2000 – High Places
“Action!”
For the second time, Shiloh lay back down fully emerged in the ice cold creek, his forehead caked with fake blood. He convulsed a little then went still, while the character Sully splashed up to his side.
“Cut!”
The shot looked okay, but I wanted to do another just in case. However Steve’s concerned look and Shiloh’s cursing helped convince me that we had what we needed. We rushed to him with warm dry towels. A little extra care was in order for this particular actor.
Shiloh was the nearest we had to a celebrity on our project. He had played the boy in “House of Cards” many years previous and his brother was Ryder Strong from “Boy Meets World” fame. I think it was his celebrity status that fueled his argument as to why he had to lay fully immersed in the ice creek rather than a few feet away on dry land. My reason at the time would become invalid later when I deleted certain scenes, but I’m glad I stuck to my guns anyway. Death in a white water creek is certainly more cinematic than death on shore.
The original plan was to have the Sully chase scene end with Sully hanging from a cliff, and the Sri Lankan clutching his foot below him. We even drove down to the Rogue River area for a weekend to scout out possible locations. The best spot turned out to be where Paul Newman and Robert Redford jumped into the river in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Some metal rungs were still embedded in the rock of the outcrop. We spent half a day eating junk food and trying to figure out the logistics of suspending my brother and the other actor safely from the edge of the cliff. Although we could cheat most of it, one shot would be needed that actually showed them hanging from the cliff.
We joked and laughed about the prospect of my brother hanging from the cliff, but standing out near the precipice and looking down at the rocky bank a couple hundred feet below… I began thinking of plan B.
Plan B was a natural preserve corridor in the Gorge. It was an interesting bit of geography, a narrow sandy inlet with eighty feet cliff to either side. We liked the prospect of a gun battle here, almost like one would see in a western. Since we wanted to do it all in one day, a shot list was needed. So a few weeks before our filming date, we made a trip out with a couple of Steve’s friends and had them enact the shoot out while we composed and videoed the shots on the fly. It was a Saturday, so there were plenty of hikers and tourists observing our filming of adults shooting each other with extended index fingers and making the accompanying sound, “Bang! Bang!”
We may have looked ridiculous, but I assured passerby’s, “Yes, that’s right. We’re making a movie.. You’ll see!”
Off camera I would throw a pinch of dirt in the stand in’s face to mimic a ricochet as well as force a reaction from him. In addition his “bang, bang!”s were way off and his shooting finger wasn’t even pointing in the right direction. Working with non-actors can be very frustrating.
The presence of our camera and clap board drew the attention of a forest warden who informed us of the application process we would need to go through to film in that delicate and very protected mini-ecosystem.
Plan C: Mid August found us miles along a gravel logging road deep in the Columbia Gorge wild reserve. It was a perfect area to dump bodies or to shoot a scene involving a lot of gun fire. No people, no forest wardens. So it was there where Sully and his buddy, Jimmy chased down that damn Sri Lankan.
Back in the summer of ’97 we had our detective on the roof of a building spying on a murder suspect’s house across the street. The scene remained incomplete because I had yet to find the murder suspect’s house. It had to be an interesting looking home, one that we could shoot the exterior, and it had to be across the street from a 4-5 story building which had a roof we could get access to.
Finally, I found a water tower that overlooked an interesting, dilapidated two story home. The tower was surrounded by an eight feet high cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. The metal rung ladder attached to the tower began about 20 feet off the ground. It was only after the home owners across the street gave permission for us to shoot on their premise that I got twitchy, knowing some laws had to be broken.
It was a few hours before dusk when Steve and I nonchalantly moved the two ladders from my dad’s truck to the side alley.
A busy street was just a block away just on the other side of the Firehouse Theater. Any passing cop glancing our way would easily spot us. We quickly threw the 25’ ladder over the barbed wire into the precious real estate space underneath the tower. Leaning the other ladder against the fence, on top of the barbed wire, Steve climbed up and leaped over, landing and tumbling with a loud grunt. I winced and wished I didn’t have to follow.
But someone had to hold the base of the 25’ foot ladder at the base of the tower, so he could reach the bottom most rung of the tower’s ladder. I gingerly climbed up the rungs and after some hesitation leaped from the top most rung way over the barbed wire, mimicking Steve’s rough landing. To return we would have to climb the cyclone fence and navigate over the barbed wire to the ladder on the other side.
We positioned our second ladder so that it reached the bottom rung of the tower ladder. My worry about police shifted to Steve as he reached the top of our ladder I was securing and grabbed hold of the bottom rung of the tower ladder to begin the 150+ foot journey straight up. If Steve didn’t fall to his death, the footage he would shoot up there would amount to about ten seconds of screen time.
I sometimes think of our premiere, sitting next to someone who glances down at their Iphone whilst the above ten seconds roll by and then… the blood.
