Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (44 page)

She sat down on the floor, leaning back happily against the shelf, listening to Doug opening the cans. He was in the middle of the plain labels now. He picked up a can and, holding it level in his left hand, started to slip his blade, crowbar-like, under the lip of the lid. The lid flew off, clattering to floor.

"Jill, look at this."

She scrambled up, already alert. The lid shouldn't have come off that easily. "Doug, what is it?"

He held out the can. Instead of a gooey mass she saw a black waxed bag, the kind that film came back from a lab in. She eased the bag open. There, tightly wound around a yellow plastic core, was a roll of film, still crisp, still whole, gleaming in the light from the overhead bulb. It was safety film.

She lifted the roll out of the can, unrolling the first twenty feet, holding it up to the light. There was Charles Ringling's face, a tight close-up, repeated in frame after frame, spooling down into the wound footage on the roll.

Someone had transferred the
Weary Hearts
footage to safety stock. No, not "someone"—Cass. It was his handwriting on all the hidden labels. He had had it done.

That's why this material had been stored in the seventies; that's why it was stored next to
Nancy,
which had been made when the film community was becoming aware of the need to copy nitrate stock. Cass must have taken the
Weary Hearts
footage out of the nitrate vaults and sent it into the lab under
Nancy's
budget code. But it had all come to the vault at the same time as
Grey Wedding,
and some well-meaning clerk, knowing that there was no
Wherever Grey Is Worn
in production, had relabeled the cans.

Cass must have thought that they were lost. That, Jill was sure, was why he had never told anyone what he had done. That was why he had had the archivists inventory the nitrate stock. He was looking for the original footage, hoping perhaps it could be copied again, but it had been put in here mistakenly. Nothing had been found. He must have assumed that his efforts had been wasted; that's why he would have let his option lapse. There was no longer any record of Bix's script. There would have been nothing to remake.

But there was a record, the one Cass had saved. This was it.

"Are we going to be able to look at it?" Doug asked eagerly.

Jill nodded. They needed a projection room. But it was Sunday. Cathy, who could have arranged everything, would not be at her desk until tomorrow, and Jill didn't think she could stand to wait that long.

"Let's see if anyone's at the editing department," she suggested. "At least I know where it is."

Jill searched for a guard, wanting to sign for the film, but she couldn't find anyone. So she and Doug picked up the six cans and carried them outside. Such lax procedure was why the studio kept losing things.

They hurried across the studio grounds, carrying all six cans of film. Even though it was Sunday, the studio had come to life. People were moving along the sidewalks, some in suits, others in overalls, still others in running shorts and loose T-shirts. Trucks and paneled vans were carefully maneuvering through the narrow roads. This was the world of movies.

A guard presided over the narrow lobby of the building that housed the editing department. Jill marched up to his desk. "My name is Jill Casler," she said, "and I need to use a Steenbeck."

The guard looked at her blankly. "Do you have an appointment with someone?"

Jill tried to remember the name of an editor likely to be working here. All her father's friends were dead or retired.

"Excuse me."

Jill turned at the sound of a voice behind her. It was a young man, wearing plaid bermuda shorts and carrying a bag lunch. He had been waiting to sign in.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I couldn't help overhearing. Did you say your name is Casler? As in Cass Casler?"

"He was my father."

"Then if you need a Steenbeck, you can use mine."

Jill touched his arm, grateful not just for his help, but for his remembering Cass. "That's very, very kind of you. I don't think we'll be long."

He signed them in and escorted them to a small editing room. It was dominated by the Steenbeck, a flatbed editing table three feet deep and eight feet wide, with a small screen behind it and two chairs in front of it. A rack for cans of film was within easy reach of the chairs. Trims— bits and pieces of film—were taped to the wall.

"Do you know how to work it?" the young man asked.

"I believe so," Jill answered.

"Then I'll leave you," he said, but at the door he paused. "Your father, Miss Casler... his work meant the world to me."

