Writing Episode 107 - "Los Muertos"

by Chris Collins (Writer)

We broke the story for episode 108 around Glen Mazzara’s simple concept: Ben goes on a road trip with his driver, Anthony. The episode should also feature our Guatemalan character, Cesar, in a separate storyline. The journey for each character should be spiritual, and it should all unfold in the desert. ‘Less is more,’ I thought to myself. We had expunged the rest of the characters and storylines for this episode.

Restricted to a seven-day production schedule, I knew that I would have to write something that could be shot near our production offices in Albuquerque, NM. My only recollection of Albuquerque was driving through it on my way west. I remember lots of billboards, tumbleweeds and a vast land that seemed to stretch farther than I cared to look. That memory sped past at 90 miles an hour from Interstate 40.

I had lived in Tucson, camped in Joshua Tree, visited Sedona and a number of other desert environments, but again, we were limited to the immediate vicinity of Albuquerque. Instead of imagining our characters amid giant Saguaro cacti, the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, or a number of other colorful southwest locales, the slugline just read “desert.” I didn’t know what to expect. I found myself asking, ‘Is less better than more?’ It would be up to production to bring that to life.

I never thought that we would be traveling outside of the 30-mile zone to the Jimez and Zia pueblos, and to other locations an hour and a half from Albuquerque. I never imagined that we would bulldoze an access road to a location nestled within a red rock canyon. Albuquerque had unveiled its endless treasury of mesas, buttes, sandstone spires, redrocks, layered rock formations, white sands, and the magnificent Sandia Mountains.

Production had spent the season trying to sell New Mexico as Los Angeles, and finally, they were shooting New Mexico for New Mexico. They lost their minds. Those crazy fucks took a simple word – ‘desert’ – and turned it into a complex and stunning vision. We added icons Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell, and peppered it with choppers, scorpions, and Ibogaine. Production had conjured the secrets of the New Mexico desert while I started humming that old saying, ‘less is more.’