by David Suzuki
WORKING IN TELEVISION HAS been very rewarding and has given me a great deal of pleasure. I have also enjoyed the traveling it has entailed, but there has been a downside as well.
In 1993, Nancy Archibald began to work on a two-hour special on dams. Nancy was Jim Murray's partner and had become the executive producer of The Nature of Things when Jim was recruited to take over The National Dream, the blockbuster series based on Pierre Berton's book and hosted by the prolific Canadian author. Nancy proposed to look at megadams around the world and ascertain whether they had lived up to their promise.
Protests had been launched against a dam proposed on the sacred Narmada River in India, and the charismatic firebrand Medha Patkar had spent years rallying indigenous people who would be flooded out by it. In 1985, the World Bank had committed a $450-million loan to build the dam at Sardar Sarovar, but, led by Patkar, public protest forced the bank to set up an investigative committee in 1991. It was chaired by former United Nations Development Program administrator Bradford Morse of the U.S., and he took on Canadian lawyer Tom Berger as deputy chair.
Having represented the Nisga'a First Nation in a landmark case and consulted other First Nations as commissioner of the ground-breaking Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, Berger had a long track record of working with aboriginal people in Canada. The Morse Commission traveled extensively in western India, listening to the people who would be affected most by the project. In the end, the report came down heavily against funding the dam, and the World Bank withdrew its promised support. By then, it had become a matter of national pride, and the Indian government went ahead and built the dam on its own.
When Nancy started filming, the Narmada dam was not yet complete. We applied to the Indian government for permission to film but were turned down when officials discovered that we would be focusing on dams. We decided to film without a permit. As we expected, the country is so vast and complex that there was no way our activity could register in the upper echelons of government before we were already in and out.
We went in December, and although the weather was still warm by Canadian standards, it was winter, when a tremendous amount of coal is burned even by the poorest street people. The air was unbelievably polluted. As we rode in a three-wheeled taxi through the streets of Bombay in early morning, coal dust hung in the air and swirled about in great clouds as we passed by. I found it hard to take a breath and couldn't imagine what the pollution was doing to our lungs. When I returned home, I became very ill with lung congestion. I couldn't shake it, and after ruling out a viral, bacterial, or parasitic infection, my doctors decided I had asthma. Subsequent tests revealed I do not have asthma, but I have been left with chronically weak lungs and allergies that flare up whenever I visit a new city or there is heavy smog.
Another difficult shoot was in 1999, when Geoff Bowie produced a program on the tragedy of the Aral Sea in central Asia. Bounded by Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, only a few decades ago this great inland sea was a rich source of fish, including sturgeon, salmon, and plaice, and villages dotting its shores were magnets for summer tourists. The Aral Sea was the fourth-largest inland sea on Earth when the Soviet Union decided to make the surrounding region the cotton center of the world. Soon, vast areas of land were growing cotton, one of the most chemically demanding crops we have. Heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers polluted the sea, and so much water was drawn from the two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, that they were reduced to a trickle.
After 1960, the level of the sea began to drop. Biodiversity was heavily affected. Before 1960, more than 70 mammalian species and 319 bird species were known, but by the end of the twentieth century, those figures had dropped to 32 and 160, respectively. What were once beaches became wide swaths of toxic sand that spreads on the winds.
Today the Aral is the tenth-largest inland sea, most of its fish species are extinct, and the shoreline has retreated more than sixty miles from the once-seaside villages. Child and maternal mortality levels around the Aral Sea are the highest in the former Soviet Union. People in the region suffer high levels of respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis and asthma, as well as diseases of the liver, kidney, blood, thyroid, and heart. And poverty ensures they have no way out. It is a stark story that informs us we must pay attention to the ecological ramifications of our projects.
To film the Aral, we flew to Tashkent and then drove to a number of communities, ending at the former edge of the sea, where the beach sand was a witches' brew of toxins. We flew to the retreating seashore, where I was reluctant to breathe deeply because I knew how polluted the air was. The food and water were contaminated. It was heartrending to visit hospitals, where medical staff were unable to help the patients. I found the entire trip unpleasant, because I knew I was taking in all those toxins, and I couldn't wait to finish. But unlike the fifty million people around the sea, I had the option of leaving. The story of the Aral Sea is a fable for our time, the result of ignoring the effect of our megaprojects on the surrounding ecosystems.
chapter FOUR
STAND-UPS AND FALL-DOWNS
IT'S ONE THING TO memorize lines and deliver them before a camera; it's quite another to move or even gesture while also speaking. Add factors beyond those and the task becomes even more challenging.
I am filled with admiration for David Attenborough, the British host of countless natural history television programs. His stand-ups set a very high standard. Actually it was a often sit-down rather than stand-up. In one instance, somehow he and the film crew had been able to move close enough to a group of wild gorillas to get them into the shot without spooking them. Attenborough was almost whispering his lines, when a female gorilla sidled up to him and began to check him out in a rather friendly manner. No amount of preparation could have anticipated the animal would move in like that, but Attenborough incorporated this unexpected intrusion into his words and kept going without blowing his lines.
