Dressed like a lab technician, actor Michael J. Anderson is bent over a dead body. He slowly recites a long, fragmented string of sentences that plays like a parody of stream-of-consciousness writing. The camera does a De Palma-style track around him as he stares at some ill-defined point past the key light. There's a tight zoom onto Anderson's face - a move that finally allows the actor playing the stiff a chance to breathe.
It was "B" movie time in February on the set where Columbus' Film Group II was shooting its direct-to-video cult item First You Live and Then You Die. Anderson plied his trade in this locally produced movie, which is currently going through the Los Angeles video distribution mill for international release. Anderson not only stars in the movie, he has also been active in promoting it.
"I'm impressed with the filmmaking in Columbus," said Anderson during a conversation that took place in February. "And I've enjoyed working with Mark Burson and Dyrk Ashton," the producer/director team behind the film.
That isn't too shabby a compliment considering that Anderson is accustomed to working with infamous TV and film director David Lynch. Anderson's three-foot-eight-inch height and other-worldly looks landed him the unusual part of "The Little Man From Another Place" in Lynch's Twin Peaks TV series. His first appearance on the tube, as a disco-dancing, backward-talking denizen of some unearthly realm, was the perfect capper to an episode that was the most bizarre 60 minutes of television since Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. It was intense, absurd, vivid and surreal: a bundle of contradictions exploding in the viewer's face.
Anderson's life is full of such unlikely contradictions. His gait, for instance, is both graceful and jerky, the result of having broken more than 300 bones due to the congenital bone disease that stunted his growth and makes his skeleton extremely brittle. (He's broken bones simply by moving.) He also has a distinct speech impediment which he's successfully tamed into something that sounds like a vague accent.
No wonder his face betrays a strong sense of strength and suffering. Anderson is only 40, but he looks ageless, as if he were both a youthful elf and a wizened spirit.
"I'm not a candidate for a role about a large, black basketball player," he laughs. "But it's also nice to do roles in which everything doesn't revolve around my being a little man."
Nonetheless, Anderson's size has been his meal ticket into major guest-starring roles on TV's Picket Fence and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In addition, Anderson has continued his association with Lynch (for better or worse) - he appeared in the critically disastrous Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and is on hold for the long-awaited (and still stalled) production of Ronnie Rocket, the movie that could succeed in making Eraserhead look like The Brady Bunch.
"I have four different versions of the script for Ronnie Rocket," confided Anderson. "But Lynch has, for the moment, lost confidence in the project. Which is too bad. If he stays to his vision of the film, it would be like a cold wind blowing through this room."
His eyes momentarily twinkle. Anderson likes to work in movies that are bold, daring and different. That's what brought him to Columbus for First You Live and Then You Die.
Most of the movie was originally shot several years ago, during a rambling, cross-country trip. The movie didn't make much sense, but it received a few screenings and, more surprisingly, a favorable review from Joe Bob Briggs. Burson and Ashton decided to take a try at clarifying the footage, but they needed a way to tie the storyline together.
So they invented the concept of a "necroscope," a telepath who can read the memories of the dead. Since the pair was looking to land a video distribution deal with a Pacific rim-based company, they needed an American actor who was unique enough to handle the part, but also well known in Asian markets. Anderson had the look, and the huge popularity of Twin Peaks in Japan made him an established star.
But there was an ulterior motive to their recruitment of Anderson. Burson and Ashton are also working on a movie based on a series of mystery novels about a dwarf detective.
Despite his claim that he "sits around a pool in Los Angeles, looking abstract," Anderson is a busy man.
"The way I see it," he says, "the more balls I can juggle at the same time, the more likely that one of them will hit me."
His eyes fill again with that magical sparkle. Despite his old nickname of "little man Mike," Anderson's persona is finally beginning to grow.
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