The closest I came to coming face-to-face with Angelina Jolie (and those famous pouting lips that put Mick Jagger and the rest of us Negroes in the shade) was seeing the back of her head from a respectable distance as she waited for the camera crew to line up the next shot in the sweltering heat of the Namibian desert.
I had hit town the night before, and this was my first day on the elaborately reconstructed Ethiopian refugee village set that they had built in the middle of the craggy, unwelcoming Namibian landscape.
The film that was being shot was to be called Beyond Borders. They had already put several weeks of emotional, high-action drama in the can in Canada. After Namibia, it was off to Thailand.
Just as Namibia had been chosen to stand in for Ethiopia (two completely different landscapes, but never mind) so Thailand would stand in for Cambodia, and Canada, in all its wintry, snow-covered glory, had stood in for Chechnya.
That’s right. Just as actors can be hauled in to pretend to be other people, whole countries can also be hauled in to pretend to be other places.
This is the movies. Nothing is real. Nothing is expected to be real. What you see is what you believe. If you’re not into fantasy, if you’re into asking too many picky questions, stay at home. The movie will make its money without you anyway.
The irony is that this was supposed to be one of those rare Hollywood films that purports to be about reality — specifically, the harsh reality of war, famine, death and disease in the modern world’s forgotten regions.
Think about it. The hell of war, poverty and politics in Ethiopia. The battle between God and Satan (that is, Good and Evil, Capitalism and Communism) in Chechnya and Cambodia. All of this played out on a huge canvas spanning three continents, and penned by none other than Oliver Stone (although I notice he has quietly chosen to have his name removed from the credits, probably after seeing the final outcome).
The film was supposed to land a huge punch about the callousness of the rich world riding on the backs of the poor.
Instead, it got eaten up by its own greed in wanting to be seen to be taking the high moral ground.
But anyway. There I was in the hot Namibian heat, preparing to play the part of an evil, idiotic Ethiopian bureaucrat called Ningpopo (geddit? Ningpopo — nincompoop?) and staring at the back of Angelina Jolie’s head.
She didn’t even throw a glance at me over her shoulder. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have noticed me among the mass of Namibian extras pretending to be Ethiopians, and the surly, silent black members of the film crew loitering all over the set. I would have disappeared into the atmosphere.
‘Your time will come,” I said to her silently. ‘Tomorrow we shoot my scene, and then you will have to look me in the eyes.”
The following day, you see, was supposed to be my big moment, and Angelina and I were actually supposed to share dialogue together. Never mind that I was a one-trick pony, a flash in the pan in the greater scheme of things. If you have your moment with a big star on the big screen, curiosity and pride takes precedence over political conviction, and you gear yourself up to go for the moment. It’s something to tell your grandchildren about, anyway.
In the event, the ravishing Angelina called in sick the following day. She had obviously read through the scene the night before and decided she couldn’t be bothered with it.
Frantic running around of producers, assistant producers and assistant directors, huddled conversations with script doctors and hey presto, by the time I arrived on set, ready to give the performance of my life for the benefit of the cameras, the unseen millions in the audience, and especially to impress Angelina, I was told that the whole thing had been rewritten and she had been voluntarily dropped from the scene, because she was simply not around.
Chagrin. Pique. Thanks to Angelina’s skittish, starry ways, I now had to reconstruct a carefully prepared performance to deal with a roomful of surly, furry, thin-lipped white men instead.
My only thought was to finish the job and get the hell out of there.
Now that the thing is out there on the wide, cinemascope screen, complete with sensuround sound, at a cinema near you, I am able to sit back and look at it and wonder what all that money and drama and ego and trauma were all about.
In fact, what is the movie about?
(Not that I got much of the money, by the way. South African actors were paid South African rates, which means, just for the record, that I was paid the equivalent of $3 000 for my three minutes on the screen. This in the context of a $100-million movie. But I swear I’m not bitter.)
The initial premise falls flat. Arrogance takes the place of compassion. Angelina Jolie and Clive Owen strut their pouty stuff (she rather better than he, since she’s got the specially loaded equipment on her mouth) but the plight of the wretched of the earth falls dismally into insignificance in the background.
Beyond Borders won’t send the rich of the world rushing for their chequebooks and lobbying their politicians for change. At best it might make them reach for their plastic surgeon’s phone number and consider having lip implants to match Angelina Jolie’s.
But even that is debatable. After all, who really wants to go around looking like they might be a throwback from the wretched of the earth?
Hollywood hokum rules. And all of us, actors and audience, continue to be its victims.