Swimming to Cambodia (2 page)

When, in Woody Allen's film
Stardust Memories,
a group of extra-terrestrials lands in his proximity, Woody hopes to get some answers. He asks, “Shouldn't I stop
making movies and do something that counts, like helping blind people or becoming a missionary or something?” The otherworldly reply: “You want to do mankind a
real
service? Tell funnier jokes.” Humor. The bottom line.

I'm convinced that all meaning is to be found only in reflection.
Swimming to Cambodia
is an attempt at that kind of reflection.

 

 

I would like to thank Peter Wollen for telling Susie Figgis to look me up when she came to New York, and Bob Carrol for giving Susie my phone number once she arrived. My thanks, also, to Roland Joffe, a fine director, and David Puttnam, a courageous producer, for giving me the opportunity to be a part of the incredible experience that became
The Killing Fields
;
to the more than 150 people who were part of that project; and especially to those either directly mentioned by name or referred to in
Swimming to Cambodia
—my appreciation for their indulgence and willingness to be included in this most unlikely by-product of the film. I would also like to give credit and thanks to William Shawcross for his tremendously informative book
Sideshow
(Simon & Schuster, 1979), from which I drew much of my historic material. I am also indebted to Sidney Schanberg and Elizabeth Becker for their personal contributions. I am deeply grateful to Elizabeth LeCompte and all the members of The Wooster Group for their faithful and fruitful occupation of The Performing Garage, the nurturing center from which this work has grown; and Richard Schechner, who first opened that garage door to let me in off the streets.
Thanks, too, to Renée Shafransky for her loving support. Finally, many thanks to TCG publications director Terry Nemeth and Laura Ross, my editor, who had the vision to see what they first heard as a written piece; and Jim Leverett, for his faithful and articulate coverage of my work over the years.

—S.G.
August 1985

I
t was the first day off in a long time, and all of us were trying to get a little rest and relaxation out by the pool at this big, modern hotel that looked something like a prison. If I had to call it anything I would call it a “pleasure prison.” It was the kind of place you might come to on a package tour out of Bangkok. You'd come down on a chartered bus—and you'd probably not wander off the grounds because of the high barbed-wire fence they have to keep you in and the bandits out. And every so often you would hear shotguns going off as the hotel guards fired at rabid dogs down along the beach on the Gulf of Siam.

But if you really wanted to walk on the beach, all you had to learn to do was to pick up a piece of seaweed, shake it in the dog's face and everything would be hunkydory.

So it was our first day off in a long time and there were about 130 of us out by the pool trying to get a little rest and relaxation, and the Thai waiters were running and jumping over hedges to bring us “Kloster! More Kloster!” Everyone was ordering Kloster beer. No one was ordering the Singah because someone had said that Singah, which is exported to the United States, has formaldehyde in it. The waiters were running and jumping over hedges because they couldn't get to us fast enough. They were running and jumping and smiling—not
a silly smile but a profound smile, a deep smile. There was nothing idiotic about it because the Thais have a word,
sanug,
which, loosely translated, means “fun.” And they never do anything that isn't
sanug
—if it isn't
sanug
they won't touch it.

Some say that the Thais are the nicest people that money can buy, because they like to have fun. They know how to have fun and, perhaps due to their very permissive strain of Buddhism, they don't have to suffer for it after they have it.

It was a lovely day and we were all out by the pool and the Sparks—the British electricians were called “the Sparks”—were out there with their Thai wives. They had had the good sense—or bad sense, depending on how you look at it—as soon as they arrived in Bangkok, to go down to Pat Pong and buy up women to travel with them. I was told that each man bought two women so as not to risk falling in love. And there the Sparks were, lying like 250-pound beached whales while their ninety-pound “Thai wives,” in little two-piece bathing suits, walked up and down on them giving them Shiatsu massages as a Thai waiter ran, jumped over the hedge, tripped and fell, hurling his Klosters down to explode on the cement by the pool. And looking up with a great smile he said, “Sorry sir, we just run out of Kloster.”

