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The Telegraph (UK) - March 13, 1999 Battle of the Beach
Ever since the unprecedented box-office success of 'Titanic', the world has been watching Leonardo DiCaprio. When he accepted the lead role in Danny Boyle's film, 'The Beach', he had no idea that he was getting into a political controversy that would threaten both his reputation and his peace of mind. David Gritten went on set in Thailand to hear DiCaprio's side of the story
This isn't paradise, it's a good imitation. For 45 minutes I have travelled in a high-powered speedboat from Phuket, a large resort island in southern Thailand, across the Andaman Sea. The sun is hot, the sky is cobalt blue and the views are stunning. The boat's prow cuts the glass-smooth surface of the turquoise water, and smaller islands with sheer limestone cliffs loom closer. The boat pulls into a beach and I wade through jade-green shallows to the fine white sand of Bamboo Island. Physically it has all the attributes of a tropical paradise, but it's hardly a desert island. A few dozen tourists, many flabby and pale, stroll around, talking loudly in Australian, German and English voices. There's no polite way to say it: they spoil the effect. I notice two beer bottles, abandoned in the sand. I have come to see Leonardo DiCaprio making his first movie since Titanic propelled him from mere superstardom into a stratosphere all of his own. After Titanic, history's highest-grossing film, DiCaprio could literally do whatever he wished. He chose to star in The Beach, adapted from Englishman Alex Garland's novel by a British team: producer Andrew MacDonald, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge, who brought us Trainspotting and Shallow Grave. The Leo Factor made The Beach a big deal, by far the team's biggest film; the budget, set by Twentieth Century Fox, leapt to $45 million, with DiCaprio's share a cool $20 million. In a shady clearing the crew have established a discreet base camp on Bamboo Island; DiCaprio was to be filmed swimming to another island with two French actors; the plan was for a boat to take me to a large barge moored off the coast, from which I would observe filming. But it didn't happen. We journeyed close to a luxury yacht, the Singa Lady, where DiCaprio was resting between scenes. But then the weather dramatically turned. Heavy black clouds raced in, then thunder, lightning and torrential rain. Soon DiCaprio's boat was at the storm's epicentre, bobbing on choppy waves. Wisely he stayed below deck. It had been a bad day for DiCaprio. His scene had demanded that he spend long hours in the water, which is inhabited by jellyfish. He was the target of a breed of red jellyfish with a painful, irritating sting; he almost passed out and had to retire to his yacht to recuperate. 'It affected my respiratory system,' he says the next day. 'It made me kinda woozy for a while.' At least he suffered no allergic reaction, unlike a female member of the film's marine team who had been rushed to hospital the previous week. Yet stings and storms of other kinds have afflicted DiCaprio since he arrived in Thailand. He and the film are embroiled in an extraordinary environmental controversy which has become an ongoing international news story. In The Beach DiCaprio plays Richard, a backpacker. In a Bangkok hostel he meets a hippie drug addict who talks of a secret, remote paradise beach on an island populated by a small, idealistic group. The hippie kills himself and leaves Richard a crude map of the beach. With a friendly young French couple (played by Guillaume Canet and Virginie Ledoyen) he sets out to find it. Once there, they learn the island's terrible secret and the group's determination to keep outsiders away. Scenes involving the community were shot at nearby Phi Phi Le island, on a beach named Maya, a beautiful crescent of sand protected by sheer cliffs which almost encircle it; it feels secret and special. But the filmmakers decreed that the beach must look more obviously like paradise, so 60 palm trees were imported and planted, sand-dunes were bulldozed and straggly bushes and grasses uprooted. Phi Phi Le is a designated environmental zone in a Thai national park, yet the filmmakers found Maya Beach far from unspoilt. Tourists visit the island daily. 'We removed three tons of rubbish from the island before we even started,' MacDonald told me. For permission to shoot the film, he paid Thailand's Forestry Department some £66,000. Fox posted a £150,000 bond, promising the beach would be returned to its former state, except for the rubbish. Palms will be removed and replanted; dunes will be bulldozed back in place. 