A snapshot of your typical Hollywood blockbuster: a breathtakingly exotic locale is suddenly ripped apart by an explosion. A fiery mushroom cloud rises through the sky, while a furious all-terrain car-chase ensues, complete with machinegun volleys, tossed grenades and helicopter fly-bys. It’s edge-of-the-seat stuff, yes. But what was sacrificed to get it on the screen? What impact did it have on the environment? And who’s taking responsibility for it? These are the kinds of contemporary questions that have begun to plague the conscientious moviemaker. We’ve had ethical clothing, ethical banking and ethical coffee growing. And now we’re starting to see the emergence of ethical movie-making, too.
Take Leonardo DiCaprio’s forthcoming film Blood Diamond. The movie, set within Africa’s illicit “conflict diamond” trade, has become involved in a very public debate about the nature of ethical film-making. Here, thanks to a scurrilously leaked, or concocted, media report about the movie’s allegedly cavalier attitude towards its African extras, the film-makers have been forced to highlight the existence of their own philanthropic Blood Diamond Fund. On top of the $40 million (£20.6 million) that the movie has pumped directly into the local Mozambique economy the fund has already raised an undisclosed six-figure sum for charitable works in the area.
“All of us together just talked about what we, ourselves, could do,” Ed Zwick, director of Blood Diamond, said recently, referring to DiCaprio and the rest of cast and crew. “Knowing all the while that it would turn out to be a drop in the bucket compared with the needs all around us. But the need was so great, and the people and the villages had welcomed us with such generosity, we wanted to do what we could.”
Blood Diamond isn’t the only movie to be caught on the horns of this moral dilemma. The producers of The Constant Gardener, the Kenya-set John le Carré thriller, have established the Constant Gardener Trust, a charitable fund that has already completed sanitation projects in Kibera. Mel Gibson’s new Mayan action adventure Apocalypto contributed to housing projects in the impoverished and flood-damaged Veracruz state of Mexico. Even Pirates of the Caribbean shelled out for infrastructural work in the tiny island nation of Dominica.
It’s a big turnaround for an industry that until very recently had been renowned for its smash-and-grab production principles. In everything from classics such as The African Queen to Apocalypse Now and that infamous DiCaprio movie The Beach, bullish Hollywood producers have been happy to turn up, bulldoze the natural environment, blow things up, ostracise the locals, decapitate some water buffalo and then leave again.
Not any more. In our eco-friendly, globally aware era there is now a fundamental emphasis on leaving a “positive footprint” on any obliging Third World location. As Mel Gibson said recently: “I’ve always been of the opinion that if you go into someone else’s country to make a film you don’t just go in there and stomp all over the place. You bring a gift. It’s like going to somebody’s house. You bring them a bottle of wine or a bunch of flowers, or a box of chocolates.”
Fine sentiments, indeed, but is there not a danger that the metaphorical box of chocolates is simply a token gesture to salve the consciences of some obscenely affluent studio players? David Belton, producer of the harrowing Rwandan genocide movie Shooting Dogs, certainly thinks so. “Sometimes there’s a danger that film companies come to these countries, and if they haven’t had any experience of them before they are, quite understandably, blown away by it. They feel very bad about it, especially because a lot of people in the film industry are paid extremely well, and so there’s a natural tendency to hurl money at the problem and feel that you’re doing something practical.”
Belton says that the Shooting Dogs team renovated the Kigali school location where they were shooting and paid all their extras an above-average local wage of $20 (£10.20) a day. The figure was based on the rate that the cable TV company HBO paid their extras for another Rwandan-set genocide drama Sometimes in April. By contrast, a US extra can expect to earn $13 an hour, rising to $36 an hour with experience and union membership.
Similarly, on the Ugandan set of the forthcoming Idi Amin biopic The Last King of Scotland, local actors with speaking parts were paid up to $100 a day, which is big money in Uganda but peanuts when compared with the Screen Actors Guild minimum of $559 a day, or $1,942 for a five-day week.
This disparity between wages is not restricted to Africa, either. On the Ecuadorian set of the Russell Crowe drama Proof of Life it was noted that the local extras were paid Ecuadorian rates, rather than the higher Hollywood standards. Is this studio penny-pinching, or simply a matter of adjusting to local realities? And is there something contradictory about a studio setting up a charity for the very workers they have underpaid? What is the appropriate way to pay people unused to Western salaries?
“There is already a big debate raging about aid,” Belton says. “How do you provide for African countries, and what aid should you give, as a private citizen, as an international conglomerate or as a film company?” Surely, Belton adds, when acting on behalf of a film company, the appropriate aid should be film related? The Shooting Dogs team, for instance, are currently sponsoring Rwandan film-makers, and helping them to produce their own movies.
Belton’s thoughts are echoed by the Ugandan Stephen Rwangyezi, actor and local consultant on The Last King of Scotland. “The film-makers from the developed world have a huge responsibility to ensure that the people they’re working with in the Third World are not being used only as tools to achieve one particular production,” he says. “Instead the film-making process must become a capacity-building issue.”
Rwangyezi adds that during the shoot the local populace, most of whom were completely unfamiliar with the film-making process, were nonetheless clamouring to be a part of The Last King of Scotland. And in return, he says, the production team were so patient, thoughtful and considered in how they explained and demonstrated everything involved (from prosaic management issues right through to technical tips) that they inspired a new generation of Ugandan film-making novices.
“We’re now putting together proposals and stories,” says Rwangyezi, who runs a troupe of actors and dancers in Kampala. “We have upgraded our CVs, and we’re moving beyond video production into proper film production. And so, thanks to the skills brought here by the crew, we will never be the same again.”
As the ethical screws tighten on movie productions throughout the world it won’t just be the movies made in Africa, with obvious African themes, that need to be responsible in their production practices. The next Bond outing, for instance, with its diverse and far-flung international locations, will surely need to pass under intense environmental scrutiny. The next Mission Impossible, too. Perhaps even the next Harry Potter. For ethical film-making is here to stay. And if you don’t believe it, just wait for the James Bond fund for Africa. It won’t be long.
Blood Diamond is released on January 26
Hollywood’s dirty history
The Beach (Danny Boyle, 2000)
Hollywood pays the Thai Government $100,000 for the right to shoot on the paradise island of Phi Phi Lay. Enter the bulldozers. The beach is rebuilt. Environmental chaos ensues.
Lord of War (Andrew Niccol, 2005)
The righteousness of Andrew Niccol’s arms industry satire is sullied when it’s revealed that the director bought 3,000 real AK47s, rented a real African gun-runner’s aircraft and borrowed real tanks destined for Colonel Gaddafi’s regime.
The African Queen (John Huston, 1951)
The legendary Hollywood director Huston arrives in the Republic of Congo. Proceeds to drink gallons of whiskey with Humphrey Bogart, ridicules his native guides, and decides to shoot some elephants. Nice.
