It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive (27 page)

And so we did.

Having refused point-blank to get back into a Lada (
any
Lada) or travel cross-country on that stinking toilet of a train, it was agreed that the
Dark Waters
production team would arrange to
fly
us from Kiev to Moscow. Hooray. We could have flown more directly from Kiev to Heathrow, but for reasons which none of us understood we had return tickets from Moscow and there was nothing anyone could do about that. So, rather than suffer the indignities of land travel on the former USSR’s terminally depressed road and rail networks, we would take to the skies.

A few words about flying in the former Soviet Union. Back in the dark days of the early nineties there were many hair-raising tales of air-related ‘incidents’ which gave the impression that these were not the safest skies in the world. Most notoriously, on 23 March 1994 (a year after our
Dark Waters
adventure) Flight 593 flew out of Moscow and promptly crashed near Mezhdurechensk after the pilot allowed his fifteen-year-old son to ‘have a go’ sitting at the controls, accidentally overriding the autopilot and killing all seventy-five people on board. Such was the notoriety of Flight 593’s demise that the popular Canadian TV series
Mayday
(better known as
Air Crash Investigation
here in the UK) dedicated an episode to it self-explanatorily dubbed ‘Kid in the Cockpit’. Catchy title, huh?

Along with the apparent element of danger, there was the equally pressing issue of customer care. In 2003, BBC News reported that the Russian airline Aeroflot had employed a British public-relations team to improve their standing as one of the least inviting airlines in the world and help them shed their ‘long-time reputation for service with a scowl’.’Their stewardesses used to be very austere and authoritarian,’ admitted Tom Austin, deputy chairman of Identica, ‘and they certainly weren’t very friendly. ’ Which, as understatements go, is on a par with saying that the heroine of
Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS
wasn’t exactly the sort of girl you’d want to take home to meet your mother. But what was most disturbing about the BBC’s report was that it contained confirmation of something which I had been wondering whether I had actually
imagined
for almost a decade: the fact that as
recently as the early nineties flight operators within the former Soviet Union ‘regularly took on extra passengers for cash, resulting in dangerously overcrowded planes’.

It is oddly reassuring to see the phrase ‘dangerously overcrowded’ used by a news agency as solidly reliable as the BBC because it means that what I’m about to tell you is very probably
true
, despite the fact that it sounds like I’m
making it up
. Here’s my experience of flying from Kiev to Moscow in the days before modernisation made the phrase ‘I’m Olga, Fly Me’ something other than a very bad joke.

First up, we tried to book the tickets by phone, with a credit card, only to discover that neither phone
nor
credit-card bookings were acceptable. This was to be a cash-only transaction, and it had to be done
in person
at the airport in Kiev. So, less than forty-eight hours after arriving at Feodosiya, Nige and I found ourselves standing at a sales-kiosk window attempting to effect safe passage out of the place in the following Kafkaesque manner.

Firstly, I proceeded to the sales window, where a list of flight times and prices was prominently displayed. Having checked which flight we wanted, and counted out exactly the right amount of Russian currency, I attempted to purchase a ticket for myself.

‘Hello,’ I said brightly to the sour-faced wonk behind the window.’Do you speak English?’

‘
Da
.’

‘Great. Then I’d like to buy a ticket for the next plane to Moscow, please.’

‘
Nyet
.’

‘I have my passport, and the correct money in roubles.’

‘
Nyet
.’

‘Pardon?’

‘
Nyet
.’

I had the horrible feeling that I’d been here before.

‘
Nyet?
’ I said, pathetically.

‘
Nyet
,’ he replied, firmly.

‘I see. So is the next plane full?’

‘
Nyet
.’

‘It’s
not
full?’

‘
Nyet
.’

‘Then I
can
buy a ticket?’

‘
Nyet
.’

‘I
can’t
buy a ticket?’

‘
Nyet
.’

‘Why not?’

Silence.

I turned to the
Dark Waters
production assistant who had accompanied us to the airport, having been ordered to make sure that Nige and I got safely on to the plane.’What am I doing wrong?’ I asked him.’I have money. I have my passport. I can
see
that there’s a plane to Moscow in two hours and he says it’s not full. But he won’t sell me a ticket. Why not?’

