by Robert Sam Anson
The watchers started gathering just after
sunset, the time of day when the light in
Chian Mai, Thailand, is at its prettiest.
They had been coming to this spot for more than two weeks now, ever since word spread that he was here, the opal-eyed farang they'd watched so often in the cool and dark. Except on the giant billoards that seemed to stare down from every street corner, no one had seen him yet, but no one was moving. There was always a chance.
And so, as the geckos croaked and the night grew black and the sensible slapped at mosquitoes in their beds, they stood. Not moving. Only whispering. A single, plaintive question:
“Mel, u nai, krap?"
"Where is Mel?"
Unfortunatelv for his native fans, out of sight is where Mel Gibson is on this late October
evening, inside the Arun Rai Chinese restaurant, making
another motion picture.
It is called Air America and, according to Tri- Star Pictures, tells the black-comedy adventure story of a group of wild and crazy guys who, a couple of decades ago in a little country called Laos, worked for a secret, CIA- owned airline, flying around rice, refugees, buckets of homemade napalrn, on more than a few occasions, 100 percent pure opium.
What the CIA was doing in the opium-haulin business, and how it was thought that such entrepreneurship would help our boys in Vietnam, is a tad complicated. But then, so is the history of this movie. We’ll attempt to unravel it all, right after we tell you about the two earthquakes, the typoon, the mysterious plague, the near— helicopter disasters,and, last but not least, what Robert Downey, Jr’s psychic said atfer reading the script. But first, back to Mel Gibson.
In the film, he plays Gene Ryack, a world- weary pilot and on-the-side gunrunner who, beneath an armor of sarcastic cynicism, possesses the proverbial heart of gold. Gene, says Gibson, is someone who "has a job to do and goes out and does it. He's easy on himself. He's got a family to look-after. He realizes that everything has shades of gray. He's good at what he does, but he doesn't flaunt it. He plays everything close to the chest.” At the moment, however, Gibson isn't playing anybody, much less a char-acter who seems suspiciously like himself. Instead, the headset of a Walkman clamped over his ears, he is doing what actors spend most of their time doing on movie sets. He is waiting.
Around him. lights are being set, microphones tested, last-minute touches applied that, onscreen, will transform this nondescript eatery into what was once the real Air America's favorite hangout, the notorious White Rose bar of Vientiane, Laos.
As everything is readied, the atmosphere is frenzied and jovial. There is a good feeling among this crew, a cinematic-dowsing-rod sense that, with Air America, they are working on a hit. Certainly, it appears to have all the elements: a commercial, thrills-and-spills script; familiar faces in all the roles; award winners handling virtually every production element. And, of course, it's got Mel Gibson, who's not only a near guarantee of long lines at the box office but also, in the words of one of the Brits manning the lights, "a regular bloke."
Proving it, Gibson peels off the earphones, gabs with the grips, shares a raucous laugh with Art La Fleur, who plays a doomed Air America pilot with a compulsion for miniature golf, and wanders off in search of coffee and conversation. Before he can secure either, David Bowe, a cargo handler in the film. accosts him with a video camera. "Mr. Gibson," says Bowe, aping an inquiring reporter, "your public would like a word with you. Are these reports we read in People magazine true? Are you, in fact, a heroin addict?"
"There's no use denying it," Gibson replies, going along with the gag. "I've been injecting myself 30 or 40 times a day since I was a child." He stops and pulls up his left eyelid. "The only way I've been able to hide it until now is that I've been giving myself the shots here. Works much faster. Goes right to the brain."
"Thank you, Mr. Gibson," Bowe says solemnly. "I am sure that Nancy Reagan will be very interested in this information."
They giggle at their prank, then, suddenly, Gibson borrows the camera and strolls into a nearby bar. The appearance of Mel Gibson with a video camera startles, to put it mildly, two couples from Seattle, dawdling over drinks. "And what has brought you to Chiang Mai on a night like this?" Gibson inquires of one of the men, zooming in. "And does your wife know you're here with this young woman?"
