All This in 60 Minutes

by Lee, Nicholas

  Who cares. Just as I took her hand, I felt deep rumblings. I grimaced in panic, dropped her hand and took off in Warren’s footsteps. I made it to the gents’ just in time. And from the next stall through clattering teeth the shivering producer said, ‘Boy, that was close. She’s a very lucky woman.’

  Back at the birthday bash the senators were all loudly singing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ (and so say all of arselickers), terrified they might miss a word, or worse, look as if they weren’t singing. At the end of it Marcos cried out ‘Encore!’ and the mob tipped their heads back and laughed uproariously.

  Imelda then decided it was Marilyn Monroe time and sang happy birthday to the president. Flat and out of tune, she warbled on and on and on, convinced she was the hottest thing since Ella Fitzgerald. Great footage.

  The next day was the official birthday celebration for the masses. Tens of thousands of peasants were bussed into a huge stadium for a ‘spontaneous’ show of loyalty.

  The ceremony was led by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila, the unfortunately named Cardinal Sin, who would often use his own pun ‘Welcome to the house of sin’ in church. And the mob loved it, and him. The real sin was what was going on in the government. The archbishop conducted the birthday celebration for reasons known only to him. It was well known that he was no fan of Marcos.

  Years later, fed up with all the fraud and corruption, Cardinal Sin became one of the architects of the People’s Power Movement that eventually removed Marcos from office. The cardinal appealed to Filipinos of all religions to follow the teachings of the gospel and use peaceful means to change the political situation. It worked beautifully. And in 2001 the cardinal even managed to do it one more time by playing a major role in the ousting of President Joseph Estrada.

  •

  I wasn’t there for Estrada’s ‘ousting’ but I was there for his ‘inning’.

  It was nine years between the Marcos and Estrada stories and I’d been to the Philippines half a dozen times for other stories. The ubiquitous Aussie fat old guys marrying beautiful educated Filipinos, a staple for 60 Minutes, plus we did poverty, rebels and one humdinger of a story that was a real fizzer.

  It was alleged that during WWII the Japanese had buried in Manila tonnes of gold said to be worth billions. Some nobody reckoned he had found it and had given us the exclusive rights to the story. We should have pulled out the moment we met him. His clothes and his demean-our didn’t quite match his delusional thinking. He was convinced he was Indiana Jones, but he didn’t convince us. What really gave him away was the couple of flimsy Dick Smith 50-buck metal detectors and a map that looked like it had come from a Christmas cracker. And once all this high-tech gear pinpointed the buried treasure that no one had been able to find in 45 years, he was going to retrieve his booty from under eight feet of concrete with a $10 shovel. We tried. We worked in intense heat. We hired helicopters, we spent loads of money, but ... there was no gold, of course, thus no story and no redeeming ourselves.

  I never had any problems entering or leaving the Philippines for those stories, so on arrival for the Estrada story, why would it be any different?

  Impatiently we stood in line at Manila airport’s immigration desk, already feeling the intense humidity, and desperate to get to our air-conditioned hotel for a really cold beer. After flashing all the relevant documentation, the other three sailed through, but not moi. The immigration officer took one look at my passport, me, the passport, me, the passport, then said, ‘Come with me.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I thought. ‘What this time? It can’t be the Palestinian look, why would they care? Maybe they think I’m Japanese and I’ve come back to retrieve all the war gold Indiana never found.’

  It was same old, same old: ‘Why are you here? What are you doing?’ This mob had none of the smarts of the Israelis so I let them have it. What did they think they were fucking doing, I’d been to their country a dozen times and had never been stopped. ‘Why now?’ I demanded to know.

  They told me I’d done a story on their president that was not complimentary so I had been blacklisted. But the only story I’d done on a Philippines president was Marcos, and that was nine years ago. I was flabbergasted that anyone would care. ‘Are you blokes kidding? You should be thanking me. He was a dictator, a liar, a cheat, a thief, possibly a murderer. And a dickhead.’