 

 

Ivan (Devil in My Ear), a South African and head of the second camera unit—and a bit of a Mephistophelian figure—said, “Spalding, there's a party tonight up on the Gulf of Siam. Could I come over and borrow your toenail clippers?”

“Sure.”

“Shall I bring some Thai stick? Do you want to smoke a joint before we go?”

I thought, why not? It's a day off and I haven't smoked since I've been here. Why not give it a try?

 

 

Now, every time I've been in a country where the marijuana is supposed to be really good—Mexico, India, Northern California and now Thailand—I've always felt that I should try it. Maybe this time it would be different. Maybe this time I would be able to sleep, like so many people say they do. Maybe this time I'd have a sense of well-being and feel at one with the world. You see, marijuana tends to unlock my Kundalini in the worst way and all the energy just gets stuck in my lower Chakra. It just gets stuck and spins there like a snake chasing its tail, or a Studebaker stuck in sand.

So I said, “Sure, bring it over.”

Then I thought, maybe I should have waited until I'd spoken with Renée first. Renée was over there visiting me for fourteen days and we planned to go back to New York together as soon as I finished the film. We had rented a summer house together in upstate New York, in Krummville, and Krummville was looking less and less exotic to me the longer I stayed in Thailand. You see, I hadn't had a Perfect Moment yet, and I always like to have one before I leave an exotic place. They're a good way of bringing things to an end. But you can never plan for one. You never know when they're coming. It's sort of like falling in love . . . with yourself.

Also, I was beginning to get this image of myself as a kind of wandering poet-bachelor-mendicant beating
my way down the whole coast of Malaysia, eating magic mushrooms all the way, until I finally reach Bali and evaporate into the sunset in a state of ecstasy. But I wasn't telling Renée that. I was only telling her that I wasn't sure when I would be coming back, and that was enough to enrage her. We fell into a big fight on the way to the party that lasted all the way down to the Gulf of Siam. And there we were, arguing on this fantastic beach where, unlike the Hamptons, there was no boat and a bigger boat, no ship and a bigger ship, no carrot and the carrot and desire and desire. It was just one big beach with no boats. Nothing to buy. Just one big piece of calendar art.

And Renée and I were walking down the beach arguing and I said, “Stop, Renée. Stop with the fighting. Look at this beautiful sunset. Look! Look! I might be able to have a Perfect Moment right now and we could go home.”

But Reńee would have none of it. She's very confrontational and always wants to talk about what is going on in the relationship, not the sunset. So she went off to cry on Therese's shoulder and talk to Julian, and I went to Ivan (Devil in My Ear) who said, “Spalding, don't let her get the upper hand, man. I mean, after all, how many straight, single men your age are there left in New York City anyway? What's she going to do?”

And I said, “Ivan, no, don't say things like that.”

Then Renee and I came out of our respective comers and went back at it for another round, until at last she said, “Listen, I'll give you an ultimatum. Either you marry me or you give me a date when you're coming back.”

I thought for a minute and said, “July 8. I'll be back on July 8.”

 

 

Then it was time for the pleasure. We had fought and made up and it was time for the
sanug
. That's the order in which we do it in our culture. So we went down to the beach with Ivan and sat at the water's edge. By then it was dark and gentle waves were lapping as party sounds drifted in the distance. We were the only ones down on the beach, under the stars, and it was almost too much, too beautiful to bear. Ivan lit the Thai stick and passed it down.

