I knew enough to be skeptical; my children and husband stayed at home, just in case the reality was more like what I remembered.
After the super-luxury of Swissair first class, landing in Romania’s airport and entering the smoke-filled and cigarette butt-laden luggage retrieval to meet my leathered, toothless taxi driver, I knew it was time to change my vision.
You see, I have two sets of eyes. Until the age of ten I was growing up in a place where no hot running water was the norm. The bathtub was tin, and carried to the kitchen, and baths were rationed to one a week. Heating came from coal stoves. Food poisoning was also a weekly occurrence, since we had no fridge or icebox. A banana was so sought after and rare that we only got one, and I mean one, for Christmas.
If this sounds like turn-of-the-century America, be aware that I’m not that old! Rather, I was born in the then communist Czechoslovakia. The benefits – besides being rather bacteria resistant – are these two sets of eyes I can switch between. With one set, my communist eyes, dirt and deprivation are familiar, and in no way hamper a good time. With the other, my capitalist set of eyes, anywhere you are not offered a hot towellete while reclining with a glass of champagne is uncivilized. All right, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but hot water and toilet paper are not optional.
This double vision comes in handy when traveling: I have no problems adjusting to whatever is at hand, unlike my single-pair-eyed family and friends. But generally I stick a pair of eyes on and leave them there until it’s time to leave. Romania was to be different.
The first switch was the drive from the luxury hotel to the ancient Communist-regime television studio. It had an undeserved reputation as the best studio in the country, since it was the only one in the country. The road was paved for a good half of the way, but even on the paved parts, my tiny Mercedes and uniformed driver were often stuck behind a horse-and-carriage driven by an ancient weather-beaten man or an ancient toothless crone in a babushka. Thin, poorly dressed Roma children lined some parts of the road, hands outstretched, at the ungodly hours of four or five o’clock in the morning. Judd Nelson, my co-star, stopped every time, giving away all of his per diem in the first two days.
At night, we visited a gilt-dripping casino with all the accoutrements of Las Vegas, and walked back to our hotel through streets lined with buildings that still showed the bullet holes of the revolution that had deposed and executed Ceauşescu ten years earlier. The worst part of taking a walk thought the city, though, were the dogs – hordes of semi-wild, mangy, hungry, desperate dogs.
It was at some point explained to us that Ceauşescu had, towards the end of his reign, forcibly ejected thousands of people from their homes to build nicer looking buildings, without much caring where the evicted folks would go. I guess they went somewhere, since I didn’t see too many homeless people, but they left their dogs to fend for themselves. Some of these homeless dogs went feral and chased us with growls and snarls from what they considered ‘their’ corners, but some wagged their tails and follow us for blocks. Some just lay there, so sick and hungry they exhausted themselves with the effort of lifting their heads when you passed. Even if you weren’t an animal lover, it would still break your heart to see a four-week-old puppy dying between the paws of its mother, who’d nudge it toward you in a last attempt to save her baby. And if you wanted to rescue it, there were at least five more within the same block. Judd, Larry and I stopped taking walks.
At the studio, a perfect example of communist modern – blocky and gray – Judd, Larry and I were treated as first-class stars with giant dressing rooms and a private chef, and a dining room only for us and the director and producer. Only I, however, appreciated the cuisine of boiled meats and white starch. Larry and Judd were busy wrapping their leftovers into napkins for the dogs. Our dressing rooms didn’t have heating, but they were furnished with ’50s-style furniture that would probably be worth some money in the States.
The crew was all Romanian, and most of them, except for the hair and makeup people, spoke little or no English. This may have accounted for some of the small misunderstandings (as they saw it), or life-threatening miscommunications (as Judd and Larry saw it).
The first day into the shooting, Judd turned to me and announced he had a feeling that to shoot an action flick in a Third World country was a really bad idea. We were filming scenes in which he and I were crawling through air ducts, escaping from a mental patient (played by Larry) bent on killing us both. The second time Judd ripped his pants on a poorly welded seam, he was ready to call it a day and go back to the States. Safety on set didn’t appear to be a priority.
