Moving Pictures

“You see, the whole point, as I understand it, is that Ginger will do absolutely anything to keep the mansion and the mine and—”
    “I hopes we can get on,” said Gaffer, “only I’ve got to muck the imps out in an hour.”
    “Oh, I see,” said Rock. “I’m absolutely anything, am I?”
    “You don’t keep mines,” said one of the dwarfs. “Mines keep you. You take the treasure out. You don’t put it in. That’s fundamental to the whole mine business.”
    “Well, perhaps this mine is worked out,” said Soll quickly.
    “Anyway, she—”
    “Well, in that case, you don’t keep it,” said another dwarf, in the expansive manner of one about to settle down to a good long explanation. “You abandon it, propping and shoring where necessary, and sink another shaft on a line with the major seam—”
    “Allowing for fault escarpments and uniclinal structures,” said another dwarf.
    “Of course, allowing for fault escarpments and uniclinal structures, and then—”
    “And general crustal shifting.”
    “All right, and then—”
    “Unless you’re just cutting and filling, of course.”
    “Granted, but—”
    “I don’t see,” Rock began, “that my face could be called—”
    “SHUT UP!” screamed Soll. “Everyone shut up! SHUT UP! The next person who doesn’t shut up will never work in this town again! Understand? Do I make myself CLEAR? Right.” He coughed, and continued in a more normal voice: “Very well. Now, I want it understood that this is a Breathtaking, Block-busting Romantic film about a woman’s fight to save the—” he consulted his clipboard, and went on valiantly, “—everything she loves against the background of a World Gone Mad, and I don’t want anymore trouble from anyone.”
    A dwarf tentatively raised his hand.
    “’Scuse me?”
    “Yes?” said Soll.
    “Why is it all Mr. Dibbler’s films are set against the background of a world gone mad?” said the dwarf.
    Soll’s eyes narrowed. “Because Mr. Dibbler,” he growled, “is a very observant man.”

    Dibbler had been right. The new city was the old city distilled. Narrow alleys were narrower, tall buildings taller. Gargoyles were more fearsome, roofs more pointed. The towering Tower of Art in Unseen University was, here, even taller and more precariously towering even though it was at the same time only one quarter the size; the Unseen University was more baroque and buttressed; the Patrician’s Palace more pillar’d. Carpenters swarmed over a construction that, when it was finished, would make Ankh-Morpork look like a very indifferent copy of itself, except that the buildings in the original city were not, by and large, painted on canvas stretched over timber and didn’t have the dirt carefully sprayed on. Ankh-Morpork’s buildings had to get dirty all by themselves.
    It looked far more like Ankh-Morpork than Ankh-Morpork ever had.

    Ginger had been ushered off to the changing tents before Victor had a chance to speak to her, and then shooting started and it was too late.
    Century of the Fruitbat (and now it said on the sign, in slightly smaller type: More Stars than There Are in the Heavens) 21 believed that a click should be made in less than ten times the time it took to watch. Blown Away was going to be different. There were battles. There were night scenes, the imps painting away furiously by torchlight. Dwarfs worked merrily in a mine never seen before or since, where fake gold nuggets the size of chickens had been stuck in the plaster walls. Since Soll demanded that their lips should be seen to move they sang a risqué version of the “Hihohiho” song, which had rather caught on among Holy Wood’s dwarf population.
    It was just possible that Soll knew how it all fitted together. Victor didn’t. It was always best, he had learned, never to try to follow the plot of any click you were in, and in any case Soll wasn’t just shooting back to front but sides to middle as well. It was totally confusing, just like real life.
    When he did get a chance to talk to Ginger, two Handlemen and everyone else in the cast who currently had nothing to do were watching them.
    “OK, people,” said Soll. “This is the scene near the end where Victor meets Ginger after all they’ve been through together, and on the card he’ll be saying—” He stared at the big black oblong handed to him. “Yes, he’ll be saying ‘Frankly, my dear, I’d give anything for one