The laughter lasts until one of the girls asks Gibson to put his arm around her for her boyfriend's Instamatic. Deflated, he complies, then mumbling to himself, returns to the set, which has been brightened by the addition of 30 imported bar girls who are playing the White Rose's "hostesses." While Air America won't be showing all that went on at the real White Rose (to avoid an X rating), the new arrivals are preparing for their parts with Actors Studio-like devotion. Specifically, they are—well, let's just say that at a number of tables, laps are occupied and hands are busy.
Gibson gives his chums a wink and turns up the volume of his Walkman. Being a regular bloke has its limits. Besides, wife Robyn is home on the ranch expecting their sixth child. And if that weren't enough to keep the mind concentrated on noble thoughts—figuring out how he is going to play Hamlet tor Franco Zeffirelli after this, for one—there are the memos everyone's been getting warning about AIDS statistics, which Dr. Robert Rabkin, the production physician, says are so alarming that hereabouts, sex with oneself may not be completely safe. There's also the matter of the Brit paparazzo who's been lurking across the canal. He'd just love to get a snap of Gibson even looking cross-eyed at something in a dress slit up the thigh. That's not going to happen. Not with Mel Gibson, who is married, Catholic, sore, and out of kilter.
Sore from all the inoculations he's been getting, including one just this evening for a potential killer carried by Siamese baby pigs; out of kilter, thanks to all these night shoots, which Gibson calls "the shits." Last night's, in particular, was a three-Lomotil dose. For six hours, he was asked to sit in a background shot. And for six hours, he did it. Without a single call to his agent; without, in fact, a protesting peep. It amazed people, that performance: one of Hollywood's most bankable commodities cheerfully functioning half the night as an extremely expensive prop. Gibson himself only shrugged. "Hey," he said afterward, ‘when you got a chance to do something, you've got to do it right, don't you?" A simple statement of blue-collar eloquence that amazed people all the more.
Still, the late hours have been taking their toll, which explains the Walkman. "The sound of my alpha waves," Gibson says, tapping the earphones. "Gotta keep those endorphins pumping." Then, with another wink, he begins looking around for Robert Downey, Jr. who plays Billy Covington, the idealistic young sidekick who falls in love, outwits the CIA and an evil Laotian general, nose-dives a helicopter into a tree, and, following capture by head-shrinking bandits, blows up a heroin factory. It is a fairly full plate for an actor, particulary one so young he still needs makeup to cover his zits. Whatever the reason, Downey is late for rehearsal. Again.
News of the latest tardiness produces a purse of the lips of Roger Spottiswoode. Trouble like this the British-born director does not ned. Not when twenty members of his crew are down with an unknown flu; not when there are three units, fifteen cameras, and 49 separate locations to oversee; not when he's shooting enough film to stretch half the 400 miles to Bangkok, and the $35 million budget he is working with is all at once looking sort of stingy. To get Air America into the multiplexes by August 10 requires that everyone hit his marks, at the moment they are to be hit, with a minimum of shilly-shallying and discussion. Sad to say, his now-AWOL charge appears to specialize in both.
Spottiswoode sighs, as if wishing Dan Melnick were here. But tonight. Air America's producer is not here. He has temporarily returned to Los Angeles to deal with Carolco Pictures, one of whose executives has suffered the recent misfortune of being executed, gangland-style.
In his absence, Israeli line producer Michael Kagan is looking after things—too many things, just now, to find Downey. There is, for starters, the care and feeding of the 500-member international crew, a battalion-size force that will shortly have to be moved ten hours up the twisting mountain road to Mae Hong Son, the next big location. Conditions are difficult in that area, which is still drying out from Typhoon Dan. Nobody warned Kagan about typhoons, or the flash floods that washed out one of the camera positions, or the Thais' custom of smilingly saying "Yes, no problem" when they really mean "No, big problem." About the only warnings Kagan has been getting are from Dr. Bob, whose latest is about a snake dubbed the "two-step," since that's about as far as anyone gets after meeting up with it. "Not to worry about treatment for this bite," Dr. Bob has jauntily advised. "No one survives it."
