NO PLACE LIKE HOME FOR

Perry
Henzell

By Kerry Doole

One of the most important guests at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival was Perry Henzell, recognized as the key pioneer of the Jamaican film industry. His appearance was rather drowned out by the ever-increasing celebrity din of the media’s festival coverage of the festival, but its significance remained.

The veteran writer/director/novelist/journalist actually had two films showcased at TIFF. His groundbreaking 1972 debut, The Harder They Come, screened in the Dialogues: series, confirming its status as a cinematic classic. More intriguingly, the festival presented the world premiere of Henzell’s second feature film, No Place Like Home.

Thirty-four years between films may just be a record for a director. The saga behind this film would, in fact, make for a compelling movie script. WORD sat down with Henzell and No Place Like Home’s two stars, American actress Susan O’Meara and Jamaican film icon Carl Bradshaw, on the eve of the premiere in Toronto.

Two months after this interview was conducted, the 70 year old writer/director succumbed to cancer, exactly one day before the Jamaican premiere of No Place Like Home. In a statement released by Jamaican Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, she states: “Jamaica has lost a very talented son and his death has created a void throughout the creative industries in Jamaica.”

Here’s how our wide-ranging conversation at the Toronto International film Festival went:

WORD: What emotions are you feeling about the premiere tonight?

PERRY HENZELL: I think curiosity, to find out how it will play. On several test screenings we did, there was a kind of stunned reaction (laughs). I don’t know what makes the film so different, but seems to be very different from normal fare. To me that’s a very good thing as I hate most movies right now. I was in Los Angeles last week and there wasn’t a single movie I wanted to see! I remember when I used to rush to New York to see three movies a day. Maybe it’s a generation gap. With this film being so different, it may have a ‘what was that?’ reaction, or people may say ‘thank god, something different.’ I really don’t know! I’m waiting patiently to find out.

SUSAN O’MEARA: I think it will be special. It may end up being the same kind of status as The Harder They Come, though it’s obviously a very different film. I hesitate to say this, but it will be instructive. It’s the personal vision kind of movie that Perry and I know from our youth that people used to make. Perry is that kind of writer and director, and the movie is very much his vision of Jamaica. That is the way it was at that moment. I don’t know what it is now. Perry was just bringing me up to date on the situation in Jamaica now. At that time it was a very real picture.

Perry had the ability to seek out people and get quality from them. The people there are so real, with so much dimension. He’d find these people and we’d film them. A scene I’d forgot was that wonderful woman up in the mountains who had made face cream and was advertising it on the package. I was telling her ‘you don’t need any advertising, it’s all on that little jar.’I remember the words on the label were so wonderful. We met people like that all the way from up in the mountains to coming down to Kingston. There’s that scene with that godawful red earth running into the river, and bam you see the encroachment, the exploitation that was just beginning. And the scene at the end with Carl wheeling and dealing, and the exploitation there, with the resort thing going on. It was just all there, so I find it very pertinent and I think young people will see that and get very excited by it.

W: You could almost make a movie about the making of this movie. Filming it 30 years ago, the financing problems, the lost footage etc.

PH: Well, people have been hooked by that hook, in terms of the story. But I hope we can move on from there to say this is a good film, not that it took 30 years to make.

W: How does the now completed version differ from how it was envisaged at the time?

PH: Well, one of the reasons I couldn’t get money for it was that I was making it as I was going along. Everybody said ‘where is the script?’ I realized that when I did write a script I had to throw away 60 per cent of what I shot To get money, I wrote a script that was a complete disaster (laughs)- because the film was planned to develop organically. So right until 3 weeks ago I was discovering little things that I would change or edit, but it was really made and finished 30 yrs ago. All I had to do to finish was film some inserts. No actors really, just inserts, and it took maybe a week. By the way that totally happened on The Harder They Come. The last shot I made for that was in an editing room in London, the scene where Jimmy Cliff records the song. It was a link shot, with a double, where he puts his hand through his hair. So history repeats itself somehow, and I seem to be going on the same track. Without digital technology I don’t think we could have made the film earlier anyway.The whole personal obsession of Susan’s character with Armageddon and all that stuff means the film is much more relevant now than then. I think the time is right.

