Always the Bad Guy

by Shane Briant

  I have a sneaking suspicion that the change-up in class was

  made because there was a fear that someone – a forerunner of Wikileaks – was about to blow the whistle that on the first series the producers and directors had flown on separate flights in, how shall I put it, more 'comfortable' surroundings. Not Emmanuel, he never believed in too much luxury.

  "Everyone is equal in my opinion. I fly with you. Economy," he'd always said. Whatever the reason, it was a nice change – it meant we arrived in much better condition to act. Producers please note.

  Germany, Ireland, England, Spain and South Africa were our destinations this time. Once again Emmanuel Matsos handed out the wads of per diems, and once more I allowed the production to feed me, provide me with wonderful accommodation, pick me up in limos, drop me home each evening, and arrange the entire itinerary for six months of my life, while I had the very best fun in the world playing the devious and devilish Neville Savage.

  In the Madrid episode, Savage had perfected a machine that was capable of stealing the voices of humans – in this case a famous opera singer. One of the guest stars was a dog – a trained terrier that had a nice cameo role.

  In one scene, by accident the dog exchanges its bark via the machine with that of the opera singer, and proceeds to run around Segovia singing Puccini, while being pursued by Savage and his gay off-sider.

  In another scene the dog had to be trained to walk up to Savage, pee on his leg, then walk away.

  Spanish trained hound peeing on my leg.

  The trainer had assured Howard, our director, that the hound was trained to do this very thing. But on the day, it didn't feel like it, despite many treats. Eventually, after squirting another dog's pee on my trouser leg to see if our dog will sniff and pee as well, the dog was fitted with a very odd device. A syringe was strapped to it's off-camera side, alongside it's dick, and a length of tubing was cunningly concealed so that when the dog stopped by my trouser leg, they could pump yellow liquid out. In the final cut it looks very convincing.

  In the final scene in the second Spanish episode Savage escapes by being plucked off the world famous aqueduct in Segovia by his offsider, Santiago Alvares, flying an ultralight. The aqueduct is hundreds of feet up and the small plane was surprisingly fast. It was a great escape act!

  Plucked from the top of the famous aquaduct in Segovia!

  I have to confess that it was all done with a crane and a harness – to have tried to catch me with a hook off the aquaduct would be akin to catching a split pea on the head of a pin.

  I recommend Madrid to any serious tourist. The bars are a delight and the tapas scrumptious. The only problem was the social time frame of the Madrilleños. If you're at all 'cool,' you won't meet your friends in a bar before 10 p.m., eat in a restaurant before midnight, or enter a nightclub before 2.a.m. This proved a problem if the crew-call was 6 a.m. Of course on my days off I had a very good time.

  I recommend a restaurant just off the Plaza Major called 'Botin.' I'm told it's the oldest restaurant in Europe and it serves the best jambon around.

  The make-up lady in Spain was extremely eccentric. She was always singing, and as wide as she was tall. Each day when she finished making me up, she'd reach for a dark make-up pencil, pinch my chin together so as to give me a 'Kirk Douglas' cleft and pencil a false one in.

  I told her we'd already filmed twelve hours without a cleft chin, and that possibly this would be a continuity problem, but she was adamant.

  "Bu' eet look sooooo nice. Like Kirka-Douglas. You know heem?"

  It was a nuisance wiping it off many times each day. Each time she noticed I'd done so, she'd always come hurrying over to me.

  The Ireland shoot was, as ever, a joy. I showed Dublin and the Wicklow Hills to Ulli Lothmans. He fell in love with both.

  However, on this six-month trip, the high point was without doubt our five weeks in South Africa.

  South African actor Bill Flynn played the useless Professor Roux – brilliantly. He was funny, yet had the perfect poker pace. I was choking back guffaws almost all day, every day. Bill played his comedy straight and very dry.

  I'd never been to Africa before, so this shoot was an amazing treat.

  For convenience we stayed in Sandton, a reasonably safe

  suburb of Jo'berg. Each day we'd drive to locations in the Kruger National Park.

  Filming in South Africa has to be one of the best ways to see the country as there are no other tourists milling around you, and you get to see everything in such a tranquil setting. We filmed amongst wildebeest and antelope, giraffe, impala, rhino, and elephants (my bareback ride was the best experience!)

  On one occasion I visited animals that were being nursed back to health after accidents on the veldt. To lie on your back and stroke a cheetah was a thrill. As was stroking a pregnant warthog – not recommended since they can be very dangerous. 'Beauty' the warthog was the ugliest animal I have ever seen, yet had an inner beauty. How can I adequately explain?

  The only way to travel! Kruger National Park.