But Michael Kagan is worried, not so much about two-steps as about helicopters and airplanes. Air America has rented 26 of them from the Thai military, and there have been problems—like almost-crashing-type problems. In the past month, the production has experienced four serious in-flight emergencies, including one the other day, when a chopper carrying a crew from the third unit began losing power while flying at several thousand feet. Had the incident occurred a few minutes earlier, when they were skimming the treetops, they would have ended up in them.
It was a near thing. Any nearer and Kagan would have had to pay a call on some beribboned generals, who are rather keen about getting their aircraft back in their original condi tion. What the generals don't know, and what Kagan hasn't yet had the chutzpah to tell them, is that special-effects supervisor George Gibbs is planning on taking one of their planes and splattering it all over a runway. Such a stunt has never been tried before, but Gibbs, who has won two Oscars for doing the previously undoable, is confident of pulling it off. Kagan, though, is fretting about the generals, who are holding a $400,000 Carolco bond and may just keep it if one of their C-123s is returned in blackened bits and pieces. "Please, George," he beseeches. "Can you just crash it without damaging it?" Gibbs only grins.
While Gibbs is grinning, Kagan is worrying, and countless comely assistants are searching for Downey, the actors who play the movie's two CIA villains—Ken Jenkins and David Marshall Grant—are shooting a game of eight ball on the White Rose's pool table. "Eat your heart out, Paul Newman," Grant announces, lining up his shot. "The table is about to be cleared." Thwonk! He misses. Another thwonk. Jenkins, a veteran stage actor, isn't doing any better. Numerous useless thwonks later. Grant, who's taking time off from a recurring role as Russell in thirtysomething, slaps his forehead. "I've got it!" he exclaims to Jenkins. "You know the scene where I'm supposed to scare the pilot? I know what I'm going to say. 'I'm warning you, I killed Kennedy.' Is that great? 'I'm warning you, I killed Kennedy.' " Grant takes another shot, which miraculously goes in. "Fuckers probably did, too."
Eavesdropping John Eskow, the screenwriter- coproducer, shakes his head and returns to telling a reporter what Air America is—and, just as important, is not—all about. First, the not- abouts, starting with Vietnam. Acutely aware of what's been happening lately to movies that are about Vietnam, Eskow wants the reporter to understand: Air America is not, really and truly not, about the country that caused so many problems. And it's not about lambasting the CIA, either, something, he adds, the CIA itself should know already, since he assumes they've planted an agent in the crew. "Uh," the reporter starts to say, but Eskow is on to the next not-about. Namely, not about anything that should cause the former employees of Air America distress, despite all the letters the production has been getting from aggrieved ex-pilots who don't want their kids thinking they were flying around smack, even if it was for a good cause. The pilots, Eskow says, should save their stamps. They're the good guys in his script, which they had to be, since if they weren't, "we couldn't I have had any heroes.”
So what, then, is Air America about? "It's a fun, zany thing for the whole family, with laughs aplenty and big things blowing up," says the screenwriter with a whoosh. "You won't have to be a communist to like this picture."
Suddenly, there is a stirring at the entrance to the set. Smiles replace sighs: Downey has arrived. Trailed by the personal trainer he's brought from L.A., he's popping papaya from a plastic bag and trying, between munches, to look contrite. The performance is not terribly convincing, but no one, including Spottiswoode, seems to mind. Like the favored child whose charm is equaled only by his naughtiness, Downey is impossible to dislike; also, it's easy to sympathize with what he's been going through in making this picture.
