by Shane Briant
Filming in exotic locations was one of the prime reasons I decided to move to Australia, so this job was going to be a dream shoot – eight weeks living in a luxury thatched bure at the water's edge at the Le Lagon Hotel near Port Vila.
John Seale arranged for all the cast, other than Mark and Jeröen Krabbé, to meet before we all left. Deborah Ungar, Lech Mackiewicz – my fellow bad guy henchman – and a bunch of other actors attended. All went smoothly at the reading, and as I looked across the table at Deborah I thought, 'this is going to work really well, Deborah has a sultry, sexy look and is clearly a fine actress.'
When I arrived on Vanuatu's Island of Effate, I met with and immediately bonded with Jeröen and Mark. Everything pointed to a great shoot.
It's at moments like this that things tend to go awry.
The first hiccup was to affect me directly. Before we'd even started filming, Jim McElroy asked if we could have a 'word privately.' This kind of remark never bodes well – avoid these private chinwags. He told me that the preponderance of opinion was that Jeröen, rather than me, should be 'the last bad guy standing.' Apparently they felt he was a bigger star in Europe, and as such should be at the heart of it when the violent action took over. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You want to change the ending simply because you think Jeröen is a bigger name in Europe? What about the integrity of the script," I argued.
In the script that I'd originally read, my character, Rex, was the cold-blooded South African mercenary who Krabbé's 'Vivaldi' character employs as 'security.' In the exciting conclusion to the film, the quiet man Rex finally takes over and excels.
"So what do you have in mind for 'Rex' now?" I asked Jim bluntly, over a somewhat incongruous glass of French champagne. Jim looked everywhere but at me, as if he hadn't considered this at all.
"He… There was a beat. "He gets shot dead in the crossfire? Something like that?"
"But the entire point of Rex being around as security for the entire film is because at the end he finally does something positive," I replied.
"Look, Shane. I'll be frank. It's been decided. It's a fait accompli. Sorry, mate. Oh, I'd like to let you know this has nothing to do with Jeröen – he didn't ask for the change."
I was stunned, as well as unbelievably disappointed; but what could I do? Get in a huff and jump a plane? Nah. Only in very complex American contracts is there any way you can wheedle out of a film merely because the script has been changed. It's just one of those things that happen – you have to accept them.
But I now had a dilemma. I had 'above the title' billing, same size and type as the other three stars, yet now my role had had its wings clipped in a big way. How could I avoid looking silly? Somehow I had to quickly think of a fallback position.
That night I lay awake in my thatched bure thinking of a way to salvage the situation. I knew I'd have to come up with something because I knew Jim wasn't going to lose any sleep wondering how to help me out – he was the producer. By dawn's early rays I had come up with a possible answer!
My idea was this. There was no way my character, the ultimate hard man from Jo'berg, was going be killed accidentally in any crossfire. It simply made no sense – the whole point of Rex was that he was capable of anything, so he could easily outwit the native Vanuatans bent on killing him with bows, arrows and spears. It couldn't be a tragic accident either – Rex was worthy of more than a stray arrow.
Rex's death had to be the result of his one redeeming feature. A terrible irony!
I've always believed that no one is all bad. As I've mentioned before, serial killers sometimes have a real soft spot for dogs, cats or monkeys. Or keep birds in their cells. So how about this? Rex, the deeply racist South African mercenary – a man who has no hint of compassion or pity in his soul, just happens to be amused by the nerve of a young native Vanuatan boy. Every day Rex passes him by in his jeep, and every day the boy raises his thumb and forefinger and pretends to shoot him.
He's the only kid on the island that doesn't fear him. Rex, thinking the kid's got balls for an eight year old, smiles back every day and returns the gesture. Where is this heading, you may ask? Well, towards the end of the film when Mark Harmon assembles his native army to take down Krabbé, Rex decides it's more sensible for him to take his stash of gold and get out of Dodge. So he races back to his room, takes off his webbing, leaving it on his bed, and has a final shave. Next thing we see is the eight-year-old Vanuatan kid edging his way though the bedroom door, curious to peek inside. He looks at Rex's back, and then sees the gun on the bed. The Glock fascinates the kid; he's never seen a real gun before. So while Rex is shaving, oblivious to the small intruder, the boy picks up the Glock and points it at Rex's back, thinking he'll play their game again – just like every day. Rex suddenly becomes aware there's someone in
the room. He looks in the shaving mirror, and sees the gun pointed at his back. But it's too late. Boom! Rex falls, a look of 'how the hell did I let this happen,' on his face.
Horrified and frightened, the boy runs away.
With Mark Harmon and Jeroën Krabbé in 'Till There Was You,' in Vanuatu
I put this scenario to Jim and John, and thankfully they agreed to it. At last I had an end that actually meant something, one cinemagoers might remember when they left the theatre.