Jill looked up from the machine. The young man, probably an apprentice or assistant, was blushing, almost overcome by this closeness to Cass. "Thank you. It did to me, too."

It had been years since Cass had let Jill play with a Steenbeck, teaching her how to splice footage, how to synchronize a sound track. But she found she could still load it.

The film was an answer print, a positive print used to check the technical quality of the negative. A little squiggly line running down one side of the film was the sound track. Cass had done everything he could to ensure that whatever images were on this film would be preserved.

She flicked off the lights. "Now this may be difficult to watch," she cautioned Doug. "There's a sound track, but there won't be any music and it may not be in any order—" She stopped. No, it would be in order. Cass would have spliced the trimmed footage into sequence. She was sure of that. "But it will be bits and pieces of the story. Anything they used in the final cut won't be here. It's not going to be a movie, just footage. It may not tell us a thing."

"I don't know how much I need to know now."

That was true. How ironic that they hadn't found it until they no longer needed to. Jill started the machine.

Several feet of blank film whined by, then the screen flowered into life. It was from the opening scene of Bix's script, Booth in close-up, the camera dollying back to show him on a horse, reining up as he approached Briar Ridge. Jill felt Doug take her hand.

And in another minute or two everything was clear. All their questions were answered.

The first reel carried them only through Booth's first battle. The film ran through the machine, the loose end flapping around and around, the little sharp slap breaking the silence of the room. Jill leaned forward and switched off the machine.

Charles Ringling could not act. As fragmented as this footage was, that was clear. His talents had been adequate for the light romantic secondary parts he had prior to this one, but the drama and intensity of
Weary Hearts
had been beyond him. Booth's silent strength came out wooden; Booth's sturdy masculine sexuality had Charles preening.

The film had been unreleasable, not because it was a masterpiece, but because the lead actor had spoiled it. Bix's brother had ruined his movie.

Jill looked at Doug. His face was tight. This must be hard for him. He had grown up with a special bond with Bix, a bond based on this astonishing physical resemblance. But Charles was his uncle, too. Charles was the one he had known.

She spoke mildly, not wanting to tamper with his feelings. "I'm surprised that the studio let it go on so long. Under other circumstances they'd replace an actor in a day or so."

But these circumstances had been unique—the alcoholic director, too grateful for work to question; the producer, overwhelmed, exhausted, turning a deliberate blind eye. That had been the price Bix had had to pay for deceiving the studio; he had deprived himself of Miles Smithson's wisdom and experience. Miles could have replaced Charles. Bix could not have, not ever.

Doug spoke. "But Bix and Alicia—they would have known."

"Yes."

Had the knowledge of Charles's incompetence been something that they had realized in an instant or had it dawned on them, slowly, inexorably? Had it made their falling in love feel like an even greater betrayal? If Alicia had left him, she would have left a man with nothing, not even a talent.

"So that's why they were already planning retakes in April," Doug said, referring to the dialogue written on the back of the doodle now framed on the wall of his grandmother's staircase. "They already knew that Charles had made a mess of it."

"They had other options, you know," Jill said. "Actors die during production. It's awful, but you can work around it. Cass was the editor on
Twice Seen
when John Reynolds died; his scenes had to be reshot with another actor.
Twice Seen
was before
Weary Hearts.
I'm sure Cass would have suggested that to Bix."

Doug shook his head. "He wouldn't do that to his brother. It would have killed Charles. Bix had to choose between his film and his brother, and he chose his brother. And you know this cover-up idea we had, that someone was deliberately getting rid of everything?"

Jill nodded.

"I bet that was Bix's idea."

She had to agree. There was nothing in this footage that would damage anyone but Charles, but it would have destroyed him. Bix, guilt-ridden about his love for Alicia, was going to do all that he could for his brother. Hiding every trace of the first script left Charles with his dignity. And yes, Cass would have cooperated in that cover-up. He, too, valued family and would have assented to destroying everything, secretly holding on to only one bit of evidence as history's due.

