Bloody River Blues

Tony?”
    “I’m saying that I’m in a bind. I got the go-ahead yesterday and I need locations in two weeks, absolute maximum.”
    Pellam laughed a laugh that terrifies producers and directors. It means: Not only are you asking the impossible but I don’t need the job nearly badly enough to put up with the crap I know I’m going to have to put up with to do what you want.
    “Six,” Pellam said. He was, in fact, ready to leave that night—just as soon as the Black Hills turned truly black and he finished his beer. But two weeks was impossible to find sites for the hundreds of setups in a full-length feature.
    It was the moment when one of them would say, “Four weeks” and they would shake hands, remotely, on the compromise.
    Tony Sloan said, “You find me locations in two weeks and I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars.”
    Pellam felt heat flow from his black hair down into his throat. He believed his skin was flushed. “Well—”
    “Thirty-five.”
    Thirty-five thousand?
    “I’m a desperate man, Pellam. I’m not going to bullshit you.”
    After a pause, Pellam asked, “Tony, tell me, does a Texas Ranger track them down in the end and machine-gun them to death?”
    “It is a goddamn different movie, Pellam.”
    “Deal. Express Mail the script to me care of Kansas City GPO.”
    Two days later, Pellam drove over the city limits into Maddox, Missouri, braked the Winnebago to a stop, and knew he’d just earned himself some big money.
    MISSOURI RIVER BLUES
    SCENE 34—EXTERIOR EVENING, STREET IN FRONT OF BANK
    MEDIUM ANGLE ON Ross and Dehlia, dressed up as if they were “out for an innocent stroll.” They are supposed to be casing the job, but Ross is introspective. He stops.
    ANGLE ON REAL ESTATE OFFICE, ROSS’S POV
    CU OF LISTING SHEETS OF ONE-FAMILY HOUSES
    ANGLE ON Ross’s face
    ANGLE ON Dehlia’s face, looking at him:
    TWO SHOT OF both of them.
    ROSS
    There was a time when I needed to be an outlaw. But it’s different now. (CLOSE ON his face.) Since you and me’ve been on the road together, lover, it’s all different. Now I’ve got you and I want to be part of the world we’ve been looking in on. Looking in on from the outside for a long, long time.
    The bank-robbing lovers in the film come upon a small midwestern river town filled with abandoned factories and characters whose lives have been ruined by rampant capitalism. They decide to make one last heist then follow the lead of all the returning World War II veterans: buy a house in the ’burbs and raise babies.
    More than even minimal or essential movies, Pellam loved good movies. He was not convinced that Missouri River Blues was a good movie. The script contained a number of time bombs—long speeches, shoot-outs, car chases and stylish camera directions. But a script is merely a promise. What Sloan would make of it, nobody, perhaps not even Sloan himself, could know at this point.
    It was not Pellam’s job, in any case, to career-counsel visionaries. He did what he’d been hired to do. He read the script ten times, got a sense of whatit was about, did his outline of the scenes, blocked them out, consolidating similar ones to minimize travel between locations. Then he clocked seven hundred miles on the Winnebago as he threaded through Maddox and environs, shot sixty packs of Polaroids, met with the mayor and the city’s insurance company, then wrote up his report and shipped it off.
    Within a day Sloan and the director of photography flew to St. Louis and drove north, where Sloan approved most of the locations. They jetted back that night to finish casting.
    For the next week Pellam helped the key grip with site preparation and deciding what cranes and other equipment would be needed for the shooting. Sloan and the cast and crew had arrived in a swirl of frenzied excitement. Grip trucks, camera cranes, Winnebagos, location vans. This movie was bigger news in Maddox than FDR and William Jennings Bryan combined.
    As on most sets, the atmosphere was boisterous in the first few days of shooting. Pellam had had some fun. Because scouts are often first on the scene, newly arrived personnel ask them for tips on places to eat and things to see. A young hotshot actor, playing one of Ross’s gangsters, asked Pellam bluntly where he could get laid and how much would it cost.
    Pellam thought for a bit, then remembered an ad he had seen not long after he arrived in Maddox. “It’ll be cheap but you’ve got to drive a ways.” He