  ‘He was our president.’

  I asked why I hadn’t been stopped at any other time during the last nine years.

  ‘You were always on the blacklist, but we now have computers.’

  So I’d been on the blacklist for nine years but it had obviously been in the too-hard basket to check the list during that time. They were so proud of the fact that they now had computers, I was almost going to compliment them on their ability to work one. Until they told me I couldn’t spend any more time in their country, the next plane out was in fifteen minutes, it was going to Singapore, and I would be on it.

  I then explained I was one of a group of four, I had eighteen pieces of luggage, and I was here to do a story on Joseph Estrada, possibly and probably their next president. The presidential election was in two weeks and Estrada was the firm favourite.

  Joseph ‘Erap’ (mate) Estrada had been a B-grade film star, which was lucky for him as B-grade are the only films made in the Philippines. He had always played heroes of the downtrodden so the poor loved him and couldn’t wait to vote for him. He wasn’t just a B-grade actor, he’d also been a B-grade mayor for a while so he’d had some experience of politics, but most of his time as mayor was spent fighting allegations of corruption, murder and rape.

  When I told the immigration officials that Estrada wouldn’t be too happy when he found out we wouldn’t be doing the story, they folded. They agreed to let me stay, but insisted that while I was in Manila I should try to get my name taken off the blacklist. I left the airport having no idea how and where I’d start the process.

  The next day we interviewed Estrada, who was a shoo-in to be president, but Richard Carleton had decided the man was a lightweight and got stuck into him in the interview, calling him a murderer and a rapist. That didn’t go down well. Richard then accused him of being a drunk and a womaniser. ‘During my younger days, of course,’ Estrada said proudly.

  His rivals not only questioned his morality but also his intelligence, so Richard asked whether you had to be intelligent to run a country. There was a long pause as Estrada, with his thin Asian mo and shifty B-grade actor eyes, took a huge amount of time to think, then mumbled, ‘Well of course you don’t have to be dumb.’

  ‘Do you know much about economics?’

  ‘Not much.’ And he wasn’t acting.

  Listening to that, I figured I’d better get off Marcos’s blacklist fast. After Richard had ripped into Estrada, there was definitely going to be another blacklist heading our way, and I didn’t want double demerits. I figured B-grade actors who become B-grade mayors who become B-grade presidents probably don’t have good memories, but murderers probably do, so I wanted to be off Marcos’s blacklist before ‘Erap’ found out I was a serial offender.

  One of the interviews needed for the Estrada story was with the attorney-general who seemed like a good bloke and pretty sharp. I told him of my dilemma and asked if there was anything he could do. He immediately checked the blacklist, saw my name and said he would help, but first I had to fill out a few forms.

  A few forms! When I first saw the paperwork that was needed, I thought, bugger it, I’d be quite happy to never see this place again, but the attorney-general was working back late to accommodate me and had told me it would be ‘very wise’ to be off that list.

  I wrote my life story and answered absurd questions, then every form had to be checked, double checked, triple checked, signed and stamped by as many bureaucrats as there were forms. I spent hours wandering miles of corridors searching for the right bureaucrat and more importantly the right stamps. Finally, with every i dotted, t crossed, stamps stamped
and signatures signed, I went back to the attorney-general’s office.

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘now you need the signature of a JP.’

  At first I thought he was joking—I was with the numero uno legal guy in the whole country and I needed a JP?—but irony’s not big in the Philippines. The attorney-general gave me the address of a JP only five minutes away, and from his window pointed out the direction I should take.

  I soon found myself in a very seedy bar area so I figured I’d gone the wrong way. I retraced my steps and headed off in the opposite direction. Nothing but building sites and open sewers. I headed back down the original route, thinking this had to be a huge mistake, then came to a shithole of a bar that had the correct address. It was dimly lit with not a soul to be seen. I tentatively ventured inside, calling out, ‘Anybody here?’ But it was eerily quiet. As I turned to go, I heard, ‘Can I help you?’

