The Movies
by George Gauthier
Chapter 5
The Blue Lagoon
Our second movie was a gay remake of "The Blue Lagoon". There had been considerable discussion about which story to do next, but since this particular adventure was one of Dyson's original ideas for the series that was the one we were doing. In this picture Paolo, Will, and Ramón played boyhood friends, shipwrecked and exiled on a desert island, and now grown into young manhood.
We were all psyched for it from the day Ginsburg confirmed Blue Lagoon as our next movie. I couldn't help but enthuse about the version released in 1980 blurting out:
"Gods! Christopher Atkins was so hot in the original."
"...er, yes and he was stark naked in some scenes too like at the waterslide. And so will all of you be and for all of your scenes. The two major differences between ours and the earlier versions are the gay angle and an HEA ending".
[Spoiler Alert! HEA stands for Happily Ever After, and a good thing it is too. I have always hated the tragic endings of the two theatrical releases of 1949 and 1980 where the young couple, hopelessly adrift and dying of thirst, poisoned themselves and their baby shortly before a rescue ship spotted their lifeboat. Hang the original novel.]
I did not appear in this episode, but I did go on location with Paolo, Will, and Ramón for moral support. Kyle sat this one out entirely. He was committed to a project at Dyson's industrial laboratory.
Set in the mid nineteenth century, the back story portrayed Paolo, Will, and Ramón as the three surviving castaways of a ship wrecked ten years earlier. Their ship was a sailing vessel carrying cargo and passengers from South Africa to Western Australia. Ramón played a Eurasian boy born in the city of Durban, Natal Province, South Africa, his father British and his mother a Hindu, the daughter of shopkeepers from India.
While under full sail their ship struck a floating log almost deliberately aimed by ocean swells at the bow. The collision opened a huge hole in the hull filling the hold with seawater. With the ship in imminent danger of foundering the captain ordered Abandon Ship and sent everyone into the three boats: the captain's gig and two whale boats normally used as lighters between ship and shore.
As ill luck would have it, the small gig holding only the three boys and the ship's carpenter got separated from the other two boats during the night which were never seen again. After three days without sighting another sail, the gig managed to land on their isle of exile, an uninhabited island of some size in the Indian Ocean coincidentally close to the location of mythical Skull Island in the original version of "King Kong".
Though low lying, their island of refuge was not a coral atoll despite its fringing reef. Behind white beaches dotted with coconut palms lay a low plateau covered by a mixed deciduous and bamboo forest from which flowed two perennial fresh water streams.
The four castaways were lucky that the carpenter Thomas Kincaid had thrown his bag of tools onto their boat. The tools would. be the means of making their existence more than merely tolerable. With tools they would be able not only to survive but to flourish, waiting however long it might take for rescue.
For six years their mentor taught the boys the use of tools and boat handling, whether with oars or under sail. The first shelter they build was a crude lean-to, ultimately replaced by a two room cabin with a roofed porch. They visited the nearby cays and islets, harvesting the remains of abandoned gardens long since gone to seed evidenly abandonment some years earlier by whatever natives had once lived there. They also gathered a decent amount of junk, flotsam, and jetsam including glass bottles and beads, brass fittings, and even a bolt of silk.
Eventually the carpenter died from the sting of the deadly Portuguese Man'O War. Its poison can kill a man or even a shark. The poor man could not have expected to die his thirties when the boys were just short of fourteen, leaving his charges alone. By then though he had passed on the skills they needed to carry on without him. This was a good man, this Thomas Kincaid, and he deserved better that to die in agony without ever seeing his own wife and children ever again.
Such was the back story, portrayed in a series of flashbacks and a montage featuring a trio of child actors who played the friends as eight year old castaways up to age fourteen. Fast forward several years to the main plot which is when Will, Paolo, and Ramón transitioned into the roles of the older castaways.
This setting was everyone's favorite fantasy, a life of leisure on an island paradise where coconuts fell from trees. Nothing for them to do but gather the breadfruit, do a little fishing and other light tasks.
However unrealistic the dream, since it actually involved a lot of work, its appeal to the modern urbanite was obvious: no job, no commute, no boss, no taxes, no clothes or laundry, no nagging wife either. In short, no cares or troubles. This version was a gay oriented remake of the 'Blue Lagoon' with three sexy young male leads, full frontal nudity, and no coy camera angles. The plan called for location filming over two weeks with the principal male stars totally sky clad in all of their scenes.
The movie was partly shot in chronological order to portray the development of their encampment which starts as a simple sail rigged as a shelter to a grass hut to a two room cabin made of bamboo with a roof of palm fronds.
