Semi-Urban Cartography

Working toward the end of a short film project. Working title: “First Day In The City.” It’s Sunday, November 16th. My friend Lars generously offers his vacant condominium as a location to pass for the INT. POSH APARTMENT – DAY segment that opens it up. The crew arrives at 7:30 am and sets up two yards worth of dolly track, a jib arm, crane and a dozen china balls at strategic locations throughout the odd 700 square foot John’s Landing set. The place looks great. This is my seventh film and still I love the sight of a hot set.

Actress Kaytee Rose Hime arrives, bouncy, full of verve and then stills. As in almost every other film, commercial or student/art (like this one) the 9:15 estimate of the first shot is way off. We are lit and set to go around 10:45. We practice the dolly track. They rehearse the crane move, low and then high for an OTS (over the shoulder). Three men surround the tri-pod base and we walk through carefully. To my left is the monitor and the sweep looks fantastic. Voyeuristic. It’s vaguely “horror show” I keep telling myself. Just what we wanted. To my right is the boom mic operator in a Gogol Bordello sweatshirt, straining up over the contraption. She too has to rehearse the move to be sure. It’s time. I call ‘action’ and we walk through. Take one is clunky and immediately we start working to improve it.

Then Producer Stewart Boyles comes to me:

“We need to think about postponing the staircase scene.”

We were set to start that scene 4 miles away at 12:30. No way we make it. I nod in agreement.

“OK then. Let’s think about doing that. We’ll need the whole day here to get it right anyway.”

He scrambles away, notifies the waiting actors. I stand off the apple box to reset our actors and away we go. Cameras roll on take two. The first shot of the film as well as the day continues. The performance improves. We’re making pictures.

Is this a production diary? Sort of. There are hundreds of self-important film diaries out there so I won’t throw another into what comes across as a stocked pond. What happened at the end of lunch however on this film, during this particular day is worthy of discussion however. Lunch is always working when it comes to the small scale cinema. We curl up on the bare floor and eat Subway. I take my tuna fish with everything. Roast beef seems popular. As we crunch chips and assess our first set-up, Stewart comes back to me with his iPhone. There’s a video he wants everyone to see.

The basic story line of the “First Day In The City” is as follows. Girl arrives in New York for the first time. She has a suitcase for a week’s worth of house sitting for a family friend. When she arrives though, the family dog is deceased. With no other means of dealing with the problem she — the girl’s name, “Betsy” in our script — packs the dog in her suitcase to take it across town to the vet. When she gets off the subway, she’s mugged for the suitcase when she tells the “nice young man” that it contains stereo equipment. Simple story. Darkly funny while inhumane. It’s even a little risky considering the subject matter. You can kill a dozen people with no response, but you’d better not kill Ol’ Yeller. I wrote the story down word for word as told to me by my friend Joel. It happened to a friend of his, Betsy, when she arrived in New York. Or so I thought.

Stewart leans in and presses play.

“What is this?”

“It appears to be the same movie we’re making.”

I cringe. People crane their ears to hear what it is we’re talking about but we keep it mostly under wraps. Carrie, a good friend brought in for her eye in both art department and continuity leans in. She cringes too although I can see the resilliance in the creases near her mouth.

“What the fuck?”

Carrie grimmaces.

“Yeah,” Stewart says. “Bummer, huh?”

The day proceeds. We move to location two in Lars’ former bedroom. Dolly track now presses in on our actress as she pees, as she discovers the most awful thing imaginable. When we wrap, everyone seems happy. Travis and Wendy talk about their next show as they disassemble the jib. Thanksgiving plans are vetted. Kevin Forrest brings in a six-pack of tall boy PBR and I drink one. Then another although I secret it on the porch. Something is unsettling in me. When I call the wife, I tell her the day went fine. We make dinner plans. I pull out of the condo parking lot and I see Stewart. Then I’m reminded through the adrenaline of a great day just what that is that has me bothered.

After he put his iPhone in his pocket, Stewart proceeded to tell me there were others than the one he showed.

They tell you that everything’s been done before. Still, I had to come home and look at the two films in question. Vitriol. The American film, Pet Sitting lacks any semblance of cinematic style. On top of that, there’s not a bit of subtlety in the performance. The opening dialog is weak, almost cringe worthy and it continues just as poorly throughout. My feeling is that the female actress who read them is the Director’s girlfriend (or someone he wants desperately to be) probably struggling to just get the lines straight in her head. In this retelling, the story deals with a girl who wants to please a potential lover. She’s not only annoyingly bad in front of the camera, but she also exhibits the unforgivable sin of being out and out cloying. Needing to please. In the Scottish film — a much better, more nuanced version — their protagonist is assured, similarly strong-willed. Except here the film starts out about the dog and remains there. When she is taken for the bag, it’s because she takes her eyes off of the prize long enough for the thief to get it. No interaction. No opportunity for the heroine to learn anything other than the ancient lesson to keep your eye on the ball. I come out of my cinematic exploration feeling at the very least, like the better, more assured film maker.

