Dead Man’s Wire

…is a new film, currently in production, directed by Gus Van Zant about a man I once knew.

Lyrics

Dead man
Stand up and walk real slow
Two and one half days
Wired to my shotgun

Pay your mortgage down
The city watches anxious 
No one buys more days
So keep the cameras trained

Hey we’re the stars of the show
The circus is on us now
And we’re walking on a high wire
Don’t it make you feel alive?

God Damned right
I’ve been angry all my life
Somebody call the news
This my bona fide strike

I’m a hell of a man
mark the fire I hold
Somebody call up the morgue 
and let those cameras roll

Hey we’re the stars of the show
The burden is on us now
Make ‘em laugh or make ‘em cry
Don’t it make you feel alive?

Big shots
They don’t need guns
But oh not so 
poor boys like me

I’m a hell of a man
And I hope the gun don’t go
I’m having too much fun 
So let those cameras roll

Hey we’re the stars of the show
not much left on this old road
We’re two twins on a dead man’s line
Don’t it make you feel alive?

My connection to the story

Richard Hall was my neighbor when I grew up in suburban Indianapolis. I never met him and rarely even saw anyone in his family, 

But the Hall house was trick-or-treating distance from mine and an air or mystery surrounded it, owing to the incident of 1977 when Mr. Hall was abducted and held at gunpoint for 2+ days by a disgruntled man named Tony Kiritsis who had been denied a mortgage by Hall’s company.

With headquarters in an expensive downtown highrise Hall’s firm provided the initial setting for the abduction when Kiritsis stormed it with a sawed-off shotgun equipped with a “dead man’s wire” that afixed to Hall’s neck and was then wired to the gun’s trigger. Later, Kiritsis transported his hostage, with local media and law in tow, to his own small apartment.  

The rest of the story (both Hall and Kiritsis live and the perpetrator never did any time) is documented by ample archival footage of and news stories about the affair. 

Later a local filmmaker and record store owner, Alan Berry, made a documentary called “Dean Man’s Line” (2018) and more recently Sony produced the podcast-turned-TV-series “American Hostage,” staring Jon Hamm. It has just been announced that Werner Herzog will produce a film called “Dead Man’s Wire” starring Nic Cage. 

Other than my very personal connection to this story the thing I find most compelling is the character of Kiritsis, who is, in my view, a true “anti-hero,” the proverbial little guy, outclassed, marginalized and willing to martyr himself in a ceremony of his own bitterness. 

This being 1977 the now-familiar concept of “live streaming” such situations hadn’t entered the vernacular. But Kiritisis insisted that the local media be present for the whole affair, making calls to local news reporter Fred Heckman (Hamm’s character in “American Hostage”) throughout the 72 hour standoff, recordings of which you can hear on Youtube. 

It is the mania of the little man that I try to capture with my song “Keep the Cameras Rolling.” The idea that he was bound to Hall in a drama that would, at best, provide some salve to his anger and, at worst, see him go out in a blaze of glory. And he wanted everyone to watch.