by Judy Nunn
Bob Crawley was introduced to Samantha and Mickey as the film’s location transport manager.
‘Bob’s much more than that, though,’ Rodney said. ‘Knows everyone in Port Vila, he’s been a godsend.’
Bob had indeed been Rodney’s right-hand man during the months of meticulous research required for the set layouts and designs. And he’d loved every minute of it. ‘Not often you get a chance to work in the pictures, mate,’ he’d said time and again to Rod.
His overtly ocker manner was at odds with his crisp, neat appearance, as Sam and Mickey quickly discovered.
‘So you’re the Hedy Lamarrs, are you?’ he said, grinning broadly at the two of them. Sam’s bewilderment was obvious. ‘Stars. You know, Hedy Lamarr, star,’ he explained. ‘Pretty exciting, I gotta tell you.’ He gave them both a nudge and a wink. ‘I’ve never met any film stars before.’
‘Oh no, I’m just an actor,’ Mickey assured him. ‘Sam here’s the star.’ There was a cheeky glint in his eye as he self-effacingly acknowledged Sam.
‘Oh well, I’ll have to take special care of you then, won’t I?’ Bob said, and Sam could have kicked Mickey Robertson. Bob Crawley would obviously be hard to take in heavy doses.
It appeared that Bob ran a vehicle hire company on the island and had been employed by Mammoth to provide all transport and drivers during the filming. He’d decided to make himself personally responsible for the top end of the hierarchy, however, and, whilst the rest of the crew travelled to the Crowne Plaza in the special bus provided by the resort for its guests, Bob drove Simon, Nick, Rodney, Samantha and Mickey in his Toyota Landcruiser.
‘You sit up the front with me, Sam,’ he said as he folded out the extra seats in the rear of the Landcruiser. ‘Gotta look after the Hedy Lamarr.’
She cringed again. Bob was going to be very wearing.
As it turned out, he wasn’t. After politely fielding a question about what it was like to be a film star – this was her first movie, she said, so she really didn’t know – she asked him about himself, and he proved to be both an interesting man and a fund of information.
He’d lived in Vanuatu for twenty-five years, he told her. ‘Came here a couple of years before they got their independence,’ he said, ‘when the place was still called the New Hebrides. I was an adventurous little bugger,’ he grinned, ‘only nineteen, out to see the world. Bummed around the islands for a while, drove trucks for a copra plantation on Malekula, sold diving gear at a shop on Espiritu Santo …’
Bob obviously loved a good chat, and Sam was finding everything he said fascinating, but at the same time she was riveted by the sights she was witnessing through the Landcruiser’s window.
Huge banyan trees, their aerial roots forming columns, stood like ancient cathedrals amidst the tangle of tropical vines and palms. And every now and then, amongst the wealth of vegetation, they passed a village that appeared little more than a collection of hovels. Rows of shabby huts, made of corrugated iron and thatching and hessian, obviously anything the villagers could lay their hands on. But the islanders themselves seemed remarkably happy and healthy.
Women, carrying baskets and bundled palm leaves on their heads, waved and smiled as the car passed by. Men, hefting woven bags of firewood on their backs, raised a hand in acknowledgement. And any number of children jumped up and down and called out in cheeky high spirits.
‘I started up the car hire company in Port Vila about ten years ago,’ Bob concluded, ‘when I’d stashed up enough dough. And now, I tell you, you wouldn’t get me living anywhere else. Not for love or money,’ he swore. ‘Why would you want to? Just look at that.’
They’d reached the coast and, as they came over the hill, the township of Port Vila was laid out before them, nestled comfortably within its perfect natural harbour.
During the brief drive through the centre of town, Bob gave Sam and Mickey the guided tour of Port Vila that he’d given the others on their first visits.
‘Chantilly’s Hotel,’ he said, ‘that’s fairly new, good restaurant there, Tilly’s on the Bay. And that’s Rossi’s restaurant.’ He pointed out an attractive white building with verandahs overlooking the harbour. ‘Still the most popular expat hangout, always has been. ’Course it’s been rebuilt and extended over the years, but it’s been there forever. Used to be called Reid’s in the old days.’
