After 11 years of planning, director John Furse finally started filming the story of the kidnapping of Brian Keenan and John McCarthy in Beirut. But the streets looked like Britain in the 1980s, and the movie's story seemed still too controversial for the Lebanese. The only solution was to decamp to Tunisia. Emma Brockes reports
'God," says the film director John Furse, looking tragically out to sea, "this could be Cleethorpes [a British seaside resort\]." For the past three hours he has been driving around town in search of biblical devastation. But all that's turned up is the usual lurid trash - a KFC, a Nissan dealership, a kiosk sponsored by KitKat, a McDonald's drive-thru, a shop selling sinister-looking, inflatable reindeer, a macrobiotic food store and the inescapable sound, issuing from every parked car, of RML FM, Beirut's English language station.
This is not what Furse expected. But then nothing, as it turns out, is what he and his crew expected when they came to Lebanon in the hope of filming location shots for Blind Flight, a biopic of Brian Keenan and John McCarthy's four years of captivity here. After spending $15,000 getting film equipment through customs and paying three weeks' living costs for a team of 20 plus - the crew is still sitting around, dismally playing backgammon and knocking back glasses of Pastis, not a single day's work in the can.
Today, finally, Furse and his producer Sally Hibbin have decided to get tough. They impose a 2 p.m. deadline for the Lebanese authorities to respond to their request for permission to film. (The drama of this is only slightly undermined by the fact that, if the Lebanese government fails to respond, the only threat Hibbin and Furse can enforce is to leave the country in a huff).
Three hours before deadline, Furse finds himself looking balefully out to sea, black windcheater snapping in the wind, sagging slightly under the weight of the final straw: in the 17 years since Keenan and McCarthy were kidnapped, much of Beirut has turned from a war-torn hellscape into a provincial British high street, circa 1985. Yes, on Hamra Street, there is even a branch of clothes store Etam.
How did it come to this? In the early stages, Keenan's script - which he adapted from his bestselling memoir An Evil Cradling, with help from McCarthy - was a story that people in Beirut seemed keen to hear. The Irish academic and the English journalist are widely and, in some cases, affectionately remembered in the city and omens for the shoot looked good. For example, the brother of one of the crew's local drivers turned out to have picked Keenan up from the airport when he arrived in the city, in 1986, to take tenure at the American University. And the Mayflower hotel, opposite the Princess Diana gift shop, was billing the crew at half-rates in honour of the fact that, in his first few days in Beirut, Keenan had stayed there.
"I remember Brian," says Mounir Samaha, the Mayflower's owner. "It was very sad for us," he says. "The hoodlums of the Earth were in Beirut. They even came here, to the hotel, knowing we had two French journalists staying. They ran into one in the lobby, who said, 'Take the other bastard'. While the kidnappers ran up to Marchand's room, I rang him from reception and he escaped through the window, down three floors, on a rope. Keenan could not have done such a thing. He was a very serious gentleman, an educator, a philosopher. He came to Beirut to teach our children, and look how we treated him."
After an initial refusal, Hibbin's second request for permission to film in the city was more warmly received. Thanks to Keenan's talent as a writer and humanity as a man, it was apparent even to Lebanon's over-sensitive security general (the department of censorship) that the script did not seek to demonise either the country or the kidnappers.
Through local agents, Hibbin impressed upon them the advantages of saying yes: that if they were permitted to film in Beirut rather than, say, Cyprus, the Lebanese authorities could at least exert some influence over the script. And, provisionally, they seemed to agree, provided all references to Islam were expunged from the script. They did not, they said, wish the film to encourage people in making an equation between Islam and kidnapping, particularly when they were trying to promote Beirut as a tourist destination.
Furse took this calmly. Even though this is his first feature film, it has been 11 years in the making and he is confident of the material. While it is not, perhaps, universally known that Keenan's kidnappers belonged to Islamic Jihad, it is widely remembered that they were Islamic fundamentalists of some sort, who ransomed Keenan and McCarthy, along with Terry Waite, Jackie Mann and the three US hostages, for the release of Arab prisoners being held by Israel.