How would you like to tramp endlessly through the steaming jungle, feeling half-dead, then look at your costar, who's just made the same tramp, and see, as Downey says he saw, "someone who looks like he just stepped out of anArmani catalog." Probably, you wouldn't like it. Nor, probably, would you like being compelled to lose fifteen pounds; to give up smoking and drinking and another well-publicized activity you once indulged in; to pump iron while others are lazing poolside; to fast for three days after flying halfway around the world; to constantly drink whole-grain milkshakes; and to have yourself shadowed almost everywhere you go by a muscular gent your colleagues sniggeringly call "Big Tits." Almost certainly, you wouldn't like any of that.
At the moment, however, Downey's attention is focused on larger concerns. Foremost is whether he is really right to play a morally tormented Air America pilot, a description that sounds like a contradiction in terms. He's also a trifle unsettled, frankly, about Gibson. First day on the set, Downey said to him—meaning it as a joke—"I don't know about you, but I'm the kind of actor who doesn't sit around bullshitting about character motivation. I say we just go out and kick some ass." "Right," Gibson answered. But he wasn't kidding. Which chilled Downey, an actor who really does like to sit around bullshitting about character motivation, down to his goddamn toenails. Understand: Downey is a terrific, light-up-the- screen talent, as he's demonstrated in such films as Less Than Zero and True Believer. According to those who have seen the dailies, his wattage is undimmed in Air America, a movie that may just catapult him into the producers'-points ether. The hitch is convincing Downey. Beneath the wisecracking, Saturday Night Live-hipster facade, he's afflicted with more than the average 24-year- old's share of self-doubts. The biggest of them has surfaced already. He was sitting in his trailer,making wicked, unrepeatable jokes, when, in a single sentence, it came blurting out: "What the fuck do you think you're doing, trying to play an Air America pilot, weasel?"
Now's no moment to dwell on that, however. The strains of "Louie Louie" are booming, and the imported lovelies are bumping. Time for Downey to kick some ass. He takes his position on the set and begins to hood his eyes, so he'll seem like the jet-lagged half-drunk this scene demands him to be.
"Quiet, please!" the assistant director calls. "This is a rehearsal." The camera dollies in, and with the cry of "Action," a fatherly arm is draped around Downey's shoulders. The voice ofMel Gibson speaks. "What," it asks, "are we doing here?"
The answer to that question, at least, is simple: Making a movie.
As for how this particular movie came about, and how Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr. came to be in it, that’s another story.
It began five years ago, when a book called Air America was brought to the attention of Richard Rush, who cowrote, produced, and directed the much-admired, little-seen Stunt Man. As Rush read about what was once the world's largest airline and the peculiar uses its proprietors had put it to, three conclusions began to form. The first was that what Air America had done was grotesque—so grotesque as to be bizarrely funny. The second was that the principals caught in the midst of these nightmare hysterics, the pilots, possessed extraordinary appeal. The third and final conclusion was that if he could somehow marry the first two, he would have himself a helluva movie—"the first comedy about Vietnam."
A year passed while Rush filled his wastebasket with ideas that didn't work. Then, one inspirational day, a dramatic mechanism entered his head and passed through his typing fingers onto the pages of a savagely surrealistic treatment. Impressed, Carolco Pictures, producer of the Rambo epics bought the property and hired Rush to direct He promptly wrote the screenplay, drew up a $15 million budget, and started making expeditions to Southeast Asia. Casting, meanwhile was proceeding apace, with Sean Connery committed to play the older pilot and, after an extended flirtation with Bill Murray and a briefer one with Jim Belushi. Kevin Costner all but signed to play the younger.
As it turned out, securing Costner's signature took a lot longer than anyone imagined So long that a movie no one had ever heard of—Good Morning, Vietnam—claimed the first-comedy crown and went on to be a smash in the bargain. Then, round about two years ago, with Costner's asking price steadily climbing, a reasonable facsimile of Fate stepped in: former Columbia production chief Dan Melnick merged his newly resurrected company, Indie Prod, with Carolco. Poking through the latter's trove of scripts, Melnick, who was well- informed about what the CIA had been up to in Laos, thanks to a lunch he'd had with a narc friend, came upon a copy of Air America. "It was like watching a rerun of Contragate," he recalls. "The same guys who created that mess created this one, for the same reason, with the same sort of financing. I thought it was a really important story."