  Through the half light I saw a totally naked man rising from a couch and a deep sleep.

  With beads of sweat running down his body, he said, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m looking for a JP.’

  ‘I’m a JP.’

  ‘I need this signed.’

  ‘You got a pen?’

  ‘Ahh, no.’

  ‘Want a drink?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  The JP wandered off in search of a pen. Having seen a hell of a lot more than I needed to, I walked over to the filthy bar to wait. Finally, still starkers but holding a pen, he returned and said, ‘Where do I sign?’ I pointed. He signed.

  ‘That’ll be twenty bucks,’ he said, scratching. ‘You can have a drink on the house.’

  I handed him twenty dollars then spent the next fifteen minutes chatting with the naked man while I polished off my nice cold free beer. We chatted about the weather, the price of beer and about Estrada, but no mention of why he was naked.

  On my way back to the attorney-general’s office, I wasn’t sure if I’d been hallucinating, but there was an illegible signature with JP next to it in the appropriate spot, and that was all I needed.

  I handed the papers to the Philippine’s top legal eagle, who took one quick look at naked man’s signature. ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘You’re now off the blacklist.’

  Two weeks later Estrada was elected president. Richard obviously didn’t upset ‘Erap’ too much, because I went back to the Philippines many times and wasn’t on any blacklist—though corrupt, charged and convicted ex-president Joseph Estrada soon found himself on quite a few. After six years of house arrest he scored a 30-year jail term for ‘plunder’, but after promising never to run for public office again, he was pardoned by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. But you can’t keep a good corrupt ex-president down. In 2013 Estrada got himself elected Mayor of Manila.

  16

  No Apology, Anthropology

  Charm, cracking jokes, acting dumb and the bribe of 800 bucks still didn’t help get the camera gear through customs at Nairobi airport. It got the film through, a fat lot of good that did us without a camera. There was a $3000 fee on bringing in film but the customs officer politely said that for $800 (that went straight into his pocket) he’d wipe the importation fee. So I paid, foolishly thinking it would cover all the gear.

  I didn’t know if I should blame Sydney Pollack for actually shooting his movie Out of Africa ‘on location’, but we were well and truly done over by the Kenyan customs officers. Pollack’s Hollywood crew had thrown money around Kenya like it was wildebeest droppings, and now it was always migration time for anyone with a camera. We were told we needed a $US50,000 bond to get the gear through customs, and it was non-negotiable. But we kept on trying, hinting that maybe we could come to some sort of agreement.

  As my diary of 27 January 1987 says, ‘A half hour later we were on our way to the hotel without, sans, having none, empty handed, gearless!’

  The producer Warren McStoker and I spent the next two days organising the $50,000 and making twice-daily trips to customs, still attempting to negotiate. Micky and reporter Jennifer Byrne, went food shopping for our five days of camping in the middle of nowhere for our story on the famous paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey. We needed to buy food, but everything else, such as camping gear, beds, chairs, cars, drivers, cooking utensils and cooks, was taken care of by a local Kenyan camping organisation. They had vast experience of looking after film crews like us. Should be fun.

  Finally with the 50 grand in our grasp, Warren and I fronted up to the Kenyan customs officials, slapped the cheque on the counter and requested the gear. Alas, the greatest legacy of English colonialism is bureaucracy. We didn’t need just one stamp, we needed ten, and each Kenyan customs officer dressed in his fancy uniform had his own stamp locked away in a beautifully carved wooden box. Once outside its ornate box and before it was soiled by our irritating papers, each stamp was presented to us, sommelier-like, as if it was a bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1945.

  After nine stamps had done their duty we started to relax a bit, but it appeared the only people to relax in Kenya were locals. The last stamper, the one and only who could actually release the gear, had gone home and he didn’t have a phone. Another day wasted.

  Next morning as Warren stayed in the hotel to placate Leakey’s minders who were getting restless, I went to meet the tenth customs officer to get his stamp of approval, grab the gear and get speedily out of there.