In the same way, Australia's Steve Irwin is very impressive in the way he delivers his lines in his TV series The Crocodile Hunter. He works at close quarters with wild snakes and crocs in a very physical way while conveying tremendous enthusiasm, yet he is able to evade a snake strike or a croc's mouth or tail without losing his cool or a limb.
I had an unscripted close encounter with a creature when we shot a stand-up for A Planet for the Taking that pondered the mystery of our relationship with the apes. I was seated on a stool as I posed the question of our evolutionary history; a trained chimpanzee sat on a stool next to me. In the opening shot, the camera was focused on me—the idea was that when I mentioned our nearest relatives, the shot would widen and reveal the animal.
As we began to shoot and I started talking, the chimp reached into the frame and tickled me under the chin! It was a probe of curiosity that we could never have rehearsed or trained the animal to perform, and it worked as a perfect surprise for the piece—but I blew it. I was so shocked at the chimp's initiative that I stuttered and then broke out laughing. Too bad, but I'm just not the calm and cool type.
We've tried to create fun in stand-ups, though. When we were filming a story on location at Cambridge University in England for Science Magazine, I did a stand-up while poling a punt on the Cam River that runs through the campus. As I finished my piece, I pretended the pole had stuck in the mud, and I flipped off the punt and into the water. It had to work on the first take, because I didn't have dry clothes to change into. It worked.
Another time, I was hired by an energetic dynamo, Margie Rawlinson, to narrate a film she had commissioned to raise money for a science museum in Regina. She would show the film at a fund-raising dinner to be attended by special guest Gerald Ford, former president of the United States. During his presidency, Ford had been filmed stumbling, and it was widely joked that he couldn't walk and talk at the same time. I was filmed on a skateboard, and my opening line was something like: “Well, I can ride a skateboard and talk at the same time.” Then, following th
e script, I slid right into a lake and finished my piece while soaking wet. I thought it was hilarious and so did Margie. Apparently Ford didn't.
We once did a two-hour special on drugs for The Nature of Things, at a time when George Bush Sr. was U.S. president and waging war on drugs and drug users. Vishnu Mathur was the producer of the program and Amanda McConnell was our researcher and writer. We traveled to Liverpool, where there was a very successful program of prescribing heroin to addicts so they could remain healthy and avoid the aids-causing HIV. We then went to the Netherlands, where, with approval of the police, “coffee shops” were selling marijuana and hashish.
I did a stand-up seated at the bar in a coffeehouse. On one side of me was the owner of the shop, and on the other side was a regular customer. The plan was for me to start talking on a tight close-up so that no one else appeared in the frame. As I expounded on the Dutch experiment, the camera would widen out to reveal the two men, one puffing on a joint and then passing it in front of me to the other, while I finished the piece.
Well, it was a huge joint, more like a cigar than a cigarette. We were just starting to use videotape rather than film, and the crew was still getting used to it. We had filmed several takes with these two guys sucking on this huge stogie before John Crawford, the soundman, discovered he had not flicked the right switch on the camera; my mike had not recorded my piece. I was annoyed, because we had already put these guys through a lot. But they seemed quite cooperative and we began to shoot again.
It took a lot of coordination to get the joint being passed across at the right moment in the script, so Rudi Kovanic kept shooting and reshooting as the smoldering dope was passed under my nose. Finally, everyone pronounced the take to be perfect; we then shot a “safety” that was also great, and we were done. The crew had to reset lights to film a scene in the coffeehouse, but my work was over. I told them I would walk to the van and wait there for them to finish.
I set off walking. And I walked. And I walked. It seemed I had been walking for miles, yet still the vehicle was way down the street. I started to freak out. I had taken ages to get here, but if I turned around, would I be able to make my way back? I turned around, only to discover that I had walked maybe half a block. All that joint passing had affected the host as well.
People ask whether it's dangerous filming for The Nature of Things. They're usually thinking about encounters we might have with wild animals. The cameraperson who does the filming is the one who may be at risk; doing a stand-up is pretty controlled, and I can remember only a couple of times when I even worried about danger from animals.
One of those occasions came when we were filming elephant seals. They get their name from the incredible proboscis of the males, who can blow up those snouts into trunklike structures that are quite intimidating, exactly as intended. A male can weigh up to a ton. Elephant seals were pushed to the very edge of extinction early in the last century and have made a remarkable comeback, now numbering in the tens of thousands.
We set up a stand-up on an island just offshore from Los Angeles, where the animals go to breed. Several huge males were lying on the beach, looking most benign. Rudi lined up a shot so that I could give my lines with the seals visible behind me. I delivered my lines, and Rudi said, “That was good, David. Now, would you mind backing up to get closer to the animals?”
The thing about camerapersons is that they are totally focused on what they see through their eyepiece. Often they seem completely unaware of the danger or discomfort others may feel. But I was up to the task. We had a usable stand-up “in the can,” so now we could try for a more impressive shot. We filmed another piece, which Rudi also pronounced fine, and then he had me move closer. My back was to the animals, but they didn't seem to mind, so I kept backing up. We did four or five takes.