Sam looked at Rossi’s with particular interest. Reid’s Hotel. She felt she already knew it. Reid’s was in the script. It was where Sarah met the French plantation owner.
‘And from about here on,’ he said, indicating the remaining forefront of the harbour with its sea wall and yacht club, ‘that’s all reclaimed land. And the main wharf down the end there, that’s where the cruise ships come in.’
Sam wondered what the ocean-cruising passengers thought of Port Vila when their luxury liners hoved to at the wharf. Glamorous as the location was, the town itself was rather shabby. Which somehow added to its charm, she thought, but it would surely leave tourists a little bewildered. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected herself, and she said as much to Bob.
‘I think I’d expected something a bit more commercial,’ she said, ‘more geared towards tourism. But I prefer it the way it is,’ she hastily added, she didn’t want to sound critical.
‘Yeah, me too, I like it shabby.’
He’d caught her out. ‘Oh I didn’t mean …’
But Bob wasn’t at all offended. ‘Port Vila hasn’t changed much over the years. It’s actually gone downhill since the French and English left in 1980,’ he said. ‘The locals were a lot better off under colonial rule. They’re not very good at running their own dance.’
As they continued at a snail’s pace along Lini Highway, he pointed out various other landmarks, the post office to the left, the local markets to the right, but Sam was intrigued by the small, perfectly shaped island in the middle of the harbour.
‘Iririki Resort,’ he said in answer to her query, ‘very popular, just a minute’s ferry ride into town …’
Iririki. Again the name registered. It was in the script. Iririki Island was the home of the British resident commissioner. Sarah and Hugh Blackston dined there.
‘… used to be the British commissioner’s residence,’ Bob continued.
‘We’ll be filming at Iririki,’ Nick said, aware of what Sam was thinking. ‘The scene with Sarah and Hugh and the commissioner.’
‘We were actually going to book in there,’ Simon interjected, ‘the whole unit. Either Iririki or Chantilly’s, but I thought it was better if we were a bit out of town.’
Nick agreed with him. ‘We don’t want to annoy the locals – film crews can be a rowdy lot. Besides, there’s more room at the Crowne Plaza.’
The Crowne Plaza was less than ten minutes’ drive south. It was a most attractively designed resort, situated beside the impressive Erikor Lagoon. From its large, open reception area, paths meandered amongst green lawns and coconut palms to solid stone bungalows with thatched roofs, each overlooking the lagoon.
‘We’ve taken over the whole place,’ Simon said to Sam and Mickey as they drove past the nine-hole golf course and up the main drive. ‘The second unit’s been here for weeks shooting the aerial shots, as well as the visual footage we’ll need for computer graphic background. And of course Rod’s team’s been here for the past month building the sets at Mele Bay and Quoin Hill. We’ll drive out tomorrow and I’ll show them to you. Fantastic locations, and, if the sets have come up half as well as Rod’s sketches and models, you’re going to be knocked out.’
‘They’ll be even better,’ Rodney promised him, ‘you just wait and see.’
The bus had arrived at the hotel before them, Bob having dawdled on his sightseeing tour from the airport, and the members of the crew were already being treated to the resort’s official welcome by a group of islanders in tribal dress.
The moment Sam alighted from the Landcruiser, a necklace of tiny shells was placed around her neck by a you
ng Melanesian woman. Then a nuggetty islander swooped upon her, shaking her hand in his powerful grip and displaying, in his black face, the whitest teeth she’d ever seen.
‘I am Chief Joe,’ he beamed, ‘welcome to our land. Welcome.’
He was an impressive-looking man, a little shorter than Sam, but powerfully built. Bare-chested and bare-footed, he wore the chief’s tribal dress of grass skirt with a grass cape draped over one shoulder. Black feathers projected from the back of the wide headband around his shaven skull, woven armbands encased his muscular biceps and he carried a carved wooden staff which he pummelled against the ground from time to time.
‘I am Chief Joe, welcome,’ he said as he beamed at Mickey and, one by one, he shook everyone’s hand and repeated his greeting. Simon, Nick and Rodney had been through the same procedure each time they’d stayed at the Crowne Plaza. Then, the official welcome over, the entire company filed into the reception area to be signed in and taken to their accommodation.