  Wrong. After presenting his Mouton Rothschild, he insisted on checking all the serial numbers. When I pointed out to him there was nothing to check them against, it fell on deaf ears. So we went through a final charade. With every bit of gear he could find with a serial number, he’d call it out. I’d then answer, ‘Yep that’s mine!’

  It was hard not to laugh but I took solace in the fact that stupidity is its own reward. Though possibly the stupidity was all mine. The time-wasting was obviously to elicit a bit of cash. Towards the end of this agonising process another guy whispered in my ear that a hundred dollars might help. But by now I’d had enough, I told them what they could do with their stamps and their attempts at extortion. I then grabbed the gear that was all on a trolley and stormed out. Not a word was said and nobody followed. I wondered why I hadn’t done it days ago.

  So finally, after three days, $50,000, endless stampings of fists, feet and bureaucratic ink, we loaded the gear and ourselves onto an eight-seater plane and headed to the town of Ludwa, the bowels of the earth.

  In fact, there didn’t seem to be a Ludwa. There was an airport (well, a dirt runway), a funny little bar, a few lopsided houses, and waiting for us in this metropolis were our three drivers in our three four-wheel drives, each chockers with the goodies Micky and Jennifer had bought in Nairobi. Our drivers had huge welcoming smiles. They escorted us to the vehicles, and even opened our doors for us. We were already looking forward to our bit of luxury camping after a long, hot day’s filming.

  Fifty rough kilometres later we arrived at Leakey’s camp. He had gone out fossicking. His flunky told us we couldn’t camp with them. ‘Perhaps you’d like to pitch your tents over there,’ he said, pointing to 11,000 square kilometres of Kenya. Over there suited us just fine. We didn’t like to be with the ‘talent’ 24 hours a day and obviously the feeling was mutual.

  Over there was flat, ugly and hot. There was nothing between us and the horizon but a few dead trees. Somehow, halfway between Leakey’s camp and over there, the drivers got not just one vehicle but all three bogged, and they had no idea what to do. First they tried reversing, then full throttle forward, but the rapidly spinning wheels sunk deeper and deeper into the sand. Micky asked if they were in four-wheel drive. He might as well have asked the theory of general relativity. Pushing past the blank faces, Micky jumped into the first car, flicked it into four-wheel drive and took off. He then did the same with the other two. My knowledge of cars wasn’t a hell of a lot better than the Kenyan drivers’ so I couldn’t really have a go at them, but I did wonder how they’d managed the long journ
ey from Nairobi. But no matter, they’d come into their own come tent-pitching time, and more importantly, dinnertime.

  We pointed to a nice flat spot (not difficult, the whole place was pancake-like) where we’d like our tents erected, please. It was as if we’d asked for the Taj Mahal and the Sydney Opera House to bookend the Champs-Elysées. Their continued blank expressions led me to believe they’d never pitched a tent in their lives and weren’t planning on learning how.

  We needed shelter, so sweating profusely in the intense afternoon heat, Warren and I took tent-erecting instructions from Micky who once again saved the day. Guess who sat in deck chairs under what was trying desperately to pass for a tree? And from their shady spot, the three local camping experts watched calmly as we searched for the four missing tent pegs that were crucial to our construction. Finally we came to terms with the fact they didn’t exist, so we created replacements by whittling tent pegs from any sticks we could find on the ground. I’d seen the movie Out of Africa, it must have been shot in a Kenya in a parallel universe to ours, because it was lush and tropical. It was hard to imagine Meryl Streep and Robert Redford picnicking out here.

  With tents up we tensed up for our first meeting with Leakey who was renowned for being difficult. He had no academic qualifications so was sneered at by fellow diggers with thousands of letters after their names. His knowledge had all been learnt on digs with his famous palaeontologist father. But he had made many significant discoveries so the palaeo-heavies couldn’t completely ignore him. He was also at odds with most of the palaeontology world over when and how we humans split from apes.