JULY 1984
Far up the Congo River, in the heart of Africa, is atributary called the Sangha, on the banks of whichwe’re shooting a movie.
Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, the mad Belgian explorer, is shouting at me through the clattering drums and chanting natives. The jungle is alive with music. “Go with the shaman!” He’s pointing to a dark hut across the clearing. I scramble through the dancing frenzy of the massed Pygmies and duck into the tribal Holy of Holies. The shaman is there, suiting up for the big party. Outside the hut, two or three hundred Pygmies are cutting it up on the dance floor, singing their swaying melodies and banging their elephant skin drums. There are more Pygmies gathered than have ever been seen before—even by Pygmies. The scene is lit by bonfires and by big klieg lights that we have borrowed from the French logging crew whose camp has been our base down here in the deep jungle of northern Congo. It’s dark in the hut, but light from the fire is streaming through the leafy walls. The shaman is rustling his relics as I stumble in. I’m crouching under the low roof and mumbling some supportive incantations of my own. Just to put him at ease, you understand. We’re in the same business, after all. “Jesus loves you, this I know,” I venture. He peers at me without much expression and then returns to his preparations. I’m about as relevant to his business as a man from Mars. He dons a grass cape that covers his head and drapes down to cover his feet. Brushing past me, he steps out into the clearing. As one, the voices rise to a higher-pitched fever as the shaman twirls among them. The strands of his headdress splay around him as he spins. Behind him your correspondent is grooving along for the ride, trying to fit in and dancing up a little improvised frenzy of my own. The throng is so dense that most of my gyrations are confined to waving my arms above their heads. JP and the crew are there with the cameras, but I can see over the bobbing heads of the natives that he has lost our love interest. The scene we are trying to shoot calls for her to be discovered, at last, by the Rhythmatist in the deep jungle. She is found among the lost Mboroo tribe and has been entranced by their strange music. Our heroine is played by JP’s fiancée, Tisch. But the shot is not going as planned. These are real Fourth World natives, and they really are entranced by their strange music. Tisch, daubed with paint and festooned with feathers, has been adopted by the women of the tribe. They have surrounded her and are wailing at her, imbibing of her outlandish blond pallor. She too is wailing. “JayPeeeee! They won’t let me through!” she beseeches, struggling to get to the men’s circle, where she can be discovered by the intrepid Rhythmatist. Pygmy social rules are very strict about this, as it happens. Women only dance with the women. JP is in more of a frenzy than anyone. He’s a director who wants his shot. He clears a path through the womenfolk and drags Tish over to the men’s side—where I’m still thrashing away. Actually by now I’ve got kind of a groove going with my new brothers in music. The rhythm is tricky but the pulse is clear, and I have pretty much got the hang of it. The melody is otherworldly and rhythmically harder to fathom. Somehow their voices fuse in choral waves and spirals, swirling up to peaks and swooping down to deep earth tones. I’m just chanting Beach Boy songs and swooping along with them. “Ooooweeeoooweeeoooooo!” The story we are trying to tell in this odd movie we are making is kind of improvised. And JP is improvising now, inflamed no doubt by the general hubbub. “OK, now ravish her!” he shouts to me. “Whuh?” I was midswoop, but now I have paused, trying to hear him through the din. “Keep dancing! And then ravish her!” “JayPeeee!” wails Tisch. “Radish?” JP is on a mission, and he won’t quit until he has me transgressing upon his babe in front of the astonished Pygmies. The music abates momentarily while the natives process this new information about the White Giants; but then they get the drift and are back into full swing as I perform my thespian duty on the director’s girlfriend. I’m sure if we had any idea what we were doing before we got to Africa this movie would probably make more sense, but I’m also sure that we wouldn’t be having anything like this amount of fun shooting it. We’re just making this up as we go along. There are just five of us in two Land Rovers. JP and I are in front, trailblazing and searching out locations for our ever more flimsy “plot”; behind us are Richard, Paul, and Lorne on sound, camera, and everything else. In the first vehicle our story conferences are becoming ever more feverish as we struggle to imagineer all of the cool stuff that’s happening around us into some kind of plausible “story.” The only plot point that we can agree on is that the love interest is lost and can’t be found. Neither of us knows a thing about plot development or denouement or epiphany, but JP sure does know how to sniff out adventure. This intrepid Belgian is the real Indiana Jones—even though I’m not sure if it’s a case of art imitating life or vice versa. He’s got the leather jacket and the indefatigable hat (just like the movie) and even sometimes uses a long whip for flicking mosquitoes and tarantulas; but when you are carving your way through the deep jungle, JP is the real thing. He can sidle up to anyone, Samburu chief or customs agent, and work something out. With his Babel of languages and patois he can cajole and barter us into (or out of) anywhere. It’s his easy tongue and tight fist on the wallet that is stretching our twoweek budget into two months across the Dark Continent. And we are arguing the whole way. I’m after musical/cultural truth, and he wants to shoot a Hollywood blockbuster. That’s because he has spent his life documenting the cultural truths of the vanishing Fourth World beyond the last frontiers of the planet. The Holy Grail for most of his life has been contact with the last and most remote tribes. He’s been hit by every form of tropical disease, snake, tsetse fly, and scorpion in the swamps and jungles of his day job. Now he’s ready for the comforts of show business, and I’m his ticket. Off the east coast of Africa we have found a scenic little slaver island called Lamu. From this spot Arab traders would venture into the heartland to spread Islam and capture humans. Of course that’s all forgotten now and the modern islanders are a cheerfully roguish mix of Africa and Islam. The wealth from the bad old days is still evident in the fine Arab architecture with its lavish filigree, but the sandy streets have never seen cars. While the crew hunker down in Mombasa to clean their gear, JP and I catch a boat out there and discover that it’s the perfect location for a chase scene. We figure that the black-clad Rhythmatist arrives with his sampling equipment and is just about to discover…(we’ll think up something) but the natives become agitated by the strange ritual music emanating from his black-clad traveling lab. Which gives you a pretty good idea of how thinly we spread the logic as we built this cinematic masterpiece. Never mind how we got here, this locale is perfect for a chase, so let’s have a chase. When the crew arrives we hire some donkeys and start rolling. It’s Ramadan, when faithful Muslims fast by day and feast by night, so the local extras are photogenically grumpy as they wave scimitars and swarm after me on a horde of donkeys. Of course the wily black-clad Rhythmatist is too slick for them and his donkey is the sleekest. He gives them the slip before we lose the light and then go feasting with the erstwhile bad guys. Deep into the night we laugh as we languish on the lamplit streets of Lamu. In the bar of the
