The shot’s a little blurry but you can make out that you are looking at a clear, thick bottle. The camera begins to pan out bringing the logo into focus and you can now see that the bottle is empty except for a small amount of liquid in one corner. As the camera continues to pan out you see the logo for Suaza. And now you can see the dirty hand that is palm up, fingers slightly curled and dirty toward the sky. The hand is attached to an arm. The arm is attached to a man.
You can now see that he has pissed himself. He lies there with his mouth open and you can hear him breathing deeply. Not quite a snore, but loudly breathing.
His pants are brown. I don’t know why their pants are always brown. There’s also a stain on his upper right thigh making the pants a darker brown in that area just below the wet spot where he has pissed himself. He’s wearing a heavy corduroy jacket that clashes almost perfectly with his pants. It’s lined with flannel which makes no sense. You can see his chest rising and falling. And then it pauses. The pause is drawn out. And out. Until the point where you think that maybe he had died, not that that would be an odd start to this movie, but you start to worry. Your anxiety rises.
And then with a gasp, he takes his next breath.
Of course, his ass is hanging out, just a little bit. Enough to make you not want to look, but also enough that it’s impossible not to notice.
The camera pans to the left and you begin to see his surroundings. There’s a brick wall. A door that looks like it has been kicked in before. Someone has painted ACAB on the door with an Anarchy sign next to it. There are darker and lighter spots on the wall that make you think that maybe public urination is a common theme here. Then there’s a dumpster. It’s green. The lid is broken and black. There’s a set of feet poking out from underneath. They are disembodied. Completely out of context and just hanging out there. The camera does not stop. It continues around the alley.
It’s a stereotypical alley, I know. But it’s his and there he lies breathing. Stopping. Gasping. With every gasp his hand clenches as if he is grasping for the bottle again. You half expect him to wake up and grab the bottle and quench his morning thirst with the last few drops of agave nectar still inside. But he doesn’t. He just lies there.
The camera zooms in on his left arm, the one not extended toward the bottle. You can see his dirty nails but it continues past that to the asphalt that he is prostrated upon. You can see the oil from the traps that has been dumped in the alley for way too long. You can see what you assume is corn oil coagulated on the ground. There obviously is no smell coming from the screen but your nose recoils anyway and you feel like you can sense what the alley smells like. What he smells like. You start to think that there is no reason it’s not his feet that are hanging out from under that dumpster. That he is a wasted a man, a lost cause. He’s a drunk in an alley past out, reaching for his bottle of empty tequila with every breath.
You start to wonder about where this is going, except that you have seen the trailers. You pretty much know where this movie is going and you are anxious for it to continue. But all you see is this drunk and his surroundings and you wait. You wait for the camera to once again pan out and maybe focus on the busy street that is at the mouth of this alley. There’s action there.
The camera zooms in on his face. He breaths in deep. He pauses. He pauses. He pauses. Then, just when you think he may be placed in that dumpster in a few more moments, he gasps for air. His hand clenches toward the bottle. He gurgles a little and he breathes in deep and profound. And then he pauses. He pauses. He pauses.
Suddenly the camera quickly pans outward. Rising toward the tops of the buildings bordering the alley within which he is contained. You see the bricks blurred as it goes up and up and up.
The camera continues past the top of the buildings. You see the AC units. You see the water tanks for the fire suppressant system that sits above it all. You see the alley get darker and darker as the blue sky stretches out across the screen. The camera continues up. Soon the blue turns to dark blue and darker and then black. You see distant stars, planets appear on the screen as it continues upward.
It gets darker and darker. There is a vignette as things continue toward black.
He paused.
P. L. and R.