'We'll leave the beach in better shape than we found it,' MacDonald said. But for a coalition of Thai environmental groups who oppose the film, this is not enough. They have demonstrated on set with banners, wearing DiCaprio masks with fangs dripping with blood; 'Don't rape our beach, Leo,' one slogan read. They also oppose modifying a waterfall in another Thai national park; for a scene in which beach-community members dive 70 feet into deep water, a protruding section of fake rock was built to make diving safer. Ing Kanjanavanit, 39, a Bangkok-based journalist, film director and leader of the protesters, claims the bond and permission fee represent 'over-the-table bribery'. She stresses the relatively small sums involved compared to DiCaprio's fee. So for the first time, DiCaprio's dizzying post-Titanic celebrity is being used against him. At first, he stayed silent about the demonstrations. Finally, he has decided to hit back. The day after DiCaprio was stung, shooting was on dry land. The Beach production team has converted a disused Phuket shoe factory into a studio housing five sets for the film. Before starting a closed-set bedroom scene with British actress Tilda Swinton (who plays Sal, the beach community's manipulative leader), I found DiCaprio in his trailer. The Thai sun has given him a light tan, and he has filled out a little; he looks older than in Titanic, and it suits him. He had agreed to discuss environmental issues surrounding the film, but seemed nervous and reluctant. Insisting producer MacDonald sit with him, he spoke tentatively, taking care to say nothing to inflame opinion further. He looked less like the world's hottest film star than a bewildered actor of 24, floundering in a thorny political situation. The protests had clearly rattled him: 'I don't know why these things have been said. I haven't seen any destruction of the beach. And I've been there every day. So it gets into the realm ofÉ' he turned to MacDonald. 'Is it OK to say "politics" do you think?' 'Yes,' said MacDonald. 'Well, I don't know if I should get into the realm of where all this started,' said DiCaprio. 'It's none of my business. From what I've seen, [the allegations] are false, made up out of thin air. I've seen everyone take the utmost meticulous care. They took tons of trash off the beach and it looks better than it ever has before.' He mentioned a survey of Phi Phi Le by Reef Check, a UN-endorsed non-profit organisation which praised the crew's work in cleaning up the island. 'In all this controversy my name has been used as symbolic of what's going on. That's upsetting to me. I don't want a bad reputation as somebody who endorses something hostile to the environment. 'If I want to help out with environmental causes in future, I want to start with a clean slate and not have people think I choose movies that are reckless and don't care about the environment of other countries. Normally I wouldn't do an interview about stuff that's not true, which has happened to me a lot in the last year. But this is something I feel strongly about.' He called the protests 'a big waste of time. A lot of energy that people are expending toward this could be put to something of actual use. There's a million important environmental issues going on throughout the world, in Thailand and the areas around where we're filming. That this is getting so much focusÉ' He looked downcast. Still, the incident has filled him with resolve. 'This year I'm really going to do some big things as far as the environment is concerned. I'm going to become a lot more activeÉ' He paused in mid-flow. 'It makes it sound like a cop-out when I say that,' he said, grimacing. But he went on to assure me of his sincerity. As a child he had always been intrigued by animals, their habitat, and endangered and extinct species. More recently he had given money to environmental charities, including a project to save gorillas in Rwanda. He decided on The Beach as his first post-Titanic starring role because he admires Boyle. They met in 1996 at the Trainspotting party in Cannes. 'I was a big fan of Danny Boyle before this film came about,' he said. 'After I saw Trainspotting and Shallow Grave, I was blown away. The type of filmmaking he does is unique. It struck me as something I wanted to be part of. So when they told me about this, and I'd figured out what the theme was and I was in on the story, I was excited.' Given all the problems - jellyfish, protests and tropical storms - filming proceeds steadily. Direcctor Boyle was tired but cautiously optimistic and delighted with DiCaprio's work ethic. 'He can do absolutely anything on camera,' he enthused, seated on the boat back to Phuket after the storm curtailed the day's shooting. 'His talent is frightening.' He agreed huge expectations surround DiCaprio after Titanic: 'But in a funny way, that's working for us because we're trying not to fulfil those expectations, but twist them round a bit. I think that's what interested Leo in this film. There's a darkness at the end which is quite different from the sadness at the end of Titanic. 