W: You must be gratified it is finally out, Carl and Susan?

CARL BRADSHAW: Indeed. This film was Perry going from gut feeling and instinct. The script was practical, but Perry’s way of working is that he has a great mind and a great eye to see inside a character. This is why I’ve been so successful as an actor because he gave me the liberty to express myself-freely. With direction from a written script it’d be hard to conjure that kind of flavouring. You’d be a little more stereotypical, but this way you became real. The style, the way Perry worked, was very valuable for filmmaking at that time. Remember in those days we didn’t have digital or cellphones etc, so for Perry to work in that way, he was miles ahead of his time

The relevance today is right on time. The world now is so unpredictable and confused and so far away from reality and love, so this film will give this new generation a perspective of what life was about, and how great it would be if we followed the conscious part of living. This movie to me will be a revolution as far as lifestyle and tolerance and acceptance go, because religion has messed up the world. Religion in general has taken the world into a doomsday mentality. This film is cultural, it goes across social, cultural and racial lines. It gives you a hope that the present generation can change their ways.

As Susan was telling me earlier, kids today don’t have a clue of what reality or tolerance is. The movie will lead us to rethinking, reawakening, and if providence allows I think this movie will shed some new light on the human family.

PH: I’m sure it will be interesting for you to see it tonight, Carl.

CB: I deliberately did not earlier. Now I’ll be in the point of view of the audience, and it’ll be more collective for me.

PH: I think in the end No Place Like Home may have a wider audience than Harder. The Harder They Come is very set in the ghetto. This one, through Susan’s character, reaches out to a broader audience. I am so bored with the whole business of the tropics as a bunch of beggars, where everybody’s starving to death and no-one has any brains. No Place takes us into a world where the poorest of the poor aren’t begging anybody for anything. They are saying ‘thank you Lord for giving us the best place to live.’ They have a certain level of wisdom or an attitude that is more sophisticated than they’re given credit for.

W: The themes explored are very relevant now, but the film footage can almost be seen as an historic document, a snapshot of a time and place now gone.

PH: Exactly. What we predicted of Negril has happened. These huge new hotels are all along the beach. You go there now and there are an awful lot of people in a bad mood . What’s wrong with them?!

CB: They’re prosperous from a material viewpoint, but the social love and cohesiveness has been drained away. We have become so Americanized in our values, so the tropics now is just a place for sunshine and the beach. The whole soul, the culture, is slipping away from the present generation. Everything now is I want more -of what?

PH: I love Jamaica. When I was a youngster growing up and we were coming into independence we took it absolutely for granted that we were the leaders of the developing tropical world. We assumed that as our right. Now places like Singapore are much more prosperous, and Barbados. We haven’t fulfilled our expectations to say the least, but those can potentially still be realized.

I think in the next few decades development will shift from the North to the South. I’m talking from a Caribbean point of view and I’m looking south not north. The North has blown it . Americans have blown it, Europeans are living under this ghastly bureaucracy that is becoming more oppressive every minute. The Middle East — forget it. China still hasn’t elevated itself to freedom. All these people killing themselves over things they’ve been quarreling about for 2,000 years. Why are we looking North for everything, when we have the whole of Latin America to develop, the whole of Southern Africa. We can link with India which does know something about freedom So why is the world looking North? It’s time for us to have our own plan.

And we have enormous resources. We don’t have deep-seated hatreds, we don’t have real problems of class and colour. Yes, the Indian peoples of Latin America have been held down for 500 years in a most ghastly way, but that is changing, in Chile, Peru, Bolivia. I think the South is coming of age, and that is where my focus is. I’m appalled at these people in the North. We’re seven years into 21st century and it hasn’t started yet! We have to remake the entire world for the 21st century.

