• Hollywood parties at the Tanks - Pages 13

from Green Space Our Place - Our Volunteers Voice - Issue 33 - Dec 2021

• Ergon supports tree planting

Following the conversion of the Edge Hill wartime fuel depot into a community arts centre, the Tanks were made available for hire as a function venue. This commercial activity was projected to provide ongoing funds to support the operation and development of the Tanks Arts Centre.

Showbiz soiree

One of the most famous early events at the Tanks was a party thrown to farewell Marlon Brando, the leading star of a movie being filmed in Far North Queensland. ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau’ was the third big-screen adaptation of HG Wells’ classic novel of the same name written a century earlier. It is a science-fiction horror film about a mad scientist who experiments with creating human-like hybrid beings from animals on a deserted jungle island. The Brando party took place at the Tanks at the end of October 1995. It was a private event attended by around 150 people. The venue was dressed up with a customdesigned jungle theme by a local artist. The evening’s program featured a Polynesian troupe who danced with Brando and other cast members, including Brando’s “mini-me” character in the film, played by the diminutive actor Nelson de la Rosa. Other highlights included Aboriginal dancers from the Wangetti Education Centre and a haka performed by Maori actor Temeura Morrison, who played Dr Moreau’s son in the movie. Brando was presented with a didgeridoo and delighted the gathering by attempting to play it. The bonhomie on the night belies the cascade of on-set dramas which plagued the filming. New Line Cinema, the American film studio responsible for the blockbuster trilogy ‘Lord of the Rings’, thought they had a megahit on their hands. Securing screen legend Marlon Brando in the title role was premised as a guarantee of box office success. But fate would have it otherwise.

Belligerent stars

Marlon Brando was cast in the role of Dr Moreau and his antics were just as crazy as those of the mad scientist he portrayed. Arriving late on set following the suicide of his daughter earlier in the year, Brando proved temperamental, demanding and difficult to coax from his trailer. He insisted on complementing his wardrobe by oddities such as wearing an ice bucket on his head or smothering his face in white sunscreen. Weighing in at 178kg, the producers were concerned about Brando’s health and assigned minders to look after his diet. Nonetheless, he reportedly consumed industrial quantities of pizza. The other major star was Val Kilmer. He was in the throes of messy divorce proceedings and requested 40 per cent less shooting time for his character which resulted in him being recast in the role of Dr Moreau’s equally weird assistant. He apparently became a serial pest, wandering around set with a hand-held video camera and sneaking up on people for candid closeups. Like Brando, Kilmer was equally petulant and disruptive to an orderly filming schedule. They competed over who would arrive last on set. This prima donna behaviour did not endear them to the support cast and crew, who chalked up hours of waiting for the lead stars to cooperate. Overall, many shooting days were lost due to no-shows or trailer-sitting.

Tormented production

The film’s original script was written and perfected over four years by Richard Stanley who was hired as director. Val Kilmer proved impossible to direct for the inexperienced Stanley despite his best efforts to accommodate Kilmer’s wishes, for example by booking the best suite in every major hotel in the area to ensure suitable lodgings. Only days after the beginning of filming, Stanley was fired from his dream project. In exchange for being allowed to collect his director’s fee, he was ordered to stay away. However, with the complicity of some loyal crew, he later returned incognito to the set disguised in a stolen bulldog hybrid costume. The replacement director was veteran film maker John Frankenheimer. He better wrangled the capricious lead actors but had to bow to frequent script changes in order to maintain the momentum of filming. Sometimes, scenes were shortened or deleted to avoid conflict and delays. This ever-changing script was a constant source of frustration for cast and crew alike. Moreover, Brando refused to learn his lines. In one scene, he allegedly ad-libbed that the animal hybrids were a result of French nuclear bombs, a provocative remark given the outrage at that time in Australia over French underground testing in the Pacific!

Unseasonal weather

The production studio was set up in Cairns in July 1995 with filming locations chosen throughout the Far North. Shooting was scheduled to take place during winter when the clear blue skies would provide ideal filming weather. Unfortunately, the winter of 1995 was anything but sunny and dry. In fact, August recorded around 140mm of rainfall, the wettest on record for this month in Cairns. No sooner had filming started at the beginning of August in Cape Tribulation than a stormy downpour flooded the set and damaged equipment. The floor of the makeup tent became a river of mud. After a few days, shooting was eventually postponed for two weeks to wait for the sun. Budget blowouts were anticipated when production was four weeks behind schedule in September. Lead actors

were forced to extend their stay, not to mention the 70-odd cast and several hundred crew on standby while intermittent rain messed up shooting schedules. Not only the weather dogged the fi lming. Machans Beach residents complained about sand dune damage which could arise from the proposed staging of a special-eff ects explosion representing the destruction of Dr Moreau’s island jetty. The shoot at the beachside suburb was abandoned and replaced by computer graphics.

Box offi ce bomb

What should have been a dream production with its great storyline, Hollywood megastars and exotic fi lming location turned into a nightmare, not unlike the plot itself. The modest budget had blown out to US $40M and the crew was on location for almost fi ve months instead of the planned six weeks. Released in August 1996, the fi nished result was just as disastrous as the shooting of the fi lm. It was panned by the critics and was a box-offi ce fl op.

Immortalising the making of the movie

Such was the drama that a documentary was made of the making of the fi lm: ‘Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau’. Accounts of toxic exchanges between the production team and the lead actors, ‘animal hybrids’ standing around for hours in full makeup in the tropical heat waiting for temperamental stars to emerge from their trailers, and a plot overhauled on a daily basis together contributed to its infamous reputation of how not to make a movie.

Night to remember

The Marlon Brando farewell was the fi rst international event hosted by the Tanks Arts Centre. It was a coup for the newly opened facility to be booked for a gathering of this calibre. Compared to the fraught experiences on set, the Hollywood crowd was all smiles. Were they applauding the wrapping up of shooting or celebrating surviving to the end of fi lming? The party would defi nitely have been given a much higher star rating than the movie itself! Acknowledgement: Special thanks to Lyn Mason who has provided valued feedback on the drafts of all my articles contributed this year.