‘Let
me
ask,’ he said encouragingly. So he asked, and got some terse reply which included words other than ‘
nyet
’. Clearly he had the knack.

‘You have to bribe him,’ he said, briskly.

‘What?’

‘You have to bribe him. To sell you the ticket. He knows you’re English and he wants a bribe.’

‘Oh, OK, fine. How much?’

‘Hang on, I’ll ask.’

So he did. Then he reported back.

‘Ten dollars, apparently. Each.’

‘So that’s twenty dollars? Plus the ticket price – in roubles?’

‘That sounds right.’

‘OK, great. Thanks.’

I took ten dollars out of my wallet, and placed it on the counter in front of the teller. He took it. I tried again.

‘Hello,’ I said.’I’d like to buy a ticket to Moscow. I have my passport and—’

I didn’t even finish the sentence. He took the money, didn’t glance at the passport, and slapped a white and blue ticket on the counter. Interestingly, it was almost entirely blank, with a series of unfilled-in spaces where all the usual relevant information would be. Airline? Blank. Flight number? Blank. Seat number? Blank. Departure time? Blank. Destination? Blank. I looked at it, unimpressed.

‘So this is the ticket is it?

‘
Da
.’

‘Shouldn’t it be filled in?’

‘
Nyet
.’

‘So I can get on the plane with it like this? All not filled in?’

‘
Da
.’

‘You’re quite sure?’

‘
Da
.’

‘You can’t fill it in just to humour me?’

‘
Nyet
.’

This was clearly all I was going to get. I stepped away from the counter and turned to Nige.’Your turn …’

Nige stepped up to the window, put down his ten dollars, watched it disappear under the counter, then went through the same ritual involving roubles, tickets, and an utter lack of flight-specific information. Simple.

‘There’s just one thing,’ said Nige, turning back towards the sales window with a look in his eye that I had come to recognise as a sign that his buttons had been pushed.’I don’t mind bribing you,’ he said to the stony-faced stooge, who gazed back unblinking.’It’s just that it would be a lot more efficient if you put the price of the bribe on the price list. Right next to where it says how much the ticket costs in roubles, you just add “plus bribe of ten dollars”. That way, we would
know
how much to bribe you so that we could buy a ticket and the whole procedure would take less time. And be a lot less irritating.’

With which he strolled off toward the departure gates, with me scurrying along in his wake.

When we got to the gate, it became clear exactly
why
there was no information on the ticket. There was a plane on the tarmac which was allegedly bound for Moscow, and a ragtag group of people in the departure lounge (or ‘holding pen’) all of whom had similarly unmarked tickets, and whose total number seemed surprisingly large for such a comparatively
small
vehicle. After waiting for an
indeterminate period of time, the plane was declared ready for boarding, at which point an official opened a glass door facing the tarmac and the entire assembled crowd
ran
like a pack of rampaging hyenas out on to the runway and up the shuddering gantry in a desperate attempt to snag a seat –
any
seat. I was pretty sure that there were more people on the plane than was customary, but the doors weren’t closed until we were crammed to busting and the last few stragglers were left waiting on the tarmac before being herded back into the cattle-yard to wait for the next plane.

If there were any safety announcements I missed them, as presumably did the people who were still standing in the aisle and therefore unable to fasten their seatbelts. Instead, the plane lurched off down the runway and up into the air with its human cargo merrily rattling around like the milk bottles in Ernie’s ghostly crate. Interestingly, although most aeroplanes tend to level out after completing their ascent, our flight seemed to be somewhat rear-end heavy and flew the entire distance from Kiev to Moscow at an angle which meant that if you dropped anything on the floor it would roll all the way back to the inevitably out-of-order toilets. As for our landing – we flew in a straight line until we were directly above Moscow airport at which point the plane simply dropped like a stone out of the sky, heading downwards in an almost vertical descent which caused your brain to attempt to crawl out through your eardrums, and making young children and adults alike scream in agony at the vomit-inducing pressure drop. When we were about a hundred feet above ground, the plane levelled out before
smashing on to the Moscow tarmac, the doors popping open almost instantly to allow the suffering hordes to stagger shell-shocked out on to the runway and scurry for the safety of the arrivals hall.