To appreciate what happened next, you have to appreciate Dan Melnick, who looks, talks, and acts like the prototypical Hollywood producer, but differs from the breed in one outstanding respect: he likes making movies that are deemed classy. All That Jazz fit into that category, as did Altered States, which, according to Melnick, "could have been another 2001" until director Ken Russell ran away with the picture and made Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote it, really mad. Such appeared to be Melnick's curse. Every time he got his hands on a really important story, someone or something always seemed to louse it up. This, the producer vowed, was not going to happen again. He was going to make a classy picture, and unlike all his other classy pictures, it was going to be a blockbuster.
Just one obstacle stood in his way: Rush's script. Melnick didn't see how it could be made into a motion picture. Not the sort, anyway, he had in mind. Among many other adjectives, it was far too grown-up for prepubescents, without whose ringing endorsement blockbusters never result. In breaking the news. Rush says, Melnick phrased it somewhat more diplomatically. "Richard." he said, "you've written the best screenplay I have read in five years." Big beam from Rush, continu- ation from Melnick: "But I told the studio I won't have anything to do with it if you're involved."
Wise in the ways of producers. Rush said he understood and asked if he could please have his movie back. Nothing doing, said Melnick. What he could have was the remaining $1 million of his $1.5 million pay-or-play deal. Said Rush in cashing the check: "I now know be the victim of a hostile takeover."With Rush out, director Bob Rafelson was in, and he was immediately charged with coming up with a new, bouncier screenwriter. He found him in a 39-year-old former poet, novelist, rock musician, and self-identified "protege" of Abbie Hoffman: John Eskow.
It was, at first blush, an odd choice. Eskow had passed on Vietnam ("I did what any half-Jewish middle-class kid would do: I faked a shrink letter"), knew nothing about pilots, and in eight years of tries, had had exactly one screenplay produced: the Clint Eastwood detonation Pink Cadillac. But Eskow had his virtues. Chief among them were an ear for snappy dialogue and courtesy of his association with Hoffman, a wacky sensibility. "I see it as a Yippie movie," he said of Air America. "We have got to be willing to risk madness. We have got to be willing to go too far." "Don't worry," replied Melnick. "We'll be there to pull you back."
Thus safety-netted, Eskow started collecting tidbits of verisimilitude.One of his best sources was a legendarily accomplished former CIA man, tracked down in an up-country Asian bar. Over rounds of beers, the ex-spook regaled the ex-Yippie with yarns of fashioning necklaces from ears. Says Eskow, who took the precaution of removing the diamond from his, "I've dealt with Hollywood executives before, but this was a little out of my ken. I mean, this guy has killed a lot of people. Not onscreen, but in real life. They were, like, you know, dead."
While Eskow was having his eyes widened, Rafelson and Melnick were scouting locations. Puerto Rico was considered, then ruled out for, among other reasons, insufficient Asians, let alone Asians who looked like Laotians. Malaysia, their next selection, had plenty of Asians but not, they discovered after flying 9,000 miles, the right kind. The Malaysians looked like, well, Puerto Ricans.
And so they made a right-hand turn to Thailand and found everything they had been looking for: 55 million potential extras who looked just like Laotians; fleets of airplanes exactly like those used by Air America; copious, colorful hill tribesmen, well schooled in the arts of opium cultivation; and, in addition to blessedly widespread ignorance of union scale, a prime minister mad about golf. This last fact came in handy when Rafelson and Melnick sought an audience regarding use of the aforementioned aircraft. Probably the P.M. would have been agreeable, but the award of a top-of-the-line set of Ping clubs sure didn't hurt.
Things were looking wonderful. Then disaster, in the form of the Writers Guild strike. Months John Eskow spent looking at his blank computer screen; too many months for Bob Rafelson, who bailed out for Mountains of the Moon.