It seemed unlikely, thought Furse, that without explicit references, viewers would imagine the captors to be members of the IRA or some other rebel organisation. Also, he thought that it might be possible to film two versions, in case the political situation changed in the nine months before the film's release.
Uppermost in these considerations is the fate of the Lebanese crew, those whose work and lives would carry on in Beirut, on the sufferance of the security general, after the British had left. In their offices in a noisy, traffic-rammed part of town, Pierre Salloum, director of Djinn House Productions, paces anxiously in the hours before deadline.
"Everything is on standby," he says miserably. "Even the bus driver doesn't know if he should turn up in the morning. After the initial refusal there was a 'Probably, yes'. Then they restudied it. Now we are waiting. It is understandable. It is a sensitive subject, especially now."
At 1 p.m., seeking distraction from the countdown, Furse and his production designer Andrew Sanders take off around town, scouting for locations that evoke civil war. It is not that Beirut has been perfectly redeveloped - plenty of buildings still have bullet marks - it's just that the most devastated parts of town, in which small businesses operate picturesquely out of the shells of bombed buildings, are the hardest to get access to.
BEIRUT is carved into zones, locally governed by militias , and Furse and Sanders have been told that, even if they get the go-ahead from central government, they haven't a hope of persuading Hizbullah to let them film on their patch. They have a better chance of filming in the less destroyed Christian districts, and finally find somewhere perfect - a steep and narrow side-street which appears not to have been troubled by renovation since the war. One apartment block has been blown open like a doll's house, acned with bullet marks, plastic sheeting in place of exterior walls, and - judging by the number of washing lines - a full complement of residents.
This, decide Sanders and Furse, will do as the exterior for Keenan and McCarthy's first place of captivity, and the road outside for some travelling scenes. Since most of the action happens in one cell-like room, the initial terrifying car-ride through the city is critical in establishing the wider political and social context of the film.
"Do you want us to provide a market here?" asks Sanders, squinting at some overhead cables. "We can't afford it, can we?" says Furse. "We don't have to have many people," says Sanders. "Just a few stall-holders." Furse thinks about it. "I don't want it looking like EastEnders," he says.
Back at the production office, cantankerous crew members order pizza for lunch and bitch about the situation. Those who have exhausted their per diems suddenly find themselves broke. The company is behind with payments. It's pouring with rain. The most recent newspaper anyone has is a 10-day-old copy of the London Times. One crew guy, explodes: "What the f--k are we still doing here? We should have chucked this in ages ago." The chorus grows. "We're being taken for a ride," says another.
Hibbin is accustomed to trouble, having worked with Ken Loach in Nicaragua on the making of Carla's Song. Compared with that, she says, Lebanon has the infrastructure and services of Switzerland. Nevertheless, she is nervous. It is possible that if things go too belly-up in Lebanon, the film's financiers will pull the plug. Tensely smoking, she asks Salloum to call his contact in the government and find out if they're any nearer to making a decision. It is 1.15 p.m.
Salloum has a short conversation in Arabic and replaces the handset gingerly. "They say call back on Monday," he says. Tyan whispers, "Monday is two days before Christmas." "Can't we go back to the Irish consul?" asks Hibbin. Salloum calls the Irish consulate, which is closed. Hibbin calls the consul's mobile, which rings and rings. "What about this man?" she says, pointing to a piece of paper. "We already tried him," says Salloum, desperately. "Everything goes back to the big boss. No one can go over his head. If the big boss says Monday, it's going to be Monday. That's it. He's as close to the president of the republic as we get." He stares mournfully down at the genie's lamp on his desk.
Charlie Leech, the assistant director, throws his head round the door. "Any news?" he says. Hibbin is silent. "I think we should get Andrew and Johnny on a plane to Tunisia," she says. "Tomorrow."
