Battles on and off field

One could always find an excuse for the ac- tor's behaviour, the frayed nerves, the rising tensions, the protracted shooting, out in the blaze of noon, out on the plains of the parched North Central Plains, but some rot was setting in, which made me profoundly sad. Was a viper slithering into the camp? Was it to sabotage the film? Once again was I suffering persecution- mania, becoming paranoid, a professional hazard in film making.

The next morning on a confidential chat with my local assistant director Mr. Upali Perera, we suspected that the virus had spread to the unit members. The real fact of the matter was that Gus Agosti was a tyrant and in his confrontations with the local artistes he didn't mince words, the English Language and Italian dialect (Gus was of Italian descent) and practically every four letter word both to artistes and technicians was liberally used. Shortly after, when the tension relaxed I confronted - Gus Agosti.

Gus Agosti was a legend. He was 67 years old when he came to work for The God King. Paid $ 500 per week for 16 weeks, he was worth every penny of it. Without his tough and ruthless methods, he could never have risen to being the world's greatest director's assistant. In temperament Gus was a classic maveric, a stocky balding, and obstreperous character. I was the opposite, artistes were my friends. Gus on the other hand was convinced that all they were concerned was to earn as much money as possible and bed the largest number of girls. He had worked with the mightiest and cynicism had distorted his judgement, and on 'The God King' he was driven mad by another problem. The young actors were on grass, plentifully supplied by the local villagers.

Gus would go crazy as the smoke filled the make up rooms when sharp at four in the morning they had to report for work. In fairness to Gus he was tough on everyone, the young English actors and the locals. When I broached the subject he said, "A popular Assistant Director is a bloody dud; a contradiction in terms; he is not doing his job. An Assistant Director is Sergeant Major. And then when he had regained his composure I popped the question which had always intrigued me, " Gus, you have enormous experience. Why haven't you directed a film?" "Ah, many a time have I been asked that question. There are plenty of good directors, but very few good Assistant Directors. Do you know I had 50,000 extras, you have 2000 it's a bloody picnic."

As a tribute to him I must confess that God King would never have been made without him. Up at 3 or 4 each morning, driving artistes and crew, costumes, make-up done however large the crowd, all would be sharp on time, ready on location for the Director to arrive on the set and start work at 8 a.m. He never once interfered with my direction, never proffered suggestions, never tried to correct actors. That was not his job. How often have I stopped Assistant Directors, from hijacking the Directors functions.

Gus Agosti had an obsession. He couldn't understand why the elephants and mahouts disappeared by early afternoon, upsetting his schedules. We explained to him that elephants had to be taken to the river or else we'd be faced with a stampede. "Bloody Bullshit'' he'd roar It's the union! the damned mahouts, they are out to skin us. We'll be stuck in this god forsaken location till they start pupping." In his hysteria he had got the nomenclature of the animal kingdom mixed up. From "The God King" Gus went straight on to work as Assistant on another crisis-ridden epic Mohamed Messenger of God, starring Anthony Quinn. Banished from a number of Middle Eastern countries, it was finally completed in Libya. The sheer magnitude of the problems must have hastened his end. A great character, and certainly the world's greatest Assistant Director.

All the young men who trained under him, Upali Perera, Raj Perera, D.B.Warnasiri, Shalinda Perera (from Los Angeles), Richard Boyle, though he was my invaluable personal assistant, will I am sure join me in saluting the memory of an impossible, aggressive, domineering, wholly committed cinema legend. So few Assistant Directors are given their due. An unpardonable pity!

On any film, a 16 week shoot including Sundays will be considered an unusually strenuous and exhausting schedule. Considering that 7 Britishers were involved I should have thought that being Union Members they would demand an off day per week - normally a Sunday... but they carried on with no protest. But during the climatic battle scene, slotted for one absurd single day, when I protested and demanded just one more day they struck work. I shall never know the reason why. It mystified me then. It is still a mystery now.

However Willie Blake whose photography in Eastman Colour lit up the screen with a startling luminosity, capturing the earth colours, the saffrons, browns and golds with unerring precision and Sumitra my wife who was in charge of the Second Unit camera and was my sheet anchor throughout the production, decided that with a skeleton crew and the elephants, we pick up as many close shots, without which the battle scene would be an elephant perahera rather than a charge; besides with only 32 elephants that was a hilarious problem. I had to shoot the same elephants charging each other; a change of costumes for the pachyderms, Kassapa and his men in costumes of a different colour to Mogollana and his troops, with a tactical attack which departed from the Mahavamsa version, a barely visible trench in the battlefield,which is set on fire, the blazing flames creating a roaring furnace with the thunder of explosions, beyond which the terrified elephants reversed and fled leaving the battle field sodden with gallons of elephant urine and carpeted with excreta. One poor beast, lost for two days was found in the jungles, its mahout taking refuge on the branch of a tree. All very unhistorical, the purists will say but it made a spectacularly visual scene. Hardly, anyone noticed the trick. Most elephants, poor dears look alike and the Mahouts were so sozzled with the local brew they were hardly recognisable.

With the filming in Mannar, Trincomalee, Anuradhapura, Mihintale, Sigiri and Hanwella over, now we had to move into the 'Studio sets at Hendala, where at least one could enjoy the comfort of travelling from home to working in more controlled conditions. But the nerves of technicians and players would suddenly snap and and people who seemed perfectly normal would suddenly break down in a paroxysm of tears.

We had shot over 100,000 feet of colour film, approximately over 20 hours of running time, we had hardly seen more than half the material, the rest was still held up in Madras by various bureaucratic problems. We were sustained by the reports of the laboratory. We were in reality groping in the dark. Such are the insanities of film making.

