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By Holly Sklar I n seventh grade, my classmates were obsessed with "Saturday Night Fever," Frye boots, and gossiping about who in our grade had a crush on whom. Even my closest friend, once bookish like me, had become obsessed with makeup, boys, and the popular girls. Destined to be a late bloomer, I felt lonely and left out. One day, hoping to lift my spirits, my mom dragged me to our neighborhood revival house — that was a thing in the pre-streaming era — to see a double fea- ture. The movies that afternoon were two romantic musical fantasies, "Top Hat" and "Swingtime," in glorious, Art Deco black-and-white, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In the "Star Wars" era, they were like nothing I'd ever seen, lavish, effervescent, witty, and glamorous. They did more than lift my adolescent spirits: they enchanted. The Regency Theater, on 67th and Broadway, became my refuge from I Lost It at the Movies HOW 'TOP HAT' LIFTED SPIRITS – AND LAUNCHED A CAREER feeling like a teenage misfit, and my entrée to history of Hollywood films. By the time I was a high school senior, I'd filled a 3x5 file- card box with capsule reviews of classics. At college, my movie education broad- ened to include indie and foreign films, thanks to the expansive tastes of my fellow film geeks in the Brown University Film So- ciety. Once a week, for four years, my crew and I would haul 16mm movie projectors to lecture halls, put CinemaScope lenses on them, and change reels. Sometime during these years, watching others' stories on screen became insufficient: I wanted to tell my own. I wrote a play and then a musical, both produced by student theater groups. I took intro filmmaking one summer at NYU. I interned at Columbia Pictures' Manhattan publicity department. The most creative thing I was allowed to do was write movie press kits … but I was in the business! Spotting my apparent ability to succinctly summarize a movie's story, my boss sug- gested I pursue work in a movie studio's story department, writing coverage: syn- opsizing submitted scripts and books, and evaluating their movie potential. It would be some years before I followed his advice. Like many a future story analyst, screenwriting was my dream. I was sure I'd achieve it if I wrote enough scripts and honed my craft. I got a job editing and producing audio books, which brought me to Los Angeles. Abridging books taught me economical storytelling, forcing me to cut a story down to its essence. A stint copy editing at a music trade magazine taught me to write attention-grabbing hooks. But I felt far removed from the movie business. I decided to get a job closer to script development. Through friends, I got my h a n d s o n s a m p l e s c r i p t c o v e ra ge a n d wrote my own, fine-tuned with feedback. I wrote blind letters, made phone calls, and SEE PAGE 45 LIVING THE DREAM: Sklar sought a career with work-life balance. P H OT O : C O U R T E S Y H O L LY S K L A R 20 C I N E M O N T A G E U N I O N M A D E