Jill now understood why Cass had consented to receive credit for the revised script. He probably hadn't liked it, but he understood that Bix's need was greater. For his brother's sake Bix needed to pretend that the new script was being forced on him. And how could he show Charles the new love scenes? How could he say, "I wrote these," when they were so much like life?

Which brother had done the greater injury—Charles by ruining Bix's movie or Bix by loving Charles's wife? Jill did not know.

"Why did you think Charles gave us the script?" Doug asked.

Jill had wondered about this. "Think about the timing. It was after I had mentioned remaking the movie. Remember how insistent he was that Payne play Booth, not Phillip?"

Doug nodded.

"I'm sure he's thoroughly convinced himself that the first version was not commercial enough. But on some level he must have suspected his incompetence, and if Payne remade the movie, playing Booth as he should have been played, Charles could point to Payne's performance and say 'that was me, I was that good.' "

"So what do we do with this?" Doug gestured at the cans. They weren't going to watch the other five reels. There was no reason to.

"We have to get rid of the nitrate. It's like a growing cancer down there. You're never to store nitrate with safety. The escaping gases will damage the safety stock and if it burns, it could take everything with it. But this..." She gestured at the cans they had brought with them. "That's up to you."

"I don't want anyone to see it." Doug's answer came immediately. "At least, not as long as Charles is still alive."

"Why are you protecting him?" she asked. Her sense of justice urged that he be exposed, that he suffer, that he undergo the humiliation from which his younger brother had rescued him at such a high price.

Doug had an answer. "He's weak, he's a coward, and he's a quitter, but he's family."

Jill could accept that. Anger wasn't all she was going to learn about from him. She was also going to learn about family. She had her own family—Brad, Dave and their children—and she would have Doug's family—his frank, down-to-earth grandmother and his delightful parents.

And his four sisters. Four sisters—the thought was a little overwhelming.

Jill looked through the young editor's supplies, found a pen and labels, and added a third label to the cans.
"Weary Hearts,
1948." She and Doug carried them back to the vault, putting them next to
Grey Wedding,
simply because that's where there was room for them.

They took the cans of decaying nitrate footage out with them, carrying it across the studio grounds to the nitrate vault. Outside the entrance to the bunker was a burn barrel, a fifty-gallon drum with a heavy lid and "Highly Flammable" labels. They put the cans in the barrel, knowing that, within the next twenty-four hours, the film would be disposed of.

So the search for the lost footage from
Weary Hearts
was over, a search that had begun with a story a young man had told himself in a German prisoner-of-war camp and that was ending here, on this Sunday morning, with this couple who had learned that once you start to look, you may find more than you ever dreamed.

Payne Bartlett

August 3

on location in some sulfurous hovel

Jill darling,

The business first—how can I thank you for sending me this script? It's everything that you said it would be; Booth is the part of a lifetime. I showed it to Pete; he's aching to rewrite it as a Vietnam story, although I'm not sure it should be tampered with. It's perfect as it is.

Nonetheless, I'm not going to make it, and you shall shriek at the reason—

It's not commercial enough.

Even if we kept the Civil War setting, it would be a Vietnam movie—the themes are so universal—and that market is played out. And setting it in the Persian Gulf seems too chancy. My money people say that for our first few pictures we've got to do some sure-fire hits, Payne Bartlett, the sweetly troubled youth. Payne Bartlett is not sweet, he is certainly not a youth, but he is profoundly troubled by decisions like this.

If we get in a position to do some less commercial properties, I'd love to see the script again, but I'm confident that someone else will pick it up long before then.

But, again, thank you.

Now for the personal—you're getting married!!! Jill, Jill, Jill. How middle class, how wonderful. And to the new defensive coach for the Lakers. I see great tickets in my future.

Susannah reports that there have been a number of public sightings of the Lynx in the company of your intended, and that he is to be the best man, and as a result, that everyone is begging to be the maid of honor, but that you're having your mother???? To your old buddy Payne, that does have the smell of very good news. But why are you getting married in Virginia? I'll come, we all will, but why there?