Denault says his primary visual stimulus was Cambodia itself. Like Dillon,
he was fascinated by its wild mood swings, which came to be reflected
in the film. During the day, it's a land of lush, green jungles,
decaying French Colonial architecture in beautiful pastels, and
a rainbow of colors on the crowded city streets. When night falls,
the palette turns candy-colored and molten black, and the mood
becomes menacing as the underground economy springs into action.
During 12 weeks of preproduction, Denault was
also struck by Cambodia's different approach
to everyday lighting: "It's all fluorescent. There isn't
an incandescent lightbulb in the country, I think." What's more, the
vogue was for garishly colored fluorescents. "People use
colored fluorescent lights for mood, for effect, the way somebody
here would dim down the tungsten in a fancy restaurant to create
a warm ambience. There, they'd turn on some pink or yellow fluorescents."
This
peculiarity helped the cinematographer create a contrast between
the eastern and western worlds within Phnom Penh. He used incandescent
sources only to light a European enclave: the Belleville Hotel
and its bar across the street, run by Corsican expatriate Emile
(Gerard Depardieu). This is Jimmy's first destination in his
hunt for the elusive Marvin, and it's filled with details that
signal its western sensibility, including Emile's dusty turntable
with its Jaques Dutronc tunes
and the bar's motley clientele of U.S. war veterans. "The Belleville is the one place in Cambodia where you do see an incandescent
light, so it represents the European incursion," says Denault.
The
complete absence of such lights elsewhere allowed Denault to
whittle down his lighting package. He ticks off the final list: "A
12K, four 4K Pars, four 1.2K Pars, four Jokers, a bunch of Kino Flos and
a bunch of open-faced 2K and 1K quartz lights. It was a pretty
small package, but even if I'd had more lights, we wouldn't have
had the means to transport them."
And
there's the rub. Cambodia's ruined roads are impossible
for big trucks - or much else - to traverse. However, because
there are no equipment-rental houses in Cambodia, the grip and lighting
equipment had to be brought in somehow from a rental house in Bangkok, the Hong Kong-based Cinerent. Fortunately, the production's crew included two
Israelis who had just the right mindset to tackle such a challenge.
One was line producer Rony Yakov. "He's
a veteran of all those Cannon films, including Bloodsport and Delta
Force," says Denault. "He decided that we had to invent just enough
of the film business here to get the movie done, and not an inch
more." Yakov brought in production manager Danny Ben Menachem, whose contributions included building the honeywagons and masterminding equipment transport. He procured
some Cambodian army surplus flatbed trucks. The entire grip and
lighting package had to fit into the two 20'-long shipping containers
that could be ratchet-strapped onto the flatbeds. To make that
possible, Don Balfour at Cinerent hired
some Thai welders to build custom shelving. "They shelved
out the whole thing inside, and there was literally one spot
for each piece of equipment," Denault marvels. "It
was a miracle of packing and really a work of art."
The
equipment that couldn't be brought from Thailand was built in Cambodia. "On every street
corner in Cambodia, there's some guy welding
stuff onto the little motorcycles," says Denault.
Cambodian welders became a constant presence on set. Key grip
Johnny Erbes had them build the ramps and stairs that allowed the
crew to haul equipment in and out of the truck, custom-made overhead
frames, special rigging to fit certain locations and anything
else that was needed. "We rigged lights everywhere," says Denault. "We
rigged frames over alleyways to keep it looking like dusk during
the middle of the day. We were so close to the equator, and a
lot of the movie takes place early in the morning or late at
night - like all good movies! So we ended up stretching silk
or muslin over areas that we could control to keep direct sun
out." The local welders were essential to making this work. "We
had grip equipment that looked like it was from the Iron Age," Denault adds with a laugh. "But it was impressive. Danny
was always saying, 'They can make you anything you want out of
spare parts.' And it's true; the whole country is just spare
parts."
That
comment echoes a line in the film, as Marvin welcomes Jimmy to
his dilapidated but genteel French Colonial palace: "The
whole country needs a paint job, but that's part of its charm." Faded
colors and flaking surfaces could be found everywhere, and Denault says
the Cambodians seem to have no sentimental attachment to the
lovely colonial architecture. "If you want to knock through
a hole in a wall, they'd say, 'No problem!'" he says. "There's
no sense of preciousness about any of it. Perhaps it's because
they don't consider it their architecture, anyway."
Much
to the filmmakers' consternation, however, the Cambodians began
to use some of the production money that was trickling in to
give some buildings a fresh coat of paint - before the shoot
commenced. "Matt was always saying, 'They're painting the
whole country before I can shoot it! It's driving me crazy!'" says Denault.
In fact, one of the film's key locations was in danger of just
such an overnight makeover. In Phnom Penh's old colonial section,
the location scouts had found two buildings catty-cornered across
the street. One was to serve as the Belleville Hotel and the
other as the Belleville Bar. Near them was a post office, another
flaking French Colonial structure. Word got around that the city
was planning to give it a fresh paint job. "We had to pay
them not to paint the building," recalls Denault. "Even
as we were shooting, the place was changing around us. We were
afraid that once we shot locations, the location fee would go
into paint, and if we then had to go back to reshoot it
would look like a different place." Denault laughs
as he recalls the time the filmmakers left Phnom Penh for two weeks to shoot
down south. "When we got back, the gaffer, Scotty Miller,
said there were noticeably more cars in Phnom Penh. I couldn't tell, but
it's possible."
But
even as such improvements occur, much in Cambodia has a provisional quality.
That includes living situations, like the abandoned casino, a
key location that was housing dozens of squatters when shooting
began there; it also includes the lighting. For instance, one
scene in the film features several long, pink fluorescent tubes
hanging vertically on the wall of a brothel. "That's classic
Cambodian decoration," says Denault. "It's like, 'I need some light over here, so
I'll tie one up with this plastic string.' Or they'll tie a light
to a stick that they poke into the ground outside, or hang a
light from a nail or a pipe."
What
proved to be a real problem was the provisional nature of the
country's electricity. As Denault explains, "Cambodia isn't on a national power
grid. Everybody's running off of his own generator, and none
of them runs at 50 cycles a second, which is their supposed standard.
So any existing fluorescent lights people had in their houses
would flicker on film." That created a considerable challenge
on night exteriors, which, like the rest of the film, were all
shot on location.
Page
2
|