Even if the cost of transferring to Tunisia doesn't sink the film, the administrative nightmare would threaten to screw everything else up. In Belfast and Glasgow, bookings were in place for drivers and caterers and hotel rooms. Lebanese window and door-fittings, which Sanders spent ages procuring, would need to be shipped, and that's assuming Tunisian buildings could be found on which to fit them. There would be continuity problems: the actors were due to have their heads shaved before they got to Belfast and, should location shooting be tacked on to the end of the schedule, there won't be enough time for the hair to grow back. Tunisian number plates will have to be digitally altered. And, after all the hoo-ha, it seems unlikely that the Lebanese actors' visas can be extended.
"None the less, Tunisia is our best option," says Hibbin. "But in the unlikely event that the Lebanese say yes on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, we should have a rethink."
"Wednesday is Christmas Day," says Leech, meekly. "Whatever," says Hibbin. A crisis meeting of cast and crew is called for 3 p.m. "Start whacking the phones," says Hibbin.
Three miles away, across the grid-locked city, Ian Hart and Linus Roache stand in the garden of a beautiful old apartment block. This is where Keenan lived after leaving the Mayflower hotel and the building outside of which he was kidnapped. En route to the meeting, the two actors (Hart plays Keenan, Roache McCarthy) stop to have a look. The apartment has yellow stone walls and pointy, church-like windows, a colonnade and a hibiscus tree. It is currently occupied by French bankers. A mark of how Beirut has changed, its rental price is $15,000 a year. "A beautiful spot," says Roache.
Hart (Voldemort in the Harry Potter films) and Roache (son of Coronation Street's Bill) have had a painful few weeks. Every time it looked as if filming might be on, they had to rapidly starve themselves, to look thin for their roles - a fast that, more than once as the pendulum swung the other way, they broke with huge binges. The hardest aspect of the job for them is condensing four years of captivity into two hours, particularly when for much of it they are the only two on screen.
They have been helped by the men they portray. "Brian and John were incredibly generous," says Roache. "They said to us, 'It's your story. It would be death to try to mimic us.' It's more about communicating the essence of their experience. John was a real joker - joking was one of his survival techniques. He would do an impression of Brian, and Brian would do one back.
"John's worst memory, he said, was of being wrapped in masking tape and transported to a different hiding place, under a lorry. He once heard gaffer tape pulled behind him in a TV studio before doing an interview, and went cold." Hart, meanwhile, is simply in awe of Keenan. "Brian relives it every time he talks about it. Even if knobheads in the pub ask him about it, he will always tell them."
At 3.15 p.m., delayed by traffic, Furse and Sanders reach the production office. "What news?" says Sanders. "It's been deferred," says Hibbin. "What?" "Deferred." "Again?" "I think you and Johnny should go to Tunis." Sanders is silent.
Keenan was released in 1990, a full year before McCarthy. On his return to Ireland, he gave a press conference at Dublin Castle. To the actors, it is the moment that symbolises how close the two men became in captivity. "You can see it in the speech," says Roache. "You can see him grieving for his other half."
In the meeting room, everyone is seated in a circle, a crate of beer in the middle. Holding up the beer, Leech says: "I've got the new schedules here, if anyone wants one."
Hibbin calls the room to order. "We looked at Cyprus and Malta and Morocco, but we have to operate now as if we're carrying on in Tunisia," she says. "We're going to try to get you all on flights, the day after tomorrow. Our biggest problem now is work permits and haircuts."
"The Lebanese actors didn't believe their parts at first," says Furse. "They thought they were too soft." Which is why it seemed that the film had such a good chance of gaining Lebanese approval. But even after 17 years, it was still too controversial.
The cast and crew are currently filming in Tunisia. After all the bad luck, they have finally had some good: so keen is the Tunisian film commission to promote the country to Western film crews that it has paid producers roughly the same amount of money they lost in Beirut. Even without this, says Hibbin, their excursion to Lebanon would not have been wasted. For the actors it was a chance to absorb the atmosphere, for the designers to create the look of the film - and there was another bonus.
In 1986, Keenan left his typewriter at the Mayflower. For 17 years, Mounir Samaha kept hold of it. Furse packed it up and carried it home to him.
