Making Movie Magic by John Richardson

Author:John Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

The second unit returned to Iguazu after Christmas, with a few of my guys in tow including a young Chris Corbould – on one of his first pictures. The water levels were higher than last time and I was very concerned about how we were going to get this heavy boat where it needed to be in what were fairly choppy conditions.

I took a couple of riggers and the army with us – I forgot to mention we’d been assigned our own squad from the local base. One of my guys, Johnny Morris, and I tied ourselves off on a rock and then took turns to belay each other – walking and swimming from rock to rock. Occasionally we would disappear under the water because we could never really tell how deep it was and every so often there’d be a deep hole we would fall into.

The idea was to get into position, and then pull the boat out on the ropes we’d been attached to. Johnny and I were tethered and got a little way out but saw the army guys were really terrified and getting very tired. I told the production office I didn’t want to take them out again, as we were being paid and had the choice of what we did whereas they were told what to do – and that wasn’t fair in such a precarious situation. I was told not to worry about them but fortunately Bill Cartlidge and Cubby Broccoli in Paris agreed with me and we did not use them again.

I’m not kidding when I say it took almost seven hours for Johnny and I to belay ourselves out to a central rock – there were no tea breaks either – pulling the boat behind us. We got it into position but in looking downstream I could see a series of rocks running the width of the river and I thought the boat might get jammed on them. Sure enough, when the time came and cameras turned over, we let the boat go into the current, it went downriver and promptly wedged itself on a rock, right on the edge of the falls.

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