one more corner and stopped beside a battered Pepsi machine. The receptionist nodded. "There." She turned around.
"Where?" Rune asked, looking around. Confused.
The woman pointed to what Rune thought was a closet, and disappeared.
Rune stepped into the doorway, next to which a tiny sign said S. Weinhoff.
The office, about ten feet by ten, had no windows. It wasn't even ten by ten really, because it was stacked around the perimeter with magazines and clippings and books and posters. The desk-chipped, cigarette-burned wood-was so cluttered and cheap that even the detective with the close-together eyes would've refused to work at it.
Weinhoff looked up from Variety and motioned her in. "So, you're the student, what's the name again? I'm so bad with names."
"Rune."
"Nice name, I like it. Parents were hippies, right? Peace, Love, Sunshine, Aquarius. All that. Can you find a place to sit?"
Well, she got one thing right: he was fat. A ruddy nose and burst vessels in his huge cheeks. A great Santa Glaus-if you could have a Jewish Santa. No checkered suit. No suit at all. Just a polyester shirt, white with brown stripes. A brown tie. Gray slacks.
Rune sat down.
"You want coffee? You're too young to drink coffee, you ask me. 'Course my granddaughter drinks coffee. She smokes too. God forbid that's all. she does. 1 don't approve, but I sin, so how can I cast stones?"
"No, thanks."
"I'll get some, you don't mind." He stepped into the corridor and she saw him making instant coffee at a water dispenser.
So much for the highballs.
He sat back down at his desk and said to her, "So how'd you hear about me?"
"I called the public relations department here?" Her voice rose in a question. "See, I'm in this class-The Roots of Film Noir, it's called-and I'm writing this paper. I had some questions about a film and they said they had somebody on staff who'd been around for a while…"
" 'Around for a while,' I like that. That's a euphemism is what that is."
"And here I am."
"Well, I'll tell you why they sent you to me. You want to know?"
"I'll tell you. What I am is the unofficial studio historian at Metro. Meaning I've been here nearly forty years and if I were making real money or had anything to do with production they'd've fired my butt years ago. But I'm not and I don't so I'm not worth the trouble to boot me out. So I hang around here and answer questions from pretty young students. You don't mind, I say that?"
"Say it all you want."
"Good. Now the message said-do I believe it?- you've got some questions about Manhattan Is My Beat?"
"That's right."
"Well, that's interesting. You see a lot of students or reporters interested in Scorsese, Welles, Hitch. And you can always count on Fassbinder, Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola. Three, four years ago we got calls about Cimino. That Heaven's Gate thing. Oh, we got calls! But I don't think anybody's ever done anything about the director of Manhattan Is My Beat. Hal Reinhart. Anyway, I digress. What do you need to know?"
"The movie was true, wasn't it?"
Weinhoff's eyes crinkled. "No, that's the whole point. That's why it's such a big-deal movie. It wasn't shot on sets, it was based on a real crime, it didn't cast Gable, Tracy, Lana Turner, Bette Davis, Gary Cooper, or any of the other sure-draw stars. You understand? None of the actors that'd guarantee that a film, no matter it was a good film, it was a bad film, that a film opened, you know what I mean, opened!"
"Sure." Rune's pen sped across the pages of a notebook. She'd bought it a half hour before, had written Film Noir 101 on the cover, then smeared the ink with her palm to age it, like a master forger. "It means people go to see it no matter what it's about."
"Right you are. Now, Manhattan Is My Beat was probably the first of the independents."
"Why don't you hear about it nowadays?"
"Because it was also the first of the bad independents. You've seen it?"
"Four times."
"What, you also tell your dentist to drill without no-vocaine? Well, if you saw it that many times, you know it didn't quite get away from the melodrama of the big studio crime stories of the thirties. The director, Rein-hart, couldn't resist the shoeshine boy's mother falling downstairs, the high camera angles, the score hitting you over the head you should miss a plot twist. So other films got remembered better. But it was a big turning point for movies."
His enthusiasm was infectious. She found herself nodding excitedly.
"You ever see Boomerang? Elia Kazan. He shot it on location. Not the greatest story in the world for a crime flick-I mean, there's not much secret who did it. But the point isn't what the story was but how it was told. That was about a real crime too. It was a-whatta you call it?-evolutionary step up from the studio-lot productions Hollywood thought you had to do. Manhattan Is My Beat was of the same ilk.