I took three deep tokes and as I held the smoke in, this overwhelming wave of anxiety came over me. I closed my eyes and saw this pile of black and brown shit steaming on the edge of a stainless steel counter. The shit was cold and yet it was steaming, and I somehow knew that it represented all of the negative energy in my mind. I could see a string extending from between my eyes to the shit and I knew that if I pulled that string with my head I could pull all that shit right off the edge of that stainless steel counter. I started to pull and as I was pulling I could see that next to the shit was this pile of bubbly pastel energy floating about two inches off the stainless steel counter. I saw that this pastel energy was connected to the shit through these tendrils that ranged from pastel to shit-brown. It was then I realized that if I pulled the negative energy off the counter I would pull the positive off with it, and I'd be left with nothing but a stainless steel counter, which I was not yet ready for in my life. And at the
moment I realized that, the counter turned into a tunnel I was going down at the speed of the Santa Cruz roller coaster. But the tunnel was not black this time so I knew I was getting healthier. It was gold-leaf, and the leaves were spreading like palm leaves or like the iris of a big eye as I picked up speed and headed for the center of the Earth, until I was going so fast that I couldn't stand it anymore and I pulled back, opened my eyes, grabbed the beach and let out a great WHOOOA. . . .

 

 

When I opened my eyes Ivan was there but Renée was gone. She must have wandered off down the beach. I had no real sense of where I was. It all looked and felt like a demented Wallace Stevens poem with food poisoning, and in the distance I saw what looked like a group of Thai girl scouts dancing around a campfire. I thought that if I could get in that circle and hold hands with them I would be whole again. I would be cured and back in real time. I got up and tried to walk toward the fire and found that I was falling down like a Bowery bum, like a drunken teenager or the fraternity brother I'd never been. And all of a sudden I realized I was going to be very sick and I crawled off like a Thai dog to a far corner of the beach.

Up it came, and each time the vomit hit the ground I covered it over with sand, and the sand I covered it with turned into a black gauze death mask that flew up and covered my face. And so it went; vomit-cover-mask, vomit-cover-mask, until I looked down to see that I had built an entire corpse in the sand and it was
my corpse. It was my own decomposing corpse staring back at me, and I could see the teeth pushing through the rotting lips and the ribs coming through the decomposing flesh of my side. I looked up to see Renée standing over me saying, “What's wrong, Hon?”

“I'm dying, that's what's wrong.”

“Oh. I thought you were having a good time building sand castles.”

She had been looking on at a distance.

Two men, I don't know who, carried me out of there, one arm over one shoulder and one arm over another, like a drunken, crucified sailor. And I was very upset because the following day I was scheduled to do my big scene in the movie.

 

 

In February of '83 I met this incredible British documentary filmmaker, Roland Joffe. He was very intense—a combination of Zorro, Jesus and Rasputin—body of Zorro, heart of Jesus and eyes of Rasputin. Roland had come to New York to cast a new film called
The Killing Fields,
produced by David Puttnam, and I was called in for an audition. Peter Wollen had seen one of my monologues and told Susie Figgis, who was helping cast the film, about me and she had set up an audition with Roland.

It was unlike any audition I'd ever been to before. Roland didn't have me read; he didn't even ask me any questions. He did all of the talking while I listened, and he talked and talked. He talked for about forty minutes nonstop. Roland told me the story of
The Killing Fields.

It was the story of a
New York Times
reporter named Sidney Schanberg and his sidekick, Dith Pran, who was a Cambodian photographer. It was about how they covered and reported the story of the Americans' secret bombing of Cambodia, and how Schanberg and Pran stayed behind in Phnom Penh after the American embassy was evacuated because they wanted to cover what happened when the Khmer Rouge marched in. They wanted to find out if there was going to be a “bloodbath” or not, so they fled to the French embassy to hide out, and when the Khmer Rouge marched into the city they went directly to the French embassy and demanded, “All Cambodians out or everyone dies.” So Dith Pran had to be expelled to almost certain death because the Khmer Rouge were killing any Cambodian who was connected with Americans. Pran was given up for dead by most, but Schanberg never gave up hope and kept searching until, after three years, he located Pran in a Thai refugee camp. He brought him to New York City where Pran now works for The
New York Times.

“Great story,” I said. “Sounds fantastic. Sounds like someone made it up. I want to tell you that I would love to play any role in this film, just to be in it. But I must also confess that I know nothing about what you've told me. I'm not very political—in fact, I've never even voted in my life.”