As a partial remake of two earlier versions of this picture, the script writer and producer were not shy about incorporating elements from those earlier productions. This was a practice long regarded in Hollywood as homage rather than plagiarism. The boys had a great time doing many of the dramatic stunts in the originals including the tandem slide down the waterfall and swinging on vines over the pool at the bottom. Their underwater scenes were especially authentic given that all three were fine swimmers who could hold their breath underwater for a couple of minutes at a time.
Good thing too. Paolo had a really scary moment when a small octopus latched onto his wrist and wouldn't let go. He finally had to stab the poor creature to get it to release him. He felt bad about that. The octopus was merely defending its territory after all.
As teenagers just recently fallen in love, Paolo and Will and Ramón were just perfect as three young lads exploring their bodies and discovering their sexuality together on a desert island. True they were actually in their early to mid twenties, but that was normal for Hollywood, and they carried off the teenage vibe convincingly.
They were utterly convincing as kids whose urges culminated in their inevitable physical joining. You could not ask for more authentic looking scenes of gay love. These boys really were lovers in real life, with the exotic Ramón making up the fifth side of their love pentagon at home. Their bodies knew each other. Paolo and Will especially moved in the dance of love in a way two strangers never could.
That said, this was no porn film and nothing the cameras captured on film involved actual sexual contact. Oh the heavy petting was sincere enough; the boy were real life lovers after all, but they were actors too. They used their real emotions to lend credibility to their performances, but those were performances. For the real thing, you just had to listen outside their trailer at night. Paolo especially was very vocal when getting plowed.
Location filming was in South Carolina one one of less developed of the Sea Islands, a chain of more than a hundred tidal and barrier islands along the Atlantic Coast.
[Known historically for the quality of the output of its cotton plantations, its workforce of about five thousand slaves was notable for being the very first slaves in the Confederacy to taste freedom when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, since the islands were under Union occupation on that date.]
Dyson graciously arranged his travel schedule so that Will would be available for longer than the two or three days originally foreseen for his involvement in the production phase of these episodes. Will's role as close-in bodyguard was taken over by no less than three replacements.
Zodiac
Several days into the shoot the script called for the boys to paddle their canoe across the lagoon. Their progress was closely followed by a pair of Zodiacs which are small inflatable boats powered by an outboard motor with cameramen and director Jim Nicholls aboard to film the action. In the script's timeline, the characters had just become lovers, adding a physical and sexual dimension to their close friendship. The canoe journey to an off shore island was a celebration of their new found love.
The three young actors looked terrific wielding their paddles, the muscles of arm and shoulder and back bunching and flexing erotically under their deeply tanned skins while kneeling in the the bottom of the primitive canoe, bare buttocks resting on their heels. Sunlight glistened off the calm waters of the lagoon and from the waves created by their paddles. Once in a while one or the other deliberately splashed another boy, a bit of improvisation to show their exuberance and happiness.
Minutes later Will spotted a sea turtle swimming on the surface.
"What a magnificent specimen! Hang the script, I'm going to ride it!"
Setting aside his paddle, he dove headlong into the water, came up next to the turtle, and grabbed the forward edge of its shell. The turtle paddled along placidly, little caring that a young human had latched on to him. Often described as imperially slim, Will's build created hydraulic resistance nor did did his modest weight mean much to the powerful sea creature which must have weighed five hundred pounds (240 kg).
Exulting in the sensation of sliding through the sea effortlessly, Will lets his legs trail behind. The water flowed over his body, sluiced through his cleavage, and laved his manhood. The great beast's flippers propelled them easily faster as he could swim himself. Meanwhile Paolo and Ramón paddled after them, gamely keeping pace, sharing the experience with their lover. The blue of the sky, the green of the waters, and the white of the clouds and sandy beach painted the scene with a vivid color palette.
At one point a pair of dolphins surfaced nearby and kept pace with the sea turtle. Paolo took that as an invitation and dove into the water and grabbed the dorsal fin of the closer dolphin. Just as he hoped, the animals were in a playful mood and did not try to shake him loose. Paolo's mount sped up, swept past, then circled the turtle, its sonar clicking away.
Paolo timed his breathing with the undulations of his steed. At several points he had to hold his breath for more than a few seconds as when his mount dove under the sea turtle and came up needed to breath too, so he never kept Paolo down for very long.
The turtle proceeded stolidly ahead, ignoring the dolphins weaving back and forth. He knew they presented no danger to him. Nothing really did in these waters, not even the strange two tailed creature that had somehow attached itself to his shell. For nearly a quarter hour the turtle tolerated the boy's presence till it grew tired of the sport and dove for deep water, staying under for so long that Will had to let go to swim back to the surface for air.