"Oh, you gotta understand, the era had a lot to do with it too, I mean, shifting to movies like that. The War, it robbed the studios of people and materials. The big-production set pieces and epics-uh-uh, there was no way they could produce those. And it was damn good they did. You ask me-hey, who's asking me, right?- but I think movies like Manhattan helped move movies out of the world of plays and into their own world.
"Boomerang. The House on 92nd Street. Henry Hathaway did that. Oh, he was a gentleman, Henry was. Quiet, polite. He made that film, I guess, in forty-seven. Manhattan Is My Beat was in that movement. It's not a good film. But it's an important film."
"And they were all true, those films?" Rune asked.
"Well, they weren't documentaries. But, yeah, they were accurate. Hathaway worked with the FBI to do House."
"So, then, if there was a scene in the movie, say the characters went someplace, then the real-life characters may have gone there?"
"Maybe."
"Did you know anyone who worked on Manhattan? I mean, know them personally?"
"Sure. Dana Mitchell."
"He played Roy, the cop."
"Right, right, right. Handsome man. We weren't close but we had dinner two, three times. Him and his second wife, I think it was. Charlotte Goodman we had signed here for a couple films in the fifties. I knew Hal of course. He was a contract director for us when studios still did that. He also did-"
"West of Fort Laramie. And Bomber Patrol."
"Hey, you know your films. Hal's still around, I haven't talked to him in twenty years, I guess."
"Is he in New York?"
"No, he's on the West Coast. Where, I have no idea. Dana and Charlotte are dead now. The exec producer on the project died about five years ago. Some of the other studio people may be alive but they aren't around here. This is no business for old men. I'm paraphrasing Yeats. You know your poetry? You studying poets in school?"
"Yeah, all of them, Yeats, Erica Jong, Stallone."
"Stallone?"
"Yeah, you know, Rambo."
"Your school teaches some strange things. But education, who understands it?"
Rune asked, "Isn't there anybody in New York who worked on the film?"
"Whoa, darling, the spirit is willing but the mind is weak." Weinhoff pulled out a film companion book. And looked up the movie. "Ah, here we go. Hey, here we go.
Manhattan Is My Beat, 1947. Oh, sure, Ruby Dahl, who could forget her? She played Roy's fiancee."
"And she lives in New York?"
"Ruby? Naw, she's gone. Same old story. Booze and pills. What a business we're in. What a business."
"What about the writer?"
Weinhoff turned back to the book. "Hey, here we go. Sure. Raoul Elliott. And if he was credited as the writer, then he really wrote it. All by himself. I know Raoul. He was an old-school screenwriter. None of this pro-wrestling for credits you see now." In a singsong voice Weinhoff said, " '1 polished sixty-seven pages of the tenth draft so I get the top credit in beer-belly extended typeface and that other hack only polished fifty-three pages so he gets his name in antleg condensed or no screen credit at all.' Whine, whine, whine… Naw, I know Raoul. If he got the credit he wrote the whole thing-first draft through the shooting script."
"Does he live in New York?"
"Ah, the poor man. He's got Alzheimer's. God forbid. He'd been in a home for actors and theatrical people for a while. But last year it got pretty bad; now he's in a nursing home out in Jersey."
"You know where?"
"Sure, but I don't think he'll tell you much of anything."
"I'd still like to talk to him."
Weinhoff wrote down the name and address for her. He shook his head. "Funny, you hear about students nowadays, they don't want to do this, they don't want to do that. You're-I pegged you right away, I don't mind saying-you're something else. Talking to an old yenta like me, going to all this trouble just for a school paper."
Rune stood up and shook the old man's hand. "Like, I think you get out of life what you put into it."
All right. I'm two hours late, she thought.
She wasn't just hurrying this time; she was sprinting. To get to work! This was something she'd never done that she could ever remember. Tony's voice echoing in her memory. Back in twenty, back in twenty.
Along Eighth Street. Past Fifth Avenue. To University Place. Dodging students and shoppers, running like a football player, like President Reagan in that old movie of his. The one without the monkey.
No big deal. Tony'll understand. I was on time this morning.
Them's the breaks.
He's not going to fire me for being a measly two hours late.
A hundred twenty minutes. The average running time for a film.
How could he possibly be upset? No way.
Rune pushed into the store and stopped cold. At the counter Tony was talking to the woman who was apparently her replacement, showing her how to use the cash register and credit card machine.
Oh, hell.
Tony looked up. "Hi, Rune, how you doin'? Oh, by the way, you're fired. Pack up your stuff and leave."
He was more cheerful than he'd been in months.