Air America
Northern Thailand - 1989
With the encouragement and support of director Les Mayfield I was now being hired as cameraman for his company ZM Productions, based at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. The next project that turned up was, 'Air America'. Former film editor, Roger Spottiswoode, directed the movie starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr. (RDJ) as pilots flying covert missions in Loas, during the Vietnam War. The plot is adapted from Christopher Robbins' 1979 nonfiction book, chronicling the CIA financed airline to transport weapons and supplies within Laos and other areas of Indochina subsequent to the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos.
I travelled to Bangkok with a friend from college, John Sorapure, who was doing sound (John has since gone on to be an accomplished director of photography in British television). After an overnight in Bangkok we met up with our director, Toby Reisz who had travelled in from LA. I had briefly met Toby in Los Angeles the previous year, he is the son of the late film director Karel Reisz (French Lieutenants Woman) and Roger Spottiswoode had edited Karel's film, 'The Gambler', so Toby had a connection with him which on paper looked like a good start, right? One of the difficult aspects of trying to shoot documentary material on movies is the vagaries in temperament of the 'talent' which is a combination of a tightrope balancing act and dancing on eggshells to record material and not get caught; I'll qualify this and say that is the only real difficulty, so having any sort of connection with them should grease that monkey.
After the night in Bangkok we all flew north to Chang Rai, a town shouldering the border of Burma. It was Sunday, the only day off for the crew, location shoots are usually six day weeks, and so we had a chance to explore the area. The presence of the movie in town was clearly providing significant cash injection to the area and hospitality to the crew was abundant. We were given free mopeds for the day just by showing our British passports and mentioning, 'Air America'. So John and I set off up a dirt track which we were told by locals led to the oldest Buddhist monastery in the region. The mopeds, little more than a lawnmower engine and pedals, struggled to climb the rutted, well-worn track. After about an hour of dodging holes and peddling support for the motor, we stopped at a shack selling much appreciated soft drinks. As we doused the dust from our mouths the rasp of a motorcycle buzzed up the hill, ripping past us a few feet away. It was clearly Mel Gibson riding a trails bike, helmet-less, powering manically into the distance. A moment later three more bikes turned up, stopped and inquired if we had see a bike go by, the burly riders were clearly security for Mel manically trying to catch up!
Actors often have stipulations in their contracts that they will not involve themselves in potentially dangerous activity (even playing football for Russell Crowe) to comply with insurance. Mel was obviously having none of it and enjoying his day off. We never made it up to the to the temple because further up the track peddling support for the moped's lawnmower engines we encountered Burmese border guards with what looked like old Enfield rifles slung over their shoulders who made it clear we would not be going any further.
That evening publicist, Rob Harris, treated us to an evening meal at a local restaurant. I say restaurant, I don't think Michelin stars were being thrown around with abandon in Thailand in the late 80's. This was a wooden box with reed mats to sit on and a bamboo screen dividing the cooking area from the 'eating room'. Well, the publicist had clearly visited the place before so I chowed down on the rice-based dish presented. I think the accommodation was also styled by the same architect as the restaurant, a basic wooden construction which I can only imagine Mel Gibson was not being treated to? Coming from West London where the still of night was only punctuated by an occasional wailing police siren, the perpetual chatter of the Thai insect world accompanied fitful sleep.
The morning announced its arrival delivering piercing rods of sun raking through the bamboo walls and I proceeded to redeliver the previous nights meal back to the Thai fields it had no doubt come from. Fearing local food I spent the rest of the week surviving on bottled water, boiled rice and bananas not wishing to look ungrateful by repeatedly regurgitating Thai hospitality. So we wandered on to set just in time to witness the filming of a manic attack on a camp in mid flow (nearly a “Cliffhanger” cappuccino moment you can read about later!) and I dived in shooting as if it was some real news event going out live on CNN. I kept rolling up to the cry of 'CUT' from the 1st Assistant Director. Keeping the camera running I followed the director as he crouched by a monitor to watch the playback. No sooner had the replay tape started to play when Roger caught a glimpse of me, snapped his head around and with the venom of a box of cobras screamed, “GET THAT F**KING CAMERA OUT OF MY FACE!!”. Great start to the day, vomiting and vilification. I spent the rest of the morning hiding in bushes poking the lens out trying to grab shots. I was annoyed that Toby had not introduced us to Spottiswoode as he supposedly knew the bloke. Roger eventually stumbled across me camouflaged in the bushes later in the morning and cracked an 'olive leaf' smile, so the heat of the moment had clearly subsided.
I can’t fathom why Roger felt so compelled to scream at me; yes I understand it was hot and the scene was a complex, dramatically choreographed attack on a village, but there are teams of background directors, 3rd assistant directors, and stunt coordinators running the actual take once staged; Roger just had to watch it all unfold on a video monitor. Many years later I worked on ‘Gladiator’ and the first week of shooting Ridley Scott staged a far larger sequence involving 900 sword wielding extras and 100 charging horse-backed stuntmen in a burning forest and he remained at all times as cool as a cat on ketamine. He rarely raised his voice, not even to shout “Action”, leaving that to his 1st Assistant Director. I did ask Ridley later on in the shoot about remaining so calm around such apparent mayhem and he said the more chaotic it becomes the more he relishes the challenge. He was and still is a great commander in chief, loved and respected by crew and cast; and of course I cherished being able to observe him control this visual anarchy.