Into the breach stepped Roger Spottiswoode, whose directorial vita contained all the prerequisites: experience with comedy (Turner & Hooch), action-adventure (Shoot to Kill), political controversy (Under Fire)—maybe a little too much political controversy about that picture, in fact. Spottiswoode was also uncommonly unflappable (another prerequisite, though he didn't know it yet) and, rare for his ilk, had an ego confined within exceedingly modest bounds, which may explain why, later, he didn't belt Eskow for giving him directing tips. "I am not an auteur, and I will never be an auteur in a hundred years," says Spot- tiswoode. "Anyone who wants to be in my playpen is welcome to come on in—just so long as we're in rough agreement about the dimensions of the playpen."
Now, if only Eskow could finish the script. This finally happened in the fall of 1988. There were several factual fluffs in the finished product, and the Russians, for one, would be surprised to find that they had troops stationed in Vientiane circa 1970. But, hey, this is a movie. And the one John Eskow had written moved like a hilarious bullet. Perhaps his best line is when the devious U.S. senator turns to the evil Laotian general and reveals that Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky has been promised a liquor store in the event that things don't turn out so hot next door. "Ky small time," the general snorts. "I want Holiday Inn. Southern California. Own and operate."
Now, if they could only find some actors to utter such dialogue, beginning, Melnick hoped,with Mel Gibson. Gibson, however, was reluctant. He'd perused Rush's version, hadn't been enthused ("The attitude was entirely too black"), and regarded Melnick's claims that the rewrite was totally new and different as a case of Dan being Dan. "Yeah," Gibson said. "I know what 'totally new and different' means in Hollywood. It means you've changed three scenes." But Melnick kept sending verbal bouquets, and eventually Gibson gave in. He read Eskow's script and learned that this time the producer was telling the truth: it was totally new and different—or mostly, anyway. Better yet, Gibson liked it. The yuks were great, he said, and the derring- do business, too. But what he really liked was the message buried deep, deep, deep beneath. The one about the pilots standing up to a challenge and making a moral choice. That, said Gibson, was something out of the action-picture ordinary. The only thing he didn't like was Melnick's notion that he play Billy Covington, which, at 34, Gibson thought he was too old for. Gene Ryack, on the other hand, was a character he could get into. "He's Asian in the way he goes about things," said Gibson. There was a yin and yang to everything he did. He was heroic, he was corrupt; he was insensitive, he was tenderhearted; he was, altogether, fairly crazy, which was his pathway to staying sane. Let him play a part with those self- canceling layers, Gibson told Melnick, pay him $7 million and a percentage, and he had a deal.
"Great," said Melnick. With his come true, who was he to argue? Now, if he could only find someone to play Billy Covington.
Enter Robert Downey, Jr., ready and willing, though whether able, the producers were not initially sure. Downey himself was quite sure: "All these guys I hang out with have been in Vietnam movies," he says, "and I thought this would be my last chance. Look, I'm a normal guy. I want to be able to sit at the beach, too, and say, God, how awful it was bugging my buddy's bloody torso and having makeup smear fake dirt all over my face, and, Jesus, the horror, when they took one hygienically raised mosquito from a test tube and put it with tweezers on my arm. I want that experi- ence. I want to be one of these jellies.” Pause, winning smile: “Plus, I’m behind on my house payments.
The smile, the attitude, and especially the eyes convinced Melnick. Yes, he admitted, in total birthdays celebrated, Robert was young for the part. But it wasn't the number of years that mattered; it's what was in the eyes. "You look at Robert's eyes," says the producer, "and you realize that this is someone who has seen a lot."
With one exception, the rest of the casting proceeded with a minimum of bumps. The exception was Ally Sheedy, first choice for the part of Corinne Landreaux, the refugee worker who arouses, among other things, Billy Covington's social conscience. After a reading, however, she was judged to lack "the right chemistry," a nice way of saying that Sheedy looked a mess. So instead the role went to Nancy Travis, the bad mother in Three Men and a Baby. After reading the script, Travis wanted very much to be in this picture, which turned out not to be Top Gun Goes to Thailand (unfounded worry A) or “the usual female role: show your tits in Act Three" (unfounded worry B). Corinne had substance and, in the fleeting moments she appeared onscreen, never bared her breasts.