  One morning I rose before dawn so I could walk from my thatched cottage down to the lake where I knew there were hippos. Because I'd not researched hippos as I should have I had no idea that they were the most dangerous animals in South Africa and had

  killed more tourists than all the 'cats' put together. But since I thought they were sluggish animals, I sat on the bank of the lake and watched a wonderful female that was bathing with her baby. Occasionally she'd look in my direction, but she manifested no aggression.

  I was lucky. The rangers told me she could so easily have taken exception to me and trampled me – she was in the shallows and hippos are by no means 'sluggish,' as I'd thought.

  Talking of narrow escapes, I had another during our last week in South Africa.

  Our director, Colin Budds, producer Stanley Walsh, and I were having a drink after work in Sandton and I put it to them that we had never been down to Jo'Berg in the evening. Were we going to be too scared to see the city? No way.

  So we drove down to Jo'Berg and looked for a fun place to visit, settling on a huge, very colorful building called 'The Lodge.'

  As we made our way inside and up the stairs I became aware that there were no other white patrons whatsoever. Initially I wasn't alarmed. The place was a maze of corridors, with various smaller rooms to either side. In each room people were lounging around, drinking –the corridors were full of lovely looking women from all over Africa – Namibians, Sudanese, Nigerians, Zambians – you name it. As we entered the poolroom it was already very clear we had unwittingly entered the largest and most popular brothel in Jo'berg.

  Colin stands six foot four, and as such is usually a target for troublemakers with a few beers in them. You know, the 'Think you're big? Wanna piece of me? Come on!' Well, Colin considered himself a useful pool player so he stepped up to one of the tables and was immediately challenged by two extremely lethal looking men. The bet was ten dollars. It was to be Colin and Stanley against the two thugs. I watched on and sipped a Fransen Street wheat beer.

  Midway through the game, Stan and Col were ahead. Then one of the South Africans inadvertently sank the black ball. Stanley smiled.

  "We won!" Colin said, smiling.

  "No," replied the second South African, "You lost."

  So saying, he stepped up to Colin nose to nose (well, nose to Col's chin) and took the bill that was on the side of the pool table. There were around twenty fit black South Africans in the room while we were three. Added to this I was never a fighter – nor was Stanley.

  "Guess we lost, then," Colin sensibly observed.

  "Wanna play some more, fellas?" we were asked. We declined and went downstairs to the bar where we had a few beers and I danced in the disco for a while with the most beautiful African woman I had ever seen. She told me she was from Namibia, stood over six feet tall, and had the blackest and most perfect complexion imaginable. And such incredible… cheek bones? Ahem.

&n
bsp; In the South African episode I was given one of Neville Savage's best disguises. I was dressed as a Zulu warrior.

  In disguise in Pretoria. 'Mission Top Secret.' Lucky not to be lynched.

  I always look forward to disguises, mainly because there's usually the chance to wander outside the set when on location and see the reaction of the public at large. In Pretoria, where we filmed inside the National Museum, it was a very different kettle of fish because I didn't want any black South African thinking that 'whitey had blacked up to take the mickey out of the locals.' The makeup was brilliant as were my very colorful Zulu traditional robes, topped off

  by a bright orange turban around my head. I was of course otherwise topless.

  Despite this, during a break – this was a night shoot – I decided I'd wander just a short distance off down the road. Inevitably, I was soon approached by a local.

  "You want to buy some gold, mister?" he asked me. Clearly he saw through my disguise at once, and concluded I was a sexually deviant tourist.

  He held out a hand in which there were about fifteen heavy solid gold chains. They still had their price tags on them. Very expensive. I very politely declined. He didn't react badly; he simply shrugged and ambled into the night.

  The South African crew was all young and highly efficient. The focus puller used to estimate distances entirely by eye. No tape measure. I asked him if this was the usual way in South Africa and he shrugged, telling me that he could judge the focal length as well as a tape measure – besides it saved time. Every shot turned out perfectly. Crisp and exact.

  Before we left South Africa, Colin, Stanley and I drove to the magnificent hotel called Star City. It's an amazing mix of luxury hotel and amusement park. I recommend a night or two here – expensive, but what luxury. While lounging there by the pool one morning Whitney Houston took a chaise longue a few feet from where I was sitting. Bobby Brown wasn't with her, and I somehow refrained from introducing myself. She looked pretty gorgeous.

  Savage being cruel to children in Sydney.

  Back in oz.

  50. ALEX O'LOUGHLIN, ALZHEIMERS & PETER USTINOV!

  Many years before I was to write 'A Message from Fallujah,' I decided to attempt a short film for Sydney's Tropfest Short Film Festival. After all, all actors want to direct, don't they? Sure they do. Plus, I thought I had enough friends in the business to make the film quite cheaply.