Forget all you may have heard in recent years about Mel Gibson, I'm going to tell you about a completely different person. Gibson was at this point Hollywood hot property coming fresh faced off the back of a couple of Lethal Weapons (and a forgettable 'Bird on a Wire'). I never saw these two guys get drunk, they often shared a beer in the same bar we would spend our evenings, and believe it or not our drink of choice was a milky glass of Horlicks to combat cicada induced insomnia! Mel and Robert clearly got on well, keeping the shooting days light and always fun. I understand they remain good friends to this day, both having shared their individual demons of fame.
The stunt coordinator was my hero from Indy III, the unique Vic Armstrong, and true to form he was accommodating in a way that always makes guys like me look good. The mornings work was to be part of a scene where RDJ is literally roped into getting to work when Gibson hauls him over the forest canopy, dangling on the end of a rope under his Bell Huey helicopter. You would think this was going to be a double or trick photography, but to my amazement RDJ would do it himself and Vic invited me to be in the helicopter during filming. The machine we flew in was a Thai Air force helicopter flown by Thai military pilots. I sat in the middle wearing a bulky military crash helmet, with the second unit director to my right and Vic to my left by the open side of the copter.
Dangling on the end of a rope hung a fairly cheery RDJ, above him was strapped a lighting unit hanging precariously from a jutting metal pole. For me the shot was DVD gold, filming one of the lead actors gliding a few meter from the treetops at 60 MPH, dangling on a rope (all can be viewed on the DVD extras by the way). The second unit director indicated to Vic for one more run and the pilot began to bank the geriatric machine right, but it was having none of it, there must have been so much weight hanging on the left (I probably did not help despite my slight 60kg) that the entire body began to vibrate, the rotors juddered battling against the strain and we dipped closer to the trees. We all snapped a startled look at each other as the pilots wrenched the helicopter to the opposite side and regained some height; that put an end to that particular shot. RDJ seemed none the wiser as if it was part of the scene despite his feet practically clipping upper branches. We landed; I thanked Vic, and scurried off to safer ground. No amount of verbal shelling from Spottiswoode could now be feared.
Interviews with talent while on location can always be tricky as the constant bustle of the ongoing production leaves scant windows of opportunity. Easiest to grab are producers who hover over productions making sure the production runs to schedule. We scouted an area with the crew working away in the background to interview the seasoned Hollywood producer, Dan Melnick. (Straw Dogs, Footloose, Roxanne). Toby had commandeered a tall directors chair and plonked it casually on the grass next to the runway. Dan Melnick ambled coolly over sporting Ray Ban Aviator shades, a bandana tied around his forehead and headphones around his neck completing the look. I pre-rolled the camera as he arrived just in case he did not have much time to give us. He hopped athletically into the chair and no sooner had he settled his not insubstantial frame the chair began to tilt, Dan tried to rebalance, the back leg sunk into soft soil and in slow motion the chair headed backwards closely followed by Melnick. We gasped as he unceremoniously greeted the ground, gravity now deconstructing the carefully crafted look with his bandana slipping down over his eyes, hostage style. I could see the crew pointing and laughing in the background and at this point I thought I'd rather take my chances back in the wonky helicopter; surely that was the end of the interview? But no, Mr. Melnick regained full composure, righted the chair on firmer ground and just said: “So, where were we?”. What a pro!
The remainder of the shoot was thankfully uneventful and we returned to Bangkok before our flight back to London. As the flight back was late afternoon the following day we had the briefest of tourist visits around Bangkok. The nighttime streets of the Patpong 'entertainment' district, named after the family who own most of the property, is notorious for it's bars and salacious stage shows. Catering for every sexual peccadillo and heaving with farangs (Thai word for someone of European ancestry), with the foreign dollars fueling poverty driven commerce, the air mugged by a mask of incense blanketing a Hogarth like tableau, not quite 'Gin Lane' or a commercial Hades but pretty near? Rather than be parted with our per-diems here we swiftly moved to find a restaurant for at least one meal that would stay down. The morning was spent thankfully not heaving down the 'china telephone' as the evening meal remained where I had put it, but on the canals or 'Khlongs' in a boat with a petrol-driven food mixer for propulsion (must be illegal now, last seen in Bond movie, Man with The Golden Gun).
Then to the airport and back to an oddly welcome cold damp London to hatch a plan about how to get on Mel’s next movie project, Hamlet. Having enjoyed the experience of filming Mel, I was determined to get involved in this Franco Zeffirelli directed movie planned for production on my doorstep.
Production Budget $35 million (estimated)
Worldwide Box Office $33,461,000 (Box Office Mojo)