With my communist vision, this seemed perfectly okay: people had done their jobs, so what if it wasn’t perfect? You’d be insulting them if you pointed out the flaws.
This way of looking at things held true as long as the safety in question was Judd’s pants. When we shot a scene in which the killer hurls himself through a glass window at me, a real glass window (the stuntman cut his head in five places), and I ended up with a face full of shattered glass, I started to feel more American. When, right before we were to do an explosion scene in the hallway, someone cleaned the floors with gasoline, my laughter was forced. (Judd was the one to call it; I thought the smell of gasoline came from the explosives.)
Then of course, there was the scene when my character, Maggie, finally makes it out of the asylum, which we shot outside the local morgue at night. Maggie has set an explosive at the massive doors and blown them off their hinges, and stumbles out through the smoke to the waiting police car. The smoke was made in two metal barrels right next to where I had to wait and make myself hyperventilate for the scene before bursting out, and it smelled suspiciously like burning plastic shopping bags. Which is exactly what it was. If I ever get lung cancer or emphysema later in my life, you’ll never be able to convince me that it was caused by the cigarettes I’ve smoked.
One day we got lost on the way to our ‘lunch’, which was served in the lobby of the morgue in the middle of the night, and we accidentally walked through the actual morgue. The dead naked bodies stacked haphazardly on top of each other seemed a casual reminder of what happens when you ignore ‘Safety First.’
My double vision was flicking on and off and on and off. It was enough to make me seasick. Or slightly schizophrenic. Ten minutes from my hotel, a Roma girl about six years old stood shivering barefoot on the roadside in November, holding her newborn sibling swathed in an old towel. Ten minutes in the other direction lived a beautiful clothing designer who owned a townhouse, all four stories gleaming with Lucite-lit flooring, expensive all-white furnishings reflected in huge mirrors and white mink throws sprinkled throughout. Her car outside was a white Cadillac Escalade with a television and video games, and of course, a white-uniformed driver. This was nothing like the communist country of my youth, but I wasn’t sure I liked it any better.
My capitalist eyes demanded action. I realized I couldn’t help one and leave all others, so I started to make plans for benefits and volunteer work I would do as soon as I got back home to the US. But with my communist eyes, the Roma kids and dying dogs were just a part of life. No need for action. This is how things went; you couldn’t change it. You just coasted along the dirty waters as best you could until it was your time to go under. I guess this is why America is the most powerful nation on earth. In our American eyes there is nothing we can’t do.
We finished the movie on schedule, my last scene being one in which my stuntwoman was to climb up a chain about three floors. Only just before we started filming this scene did we find out that my stuntwoman, or stunt girl, really, was not a stunt person at all, but just an actress. All the times she was jumping off roofs and elevator shafts and crashing through glass she was no more trained than I was.
I did the climbing myself. The first take became the only take, since after I brilliantly ascended to the ceiling, I had no strength to even hold a glass of water. But at least I did it. Until then I had no id
ea that I could climb three floors up a chain.
Shooting an action movie in Romania ended up being a bit like natural childbirth: the experience made you realize your strength.
I already knew I could float down a dirty stream and close my eyes to ugliness around me.
What I don’t always remember, though, is how lucky I am that I don’t have to.
Thai Dyed
ERIC BOGOSIAN
Eric Bogosian has starred in a number of feature films (including the adaptation of his play, Talk Radio) as well as playing Captain Dan Ross on Law & Order: Criminal Intent for three seasons. In addition to Talk Radio, Bogosian has written a number of plays, including subUrbia (which was also adapted to film), six solos shows and three novels. His latest novel, Perforated Heart, was published by Simon & Schuster last year.
