Old friend Valerio says he’d not received an email I’d copied him into on 31 October. Searched in his spam, did a global search — no joy. Said he’s now worried there might be other messages that’ve just got lost out there in cyberspace.
My reply to him: yes, it’s worrying indeed. You can’t fix what you don’t know is a problem.
This calls to mind something that happened on the 1988 film shoot in China.
The film director had gone out prior to the shoot itself, to do some recce’ing (reconnaissance).
It was a travelogue, following this multi-millionaire motorcyclist throughout his ride from Shanghai to Pakistan.
As anyone who’s worked in documentary film projects would know, especially in the earlier days, there was really no such thing as spontaneity. You didn’t just turn up and follow the subject with your camera crew throughout his journey.
Especially if it was China, where you’d need all sorts of things like permission — that is, after you’ve found the right people and places for him to “run into” on his long ride across China on the Silk Route. It would’ve been a waste of time and money unless everything was already in place for the camera to roll.
The motorcyclist was originally going to just get up in the morning, have breakfast, get on his bike, stop for lunch, get on his bike, stop for the night, eat dinner, go to bed. Repeat the next day, and the next, and the next — for 37 days all the way from Shanghai to the border with Pakistan.
With a film to be made out of it, an idea suggested by one of his PBS (America’s Public Broadcasting Service) friends, it’d have made sleep-inducing viewing in this format. So, the film company commissioned for the travelogue decided to weave a trail of “chance encounters” into his 37-day journey across China. All for a bird’s-eye-view of China in that era (the late 80s): a private entrepreneur parvenu in officially-socialist China; a divorced woman — just to name two examples.
On her recce, the film director had been assigned a guide/interpreter woman, to whom the director entrusted with the task of unearthing these interesting encounters and obtaining the relevant permission.
After the first day of filming around Shanghai, the director sat down with the guide/interpreter to go through the list of people the latter should’ve rooted out for the motorcyclist to “run into” and chat with.
The guide/interpreter had displayed blatant dereliction of duty right from Day One of the recce — which was why I was taken on last minute, as her English and work ethics were so appalling.
On the drive out of Shanghai, the director decided to have a meeting on the mini-bus with the guide, asking her, “Have you tracked down the people on my list that I’d asked you to sound out? Have you found me other likely subjects of interest?”
The guide said, “No.” (Surprise, surprise.)
The director: “Why not? The recce was a few weeks ago, you’ve had all this time to do it! We can’t afford to lose time, having come all the way from the other side of the world! You’re the local, you know where to find these people and how to get permission. That’s why we’ve employed you.” (Well, we had no choice actually, as she was assigned by the government body.)
The guide’s self-defence: “I couldn’t do it, because I don’t know how much you know about China. You have to tell me what you know about China, and you have to tell me what you don’t know about China.”
(China, 1988; London/New Orleans, 2021)
See also blog At the Lost Property Office
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