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Patriot Games
London, Annapolis Maryland - 1991
The second outing for Tom Clancy's techno-thriller novels about retired CIA agent, Jack Ryan, played by Harrison Ford, began filming in South East London at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. Having worked on Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, I was fairly confident that it should be a ripple free experience. A potential disruptive pebble on this pond was that Nigel Wooll was the UK production manager and he did not hold me in high regard after a bellicose ejection from his office at Elstree Studios in 1987. The reason was that while on Roger Rabbit I bumped into director Ron Howard, who was in pre-production for, ‘Willow’ and in my giddy naive enthusiasm I pitched an idea about making a documentary on mythology and the making of the film. Nigel Wooll was the producer and when he found out I had not gone through him first took great umbrage, invited me into his office and proceeded to loudly berate my impertinence!
So while he did acknowledge my presence I was all but blanked during the London shoot on Patriot. Little did I know that the tenuous link to Harrison from the London leg of the shoot was to see this silver-screen hero unwittingly become my personal saviour, after bypassing US immigration to film the American scenes; more of that one later.
The Old Royal Naval College was originally established in 1694 as a respite hospital for mariners and the buildings became a Naval College soon after 1896. It was still in use by the Navy at the time filming took place. It was the opening scene of the film where Jack Ryan and his family are caught up in an IRA assassination ambush. Although we only filmed the sequence for three days Paramount Pictures edited my 'behind the scenes' documentary footage as an internal promo to highlight the production and I later found out Harrison and Australian Director, Philip Noyce also viewed this. He had come to the attention of Hollywood through his well-received, taut, claustrophobic thriller, 'Dead Calm' (well worth viewing). Noyce, a gregarious and animated native Australian, relished the genre and was easy going on set with cast and crew alike.
I was invited to join the continuation of the shoot in America and armed with nothing more than my light-meter and passport (minus any work visa) I was flown to New York to pick up a rental car a drive down to the America naval academy at Annapolis, Maryland. US immigration is, in my experience, a deliberately intimidating event, despite being many years away from the horror of 9/11. I knew I was coming to work, I knew an American could have done my job and I knew I was going to have to lie my way in, so when confronted by a burly buzz-cut immigration officer I went sanguine as I trotted out my 'holiday' plans while in the big apple.
First hurdle over, I collected the rental car, a gaudy, plum purple Buick, and a vague map showing the main road south out of NY and headed to Maryland. Despite the millions of road users in America the roads are so large my drive through Pennsylvania and Maryland was event free. Annapolis is situated on the Chesapeake Bay, is the capitol of Maryland and home to the United States Naval Academy.
The sound recordist and my camera assistant, Tom, were local crew members and they brought the 16mm camera equipment with them. Most film sets are 'unionized' and all crew members have to be in the 'local' IATSE union to work. The scene I was covering was set in one of the Naval Academy's classrooms and featuring Harrison Ford and James Earl Jones (Who was the voice of Darth Vader for trivia buffs!) Before entering the classroom set I could see my sound recordist and camera assistant being quizzed by the union rep about their IATSE membership and felt resigned to the inevitable ignominious fate of not only being kicked off the production but also deported from America for working without a visa, which will also come with a ban on future entry. Well, what happened next you could really not make up, on stepping foot across the threshold of the classroom door Philip Noyce clocked my entrance, beamed a welcoming smile and strode over to greet me, “Paul, Hi, where've you been, we've missed you!” Then Harrison Ford joined in the greetings and gave me a hearty hand shake, and said, “Welcome back”, Well I returned an appreciative grin, hiding my panic, and joined in with some small talk much to the bemusement of the crew. The rapturous bonhomie I was afforded by the director and leading man clearly castrated the union guy from even thinking about checking my credentials.
I settled in to cover the master shot of the naval classroom scene, the room now filled with extras dressed as Naval students. The problem from my perspective was the shot was so all encompassing the main camera covering the scene was wedged into the doorway, and the only 'safe' place I could be was tucked under the lens shade of the camera. I checked this was OK to do with the camera operator and knelt down ready to roll. Well, it was quite a long dialogue scene and my knees began to lose interest in proceedings so I shuffled about to get them back in the game. Unfortunately little did I realise the crown of my head was now dancing about in the bottom of the picture frame, totally ruining the take!
I only found this out when the operator informed Philip Noyce that it was not really the best for him and could he have another take, kindly mentioning nothing about my uninvited cranial guest appearance. It would appear that the warm welcome afforded to me earlier in the morning by Director and Star had been money in the bank. I decided these, 'get out of jail' cards may not always be on hand, so reverted to stealth mode for the rest of the day.
We took a diversionary trip to CIA headquarters in Washington to interview a CIA spokesperson about the reality of Jack Ryan's character and plausibility of Tom Clancy's novel. Don't think many secrets were spilled on that visit but it was fun being shown round. After filming was completed I decided to fly to Los Angeles to say hello to some of the people who only knew me by name and the work I had done for them. Never having been to Hollywood before it was an agreeable adventure but ultimately my view of Tinseltown was that of a highly decorated cake with an unsavory and wholly disappointing filling. Returning to London I didn't have to wait too long until my best new friend John Pattyson called with the next adventure.
Production Budget $42 million
Worldwide Box Office $178 million