The wrap-up party (film parlance for the break up of colleagues and friends) was held at the Art Centre Club. The drinks were spiked with some devilish decoction, probably the Kassapa psychedelic brew (one can guess the presiding genius of this practical joke). Everyone was mildly hysterical, I vaguely remember Raymond Torin's enormous bulk being carried out or was it a fantasy? And then staggering home I blacked out or did I?

Editing

The rough cut or in literary phraseology, the first draft was carried out at home in Dickman's Road, where Sumitra had her own editing set up. The machine which could only accommodate the normal 35 MM film was adapted to the wide screen format. Sumitra first mapped out a graph which slotted in all the scenes (over 200 if I remember) with different colours to indicate changes of location. Later on this proved to be our salvation.

The film was cut strictly according to the script, following its own narrative complexities with meticulous fidelity. The first rough draft ran for over three and a half hours according to the Gospel text of Greville Bell. Dimitri de Grunwald flew from London, saw the screening, discussed what could be eliminated and planned our move to London.

London

Dimitri's choice of Co Editor was Rex Pyke, a young and extremely charming character whose work for Sir Peter Hall, particularly a dramatized documentary style feature Akenfield adapted from a best selling book about a Sussex village had marked him out to be a promising and above all imaginative editor. After numerous screenings at which he must have been puzzled and bemused by the sheer length and the ponderous movement of the narrative he wondered how best he could shorten it. The redundant scenes had already been dropped. Any further excision might risk the danger of the story being unintelligible if not confused.

Being very much the daring young man on the flying trapeze he decided to cut every shot in half. This certainly cut the running time by nearly 1 hour, but Rex was a sensitive person. The more he screened his version, the more he realised the film had lost something that gave it a unique quality, distinct from the conventional Western film. He had destroyed the rhythm, the tempo of a kind of narrative that was the anti-thesis of European cinema. Each director, unless he is a factory hack, shoots his material to be edited in a certain pattern, a certain tempo. Now it was like a recording run at the wrong speed. Maybe I was expected, given the material to produce a film fast paced, action oriented, propelled by the conventions of Western Cinema. In my inability or refusal to conform, I had shot the film in such a way that the relationships of the characters, their behaviour, reflected a more meditative quality. Rex Pyke was intelligent enough to realise what had happened. He confessed he had ruined the film and resigned.

It was a gesture that was the decent, the courageous thing to do. Sumitra and I completed the final scenes but there was little we could do to repair the damage. The film had to be re edited all over again.

Dimitri decided to hand the film over to Russ Lloyd one of the industry's most experienced editors and the great John Huston's favourite editor. He went back to Sumitra's early graph, restored some of the missing scenes, eliminated the jerky rhythms, cleaned up the rough edges of the narrative and in a brilliant editing coup, re introduced , like a musical motif, key scenes of Kassapa, in his search for his great visionary monument. The Russ Lloyd version, was the final attempt at salvaging what may have been a pretty mutilated narrative of Sumitra's rough cut and Richard Boyle was perceptive enough to comment, that in the final analysis it was Sumitra's vision that was scattered on the cutting room floor. Russ Lloyd had given of his best out of the vast reservoir of his experience. Rex was young, revolutionary, radical in his approach to material that could not be edited his way. The original choice of editor was the wrong one. However Rex has remained our friend over the years, visiting us in Paris and even coming forward to pay part of the exorbitant royalty I was forced to pay for the rights of ''Village in the Jungle".

Dimitri and Manik had signed up the services of Britain's finest technicians for the final stages of the film. Alan Bell for the sound track, a music editor Bob Hathaway and for the final recording Doug Turner who is an institution - responsible for all of Lindsay Anderson and John Boorman Films.

The music of Nimal Mendis orchestrated by Larry Ashmore was recorded at Wembley Studios with players from the London Symphony Orchestra. Not a single oriental instrument or musician was allowed (Union Regulations on the pretext that they could not read Western Musical Notation;) Fortunately I had met a young American at a party who was researching oriental and African drum rhythms for his Doctorate. He mimicked all the Drum sounds on the film and only our virtuosos would suspect the difference. Altogether 48 sound tracks were used, 3 sound editors, whereas one wretched and over-worked editor does it all with an apprentice if he or she is lucky on our local films.

Recorded on Dolby 25 years ago, the sound track of The God King is one of its major assets, contributing a great deal to whatever impact it may have.

For inexplicable reasons, the distribution of the film was granted to Scotia Barber, a relatively minor company when Rank's were willing to acquire it. Another error of judgement. On TV it has had the widest exposure even in countries as unlikely as Brunei, Peru and Papua New Guinea (Source, TV Marketing.) Not a single penny accrued to Sri Lanka, not even from the TV sale to Rupavahini.

Co-productions with Western countries are a professional hazard as the senior partner holds the negative and one has little chance except risk lengthy legal action, if there is a breach of contract.

Even more ironic was "The God King's'' fate when it was suggested that we dub the film in Sinhala; After completing half the film, work was suspended. No reason was given for this sudden and arbitrary decision. It was rumoured that someone had strongly argued that the film was anti-Indian. The Swami, a villain interfering in a sovereign state. Very topical and contemporary I would have thought.

My total fee for directing The God King was Rs. 40,000. The company still owes me Rs.18,000 according to the accountants. But money was the last thing on my mind. If the film was never completed it would have been a humiliation for the industry and the country. I would have fallen on my knees, bitten the dust and directed it for nothing. After all the house in which I was born was named "Sihagiri".

More Plus * It's got to be Hip Wo Street when you fall ill * That chelating feeling * What's it all about?

Return to the Plus Contents