Blimey.

From Moscow we flew to Vienna, a gleaming capitalist paradise where Nige and I celebrated our escape from Russia by smothering ourselves in consumer durables purchased with infinitely flexible credit cards (I bought a Rick Astley CD, because I
could
!) and making long-distance phone calls without the handicap of a two-day wait. Another sixteen hours later and we were home, back in the arms of our respective loved ones, neither of whom had much sympathy for the ordeal we claimed to have endured. They had both been busy with
real
jobs while we had been arsing around in the former USSR, and neither of them were in the mood to feel very sorry for us. Within hours of returning home, the Russian jaunt had effectively ceased to have any ‘real’ meaning whatsoever, morphing swiftly into a near-mythical amusing anecdote which Nige and I would roll out at dinner parties for years to come, a story which people would listen to and laugh at (if we were lucky), without experiencing any of the pain, the pain, the
pain
…

But ah, I hear you say, what about the set report, the
raison d’être
of the whole trip? What about the fabulously newsworthy coverage of ‘the first Western feature film to be shot in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union’? What happened when we finally got to Feodosiya?

The short answer is … nothing.

Nada.

Niente
.

Nul points.

Nyet
.

Oh, we did interviews – loads of them, with the cast, the crew, and the director Mariano himself. And the interviews were pretty good. But you can do interviews
anywhere
. The key thing about set reports is that the journalist is meant to report
from the set
, observing and recording the actual filming
actually happening
. This is what makes set reports special. Moreover, it is what makes them ‘set reports’.

The night that Nige and I finally arrived in Feodosiya, Mariano had been out filming, shooting into the early hours of the morning on the beach, returning back to base camp about the same time that we shipped up, ready for action. Unfortunately, this was also the exact same moment that Mariano and his team ran out of film – literally. Apparently, most of the film stock available in Russia and Ukraine had the perforations on the wrong side, and thus it had been necessary to purchase vast quantities of Western-compatible stock in advance and import it. However, once inside the former Soviet Union the Western stock commanded a high market value, which had inevitably led to someone selling it off at a handsome profit, thus leaving the
Dark Waters
production team temporarily stranded, with nothing to run through the camera other than the cold Ukranian air.

And so the awful truth is that, after having travelled for four days to get to Feodosiya, Nige and I didn’t see
one single frame
of film exposed. Not
one
. Hell, we never even got to
the location – what would have been the point? There was nothing happening out there because
nobody had any film
. It was a film
without film
. It was, in effect, an
anti-film
, at least for the forty-eight hours that we were there. In this respect, the slog to Feodosiya to file a ‘location report’ on
Dark Waters
had been the single most pointless journey I have ever made.

There – I’ve said it. I feel better now.

Dark Waters
did finally get finished – a miracle of which Mariano should be rightly proud. And despite its hideous production history, the movie turned out to be a pretty decent calling card which won several international awards, and garnered solidly appreciative reviews from the mainstream and genre press. At the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal,
Dark Waters
won the Prix du Public, while at the Fantafestival in Rome it was awarded the Special Vincent Price Award for ‘outstanding contribution to Fantastic Cinema’. In 1995 it played at the Fantasporto Film Festival in Portugal where it was nominated for the Best Film Award, losing out (very respectably) to Danny Boyle’s debut feature
Shallow Grave
. At some point a version of the film seems to have become available in the US under the somewhat more gaudy title
Dead Waters
– although Mariano apparently had no role in either the retitling or the frankly scruffy packaging of this release. As recently as 2006, a company called No Shame issued a digitally restored director’s cut of
Dark Waters
on DVD, solving many of the technical problems of the
original cut, and tightening up the running time by around seven minutes to produce what Mariano proudly calls ‘the best-looking version of the film I’ve ever seen’.