W: Jamaica’s place in the world was really boosted by The Harder They Come.

Did that film have more impact than you could have imagined?

PH: I had no idea! I attribute it to two things. Jamaica really is one of the great crossroads of the world culturally. The Caribbean has this incredible mixture of African, Chinese, Indian, European, all mixed up. Secondly, geographically it’s a great crossroads. Also the Jamaican point of view is very unshuttered. Jamaicans go out in the world with a very kind of free mind. They’ve been very successful around the world. They are much better integrated into English life than say the Pakistanis, and, yes, to some extent in Canada. Jamaica is accessible as a crossover culture. The voice of Jamaica is the voice of freedom. We had no idea how lucky we were to be colonized by the British as opposed to the Americans.

We are in the sphere of American influence. In the ‘30s they invaded every country in the Caribbean and Latin America with the Marines. They trained local armies, found the biggest ugliest thug they could, put him in charge and kept him in power for 50 years. The English on the other hand were relatively emancipated about it. They established a parliamentary system and left a judicial system intact, and then said ‘good luck chaps, we’re off.’ We didn’t have to fight our way to freedom, so we’re damn lucky. We should take advantage of that,

W: Music has been a focus of international interest in Jamaica. It’s a great soundtrack on No Place Like Home too.

PH: Yes, and I really hope this album will be as strong as Harder They Come. I love the music on here and I think it’ll go far. Somebody said the other day and I liked the idea, they said ‘this is a feel-good movie.’ They didn’t mean that in a light way. And I think it is kind of a feel good movie. You come out of it feeling kind of warm.

W: The Harder They Come is also screening in the Festival. Shows its longevity, doesn’t it?

PH: Yes it has lasted on and on, and got stronger over the years, which is phenomenal really. Usually, you release a picture, it has its run and then it dies. Harder is being seen by more people now than ever.

W: Carl, you were in The Harder They Come. Did you sense its potential impact?

CB: At that time, no. No-one at all had a notion of where to go. It was just something we had to do as a people. Perry came out from England and the BBC, and he had a gut feeling that something should be done in Jamaica. We were all first-timers. Nobody really had experience. It was my and Jimmy Cliff’s first time ever in front of the camera, and most of the cast were real-life street people. We didn’t even have a thought of where we’d go.

Reggae hadn’t really broken out. We were still with the ska and rock-steady. What The Harder They Come did for Jamaica was take the culture to another level. The film was the vehicle that really give the music its launching pad, and it also gave Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff a career launching pad.

When it hit home for us that something was really happening was at the premiere in Kingston. People lined up from 1 PM for a 7PM premiere. When the Governor-General came, he had a hard time getting in with his entourage! The industrial fence was flattened, and 60 per cent of the audience had lost their shirts getting in!

At that time that was something strange. Our imagination didn’t take us beyond Jamaica. I wasn’t familiar with the international scene. Maybe Perry had a good feel though, but the rest of us did not have an inkling. It took the music to the world, and became a launching pad not just for films and music but for the Jamaican way of life and culture.

It gave Jamaica its edge. Before it was just sports people that were prominent. After this everything Jamaican became bigger. Coffee, bauxite took off, the music. It all started to gravitate to a really cultural Jamaica, and we had a social and religious edge. At the time, Rastafarian culture was backstreet. It was an imprint for seeking more, adapting and wanting to be a part of something.

W: The film created a Jamaican movie industry. Is that in a healthy state now?

CB: Jamaica is looked at as a location for a lot of the major studios. I don’t think we really grasped the value of what we have by making more films. Films are such an expensive business, whereas with music if you have 50,000 dollars you can go make a record. In film you need millions. Our culture is more physical and visual. People put their money in banking, insurance companies, plazas, apartments. To go to a bank with a couple of sheets of paper? That doesn’t work. They want to see their investment physically. Film was the last thing you’d be able to get money for.