For a couple of months prior to principal photography, I trained every day for two hours in a gym in Bayview, Sydney. By the time I was dressed in the khaki fatigues, boots and T-shirt, the sleeves of my T actually hugged my biceps. For the first time ever, I thought I actually looked like a 'tough guy,' as opposed to simply acting the 'bad guy.' I'd had my fair hair bleach-blonded almost white, and cut to one inch in length. With some sunshine and makeup I thought I looked pretty much the way Rex might look – Cliff Robertson would have loved the tan!
On the very first day of filming I was reminded of Tim Dalton's sage advice on contracts, 'Got to have everything covered in the contract or you lose out.'
Again I had practically none of the creature comforts covered,
and again I lost out. Here's what happened.
The first day was very hot and humid, and in the minute it took me to walk to the unit base from where I'd been dropped off by my driver I was sweating like a pig, yet actually enjoying the tropical feel. After wardrobe and make-up I was taken up to the set, a huge wooden house built of wood on stilts in the jungle. It was there I saw the courtesy tents. Those provided for 'the stars.'
There were three for actors and one for the director. They were large brand new tents with the actor's name pinned to the front so that people knew it was for that actor and no one else. (There were also directors chairs for the cast but the locals always sat in them!)
Inside each tent was a camp bed with a pillow at the top, an 'Eskie' next to the bed with ice cold drinks inside, and a bedside table with mosquito repellent and a hurricane lamp. However, there were four of them. Not five. I did not see my name. I was surprised, since there were four actors' names above the title. An oversight? I immediately tracked down the Unit Manager and asked him in the nicest way where my tent might be. He pulled out some paperwork he had in his pocket and glanced through it. Then he looked up at me. "Nothing in yer contract, mate. No tent, no bottled water. Nix." He paused, maybe feeling a bit uncomfortable. "See, Shane, I just go by what's in the contract. It's that simple." I smiled and told him I understood—no problem. I did feel a bit stupid at lunchtime when Mark, Jeröen and Deborah repaired to their tents, lay down, turned on their fans and sipped their Perrier water. So…what to do? It was another test for my inventiveness – I would say nothing more about the tents. I'd shame them. That was the idea, anyway.
That evening I asked my driver to stop by a toy store in the capital, Port Vila. There I bought a kid's Indian tepee – small enough to accommodate a five-year-old.
The following morning I arrived early on set and erected the tepee right next to the four other adult tents. I stuck a note with my name on the fro
nt and placed a bottle of fizzy red soda inside. Then I left the area and watched the reaction.
No one other than me found my joke funny at all. They were mostly embarrassed. The result was that John Seale told someone to give his tent to me, since he said he never used it. John is a nice guy.
So, instead of giving us all a laugh, it all fell a bit flat. But I had my tent!
Take your contracts seriously. Tim Dalton is a wise man.
As the shoot progressed more problems with the script developed day-by-day and this didn't please Mark at all. One evening he told me that what bugged him was that he was seldom if ever consulted about the changes, and he felt that since he was the lead character, John and Jim should discuss any changes with him.
Over the next few weeks this caused more and more friction – Mark had accepted his role based on the script he'd been given. Now the script had developed in a quite different way.
I tried to distance myself from the friction, but it's practically impossible to do that. People will always ask you, 'What do you think, Shane?' and that's not the time to be a wimp and prevaricate. You have to offer an opinion. Take one view and risk offending the producer and director, offer another and risk offending Mark. I thought it best to tell it the way I saw it, and that happened to be the way Mark saw it.
I think I ended up being as politically sensitive as possible, but I wasn't much help to anyone.
Despite these problems, I had the time of my life for those eight weeks. The weather was superb, the days I didn't work I spent swimming or sailing in the lagoon, eating fresh tropical fruit, and sipping cocktails.
'An actor's life for me!'
I spent a great deal of time talking with Jeröen as he painted his canvasses outside his bure – he is a famous painter back in Holland. I liked him a lot; he has a wonderful sense of humour and enjoys every second of his life, never allowing anything to upset him. He thought, as I did, that he was on the perfect junket – whereas Mark had more to lose since he was the principal star and would be blamed if the film ended up a turkey. During the shoot I met and became friends with Sandra Lee Patterson who acted as a voice coach. She now owns one of Australia's leading acting academies, 'On Camera Connections.'
When we returned to Sydney, Mark came to visit Wendy, Coco and me in our house in Avalon on the Northern Beaches, and we went water skiing on Pittwater.
Coco and Mark on our veranda in Avalon, Australia.
As you'd expect Mark was an expert mono-skier – but then he'd been a star college quarterback, and could probably have excelled at any sport he cared to indulge in.
