Peter O'Toole in Cambodia
Peter O'Toole in Cambodia
Phil Coggan has written an entertaining account of the filming, in Cambodia, of the movie Lord Jim in 1964. It's good stuff, especially the comments from the lead actor, Peter O'Toole, on how much he hated the place:
"If I live to be a thousand, I want nothing like Cambodia again. It was a bloody nightmare. I really hated it there. How much so you can judge by the fact that after six months in the Orient I hadn’t picked up a single word there, whereas after nine months in the desert on Lawrence I was speaking Arabic pretty well."
https://pjcoggan.com
"If I live to be a thousand, I want nothing like Cambodia again. It was a bloody nightmare. I really hated it there. How much so you can judge by the fact that after six months in the Orient I hadn’t picked up a single word there, whereas after nine months in the desert on Lawrence I was speaking Arabic pretty well."
https://pjcoggan.com
- spitthedog
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Peter clearly didn't make it down to the coast when he was here as if he did i'm sure his opinion of the KOW would be drastically different..
Was he teetotal in the desert then or did he manage some of his legendary benders whilst there?
Was he teetotal in the desert then or did he manage some of his legendary benders whilst there?
"I don't care what the people are thinking, i ain't drunk i'm just drinking"
He didn't appear in the shot. There's Khmer writing on buildings though it could well been shot in Hong Kong too.spitthedog wrote:Peter clearly didn't make it down to the coast when he was here as if he did i'm sure his opinion of the KOW would be drastically different..
Was he teetotal in the desert then or did he manage some of his legendary benders whilst there?
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Don't blame me I voted for Sanders
- Barang_doa_slae
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You mean like in this recent movie ?jm wrote:He didn't appear in the shot. There's Khmer writing on buildings though it could well been shot in Hong Kong too.spitthedog wrote:Peter clearly didn't make it down to the coast when he was here as if he did i'm sure his opinion of the KOW would be drastically different..
Was he teetotal in the desert then or did he manage some of his legendary benders whilst there?
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Shot in Thailand
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There was a good article about the shoot in the Post a few years back.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/7days/camb ... -hollywood
Here are some extracts from a Time interview in 1964, I can't find the original:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/7days/camb ... -hollywood
Here are some extracts from a Time interview in 1964, I can't find the original:
From: http://blog.andybrouwer.co.uk/2006/07/l ... toole.htmlThen the company moved on to Cambodia. For all the anti-Western ferment in the Southeast Asia country, producer-director Richard Brooks had managed to get permission to shoot location scenes in jungles and around the ancient temple ruins of Angkor Wat. To accommodate his large cast and crew, Brooks had to spend $600,000 to add a 47-room wing onto a little hotel near the location. "That hotel!" rages O'Toole. "More expensive than Claridge's! Ten flaming quid a night [$28] and a poxy room at that. Nicest thing you could say about the food was that it was grotesque." Soon everyone was set upon by dysentery, giant stinging insects and prickly heat rash that made clothing unbearable. Then came the snakes, which seemed to have a particular curiosity about show business. Walking down the middle of a jungle road, O'Toole came face to face with a huge black cobra. "They say no snake can travel faster than a scared human," he recalls, "but I ain't so sure. The snake went like hell, but luckily away from me." Another cobra slithered onto the set and dropped to the floor of the makeshift ladies' rest room. As screeching pandemonium broke out, a grip rushed to the rescue, killing the snake and stretching it out to its awesome seven-foot length. Then, an almost identical cobra appeared, eluded its chasers and presumably lurked in the shadows through the night's jittery shooting. One feminine member of the crew discovered two snakes curled up inside the commode - but did not linger to figure out what kind they were. Of particular dread was a snake called the 'two-step'. "It bites you, you take two steps," explains O'Toole, "and then you die. One day there was a nasty cop around and he had one curled around his foot. Flaming lovely discretion shown by the snake. It didn't bite the guy, so justice isn't total."
Almost as annoying as the snakes were the Cambodian officials, many of whom seemed to think the movie company had come just for the privilege of paying bribes. One day Crown Prince Sihanouk, Cambodia's pro-Peking ruler, showed up. "He started yelling the usual anti-British crud," says O'Toole. "I walked up to him and said, 'I couldn't agree with you more. I'm Irish meself.'" A mysterious Frenchman appeared on the location one day and darkly advised Brooks to get his company out of Cambodia by March 12. Unlike Caesar, who paid no heed to the soothsayer, Brooks for some reason believed the man. With O'Toole's concurrence, the work schedule was doubled and the daily shooting went on from noon until nearly dawn. The scheduled 12 weeks was thus cut to nine and the company left the country on March 3. One week later the US and British embassies were attacked by mobs (O'Toole is convinced that some of the trouble-makers had worked in the film as extras.) Prince Sihanouk took to the national radio to denounce the movie company as 'Western imperialist invaders.' "If I live to be a thousand," says O'Toole, "I want nothing like Cambodia again. It was a bloody nightmare. I really hated it there. How much so you can judge by the fact that after six months in the Orient I hadn't picked up a single word there, whereas after nine months in the desert on Lawrence I was speaking Arabic pretty well."
Romantic Cambodia is dead and gone. It's with McKinley in the grave.
No Escape.Barang_doa_slae wrote:You mean like in this recent movie ?jm wrote:He didn't appear in the shot. There's Khmer writing on buildings though it could well been shot in Hong Kong too.spitthedog wrote:Peter clearly didn't make it down to the coast when he was here as if he did i'm sure his opinion of the KOW would be drastically different..
Was he teetotal in the desert then or did he manage some of his legendary benders whilst there?
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Shot in Thailand
OK movie just to show that Owen "I want to kill myself, not really" Wilson can do serious well.
Its actually banned in Cambodia because all the signs are in upsidedown Khmer script and they escape to Vietnam on a river!
Just shows you what Thailand and the west think of Cambodia for them to do that.
pew, pew, pew, pew!
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To be honest I always thought Peter O'Toole would have been a bit less sensitive than that - It sounds like he was missing his suite at the Savoy. However, his observations are very interesting and straight to the point.
Romantic Cambodia is dead and gone. It's with McKinley in the grave.
Just what makes Cambodians more greedy than most other cultures? Is it the geography? Or did something odd happen to them in the distant past?
Every time I read something historical it seems they are selling rather than renting boats, or making people build 40 room hotels etc etc. I'm sure I must have it wrong.
Every time I read something historical it seems they are selling rather than renting boats, or making people build 40 room hotels etc etc. I'm sure I must have it wrong.
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Abou-Gor wrote:Just what makes Cambodians more greedy than most other cultures? Is it the geography? Or did something odd happen to them in the distant past?
Every time I read something historical it seems they are selling rather than renting boats, or making people build 40 room hotels etc etc. I'm sure I must have it wrong.
Is that a Peter O'Toole quote or a serious question?
Romantic Cambodia is dead and gone. It's with McKinley in the grave.
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