PH: Tragically in the last 10 or 15 years interest rates in Jamaica - at one point 60 per cent and now 15-20, they completely wiped out an entire generation of entrepreneurs. if you borrowed money in the 80s or 90s you couldn’t pay it back . An entire generation of ambition was just wiped out

The policy of the government was simple-minded. They were completely obsessed with the exchange rate, which they haven’t been able to control anyway. What is happening is that they paid huge interest rates, and edge fund money etc would come into Jamaica on deposit. So there was a pool of money where they can intervene in the exchange market, but thecost of that is the highest interest rates The richest people in Jamaica are those who have done nothing except put their money on deposit and get the interest. The private sector didn’t have any interest in investing. They could get easy money without taking a risk. That was a tragic mismanagement of the country.

Yes I explored such themes in my novels, like The Power Game, Now I am going back into journalism a bit as a columnist for the Gleaner. I’m hoping to shoot Power Game, and in preparation for that I want to do a series of news documentaries, just to bring me up to speed on the personalities involved and the Caribbean as a whole. To see what the actual negotating position is for small Caribbean countries vis a vis the WTO. Forget the IMF. They are totally discredited and they did unbelievable damage. And the World Bank now, headed by Paul Wolfowitz! (shakes his head in disgust).

W: Have you enjoyed the transition to novelist, or were you forced into it because you couldn’t fund your films?

PH: I’d been running around the world broke for a couple of years without being able to raise the money. At a certain point I thought I knew everyone in the world who might risk a million dollars. I started to become incredibly envious of the painter, the musician, anyone who didn’t have to raise $10,000 a day to work! How lucky can that be, to just go to a canvas or pick up an instrument and keep their creative soul alive. Then I thought, ‘write a novel?’ Why not.’ Which is what I did, and then it took me at least two years to make the transition, to realise that you had to entertain with words, you had nothing else. Once that penny dropped and I came to terms with that, I just love it. I consider I’ve done my best work as a novelist with The Power Game.

I feel that No Place Like Home has fulfilled my ambitions for the screen. When I make Power Game, it will be completely different. Not just a script in place but an entire book!

It will be more driven by plot and conventional in every way, which is needed when you’re doing a series for TV. I’ll shoot on tape, so that’s a different thing again. I love sitting in the bush in Jamaica writing novels! Not like being in some terrible exile from the world of movies.

W: Did The Power Game ruffle feathers there?

PH: Yes - but we do have a strong established tradition of freedom of expression. Nobody has ever said to me ‘you can’t say that.’ If they did, I’d say mind your own business! Up to and including the prime minister. I don’t know of another tropical country with that kind of freedom of expression. Once again, that is something we should protect and take advantage of.

W: What have you worked on since filming No Place Like Home, Susan?

SO’M: I was already retired. I was into the film production side, which is how I met Perry I was producing commercials then. I’d trained for the theatre, did some work but lost the hunger for it. I’ve been out of film world completely for the last 15 years.

W: I know you’ve been very active in Jamaican film, Carl

CB: I just keep working! Looking for work, creating work. We try to keep the tradition alive. There were a couple of movies I produced and acted in, Dancehall Queen and Third World Cop. I did The Lunatic and one called Klash. One called Almost Everything, and with luck there’ll be a new Spike Lee movie with Fred Williamson. I hope I get a part in that one. I’m always looking for new ideas too.

PH: I really think your performance here is just wonderful, Carl, I really do , and I think it will take you in a different direction.

CB: It is all I do. I gave up teaching and I’m not really a hustler by profession (Laughs) I just can’t rely on acting, so I location manage and production manage. I’ll do anything in the business, though acting is my passion.

PH: You are undoubtedly the Jamaican actor, no doubt about it Yes, I will sign him up for The Power Game, a starring role.

W: Finally, Perry, tell us about going to university at McGill in Montreal?

PH: I thoroughly enjoyed my two years there before I dropped out (laughs).