As the day for departure neared, the actors began to prepare. Some screened documentaries on the CIA, others waded through tomes on Southeast Asia. still others boned up on tropical diseases, which in Thailand number as many as monks. Gibson, who plowed through the entire regimen, added to it two items more: learning a bit of Thai (his favorite expression, no surprise, is "Mai pen rai"—roughly, "Don't sweat it") and getting over his terror of helicopters and airplanes. He conquered his aversion in typical Aussie fashion: by learning to fly the bastards. Gibson did all right, too. Enough all right to take off, point through the sky, land an airplane without crashing it, and keep a helicopter hovering. The last, says Gibson, was tricky. How tricky? "Like driving down a bumpy highway at 90 miles an hour holding a steaming cup of coffee and not having a drop spill in your lap; like learning to balance on an egg; like—I suppose I shouldn't say this, but what the hell—like trying to hump in a ham- mock." That's how tricky.
Downey's preparation was somewhat different: he had his psychic read the script. The seer was alarmed by what he foresaw. There would be financial problems. And his client had best look after his limbs, since there would be problems with them as well.
Unaccountably, the psychic forgot to tell Downey about the earthquake, which shook the bejabbers out of Chiang Mai two nights after he checked into his hotel. As the building started shimmying, the hallway outside his suite began filling up with talented people in bathrobes. Gib- son was there; so were Melnick and Eskow and, after a pause to collect his video camera, Downey himself. Said Eskow, "Well, at least it's going to be an A death."
Except for a grab bag of now-concluded troubles, the production's been proceeding splendidly sincejthen. There has only been one more earthquake. nobody's tripped on a two-step, and the fellas who are ignoring Dr.Bob's AIDS warnings are at least using two condoms at a time. The mysterious flu seems to have gone away as well, although, to be on the safe side, cast and crew are avoiding close congress with baby pigs.
They're filming up in Mae Hong Son now, where the props department has built a refugee camp and airbase, complete with howitzers, machine-gun nests, and maintenance hangars, one of which the locals are going to turn into a recreation center when the production's over. Travis has brought along Of Human Bondage, and for the nonreaders in the group, there are beer blasts every weekend. Perhaps because of the latter, one love affair has blossomed—between a supporting actor and a hootchy- kootchy girl—and one very notable presence is occasionally having trouble remembering his lines on Mondays.
All the same, everyone seems pleased to be gone from Chiang Mai, no one more so than Gibson. Not only was that Brit paparazzo proving a pain. but a U.S. tour operator had cut a deal with the hotel to bring gawkers up for a look at his room, or, more precisely, the closed door of it. You should have seen the swooning in the corridor. To preclude a repeat of that occurrence, the producers have billeted him in an off-the-tourist-track hostelry some miles from Mae Hong Son. There, Gibson has been passing the time playing darts, discoursing knowledgeably about cattle, and sneaking looks at essays on Hamlet, who, he jokes, "had something rotten going on inside his head."
Downey, whose limbs remain intact and who so far has had no trouble cashing his checks, is likewise thriving. Since discovering that the role he plays is the largest, most important one in the picture, he's become considerably more punctual (except when he has more pressing things to do, like read his mail) and considerably less intimidated by you-know-who.
So what were the now concluded troubles? A bit of everything. The two Rogers, director Spottiswoode and cinematography chief Deakins, weren't seeing eye to eye about the filmic dimensions of the playpen, and almost no one was fully delighted with the screenplay, which was undergoing constant revision. "There should be more rawness and dirt," groused a well-placed script critic. "It's too slick, too jokey. It's just all too Hollywood. But if you put $35 million into a picture, that's what you are going to get."