‘All this and I’m being paid as well? I don’t believe it!’ Sam said to Nick an hour later when he called by to see how she was settling in. ‘Is yours as posh as mine?’
‘Not quite, love, you are the star after all.’
Sam had been allocated one of only several bungalows built out over the water. They were larger than the others, near the swimming pool and bar, and were considered the resort’s deluxe accommodation.
‘They’re all fabulous, though,’ Nick said. ‘I’m number 25, just down there, you can see me from here.’ They were sitting on her open verandah, having admired the tiny fish darting about amongst the pylons below, and he pointed further down the lagoon. ‘Simon and Brett Marsdon have the other two deluxe bungalows. Simon offered me the choice, said he’d actually prefer to be further away from the pool because the bar could get noisy at night. But I declined.’
‘Why?’
‘Politics. Writers are pretty low down in the Hollywood pecking order and I think our young Mr Marsdon might get his knickers in a knot if he found out I had accommodation equal to his.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘Not at all. In fact he’ll probably be a bit miffed at his director and co-star sharing equal status. Did you know he wanted a Winnebago sent out for his personal use on location?’
Sam shook her head.
‘He carried on like a two-bob watch when we told him he couldn’t have one. Well, his agent did anyway. “It’s a standard clause in Mr Marsdon’s contract”,’ Nick said in an appallingly bad West Coast accent. ‘His agent’s actually called Mort, would you believe, and Mort wasn’t going to budge, threatened to pull Marsdon out of the movie. The producers were terrified, “Give him a Winnebago for God’s sake,” they said, so we had to take them on as well. We told them it was a physical bloody impossibility, that the roads on Efate weren’t built for luxury caravans. I must say I was lost in admiration at Simon’s self-control. He hadn’t wanted Marsdon in the first place, but Mammoth had insisted, distribution and all that, and I know he wanted to tell both Marsdon and Mort to go to hell, but he kept the peace instead.’
Nick took off his glasses; it was a stinking hot day and the sweat was causing them to slide down his nose. ‘It’s true about the roads,’ he said, wiping the frames on his T-shirt. ‘Christ, they haven’t been improved since the Yanks built them in 1942 – you need a four wheel drive to get to Quoin Hill.’
‘So Brett Marsdon’s a monster then,’ Sam said lightly, but she had a vague sinking feeling. She’d been naive, she told herself. Like the rest of the world, she’d believed Brett Marsdon’s press. ‘The golden boy of movies’, they hailed him. Both onscreen and off, the press loved Brett Marsdon. But he was obviously insufferable, she thought, and the ensemble camaraderie she’d experienced in Sydney was all about to end. ‘Why didn’t anyone warn me?’
‘What point would there have been? He’s the bums-on-seats and we’re stuck with him. Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough. He’ll be here in a couple of weeks.’ Nick put his glasses back on and jumped to his feet. ‘Fancy a swim?’
The actors were not needed for the next two days. Rodney was supervising the final dressing of the sets, after which there was to be an intensive fortnight spent shooting the scenes between Sarah and Hugh Blackston prior to the arrival of the American fighter pilot.
As promised, mid-morning the next day, Simon took Sam and Mickey out to show them the sets constructed at Mele Bay and Quoin Hill. Nick came with them and Bob Crawley was once again behind the wheel.
‘You blokes haven’t seen them yourselves, have you?’ Bob said to Simon and Nick. ‘Well, you just wait, you’re in for one helluva shock. Couldn’t bloody believe it myself. Jeez, you movie people, I dunno. The money you spend! Must have cost a mint!’
When they got there, Simon and Nick were not shocked at all, they were delighted. The set had been perfectly realised from the sketches and models they’d pored over for months, and at great length, with Rodney. And the location they’d personally chosen in their earlier field trips had proved ideal.
Stretching along the normally deserted shores of Mele Bay was a small harbour town. There were jetties and boatsheds and buildings fronting on to the water, and behind them was a main street with shops, a post office, restaurants and businesses.
‘Vila in 1942,’ Simon announced after the moment’s silence during which they’d all stared in admiration. Then he turned to Sam, his pterodactyl eyes gleaming. ‘The Vila of Mamma Black, Sam,’ he said. ‘Just prior to the arrival of the American forces in the New Hebrides.’ And Sam felt a tingle of excitement.
