Road Safety by Alex Pickett
Associate shorts editor Olivia Kingery on today’s bonus flash fiction: If you had the chance to make a road safety film, where would you draw inspiration? Who would you kill off? I’ve never read a story that asks those questions before now, but I know this is a story I will find myself returning to for the sadness, the charm, and the scare.
Road Safety
I was commissioned by an insurance company to make a road safety film to scare their drivers into being safe. Though I suspected it would be used to screw their customers in some way—that they could, for instance, deny them coverage if they have not yet watched this film—they paid me four thousand dollars and gave me a thirteen thousand dollar budget, plus a car to crash. I was in no position to refuse.
My film-school friends, with whom I am in contact via a Whatsapp text group, were all very supportive, though they are all too big now to do piddly-shit projects like this just to pay the bills. One of them directed six episodes of The Bold Type. Another’s art films have been screened in galleries, and because of those she’s been tapped to direct an episode in the upcoming season of Transparent. Another directed a couple of cult-successful indies and was offered to direct the next Amy Schumer movie (which she turned down because of implausibilities in the script). Another’s short film was nominated for an Academy Award and she was just offered the same Amy Schumer movie (which she is in no position to refuse).
I had only mentioned my insurance film job as a joke, but they all responded enthusiastically. I realized they thought this was all I deserve. I wanted them to laugh and tell me to refuse it, though I was in no position to. I wanted it to be a joke.
Their support, though it angered me, also inspired me to make the most of the project. Perhaps it could be like how Kiarostami started out making government-commissioned instructional films for children in Iran. I didn’t text this comparison to the group.
I went to my college film lab. I had attended the school twelve years before. I don’t teach there now. An old professor took pity on me and shared the lock code on the condition I don't rat him out should I get caught.
There I discovered some old Carl Theodore Dreyer informational films commissioned by the Danish government in the 1940s. One about getting checked for cancer, another about Danish churches, and—bingo!—an eleven-minute road safety film called They Caught the Ferry.
The film only has about three lines of dialogue, about how the man and woman have to hurry from one ferry to another. Much more time is dedicated to the ferry docking. Almost seven minutes to the front wheel of the motorcycle, power lines, and the man’s face before a truck—driven by Death—runs them off the road. The last thirty soundless seconds are of the ferry leaving without them, followed by a wooden dinghy holding two stark white coffins, steered by an old man with a long beard.
How was I supposed to compete with that! The form had been perfected in 1948, apparently. I couldn’t even borrow from it since the film is so rarely seen.
So I rewatched Two Lane Blacktop, and Kaili Blues, this Chinese film with a forty-one-minute handheld take from the perspective of a man on a motorcycle. Also, for the popular perspective, I watched Mad Max Fury Road, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, The Cannonball Run, Baby Driver, and Drive. I watched some Kiarostami, for those shots of clouds reflecting off windshields. I watched Hitchcock and fell in love with back projection. Il Sorpasso because it ends with a car crash.
I asked for a twenty-five thousand dollar increase in my budget. They gave me an extra seven hundred and moved the deadline up a month.
Road films are perhaps the opposite of road safety films. The links: a driver taking a risk, usually a crash, and an emotional reaction. Often a villain. Except for Kaili Blues. I couldn’t bring myself to do one long take though. The form’s too associated with Birdman now. That macho Iñárritu stuff isn’t for me.
My limitations: the crash must involve an uncontrolled intersection. There must be at least one death.
My first script was returned with the note: “We don’t want to give them nightmares.”
My second, in progress, which will surely also be refused: A woman of talent. Opening shot of unmade bed in foreground, evidence of unrecognized dreams—a sculpture or something—in background. We suspect it’s a room in her parents house—it’s a small bed, trophies and ribbons on a shelf. Pillow shots of smokestacks to establish middle America, power lines to evoke driving and connection (also homage to Dreyer and Ozu), an empty uncontrolled intersection. She’s out to lunch with her more successful friends. Her clothes aren’t of the same quality; her eyebrows twitch when they order more wine “for the table.” She gets a text: Remember, Matthew gets out at three. It is almost two thirty. They begin to pour her more wine. She covers the glass. “I have to pick up my nephew.” Oh, nephew? So she’s staying at her sister’s. And she doesn’t drink irresponsibly. She does text though.
I want the nephew to die but the woman to live. The shame worse than grief, worse than death. Sitting on that basement bed, a black dress, the evidence of wasted talent all around her, waiting until the last minute to leave, but needing to ride with her sister since her own car is obviously totaled. Why didn’t she cover her brake while crossing that uncontrolled intersection? Where will she go now? She reacts to a noise off camera, though we hear nothing. She can’t bring herself to move. She puts her hands to her knees to push herself up. Her back hurts.
Death life shame grief. Wouldn’t it be nice to write about something else?
Surely I’ll condense. Sculpture in the backseat. Open in the school parking lot. Fiery crash while checking texts. I want the nephew to die though. And I want her in that basement, in that dress.
Alex Pickett's novel, The Restaurant Inspector, is forthcoming from University of Wisconsin Press in 2021. He holds an MFA from the University of Florida and his stories appear in Subtropics, Green Mountains Review, Southern Humanities Review, and The Rupture, among other publications. He currently lives in London where he teaches creative writing to asylum seekers and works nights at a homeless shelter. His website is rapickett.com
