“We used a pump car on The Starfighter. That’s how we trucked in the gear for the cave sequence.”

“No shit?” he said.

“Why’d you use a pump car?” Dana said, laughing.

“I don’t know. It was in an old mine and the track was there and it just...seemed like the thing to do. The crew got a good laugh out of it at least.”

“Wow, so you worked on The Starfighter,” Scott said, and she saw him making a calculation about her, although it was too soon to tell whether it was about her age or experience. “Beyond its time for what it was.”

“Thanks,” Phoebe said. She felt like she was on the knife’s edge of Scott’s esteem. An inch to the left and she was his mother. An inch to the right and she was his teacher.

“That establishing shot, in the arena,” he said. “You know the one?”

Of course, she did. It was a scene taught in film schools now, when Jack walks into the arena for the first time and the Emperor looks down from his box. Ted had been credited with breaking open the idea of the fourth wall in a way that nobody else had done.

It burned as much now as it ever had.

“That was me,” Phoebe said.

“C’mon,” Scott said, slamming his lips shut as if she’d just claimed to be the love child of Jackie Chan.

But Dana leaned in, like it was a trusted secret. “Really?”

True, it had only happened because Ted was laid flat by the flu and they couldn’t afford the production delay, but Phoebe had stepped in and up so seamlessly it felt like a dream to her now. That day in Bryce Canyon had been grueling and the most fun she’d had in her entire life. After that, whenever Ted’s tantrums and obsessions put them behind schedule and the unit was small, she stepped in. The cave sequence when the Starfighter discovers the galaxyfinder. The bedroom scene when Princess Ariana tells Jack she’ll wait for him. In the credits, Phoebe was listed as a coproducer and a camera operator, but the plan for the third film was to codirect. Omega never would have allowed it, but at Switchback Studios, they could do whatever they wanted. Trust the work, Ted had said, but how could she when he always got the credit for it? That was why she’d gone to Jerry, to have something of her own.