As any actor or performer will tell you, both the curse and the joy of the way of life is never really knowing what's around the corner. It makes planning life very difficult, but sometimes amazing opportunities come up and you can find yourself half way across the world.
The case in hand being last week. I'd just had a booking cancelled due to "change in management", leaving me with a very rare free weekend. I'd barely had time to accept birthday invitations and the like, when a message pops up in French on my facebook page. After dusting my linguistic cobwebs and with a little help from the webs assortment of translation services it appeared to be an offer to go to Tunisia for 5 days to do some filming for Tunisian TV.
A few hasty emails later, and some hastily arranged travel plans and I heading off into the unknown. I have a history of less than straight forward airport rendez-vous' as Captain Jack due to unforeseen circumstances and this time was no different. In various places in Tunisia, including my destination, the capital Tunis, there is a curfew in effect. As a result of the my flight's departure was brought forward by an hour, with no prior notification. Fortunately I was at the airport in plenty of time so a mild panic was the only result. However, as a result of the arrival time still being close to the curfew cut off point, midway through the baggage pick up point in Tunis, the staff just stopped and left. An hour or so later we managed to locate someone who could go and retrieve our luggage. In the mean time I was having to try to explain (rather unsuccessfully) the situation to my contact, in my broken French as he spoke even less English than I spoke French.
My bag was obviously the last out, and further complications arose at customs where the paperwork I'd be given for my sword wasn't enough to convince customs to let it through. With reluctance I waved goodbye to my sword in return for some dubious looking piece of paper. However, I had made it, and thankfully everything else went smoothly enough. The moral of the story being that in French lessons they should focus more on airports than train stations.
Following a night in Tunis, it was an early start to head off to Hammamat, a coastal town and beach resort further down the Tunisian coast, towards Libya, and the location of the shoot. There are various piratey looking boats in the harbour that are used for tourist excursions. One of them had been hired for a couple of days for the purposes of the filming. After a quick hop on board to meet the director and the rest of the crew it was over to the hotel to check in and get into costume and makeup. The one downside with having your own hotel room doubling as your dressing room is that once I was ready in order to get back to reception where I was being picked up I had to walk past a crowded swimming pool. 20 minutes later...
Fortunately the seas were calm, and whilst I was sweltering away in full costume in the high temperatures waiting for my next shot, I could at least console myself that for a couple of days my "office view" was considerably better than most.
After a quick rewrite of the script to get round the lack of sword issue, my scenes went smoothly enough and it was quite fun having to do my own stunts on the whole.
The lack of health and safety could be called refreshing, although I did draw the line at jumping off the boat onto a wafer thin van roof, and I also vetoed the getting my costume wet isn't a great idea as, unlike Disney, I don't have stunt water costume, and also it would limit it to one take! The following day a compromise was reached and I got to jump onto a bouncy castle instead.
Luck clearly went my way the following day as my scenes were all scheduled for the afternoon. The morning had seen choppy waters and I think just about every on board had been sick - the director, from Belgium, got the record - 7 times.
With some of the cast and crew
The final day's shoot was just me, and an empty beach (well it did start at 5am!). I was greeted by the site of my vessel for the day, with the sun rising on the horizon - quite a picturesque scene really...
The minor drawback with the whole plan is that the boat had a leak. In order to get round this a raft of rubber rings was constructed and the boat placed on top. I then got onto the boat, and was pushed out to beyond where the waves were breaking, without me getting too wet. The boat was eventually manoeuvred into position. Clearly the sea didn't quite agree with that, and a huge wave arrived, lifting my boat off it's raft and sending me quickly back to shore, slowly sinking as I went. In a scene rather reminiscent of Jack's appearance in Curse of the Black Pearl, I arrived back at shore with very little of the boat remaining above water as I stepped off onto the beach. Still film crews are a resourceful lot so there was a Plan 'C'.
Plan 'C'
All in all it was an enjoyable shoot, even with the inevitable hanging around that goes with filming anything. I was fortunate enough that I'd been booked an extra couple of days to enjoy at an all inclusive resort, and despite the paucity of the rum in the rum cocktails (my calculations made it 10 hotel measure to 1 pirate measure) I managed to get enough time by the pool to mean that at least for the next week or so I shouldn't need to spent quite so long in makeup
It's a hard life sometimes
My last day was spent seeing a few of the sights around Tunis, by a local, who was part of the production team - it's really much more interesting to see the Tunis the locals see rather than the specific tourist places.
The home trip was rather less eventful than the way out, and I am pleased to say I was safely reunited with my sword, after jumping through a sufficient number of hoops.
à bientôt
As they say in Tunisia. And France. And probably a few other places.
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