Lying Down

Lying Down James Sallis (bio) You ever see Always a Dead Body Somewhere, that opening scene panning so slowly along the beach to the poor sucker lying there stone cold gone and done with, with the heron perched on his chest? That's me. That was my breakthrough, the beginning of a long career. I owe a lot to that minute and a half by the water in San Diego. My name's Jeremy Blunt. The studio wants a dead body onscreen, I'm who they call. Before Always, I'd spent twelve years out here trying to make it as an actor. After Always, word got around fast, the way it does, and I didn't have to go knocking anymore. Best in the business, everyone said. Has the experience you need, my agent said. No one does better DBs than me. End of discussion. You better believe, after a quarter of a century out here on sets and streets I have more stories to tell you than I could get through in a solid month. Like the time they set up close to an anthill no one noticed. I got down, doing my thing, dead to the world you might say, and right after cameras started rolling, so did the ants, up and out to find this fine big meal they'd been provided. And it was a long scene. Shows what a pro I was, even then. Or there was that time the director and cameraman, both hungover from last night's party, got into it and wound up pulling prop guns and swords on each other. Or the director who had to show everyone, every scene, how it was to be played, so that his shootings went two or three times as long as others. When it came down to his prepping me, my part being exactly to do nothing, the whole crew applauded as he lay there. He just looked confused. But maybe we can get into that later. The big moments in our lives never come when we expect them. I owe a lot to that San Diego shoot. I owe everything to what I'm telling you about here. We were shooting on the fly and cheap as junk shoes, one of those projects where the director and writer are the same and it looks to be financed off credit cards and deception. We were in a state no one would ever have much reason to come and in a part of the state where even the roads were downright sullen about being there. The whole thing was a mess. [End Page 130] Everyone knew it, and no one would say it. The script was still getting cooked. We'd come in mornings and everything from dialog to the roles themselves would have been changed. The one thing we did not do was reshoot, anything. No money for that, so whatever got onto film stayed there. Made for some interesting continuity, not to mention transitions. Guys would be talking in a room, full daylight, then they'd go outdoors and it was dark. Or the director, editing, would lard in filler, patch-over shots of the set through a bottle of seltzer or a windowpane with rain running down it as characters spoke voiceover. That sort of thing. The female lead was one of those with a nose that could hide behind a demitasse spoon and eyebrows plucked away to make ample room for expertly drawn new ones. She pronounced every single syllable of every single word like she rolled them on her tongue before pushing them out. If we'd done run-throughs before shoots she would have showed up in tights and shapeless cloth dresses, which is what she wore, all she wore, any time she was off camera. Then one morning this guy popped up, fifties maybe, good shoes and haircut. The suit fit, but it looked out of place as hell here in rural bum-fuck on a halfass movie set. Struck me as a man accustomed to moving through the world expecting no resistance. No one I asked knew for sure who he was. Like me, he hung...