I’ve filmed in Thailand twice. First in 1989 on a CBS Movie of the Week entitled Last Flight Out and then in ’97 on an HBO movie, Bright Shining Lie. That second time we were put up in a Bangkok hotel for one night before shipping out to location. Despite being jet-lagged out of our skulls (a problem when location shooting halfway around the world), a bunch of us, including a Chinese-American actress in her late fifties, decided to go out and see the sights. We grabbed a cab in front of the hotel and asked the driver to take us someplace where we could see the sights. He chattered something back to us and off we roared toward Patpong, a popular tourist district packed with open-air bars and food stands and souvenir vendors. The driver arrived at a nondescript door, pointed and nodded, ‘Ping-pong show, banana show, razorblade show?’ He smiled beatifically. He’d wait.
What could this be? We headed for the door. In moments we figured out what the driver was describing. Oh yeah. Behind that door was the thing Patpong is most famous for, the sex show. We opted for dinner instead. We soon learned how ubiquitous the sex trade is in urban Thailand. But what’s more impressive than the vast amount of carnal experiences available is the blasé attitude the locals seem to have toward the sex industry. Repeatedly I encountered completely innocent invitations to see strip shows or to employ prostitutes from really sweet hotel personnel. Of course, they recognized me as a Western male and simply assumed that’s why I was in Thailand.
The learning curve would accelerate because we were shooting near the city of Pattaya, which is to the sex industry something like what Las Vegas is to gambling. Hanging out in Pattaya and not absorbing the predominant industry would be like going to the beach and not swimming. No visitor can avoid the bars that open onto the street. Prostitutes – young women, older women and young men in drag – lustily hail all who pass by. It’s easy to see the roots of this once-tiny beach town when it was a Vietnam War–era R & R spot. After years of being the place where our boys in uniform relaxed, it grew and grew. Today it is a thriving, throbbing destination. How big? The Sixth Fleet was anchored there while we were shooting. That’s something like 6000 sailors. Pattaya had no problem accommodating them.
Yes, I did visit a few places out of curiosity, but after two visits to go-go bars, I didn’t return. I won’t lie, there is something exciting about the demimonde of urban Thailand. It’s impossible to erase the mental images of The Deer Hunter, which was shot there. But let’s be clear: the sex industry is an adjunct to a hard and vicious crime world in Thailand. It is not cool or easygoing. The girls are very poor and for the most part sell intimacy because they are sending money back to their impoverished families. Some, if not most, are virtual slaves. After having a bar girl explain how her family sent her to the bars to make ten bucks a night, I lost my curiosity.
Thankfully, Pattaya is more than people selling their bodies and my most memorable night in Thailand was spent there. We finished work in the early evening and dispersed to find food. The sun had just set, which, due to the throbbing heat, is the cue to go out and about. We grabbed a túk-túk outside the hotel and roared into the city proper. There we found a wonderful theater that featured transvestite renditions of Broadway musicals. Just under the theater was a shooting gallery, where for five bucks one could grab a .45 or even a machine gun and blast away at targets. I wondered if the flooring between the range and the seating upstairs was bulletproof.
Having satisfied our artistic and martial needs, we ambled shoreward, where an open-air vendor displayed his freshly caught fish. The deal was that you picked out a fish you liked the look of, described how you’d like to have it cooked and then sat at a picnic table on the beach. Ten minutes later, I was served the best grilled fish with chili sauce I’d ever had.
Still, I was not in Thailand to play, but to work in-country. And it was here, on and around our sets, that I got to experience the real Thailand. I shared food with the Thai film crew (they had their own food service) and as a result will never again be satisfied with Americanized ‘Thai’ food. I visited village food stalls replete with fly-speckled slaughter, climbed multistory limestone waterfalls flitting with butterflies, was amazed and frightened by the immense night-time drone of jungle insect life, and in general had my entire sensory apparatus – taste, sight and smell – transported to new uncharted territory.
But the treasures of Thailand that brought me the most joy and satisfaction were the Buddhas in the temples. First and foremost was the massive reclining golden Buddha of Wat Pho in Bangkok. This wonderfully serene Buddha is 150-feet long, covered in gold and housed in a large airy shelter. I’ve been there a few times, I even have a little version of this Buddha over my desk to keep me company. Visiting temples became an addiction with me on both my trips. On my days off, I would simply ask my driver to find a Buddha. Because we were often in the jungle, getting there was half the fun.
