WHAT TO EXPECT
WHERE TO STAY WHERE TO DINE PHOTO TOUR
By ELLEN VANSTONE
Saturday, April 23, 2005 Page
Special to The Globe and Mail
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC -- The bottom has fallen out of the banana industry, the power-tripping
prime minister refuses to set a date for a coming-overdue election and a main tourist
attraction called the Boiling Lake has mysteriously stopped boiling.
But the really big question in Dominica these days is, "Where's Johnny?"
Disney is producing two sequels to its 2003 hit Pirates of the Caribbean, and using
nine locations on this Caribbean island in the back-to-back shoots, which means Johnny
Depp, as the sexiest, quirkiest, most adorable rum-sodden pirate who ever brandished
a cutlass, is going to be in town for several weeks. The built-up has been intense.
I was in Dominica two weeks ago, sent by The Walrus magazine to interview politicians,
business people, locals and expats for a serious-minded culture-travel story, but
there was no avoiding the Johnny factor. The first clue was a collection of grotesque
plastic huts on the side of the road south of the capital, Roseau. I asked about
them at the hotel: Was it a new kind of prefab, forest-preservation, cheap-housing
alternative for a population that suffered a 23-percent unemployment rate and of
whom 30 per cent lived below the poverty line? Nope. "Pirates" was the
answer. The huts were props.
The next clue was an overheard conversation at dinner. The waitress asked a table
of boisterous American men, "How was your day?" and the answer was "Long!"
This is not the response of tourists who have been drinking rum, watching whales,
snorkeling or napping in the sun. Sure enough, they went on to discuss what they'd
been building all day: gangplanks. Not that tourists were exempt from the Pirate
fever. I met several Californians on an expedition to Titou Gorge, where we all hiked
up to a mountain pool, swam into a dark cave and ended up in a spookily lit, underground
gorge. Beside the waterfall that crashed through a gash in the rock ceiling, our
guide mentioned that Johnny Depp would be filming -- and swimming just like us! --
in this very gorge. One woman gasped and almost went under. I wondered how the filmmakers
would black out a faint patch of graffiti on the wall. She wondered if she should
scratch her own message: "Hey Johnny for a good time call Lynnie in Fresno.
. . ."
And so it went: A Peace Corps worker, Bobi from New Mexico, who weighed about 90
pounds and had the colouring of Cate Blanchett, told me she had auditioned to be
a pirate extra (piratescasting.com): "We're all a little obsessed with it."
And after a long interview with Dominica's éminence grise, author, historian
and former politician Lennox Honychurch, who earned his PhD from Oxford with a thesis
titled Carib to Creole: Contact and Culture Exchange -- well, Mr. Honychurch was
also quite comfortable in revealing that he wouldn't mind a glimpse of the famed
Mr. Depp either.
It's easy to see why Disney chose Dominca, despite its relative rusticity.
There are few major roads, no major franchises and a small airport that shuts down
at night. The island -- population 70,000; 750 square kilometres -- consists mainly
of mountains covered in rainforest. Miles of unspoiled shoreline look exactly as
they did hundreds, probably thousands, of years ago.
For Pirates 2 and 3, Disney is employing some 250 locals in full- or part-time capacities,
has brought in 400 of its own personnel, and is pouring U.S. dollars into the economy:
filling up the hotels, consuming gallons of Dominica's pure spring water (the island
has 365 rivers), building roads, a bridge at another set, a replica of a 16th-century
church and half a ship (CGI will fill in the blanks). The shoot is not without controversy.
The entire production is banned from the Carib Territory, a reserve on the northeast
coast and home to 3,000 Caribs -- the last remaining aboriginals in the Caribbean
-- because the script depicts them as cannibals. It's a touchy topic. One hates to
sacrifice the comic potential of seeing Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow (already tenderized
by years of rum consumption) tossed, at least temporarily, into a cauldron, but in
fact there is zero evidence that Caribs ever ate other humans.
There is, however, ample evidence that the cannibalism rap was cooked up by invading
Spaniards in the 1500s. After documenting the sight of human bones that Caribs kept
out of respect for ancestors (much the same way we might keep Granny's ashes on the
mantel), and then being dismayed when they refused to be peacefully enslaved, the
Spaniards exaggerated the savagery of the Caribs in their reports home, and were
subsequently rewarded with reinforcements and a clear mandate to exterminate the
natives. "We have been stigmatized throughout history, in every history book,"
says Carib Chief Charles Williams, who also runs the Carib Territory Guesthouse where
I'm staying for part of my trip. At 55, he is quick-moving and laughs a lot with
his wife, Margaret, and the other guests, but his expression turns solemn when Disney
comes up. "The world now knows the truth of what the Europeans did," he
says, and for Disney to go ahead and exploit the false cannibalism story despite
their protests "is a big slap in our face. It is not respecting the moral and
ethical rights of the people."
At the same time, he is aware that many Caribs have signed on as extras. "Each
individual has the right to make their own decision," he says carefully. The
problem, he says, is the extreme poverty of most Caribs, who are "falling prey
to a few dollars rather than standing up for the integrity of our people." The
story's not over yet. Williams is still giving interviews almost daily to reporters
from neighbouring Martinique, the United States, France, Britain and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, over the past week, the news in Dominica is picking up. The prime minister
has called the election for May. There are signs that the volcanically heated Boiling
Lake is starting to boil again. And my contacts in Dominica report that Johnny has
landed -- that is, probably or, well, maybe. "I pretty sure he's here,"
said one Dominican who lives on the west coast near Roseau, and who preferred not
to go on the record with her views of Johnny and what she'd like to do if she met
him. "There's a lot going on. I've been hearing helicopters and there are transport
trucks on the roads." Another resident, conservationist Rowan Byrne, says, "No,
I haven't seen Johnny, but I've met his stunt double, and I've seen Keira Knightley,
and I stood next to Orlando Bloom in the bar the other night." Byrne is an unreliable
scout, however. He's more interested in browbeating members of the film crew into
helping him protect endangered sea turtles whose nesting season coincides with the
shoot. "They called me Saturday to report a leatherback nesting," he says.
"I never would have known. They're very, very helpful. It's helping my research
immensely." He's got more Disney cast and crew coming out to help him look for
turtles this weekend. From the other side of the island, I receive an e-mail report
from Mardi Dauphinée, a Calgary native who is working on a Foreign Affairs-sponsored
youth project in the Carib Territory: "No sightings of our dear Johnny yet!
But one of our staff who is working as camera crew has indeed met him," she
writes. "The film crew's presence is definitely felt all over the island, everyone's
talking about it." She ends by promising that "as soon as we see/meet or
smell Mr. Depp we'll be sure to give you all the details of the encounter!!!! Send
us your positive vibes in the endeavour Ellen!"
Will do.