The Fall Guy

by Denarii Peters

Today I am an international jewel thief but I won’t get away with the gems. Yesterday I was a spy but I lost the secret code. It’s usual for me to be the bad guy but every day I am the fall guy. The spy had a better wardrobe. I preferred the well-cut suit. This one is too cheap and a lot too tight.

I don’t much care for today’s action either. I’ve had to run up and down the steps six times already. I’m far too hot and not in the mood for suicide.

I stand on the topmost platform and peer down. It’s a long way. People beneath me look like ants seen from an aeroplane. I wonder if they are looking up at me. Do they even know I’m here, about to leap from among these metal struts? Someone shouts the magic words and…

“Five!”

I shrug my shoulders. I have to be sure everything is in position. I have to be comfortable.

“Four!”

I take a good deep breath. It won’t be possible to draw in anymore. The wind will whistle around me howling like a banshee and buffeting me like a floating paper bag.

“Three!”

I let go of the strut and raise my hands. I have to look convincing.

“Two!”

I get up on my tiptoes. I lean forward. I try to think of eagles, not tumbling leaves.  

“One!”

I’m over the edge but I’m not flying.

“Action!”

Falling from the Eiffel Tower takes courage… even when it’s not your first time. It’s all that metal so close to you. I’m always just a little nervous in case some idiot sticks an umbrella out at me. Not that they could touch me. I’m already too far out by the time I reach the height from which they are allowed to view. It’s their sudden display of shock that is most distracting, and at a time when I should be concentrating on counting.

I have to get it right: too soon and the parachute is in shot so I have to go back up and do it all over again, too late and… well, no-one ever said being a stunt man was a safe occupation. You should see how much I’m charged for insurance.

I don’t have time for any more thought. I’m told the view on the way down is spectacular but I’m too busy to take it in. A twist, a turn in the air… Ah, the villain’s last action is complete. A sharp pull on the rip cord and the parachute blossoms above me. Good. I think my timing was perfect.

Hello Paris!

*

The film has been another sorry flop at the box office. Nine out of ten of the ones I’ve been involved in are. I’m not surprised. Chases through the streets, followed by a race up the most filmed tower in cinema… then the baddie gets cornered and chooses to jump instead of being arrested? It’s all complete nonsense. Besides, what’s new and exciting about that? Where’s the imagination?

I want something different, a stunt to make the audience breathless. I want to leave my mark, not on them so much as on my contemporaries, a place in the stuntmen’s role of honour, the one that started with guys like Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton back in the silent days. Think of Hal Needham and all the work he’s done for Tarantino, Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies. Where would Bruce Willis be without Colin Follenweider taking his falls for him? What would Indiana Jones’s heroines do without Wendy Leach? Eddie Kidd even got a knighthood for his work, for “services to cinema”. Fat chance of me seeing my name above the titles like Jackie Chan always does.

I swallow another drink and let my imagination wander off to a place I doubt there is one chance in a million I will ever reach.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Do what you like. It’s a free country.” I don’t even bother to turn to look at the new arrival until he places another neat whisky in front of me.

“I saw your work in Towers Of Gold. I thought you were the only decent thing in the picture.”

“Thanks. I thought it stank, too.”

“You want to be in a better film?”

“Silly question!” In fact, as silly as they get. The truth is I’m out of work again so any film will do, even a sequel to the crummy Towers of Gold.

“Maybe it is. Even so, I might have something to interest you.”

Now I am looking harder at him. I have never seen him before. I can’t even start to put a name to him.

Over the next couple of hours he tells me all about himself. Karl Dephone is an up and coming director. He cut his teeth on TV, stuff for Netflix and Disney, too. Now he is ready to direct his first cinema release. It’s a strange subject, an adventure about a man who wanted to be like Charles Blondin, the guy who walked over Niagara Falls on a tightrope. The twist is that he performs in a town by day and robs the rich as a cat burglar by night. The stunts in the early part of the film are a bit routine but they all built up to the big one.

“Could you repeat Blondin’s stunt?”

“You’ve come to the right man. I’m pretty good on a tightrope. I come from a long line of circus folk. Until I was eighteen I was part of the family high wire act. I could do it again with a little practice.”

“You wouldn’t have to do the whole walk, just a section of it. We’ll shoot the rest using CGI.”

I bristle at the mention of every stunt artiste’s enemy. “I won’t need to use any trickery. I’ll do the whole thing exactly as Blondin did, walk one thousand three hundred feet on a three-point twenty-five-inch diameter rope, held one hundred and sixty feet above the river.”

My new boss thumps me between the shoulder blades. “That’s the spirit. Let’s make one humdinger of a movie!”

*

We started work a mere four weeks later. I was surprised when I saw my shooting schedule. The walk isn’t going to be until the very end, only a couple of shots before the final wrap. I was expecting all my stuff to be filmed together within a few days but on this picture it’s all spread out. I’ll be spending a lot of time doing nothing. Still, I am being paid and it is the most I’ve ever earned for one film.

Two days into the shoot Dephone got me to sign an insurance policy he had taken out. It’s for a lot of money. If I were unable to complete the walk, it would mean the film didn’t go under. It’s there to pay for re-shooting with another stuntman. It’s a sensible precaution. I had slipped and almost fallen from a roof on my last assignment.

*

Sunday morning and the rainbows are thick over Niagara Falls. I chose the rope myself and double-checked both ends are fully secure. I tested the balancing pole. Blondin had one weighing fifty pounds. Mine is much lighter, made of a special steel alloy. I stand on the rope. Yes, there is enough give in it.

I’m all set.

“Wait a sec, Davie. I’d like you to wear this.” Dephone picks up a tiny camera.

“Wear it?”

“Yeah, I want to catch your expressions as you walk across, give our star something authentic to work on. Don’t worry. It won’t get in the way.”

They strap it on. Suddenly I’m feeling uneasy, but I don’t know what there is to worry about. I can do this.

*

I’m close to halfway. I look over my shoulder. The handful of  people on the bank behind wave me on. I see Karl Dephone over by the place where the wire is anchored.

I see him bend, a flash of something in his hand…

I am falling, falling, falling…