'And he works so hard.' (DiCaprio is working a gruelling 63 days of 67 in the film's schedule.) 'He was in that water for hours today and never complained once. I couldn't believe he'd put himself through that.' When Boyle read The Beach he quickly called MacDonald. 'I said, "Buy the rights now. Don't even bother reading it." ' Fast-moving stories with a strong narrative thrust are a signature of the MacDonald-Boyle-Hodge team, and Hodge honed down the novel. 'To put it crudely, we wanted more sex and violence,' said Boyle. Ewan McGregor has expressed his disappointment and anger at being passed over for the lead role of Richard; to date he has starred in all their previous films and considered himself a permanent member of the team. And landing DiCaprio necessitated another change; in the novel Richard is English, but now he's American. To maintain a balance, the team decided that Sal, his American nemesis in the book, should become British. Enter Tilda Swinton. The Beach also shares another trademark of their films: lull the punters with an attractive proposition, then disclose its dark underbelly. 'It's like Shallow Grave, when you make the audience want to share that flat,' said Boyle. (And who was not initially seduced by the witty insouciance of the junkies in Trainspotting?) 'Here, you want people to think "I'd love to go to that beach, be in that community. What a cool way to live." Until it all starts to go wrongÉ' MacDonald, meanwhile, is a man on a mission. Irritated by the protests and determined not to be seen as a ravager of Thailand's beauty, he gave me a guided tour of Phi Phi Le, its imported palm trees and unrooted scrub. 'The grass will grow agai n,' he said. 'We've hired a landscaper to irrigate it.' So badly does MacDonald want vindication that he is making a documentary to prove the film's presence improved Maya Beach. 'We'll have before and after pictures,' he said. 'I can't wait to show them to the world. This is the first movie made by Westerners that actually represents Thailand, which is part of the reason why there's so much sensitivity.' That and a chaotic response to a ticklish political situation. MacDonald has played a straight bat, aiming to get his film made without offending anyone. But he has been left twisting in the wind; more than one person on set noted the irony of Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch's global media organisation, failing to send a senior troubleshooter from America to quell bad publicity. Then there are DiCaprio and his handlers, who issued unilateral statements stressing his love for the environment and respect for the Thais. Yet he has endorsed Thailand as a 'hot' tourist destination, even though the Reef Check survey he supports named tourism as Phi Phi Le's major problem. Bangkok media sources think The Beach was badly served by its local fixers, a Thai production company that might have foreseen the consequences of using Maya Beach as a location. Two days later Ing Kanjanavanit sat in a Bangkok coffee shop complaining about the film. She said granting permission to shoot blatantly violated Thailand's National Park Act; she claimed an inappropriate clause of the act was invoked. 'My point,' she said, tears springing to her eyes, 'is that our laws shouldn't be for sale. 'But everything in this country is for sale. It's a banana republic, now more than ever. This affair of The Beach is like a mirror. It shows me what sort of country I'm living in.' Articulate and likeable with a touching sincerity, Kanjanavanit is of high-born stock. Her father was bodyguard and brother-in-law to Siam's last absolute monarch, who abdicated and lived in exile; she was educated in English private schools. She has now reported Fox to the US Justice Department under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And 37 Thai law professors have petitioned the minister of agriculture to revoke the contract giving permission to shoot The Beach. A hearing is set for March 26. She shrugged when told of DiCaprio's distress at upsetting Thai environmentalists. 'If he doesn't want to upset us, he should go home,' she said. 'Anything else they do or say is just a PR exercise.' He won't go home, of course, until the film's completion in mid-April. When protesters are not visibly evident, DiCaprio is largely sheltered from all the fuss. 'I went scuba diving a couple of times, but I haven't done much here,' he told me. 'I've stayed in the hotel or worked. I wish I could tell you fantastic stories, but it hasn't been that exciting.' For many around him, it's been quite exciting enough.
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