The following year I visited him at his home in Hollywood – I don't think he'd enjoyed Vanuatu much and that was a shame. I know I did.
The film was distributed the following year. It set a new
Australian budget record (so I was told, anyway) of thirteen million dollars. But it didn't really cut the mustard with the critics, and as far as I know didn't do too well at the box office.
Jeröen went back to his European movies, Deborah Ungar went to Hollywood and starred in another forty-odd movies, and Mark went on to star and produce the longest running hugely successful cop series in American history – NCIS. I gladly stayed in Australia to make more movies there.
family sadness.
Lifestyles catch up with my family.
At 3 a.m. on the fourth of July, the telephone rang and the son of my mother's best friend, Peter Hambro, informed me that my mother had died of a heart attack. We talked for a long time, then I sat on the deck outside our Avalon home as the rainbow lorikeets arrived on the veranda thinking as birds do that it was breakfast time.
Mum always loved Australian native birds, and these beautiful rainbow Lorikeets made me feel my mother was with me in spirit that day. She'd had a tragic life. So beautiful as a young girl, she would have had a wonderful career had the war not come. When it did, she married the wrong man and her marriage was a disaster. She also suffered from asthma all her life and was never really happy. Towards the end of her life, she came to visit me twice with my Aunt Margaret. Finally she had some happy times. After sixtyfour years she returned to the happy country of her childhood. On the final Saturday of the second visit, before mum and Marnie left, Wendy and I took them to a wonderful restaurant called Jonah's. It's on a hill overlooking Palm Beach, and has the most superb views over the Pacific.
"Can I have anything I like?" mum asked – she always worried that maybe I couldn't afford something.
"Of course, mum," I replied.
"Then I'll have the lobster. With lashings of unsalted butter!"
I'd never seen her happier. The lobster arrived accompanied by a sauceboat of melted butter, which she finished in ten minutes – the butter, that is.
"Do you think I could ask for some more butter," she asked me. Rationing during the war had meant she'd had to go without butter for too many years and she'd never forgotten this butter famine.
I ordered more, and when she'd finished her lobster she looked positively radiant.
Wendy, my Aunt Margaret, and mum at Jonah's, Whale Beach.
Two days later she flew home. A week after that she suffered a massive coronary while in the kitchen of her best friend in Harlow Essex, Mary Hambro. Mary told Dermot that mum had simply muttered, "that's really painful,' and was dead before her head hit the floor. It had to have been all that butter. Her cholesterol count was as massive as her heart attack. Yet, as she told me many times, she always preferred to 'chance it.' It was a fact of life that all my family then liked to 'chance it.'
As I mentioned earlier, my brother Dermot was a chancer all his life. Because he'd screwed up his chances of a fine Oxbridge degree, he embarked on a career that saw him do so many varied things it makes my head spin just to think of them.
After dabbling in Egyptology and being blackballed by that particular community for not being exactly frank with them, he married Jane Attewill and had two divine daughters, Natasha and Rosalind.
He then interviewed for a job with the Ministry of Defense and was hired to research any 'secondary' questions the Minister might be asked in Parliament. I think this shows how bright Dermot was. I was proud to think the Minister was reading off a script my brother had prepared for him.
Naturally nothing ran smoothly for Dermot, and he soon had a falling out with the Minister's Office, was divorced, and remarried, this time his wife was called Trina. They had a boy named Toby. It was at this time that he chose to move to Hong Kong, but within a a few short months he'd talked Radio & TV Hong Kong into hiring him as a breakfast radio host. By this time his health was appalling. He'd never taken any care of himself – smoking and drinking far too much. He must have known it would take him down, but he was the kind of man who never thought about what might happen next, he'd simply say, "My round!"
The last time I saw him was at London Airport. We met for a drink in the bar – I had to fly off with the 'Mission Top Secret' crew to Poland. I hadn't seen Dermot for a few years and we were delighted to see each other. By then he'd become a diabetic. Nevertheless he threw caution to the wind and decided to celebrate. An hour later, when I returned from the loo there was no sign of Dermot and his third wife Christina – Dermot was in a diabetic coma, about to be rushed to hospital. I had two hours to spare before my plane left, and I wanted to make sure that he'd be all right, so I drove with them both to the hospital, hoping that Dermot would regain consciousness; which he did an hour later. He looked at me, smiled and held my hand. Then said, "Please don't leave me, I think I'm dying."
What could I do or say? I had an entire film crew waiting for me. Without 'Neville Savage' they'd be up the creek.
I stayed with Dermot for an hour. He eventually fell asleep and I left for Warsaw – I had no alternative.
He didn't die that year; he died the following year. He was just fifty-two. Such a waste; he had a brilliant mind and was supremely witty. He could have done anything, but his problem was that he thought he
was indestructible.