Smuggling pot into Thailand is a bit like hauling coal to Newcastle, but that’s exactly what Danny Boyle was required to do while bringing Alex Garland’s twisted vision of utopia, “The Beach,” to the screen.
“When we told the Thai police we were going to grow a marijuana field for the movie, they said, `Oh, no. We’ve got loads of them … why don’t we keep one for you, and you can film there,”‘ recalled Boyle. “Evidently, the police burn about one big field a week. Eventually, though, they allowed us to grow one that fit the needs of the picture.”
In an effort to add at least a veneer of legality to the process, Boyle’s gardeners decided to import hemp seeds, rather than far-more-potent strains of cannabis.
“They had to be brought in surreptitiously, in a suitcase, because no one would give us permission to actually transport them from France or Australia,” continues the amiable Manchester native. “Technically, if that person had been caught, he could have been thrown in jail — and smugglers get the death penalty there. But, the police said not to worry, they’ll turn a blind eye.”
With cooperation like that, it’s no wonder Hollywood producers have begun to favor foreign locations.
“The plants were on an eight-week growth pattern, but — because we were shooting in late fall — they weren’t getting enough daylight for their needs,” said Boyle. “So, we had to grow it in our compound and transfer it over to the location, because otherwise the plants would be stolen by people thinking it was the real thing. Here was this huge dope field, right outside of our office, and, above it, our crew installed neon lights that would be switched on after 5:30 p.m.”
Clearly, Boyle, whose breakthrough film was the heroin-laced black comedy “Trainspotting,” would be pleased if any potential employers didn’t rush to pigeonhole him as an expert on the drug culture. If anything, he stresses, “The Beach” errs on the side of moderation in depicting the amount of Thai stick that actually would be consumed by a collection of latter-day hippies in a secluded island paradise.
“The stories we choose to do are about modern life . . . what’s it like to be alive now,” says Boyle, who regularly collaborates with producer Andrew MacDonald and screenwriter John Hodge. “They could be about anything really. We’re not drug addicts, or anything like that.”
Film buffs probably already have forgiven the trio for their first American effort, “A Life Less Ordinary,” and will see “The Beach” based on the promise of “Trainspotting” and freshman sensation “Shallow Grave.” (In part, they’re also responsible for the truly bizarre “Twin Town” and a short feature for Miramax, “Alien Love Triangle.”)
Younger audiences likely will be drawn to “The Beach” for another reason: to see if Leonardo DiCaprio can follow “Romeo + Juliet” and “Titanic” with another hot performance.
Here, DiCaprio plays an American backpacker, Richard, who’s drawn to Thailand by its many seductive charms, one or two of which don’t actually involve the Seven Deadly Sins. More important, the exotic destination might provide him an opportunity to connect with someone or something slightly more emotionally available than his iMac.
In fact, what Richard encounters upon his arrival in Bangkok seems more akin to a psychedelic outtake from “Apocalypse Now,” complete with whooshing ceiling fans and a messianic cult leader. As the movie progresses, it’s no accident that idyllic Thailand begins to look a lot like another familiar Southeast Asian nation.
“The fixation with Vietnam — or at least Hollywood’s version of it — was taken right from the book,” Boyle says.
After being challenged by Thai toughs to drink a shot of snake’s blood, Richard meets a crazed burnout, Daffy (Robert Carlyle), who, before slitting his wrists, hands the Yank a map to a secret island. Looking for someone to share his adventure with, Richard enlists two gung-ho French tourists (Guillaume Canet, Virginie Ledoyen).
Sure enough, the island is every bit as spectacular and secluded as advertised.
The only inhabitants are members of a commune — led by the charismatic Sal (Tilda Swinton) — and several well-armed Thai marijuana farmers.
The two groups coexist in peace, based on Sal’s pledge not to reveal the existence of a prized lagoon to any more outsiders.
Now, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill communards. Aside from puffing away on an endless supply of grass, they idle away their time playing GameBoy and soccer, worrying about their personal hygiene and making shopping lists for their next trip to town.
“They can’t leave any of their toys behind,” says Boyle. “It’s not a wilderness utopia. . . . They go to the wilderness and they develop it. That’s our problem, really . . . we’re no longer hunters and gatherers.
“We’re addicted to development, to shopping … we can’t stop it, even though it will kill us.”
The island, of course, is stunningly beautiful. But, it begins to close in on the commune when it’s discovered that Richardgave a copy of the map to another group of refugees from Western “club culture.”
“We talked about making the first half look like a travel brochure … very inviting,” says Boyle, who traveled to several exotic locations before settling on tiny Phi Phi Le island, off Phuket. “But, as you went on, the colors became more saturated, denser. What looked like freedom, became more and more crowded.
“It’s starts out rural, but ends up urban.”
Besides having to deal with the intricacies of producing a $60 to 80 million film in a distant location, Boyle found he was constantly having to deal with Leo-mania.
Not only did every gossip rag in the world stake out the set, but also various political activists focused on the high-profile project.
If DiCaprio sneezed, it was news somewhere. The biggest controversy erupted, though, when the production team won permission to plant 100 palm trees behind the sand dunes of the lagoon, and make two of the dunes shallower.
“The most upsetting thing for us was the environmental protest, and I felt it was unfair to the film,” said the 43-year-old director, who began his career in television in Belfast. “From the outset, we had taken so much care to make sure we didn’t damage the environment. Every film crew causes damage wherever it goes, but we put a lot of money in the budget for environmental protection and did everything we could, including making sure no foreign soils were introduced.”
The sculpting of the beach, he added, “was tricky because we didn’t want to damage the dune, which actually protected the back of the island. We put it back the way we found it, and, in fact, it survived last season’s largest monsoon.”
The controversy doesn’t appear to have crossed the Pacific, however. More crucial to the film’s success will be the reaction of Boyle’s fans to a big-budget Hollywood movie that is largely linear, and only occasionally punctuated with the kinds of visual eccentricity that made “Trainspotting” such a gem.
“The style of the film has to be appropriate to the story . . . the style emerges from the story,” argued Boyle, who’s especially proud of a wild sequence in which Richard becomes part of a video-game fantasy. “I think that films are inflationary, just by their nature. We made a small movie, `Shallow Grave,’ and followed it with a much more ambitious film, `Trainspotting.’ If we had tried to make another `Shallow Grave,’ even then, we’d be denying something natural in filmmaking.
“I think it’s perverse to stay small too long, because, ironically, you fill up the places for the people coming through behind you. There are a lot of filmmakers in Britain who probably should . . . make a sizable film, because they’re choking up the opportunities back home for new filmmakers.”
The problem comes in knowing that “when you inflate, it becomes inevitable that you’ll burst. Then you must start over again somewhere else.”
Or, perhaps, then find a tropical paradise that’s at once seductive and dangerous, where it’s possible to disappear from critics and studio executives forever.