The Buddhas of Thailand vary in quality and size. There have been instances of very small solid gold Buddhas found encased in large unremarkable plaster Buddhas. This was done in order to protect the inner, very valuable Buddha from pillage by conquering armies. I heard that one was discovered a few years back when a large plaster Buddha was dropped while being moved. It cracked in half to reveal the sacred solid gold deity within.
One day I found myself wandering around a monastery north of Kanchanaburi in Chiang Mai. The Buddha here was fat and ugly and poorly rendered. Disappointed, I was making my way back to the car park where my driver waited for me, when I passed a stand of incense and recognized it as a place to say a prayer and make a donation. So I did. Then I spied a little sign, in Thai, on the ground. Approaching it I saw that the sign indicated with an arrow an opening in the ground and a tiny ladder going down into the hole.
So I let myself down into the hole. At the bottom of the little ladder I found myself in a small limestone cave, maybe ten-feet wide. Here were some small Buddhas and more incense and candles. I let the vibes wash over me, alone in a cave underground. Then, like Alice, I noticed a small door, maybe three-feet high, set in the wall. It led into a little tunnel. In I went, noticing as I did that the little door had a loose padlock attached. I figured I wasn’t going far, so I ignored the padlock.
That tunnel led to another cave. And another tunnel and another cave. And on and on. In each cave resided a Buddha. After three or four of these I remembered that padlock. Perhaps it would be a good idea to turn back. But I was curious: each succeeding cave was occupied by more interesting Buddhas! I couldn’t stop now! The adrenaline flowed as I pressed on.
And then I had the great experience, what Spalding Gray called ‘the perfect moment.’ The last cave. High-ceilinged, spacious. With one wonderful supreme Buddha! No wonder the public Buddha outside was so crummy. He wasn’t the real one, the significant one. He was the one for the tourists. This was the guy! Oh yeah. I hung there for a while, praying, thinking, alone who knows how many feet underground in a limestone cavern in Thailand.
Eventually I found my way out, found my driver and realizing the late hour, said, ‘I better get back, production has no idea where I am. It’s important.’ He replied with classic Thai tranquility, ‘Yes, yes, very important. I unde
rstand.’
The King and I
RICHARD E GRANT
Richard E Grant was born and brought up in Swaziland, emigrated to England in 1982, and since his first film Withnail and I in 1986, has appeared in forty films and worked with directors Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jane Campion, Bruce Robinson and Robert Altman. Grant wrote and directed Wah-Wah in 2004. He has also published three books, With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E Grant, The Wah-Wah Diaries: The Making of a Film and By Design: A Hollywood Novel.
At the tail end of the last century, I scribbled an autobiographical screenplay about my adolescence in Swaziland, Southern Africa, entitled Wah-Wah (the toodle-pip and hubbly-jubbly colonial slang of the last gasp of empire). After a couple of years trying to chicken-and-egg it – get it cast and financed – my producer politely withdrew to become a drugs counselor in Barbados. Into the breach stepped a comely French female producer (whom I shall diplomatically refer to by her initials, MC), who promised calm financial passage and clearsailingconditionsahead.com. Despite the invention of phones, faxes, texts and emails, the small matter of answering any of these communications between my office in London and hers in Paris became increasingly infrequent.
There’s nothing like the hilarity of hindsight when revisiting the near nervous-breakdown-inducing details of working with the aforementioned foe …
Having ploughed through four years of rewrites, preproduction collywobbles and yo-yoing financials, we finally find ourselves in Swaziland, only to discover, five days before shooting, that MC has ‘neglected’ to secure work permits for the hundred-plus crew and cast. She is still in Paris when I am red-carpeted by an incandescent Swazi government minister at 8:30am on June 2, 2004.
Lights, Camera...Travel! Page 13