That was the signal for Paolo too to abandoned his own ride and swim over to the canoe, now being towed by one of the Zodiacs. He helped Will clamber in. They lay together in the bottom , catching their breath, Paolo's head resting on Will's chest, listening to heartbeat of the boy he loved, with the third youth caressing their limbs. All of them were thinking that life didn't get any better than this.
"Cut!" the director called.
"That footage was terrific, kids! Will and Paolo you have great instincts, diving in that way to ride the animals. You can't script something like that, but when it happens, it gives the movie unmistakable authenticity though back in Hollywood, they will think I used a mechanical sea turtle and dolphin. We got some terrific footage of you both with the camera drone, not to mention that nice cuddle in the canoe. Hoorah!"
Indeed the footage was dramatic and exhilarating, evocative of the natural paradise that was the boys' island of exile. Naturally the production would have to fill out the sequence. Close up would have the actors towed through the water on ropes, but that would hardly lessen the authenticity of the sequence. This scene would help immersurably at the box office. Footage that didn't go into the movie itself would become part of the 'Making Of' video.
There were smiles all around at this latest success during the production. Everything was going swimmingly. This was a happy company. Everyone got along with everyone else, crew, cast, support folks. That was how veteran director Nicholls liked it on his movies, and these days he had enough clout in Hollywood to pretty much get his way. You never worked for him more than once if you were a troublemaker or a sourpuss. Life was too short to spend any of it with unpleasant people, no matter how talented or competent.
"You know, I hate to be a spoilsport Jim," Will ventured over lunch the next day, "but the shallow waters of the lagoon look more green than blue. Only the deep ocean beyond the reef is truly blue. Or am I missing something?"
"What you are missing, my young friend, is that this is Hollywood, where minor inconsistencies like that can be completely ignored. For example, there was an old disaster movie called 'Krakatoa: East of Java'. Terrible picture. The fact is that the Krakatoa volcano was due west of Java, as the producers well knew. They just thought "East" sounded more exotic.
Then there was that el cheapo monster movie 'Giant Gila Monster' where the title role was actually played by a Mexican Spotted Lizard. The local pet store must have run out of gila monsters the week they cast the picture. Why the sudden concern for verisimilitude? I thought that was Marty Ginsburg's hang up. And isn't our next movie going to be about humans hunting dinosaurs?"
The boys chuckled at that. Dinosaurs had died out sixty million years before humans evolved on this planet. Will had also heard that blonds like himself probably hadn't been around longer than ten thousand years, long enough for humans to migrate out of Africa to finally reach Scandinavia.
At one point Ramón climbed a palm tree and cut down several coconuts. Nicholls chortled at the comical ending to his climb when, he slid part way down the trunk after the length of rope tied to his ankles lost its frictional grip on the bark. He landed rather hard on his rump.
"I guess Ramón needs a little more practice." I observed blandly.
Ramón got to his feet, brushing sand off himself. The olive skinned lad looked ever so cute standing there nude, rubbing his sore butt with both hands, trying to recover his dignity, embarrassed over his clumsy descent but with a boyish determination to do it right the next time. Meanwhile, Will picked up a machete and expertly whacked the top of the coconut off, holding it out for Nicholls to drink. The director didn't have the heart to tell the lads that the high fat content of coconut milk was not at all to his taste though maybe OK if you were dying of thirst.
Nicholls liked working with young actors like these three, personable boys just recently grown into young men. Nicholls had never had sons of his own, just a daughter. That was probably why he had developed such a strong avuncular interest in some of the young actors he had taken under his wing over the years. If some of their antics and doings bordered on the outrageous, well they were still so young. Anyway, none of the three had a mean bone in his body, so Nicholls was inclined to indulge them. They kept things lively on the set or location. More power to them.
Nicholls considered the movies an authentic art form. Its medium was not just film (really digital video these days) but scripts and actors, words and actions, sets, locations, and special effects. How gratifying it was for him to be able to preserve the beauty of these three lads forever, just like an artist who worked in clay or paints. On film, they would always be young sexy and healthy young males in their prime, fine exemplars of the human form.
Danger Close
Next the script called for two of the boys to be threatened by a shark which invaded the lagoon while they gathered shellfish in the shallows. A mechanical shark larger and much more capable than the one used fifty years earlier in "Jaws" portrayed the villain of the piece. Paolo and Ramón's characters immediately realized that they could never make it to shore before they were overtaken by the shark. Their only hope was the uncertain refuge of a pair of raised coral heads called dead heads which no longer housed the coral polyp but nevertheless stuck up more than three feet above the surface of the water.