‘You’ve done a great job, Rod,’ Simon said as the set designer joined them. Rodney and members of his team had been at Mele Bay since dawn.
‘Yep. Knew you’d like it,’ Rod replied, giving his lazy grin, but secretly basking in the praise, as he always did when it came from Simon Scanlon.
The group of them stood on the sandy spit looking out over the foreshore and Rodney explained the layout to Sam and Mickey.
‘That’s the Burns Philp warehouse and pier,’ he said, ‘where the boats came in to collect the copra.’ He pointed further along the shore to a building with shuttered verandahs. ‘That’s Reid’s Hotel,’ he said, ‘and the boathouse just this side of it, right on the water, that’s Mamma Black’s. We’ll be shooting interiors in Reid’s and Mamma Black’s,’ he explained, ‘but the other town buildings are mockups. Come and I’ll show you.’
No amount of research had been spared during the preproduction phase of Torpedo Junction, and the township of Vila, prior to the land reclamation, sea wall and additional buildings, had been recreated to the last detail. But it had been recreated in a way that only the world of film could accomplish.
Sam was in a state of utter amazement. What had appeared from their viewpoint at the spit to be an entire town was a complete deception. The buildings on the foreshore side of the main road were three-dimensional, ‘so that we can shoot walk-pasts’, Rodney explained. But those on the opposite side were facades. Behind the post office, the stores and the restaurants, so real and solid in texture, there was nothing but frames of steel scaffolding.
‘We used stronger framework than usual,’ Rodney explained. ‘Normally they’d be wooden struts, but it’s the monsoon season after all. We chose to film this time of the year because there are less tourists around, but if the worst comes to the worst and a typhoon’s forecast we can easily take the facades off the scaffolding and lay them flat out on the street.’
Even the street itself, to Sam’s further astonishment, was made of synthetic fibre. ‘It breathes,’ Rodney said, showing her the holes in what appeared to be a solid paved road, ‘so that we don’t kill off the grass underneath. And it’ll be rolled up when we’re not shooting wide shots.’
Mammoth Productions had guaranteed the local government that the location would be left undamaged and, once that stipulation had been agreed upon, gaining permission to film had been easy. It was all a ma
tter of money, Simon told them. ‘Not just payment to the government,’ he said, ‘but to the villages; there’s a number of them in this area. Each one gets a whopping fee by local standards, and of course the villagers themselves get paid when we use them as extras, probably more than they earn in a year. Everybody’s very happy, believe me.’
The interior of Reid’s Hotel was thrillingly atmospheric. Sam could just see the colourful mixture of colonial society milling around amongst the baize-topped tables and spilling out onto the shuttered verandahs. But it was the converted boathouse of Mamma Black’s that most excited her. This was where Sarah had discovered herself, Sam thought. This was where Sarah Blackston had become Mamma Black.
It was a solid timber building with a corrugated-iron roof and an outside water tank. ‘British built,’ Rodney told her, ‘used to belong to an English trader who converted it into a makeshift home for himself, hence the water tank.’
Huge doors opened onto the shore where small boats had once been slipped into the shed, and large shutters on the upper half of the other three walls could be lifted by rods that then wedged into the window ledges, opening the building up on all sides. Benches and a sink were set down one end, two narrow beds at the other, matting on the floor. Sarah’s work area, Sam thought, where she tended her flock.
Rodney flicked a switch and, in the centre of the wooden beamed ceiling, a large electric fan slowly started to rotate. ‘Generators are connected, we’re ready for action,’ he grinned. Then he showed them all, as he had at the Reid’s set, how whole sections of walls were ‘floaters’ that could be removed for camera access.
An hour later, they piled back into the Landcruiser to set off for the other location at Quoin Hill.
‘What’s that island?’ Sam asked Bob Crawley as she looked out across the sandy spit.
‘Hideaway,’ he said. ‘Used to be Mele Island in the old days. Do you swim?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Well, you’ll find some great snorkelling over there. You should give it a burl if you get the time. Coral reef only twenty metres from the shore, the fish are unreal! Hideaway Island’s very popular with the tourists, and the Kiwi chef does a beaut chicken coconut curry.’