Reality sets. When my film is finally completed there will be three similar in the pipeline. I realize this on that Sunday night as I drive home with a stuffed dog in the passenger seat and the sweat of a 14 hour day still on my neck. What do I do? My first instinct (after the above described confirmation of the disaster) is to work simple first: I can change the title. I can give it a name that is a tip of the hat, an acknowledgment of its place in urban mythology. As I begin reading into the subject, I find there is a common trope: “As told to me by a friend.” Urban myths never happen to the teller. Having the story happen to a friend is a means of legitimizing the tall tale while also distancing oneself from the viability. I swirl around the title “As Told To Me By A Friend.” I see it on the box with a grainy picture of Betsy, cross legged on the stairs in despair.

Does it work? I curse Joel for putting me into this situation.

The term “urban legend” (or “urban myth” or “contemporary legend”) appears in print at least as early as 1968 when University of Utah English Professor, Jan Harold Brunvald coined the term (his 1981 book established it as legitimate folklore). He worked from the bottom up, the seminal tale of the marauder in the back seat of the car, lurking ready to strike as an unsuspecting female driver moves obliviously along a country highway. The truck right behind the car flashes its lights, even rear ends the car in order to keep the predator at bay. Brunvald created the template for this and a dozen or more of these stories: straight A’s for the roommate of a college suicide victim, “Bloody Mary” in the bathroom mirror, the sewer alligator. All of these stories were given academic context by Brunvald. In 1998, the phrase became an indelible part of the vocabulary with a feature film.

Is the dead dog in the suitcase one of those bedrock stories though? It is certainly accounted for, but it tends toward the most obscure. It’s perhaps new. As I dig, I think of the crew’s reaction as they came to the realization. They were stunned. A moment to think crept through the room as they chewed lunch slowly. Everyone took a moment of pause to dig deep into their memory bank of stories, tales and things told to them to perhaps find something similar. Had I heard it? No.

According to Snopes, there is nothing prominent about a dead dog, per se. Dead cats in packages stories are as old as the hills (a particular concentration of those stories coming from the Edmonton, Alberta area). To summarize those slightly different themes, an old woman (or infrequently, a young girl) is house sitting while her friend is at work. The cat dies and she makes an effort to take it to her place of work in a shopping bag. She’s robbed there with the thief vanishing into the crowd. This myth also appeared in New York Times articles as early as 1904. Some legends have the thief dying in the end, the shock of their discovery too much to internalize. In Arizona, the story bends to involve a live wildcat in a bag that some absent minded wilderness trapper was taking to the Los Angeles Zoo (particularly curious, considering the relatively invulnerability of a trapper versus a young/elderly woman).

As I eat my salad and think things over, listening to Lisa and her Mom talk, peace is made. First I forgive Joel. Then I forgive Stewart for not saying something earlier (as well, eschewing the task of investigation, or even Googling the phrase “dead animal in suitcase”). The martini I order is particularly dirty and cold. Monopolova. I order another and another. When I walk outside to get the car, the cool sense of peace is more chemical than spiritual. I’m no fool. I know when I’m placating myself. However, there is that old writing adage that there is nothing new. As I circle the block, I laugh catharticly to myself out loud:

“There is nothing new. There is nothing new.”

In the end, do I feel bad that there is at least some precedent for my version of Betsy’s story? As a filmmaker, no. I’ve watched the other works and as I’ve said, they’re pale. They’re amateur at best. As a writer though, I find myself feeling similarly. The notion that I am in some small way retelling an American urban mythology is wholly appealing, some stamp of my own on the larger consciousness. Hell, Pynchon used the sewer alligator in V and no one called him a hack for it.

Do I feel bad for believing it was true? On April 13th, 1975 a 43-year old business man drove his car off of an Austrian road, shaken by his encounter with the proverbial vanishing hitchhiker. She was there and then she was gone.

Did I drive the car off the road? Is this story a crash in spite of smooth tracking shots? Or is it simply a tingle up the neck? We’ll have to wait and see. Maybe this will be the story that cements the dead-dog-in-suitcase story into the array of urban myths. That chance alone makes it worthwhile.