As if all this weren't enough—and to the nervous L.A. powers who dispatched a snoop to the scene, it was—some of the actors were beginning to grow jaded. One, who only weeks before had rhapsodized about Air America being a "communal search for truth," had altered his opinion to the following: "Let's face it, what we're doing here is making money." Worse, those who were making the six- and seven-figure money—Downey and Gibson, respectively—were kicking up a fuss. In Gibson's case, it was over certain unspecified personality clashes; a number of the lines he was being asked to speak; the leveraged departure of his longtime stuntman; reporters who pestered him with personal questions and a host of other annoyances, including being asked about what he thought of the Vietnam War. (If you must know, he thought it was pretty stupid.)
With Downey, the gripe compendium was shorter. Simply stated, he wanted to act the way he's always acted—which is to say, with a plenitude of prior conversation, ad-libs, and strikingly different takes—and Spottiswoode, who had more to contend with than the wishes of one very young actor, wouldn't let him. In time, their differences precipitated a blowup—Downey hotly accusing Spottiswoode of not being "an actor's director," Spottiswoode just as coolly informing Downey he was right: he was not an actor's director, he was a movie director.
Happily, the two Rogers got back in sync, and Downey apologized for being such a jerk. "I thought I knew about movies," he says. "But this movie has taught me a lot. I don't know, maybe it was the old insecurity shit, or the creative aggression I've been feeling lately, or that I hadn't worked in so long and was worried that I would suck. . . ."
In the estimation of some who have monitored his performance, there are other things Downey has yet to learn, like carrying his body better and being aware—as old pro Gibson is, instinctively— what lens is shooting him and from what angle. Learning to give his all on the third or fourth take, rather than the ninth or tenth, would also be nice, as would not relying on the acting advice of Big Tits. Nonetheless, he has turned a crucial corner in Mae Hong Son, and since he's turned it, the set is harmony and light.
To celebrate, a couple of Sundays back. Gibson hosted a barbecue on the lawn that sweeps from his room to the river. Nearly everyone from the cast and crew was there; and after washing off the mud from a hard-fought volleyball game, Gibson himself threw the steaks on the barbie. When a Huey helicopter from the second unit made a thundering fly-by, some of the revelers pretended to shoot it down with their fingers. If Eskow's CIA mole was watching, he probably reported that they were acting like one, big, fractious, happy family, which more or less, they are.
For that, some kudos must go to returned from-L.A. Dan Melnick. He was out in a helicopter not long ago, along with several associates who wanted to take a ride over some of the most filmable scenery in the world. Their excursion brought them close to the Burmese border, where the resident drug lord, a redoubtable fellow named Khun Sa, has a predilection for taking potshots at sightseers. Luckily, Khun Sa is a Mel Gibson fan, and according to production rumor, safe passage had been granted Air America in exchange for the star's autograph. Anyhow, they were flying around, and wouldn't you know it, they got lost.
On the slope of a mountain, they spotted a hill-tribe village. There were ponies, some adorable thatched huts a little smaller than your average pool house, and natives wearing the oddest costumes, black getups that it appeared someone back in the '60s had accessorized with macrame. In a swirl of red dust, the chopper touched down.
The villagers, who had had no contact at all, basically, with the outside world, came out to gape at the insectlike marvel that had landed in their midst. With a screeching clank, its body opened, and a man with frighteningly pale skin alighted. He was clad in a tailored bush ensemble. "Greetings," said Daniel Melnick, offering them a box lunch. "We come from Hollywood."
So that's what's been going on up in northern Thailand, where instructions have been given that the name Richard Rush is not to be mentioned in public. All we've left out is why ? the CIA went into the opium-hauling business and how, because of it, a lot of real, innocent people died.
You'll just have to see the movie.
Not that it'll tell you, either.
-- Robert Sam Anson covered the war in Laos and used to drink with the real Air America pilots at the real White Rose bar. He currently lives in Thailand.