A cat and mouse game ensued as the boys, each on his own pedestal jabbed the short collecting rakes they had carried at the eyes of the sea monster hoping to chase it away.A masterpiece of animatronics, the mechanical shark stole the scene from the two actors by its size and air of menace. Nichols could foresee that it had a future in Hollywood, rather like Robby the Robot had after his breakout role in "Forbidden Planet".
As the script would have it, the boys were lucky that the shallow water did not allow the shark to lunge out the water to snatch them off their perches. The ebbing tide soon forced the monster to swim beyond the reef lest it get stranded. So the plot did not require unrealistic heroics or tragic self-sacrifice by one of their number which would have spoiled the HEA ending.
What no one expected was for the same two actors to come under attack for real just when the safety shooter used the break to disassemble and clean his rifle. Alas two hungry alligators took after the boys. Now these were good sized reptiles some twelve feet long and weighing eight hundred pounds. Caught by surprise after attending to a call of nature, Paolo and Ramón climbed a nearby live oak (so called because it is an evergreen) expecting to stay out of reach.
The boys did not realize that alligators are quite capable of climbing trees. Incredibly they can even get themselves over a chain link fence. One of them started up the trunk while the other patiently waited for his turn. All the boys could do was retreat higher.
Paolo complained:
"This is so unfair. These damn things can out run us, can out swim us, and now they can climb trees too?"
Seeing his friends in danger Will paused at the tool rack passing over the machete and the hatchet in favor of a two-handed axe since alligator hide was so thick. Running up to the alligator still on the ground he swung the axe with all his strength screaming "Die! as he brought the blade down on the middle of its back the broadest target. The blow did not kill it of hand it did cut the spine paralyzing its hind legs. Straddling the stricken beast Will destroyed its brain with a couple of follow-up whacks.
The alligator climbing the tree was a little too high for his tactic with the first gator so Will brought the axehead down on its rear left leg severing it. That dropped the reptile onto the ground, still mobile, dangerous, and very angry. Will avoided its lunge jumping out of the way. By this team other crew members rallied to the fight having grabbed whatever they could lay their hands on. They circled the animal which distracted it long enough for Will to get close and deliver the coup de grace.
"My God! Nicholls exclaimed. "That was the bravest thing I ever saw!"
A moment later, veteran movie director that he was, he turned abruptly to the cameraman whose job it was to capture images for the Making Of video and said:
"Please tell me that you got all of that!"
The grinning cameraman replied with a thumbs up.
The director nodded, relieved and cheered by the cameraman's assurance. Suddenly he paused, struck by a sudden thought which put a strange look on his face, one which the cameraman recognized as one of Nichol's "lightbulb" moments. As he later told us, the cameraman thought to himself:
"Uh, oh. Here it comes."
"That's it!" Nichols exclaimed excitedly. "The shark attack was only the warm up, almost anticlimactic compared to what we saw just now. We'll write this scene into the movie."
Too bad they could not depict the courageous attacks by movie crew, not in the movie itself. These boys were supposed on a desert island after all.
With that the director got the boys back up in the tree for closeups especially of Paolo's plaintive wail and of Ramón's quick grab for a branch when his foot slipped. A quick patch job hid the damage allowing the director to use the second alligator as a prop, camera angles and movie magic allowing Will to reenact the killing blow. The dead alligators were too damaged for close-ups, but stock footage would supply that need.
Although a battered Gulf Stream trailer could be seen very briefly as the camera tracked the action, that flaw could be removed easily enough in postproduction.
Later, the director ruefully conceded that the real-life alligator attack was infinitely more exciting than the mechanical shark attack in the script and that it improved the movie immeasurably. He could take satisfaction that, though his imagination might have failed him and his scriptwriter when outlining the original story board, his directorial instincts were intact enough to recognize a golden opportunity when it presented itself, just like with the boys and their rides on the sea turtle and dolphin. Regardless, adding the alligator attack got their movie the kind of free publicity a studio could only dream of.
Dyson was pleased with the results of showings of the first four episodes to test audiences which were representative of the public at large, not just their target demographics. It seems almost everyone reacted positively to these stories of survival.
Even straight boys, always Hollywood's key audience, loved their movies. Will, Paolo, and Ramón did not threaten their own standards of rugged masculinity. Given their slender physiques and pretty boy good looks and obviously gay vibes, their action adventures appealed to the straight male audience rather like action comedies. How else could you take a movie about bare ass punks killing dinosaurs, turning the tables on Indians on the rampage, or actually riding a giant sea turtle and bottle-nosed dolphin in a tropical lagoon? And nothing could top a boy really killing a pair of alligators with nothing more than a woodman's axe.
The Making Of videos were particularly well-received.
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