  Most Tropfest films are made for the love of it by young people who just want to give it a try. The great majority turn out really well, while a few are sensational.

  So my first thought was to ask my celebrated film writer friend Jeffrey Bloom to write me a story – one that had to include a mosquito somewhere.

  Within a week I had a funny eight-minute script about a man who invents a cloning system to rid the world of all mosquitoes, by cloning only females that cannot reproduce.

  Using the same cloning system as he'd used on insects he decides to bring his adored wife back from the grave. As a young woman. The android he develops is a replica of his wife, aged twenty, perfect in every way except for having lost the ability to reproduce. But the side effects prove to be worrying. 'Jane' likes to bathe every few hours, and when she sings in the shower, she whines like a mosquito. Clearly his cloning system is not perfect.

  I knew whom I wanted to cast as 'Jane,' a beautiful actress called Janneke Arent. I cast myself as the Professor, and then looked around for a young actor with great deadpan comedic talents.

  On the second day of casting I found him.

  At the time, Alex O'Loughlin, was yet to be accepted into NIDA, the Australian Institute of Dramatic Arts. It's a notoriously hard Academy to get into, but within two months he'd managed it.

  Oyster Farmer' and 'Mary Bryant,' and a move to America to become a star there with 'The Shield,' 'Moonlight,' the film, 'The Back-up Plan,' with Jennifer Lopez, and then McGarrett in the remake of 'Hawaii-Five-O.'

  Wendy and Alex O'Loughlin in West Hollywood. 2010.

  I'm not blowing my own trumpet when I say I saw it coming – I think anyone could have. Alex was delightfully modest, had a killer smile, and a burning ambition. He had heartthrob looks as well as being a natural actor.

  I asked my now firm friend Geoffrey Simpson, the Director of Photography of 'Shine' if he'd light my film and he kindly agreed to do so.

  Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, agreed to let us shoot on a weekend in their laboratory, and three days later we had our short film in the can.

  The post-production was far harder – something all would-be short film directors should know. However, Spectrum Sound came to our rescue, as did Vicki Ambrose-Barry, who did a fine job editing it.

  Sadly, with all the talent I'd assembled, 'AVX86' didn't make the finals.

  A footnote. Alex has always pleaded with me not to distribute or post my film because he's embarrassed about his performance. Of course, since he asked I haven't. And won't. But he's wrong – he's very funny.

  The cast and crew of 'AVX86.' Janneke Arent in the centre. Alex top right.

  One of the shows I am most proud of came between two tours of 'Mission Top Secret.' It was an episode of a drama series called 'G.P.'

  This series about a medical practitioner ran for a long time as Australia's version of 'Doctor Findlay's Casebook,' and starred Englishman turned Australian, Michael Craig.

  The strength of this series was in the writing, in the direction, in the casting of the actors, and finally in the production team.

  'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' centred on Alzheimer's disease. Noel Hodda wrote a heart-wrenching story of a well-known composer who lives with a conductor. Mark Lee played the conductor.

  Mark had starred with Mel Gibson in Peter Weir's 'Gallipoli,' and always brings the softest touch to his performances. We were directed by Tony Tilse, to my mind one of Australia's best television directors. It was the first time for many years that I hadn't been a serial killer, psychopath, demon or vampire. It was such a refreshing change to be normal – albeit very ill. I loved it.

  One week into the filming I was allowed to conduct one of my character's pieces in the Sydney Opera House. It was a very modern piece without any discernible rhythm. Today they call this music minimalist; Pierre Boulez is an exponent.

  In the piece I conducted, there was neither a time nor a key signature, so I had to view footage of Boulez and Carl Maria Giulini conducting their own music to be sure I was even halfway convincing. The wonderful part of these few moments was the fact that the small chamber orchestra actually looked at me for direction! I felt I was conducting them. It was exhilarating.

  Once an actor is cast, it's up to him to conduct adequate research. When this is complete he has to upload all the emotions that he's garnered and step inside the mindset of the person he's playing. Occasionally I get deeply moved by the state of mind of the character. In the case of Murray Booth, the composer suffering from Alzheimer's, I was emotionally shaken during every scene.

  One day Booth goes for a walk after an argument with his partner, and finds himself on a pedestrian overpass with no idea where he lives. The cars and trucks are roaring past underneath and Booth is panicked. I remember being invaded emotionally by Booth's panic during those shots, identifying so intensely with Booth's situation. It's an odd profession, acting.

  It's working with the best and most committed actors that's exhilarating. They may be about to become stars or have been stars – more importantly; they may be better actors than both of the prior categories and have never been fully appreciated.

  An actor who for me falls into this last category is Mark Lee. He's had a great career but never made it to the summit. He should have.