I began my spiel once more, then realized that Rudi's free eye wasn't squinting as usual but was opening ever wider, staring at me. The nearest elephant seal was practically under my bottom, and I thought he or another must have woken up. In fact, a huge male had lifted his head and body to tower above me. I'm no Attenborough; I fluffed my lines and scrambled out of the way.
When we were filming for The Sacred Balance, a series of four one-hour shows, one of our first trips was to Pond Inlet on Baffin Island in the eastern Arctic. It was a wonderful time: the sun remained above the horizon twenty-four hours a day, and we often found ourselves filming at 10:00 PM with light streaming down on us. The ice was melting, and we were able to film hunters shooting a narwhal at the edge of the ice sheet.
One spectacular shot from a helicopter was to show me walking alone across an immense expanse of ice. All our gear and the crew had to be taken far away so they wouldn't be in the shot. Neville Ottey, the cameraman, was perched in a chopper that hovered above me for a while as I walked along, and then it pulled straight up until I became just a dot on the ice.
Before we took the shot, at the insistence of our Inuit guides I had carried a rifle, because polar bears are virtually invisible on the ice. They can jump up and attack so quickly and powerfully that I wouldn't have been able to get help before I was killed. That shoot is the only time I have felt the hair on my neck stand up; all of my senses were wide open as I walked along. I can't tell you how happy I was when Neville announced that he had the shot and we could leave.
More common hazards have arisen in urban areas. Once, for a film about magic and illusion, producer Daniel Zuckerbrot had a cute idea: we would start a stand-up with a “medium” shot from below of me on the strut of an airplane, wind blowing through my hair, propeller roaring, sky in the background. Next we would cut to a wide shot of the plane in the air with me outside it, then to a close-up of my face as I continued talking “to camera.” Finally, I would let go and drop out of the frame. In the following shot, we would reveal that I was standing on the strut of a plane that was still on the ground, with the propeller spinning; I had merely stepped onto the ground.
The sequence was edited together perfectly, and until the last shot it did indeed seem I had jumped out of a flying plane. But in order to get the sequence, I actually had to fly while being filmed from another plane. Yes, I had to get out onto the strut, talk to the camera on the other plane and hang on until the cameraman signaled he had the scene.
Even more hair-raising, I couldn't be tied or attached to the plane. I had to wear a parachute and be prepared to use it in case I fell. I was quickly instructed on how to pull the cord and release the chute. I had never jumped from a plane; somehow, a one-minute instruction that ended with “if you slip off, just pull this cord and you should be fine” was not that reassuring. Nevertheless, I did it, and for some reason I felt no fear when I got out onto that strut. Actually, I was half tempted to jump. I instructed the cameraman to keep shooting if I did fall. No point wasting the opportunity.
I think the most dangerous urban shoot was a stand-up for that same show on drugs. Vishnu said we had to do a stand-up in New York City to convey the flavor of a “drug neighborhood,” so I flew down to New York on a Saturday to meet the crew that night. We drove to the middle of Harlem and parked the van at the corner of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X streets. It's the only time I have ever felt white, as if my skin were shining like a beacon.
When we hauled out the camera and gear, a cluster of young black men formed around us. “What are you guys filming?” they asked. Perhaps Vishnu felt oblivious to the attention we were attracting, but I was scared. When he told them we were doing a film on drugs, the response was exasperated. “You mean you are going to do another film showing us bad-ass niggers doing drugs!” a young man exploded. A big fellow put his hand over the camera lens and told us: “You are not going to film a f---ing thing here.”
“Let's get the hell out of here, Vishnu,” I hissed, as he seemed about to argue with the group. Filming in that location seemed to me the most horrendously stupid idea I've ever been involved in, and I believed we were lucky to get out of there intact. So where do y
ou think we ended up shooting the stand-up? On a street where all the buildings were boarded up because they were occupied by gangs of crack and heroin dealers. I did my piece under a streetlight with the dark, shuttered buildings behind me, expecting to feel a bullet in my back at any moment. And the CBC doesn't even give danger pay for a shoot like that.
A lot of the time, the danger seems real only in retrospect. When we are shooting, we are so intent on getting the piece in the can that any danger seems minor. For A Planet for the Taking, we filmed a sequence on a kibbutz in Israel near the Jordanian border at a time when Arab–Israeli hostilities had broken out. As we filmed, we could hear gunfire and the drone of planes along the border, but it was only after I had left Israel that I wondered how dangerous it might have been.
Another shoot was very plainly hazardous. It was a story about offshore oil drilling before the Hibernia oil field off Newfoundland had been fully developed. We dressed in survival suits and flew in a large helicopter far out over the ocean to an immense drilling platform where dozens of men lived. From there, a smaller helicopter lifted our gear in a sling and transferred two of us at a time, clinging to the outside of the net, to a barge where we would film the stand-up with the platform in the background.
