Not on Our Watch (3 page)

2

Two Paths Out of Apathy

Don’s Path

March 2004,

Johannesburg, South Africa

I’m standing at the South African Airlines ticket counter in the Jo-burg airport, wife and children in tow.

‘DC!’

I spin around and come face-to-face with Desmond Dube, his wife and son trailing along behind. ‘Ah
hah
,’ says I.

‘Told you.’

I’ve known Desmond now all of three and a half months—the amount of time it took to shoot the film
Hotel Rwanda
in South Africa and Rwanda—but we’ve made fast friends. When we first met, I had the earphones of my iPod jammed into my ears, eyes closed, listening to Babatunde Olatunji and stressing about my character, Paul Rusesabagina. Des tapped me on the shoulder.

‘What’s that?’

‘An iPod.’

‘I-
what
?’

The iPod was a rarity in Johannesburg at that time, and Desmond had never seen one before. I gave him a brief tutorial and let him hold on to it for a minute while I rehearsed. By the time my scene was through, Desmond was asking me how and where he could get an iPod—immediately. I checked around and found that there were indeed a small number available in town but at almost twice the price as in the US. The next day, I reported the news and offered to arrange to have a much cheaper iPod sent over from the States as my gift to him, but Desmond wouldn’t hear of it and insisted on paying whatever the cost. Desmond Dube was a big star in Jo-burg; his local television show had been top-rated for several years. He was a man proud and able to pay for what he wanted when he wanted it. Dig it. And anyway I could still get the thing full price and discount it to whatever sum I thought reasonable, ‘gifting’ the difference to him without his knowledge.
Pride—check, altruism—check
, we struck a deal.

News of iPod trafficking spread across the set, and in two weeks’ time I had at least eight requests from local cast and crew wanting to get in on the cut-rate US hookup. Everybody insisted on being fair, paying the full US price and not a dollar less, which after FedEx, customs fees, tax, and tax on customs—all overages I obviously absorbed ...well, I actually hadn’t planned on that much altruism. I called the local shops to see if I could just get the iPods at the exorbitant rate they were offering, now cheaper than having them shipped from home, but wouldn’t you know it, they’d all sold out, no shipments arriving for weeks. Great. So be it. Sure, I’d already dropped a load on a thousand gifts for the cast and crew, but Tom Cruise had given motorcycles to people he worked with on films, right? Didn’t Keanu pay for some crew member’s kidney operation or something? Wasn’t I a Big Baller? Least I could do was eat the extra couple of grand for my newfound African homeys. My only caveat was that I get the cash from the folks in US dollars. My wife and I had already bought every conceivable artefact, mask, and fair item with the rand (South African currency) I had amassed with my per diem (a stipend paid to performers on productions that are on location out of town), and I wasn’t looking to collect more SA currency only to get killed on the exchange. Everybody understood and agreed, so I went ahead and put the follow-up orders in, even though a recurring theme had accompanied each request: ‘You must understand, it’s very difficult converting this rand into US dollars.’

Not the most encouraging news, but still I was sympathetic.

Working a six-day week with only Sundays off made banking near impossible. Even when they were open, converting cash in South African banks as a black South African can be
tricky
to say the least. Even the connections my friends knew of on the so-called ‘black market’—their term, not mine—took Sundays off. However, somehow, everybody managed to get their money right and into my hands before I headed home—except for Desmond.

Week after week, Des trickled dough to me—a fiver here, ten spot there—always with the assurance that the final oowap was on its way and not to worry. I suggested more than once that he just let the iPod be my gift to him and let the money slide, but he rebuffed me every time, once saying, ‘You think I need the charity?’

Now, standing at that ticket counter looking at seating with visions of the LA hustle and bustle crowding in, I had all but forgotten about it. But sure enough, Desmond strode in at the wire grinning like the cat that ate the cassava.

‘Ah
hah
,’ says I.

‘Told you,’ says he, throwing it back to me.

I could make out the familiar faded green of US currency sticking out of both sides of his fist. Yet even with my less than perfect vision, I could clearly see that it was light. With no accompanying look of apology or regret, Desmond pressed the $50 into my hand. ‘Get you the rest when you come back.’

The wink he gave me was my cue to smile, so I did. I hoped he was right. I said goodbye to Des’s wife and baby as he said goodbye to mine, and one hour later, Cheadle and company were headed to California.

Then somewhere over the ocean, it happened: déjà vu—not the one that hits you when somebody says something familiar to you, but a familiar
feeling
of the moment sidled up. Unease. This feeling I had come to recognise over the years. Like surviving the temporary pain in your stomach, paying you back for that burrito you ate at the taco stand, it was one I’d also become accustomed to breathing through and riding out. But this time was different. This feeling came out of the blue and the breathing wasn’t working. This one was telling me that I had unfinished business in Africa, and it wasn’t the $150 between friends.

Autumn 2004

Los Angeles and Toronto, Canada

This autumn in LA followed hotly on the heels of
Ocean’s Twelve.
My family and I travelled to five countries in four months, and fun as it was, we were all still looking forward to returning to our brand-new-ish, dream–cum–money pit, nightmare–cum–pseudo dream house in the canyon. School was right around the corner, hard apples were in season, and all in all, autumn in LA was good. But autumn was about to trip me up, placing me front and centre on things I had only played at a few short months ago.

Earlier that summer, while we were still shooting in Italy,
Hotel Rwanda
director Terry George brought over a rough cut of the film and screened it for a few of us. He also brought along Paul Rusesabagina, who, unfortunately for me, sat beside me in the darkened theatre. I’ve never been more nervous in my life. Every sound and gesture I made on that screen seemed either too big, too small, or just too
something
with me being in such close proximity to the man who actually did the things I was acting. It was very difficult watching the film with one eye while trying to gauge the reactions of the very stoic figure on my right at the same time. At some point I just gave up and forced myself to focus on the movie. (Actually, first I gave up looking at the movie and turned sideways in my seat to look directly at Paul, felt stupid,
then
turned forward and focused on the film.) No matter what I say at the press junkets, I am the harshest critic of any film I am in, especially one in which I’m the lead, so even without Paul sitting right there next to me the experience would have been painful.

Two hours later the lights came up and no one was talking. Now, there are many different types of ‘silence’, but the two most common following the screening of a rough cut are the one of awkward embarrassment as people try to make it to the door or the kind when people don’t yet want to speak for fear of trivialising the moment with some insipid comment that attempts to sum it all up. When Paul reached over and gently squeezed my arm, I allowed myself to believe the silence was the good one. But when I saw Scott Caan (tough-as-nails actor, and son of James Caan) sniffling into his sleeve, I knew the film had struck a chord.

Days removed, I found myself playing the movie over and over in my head, as much for its content as for the fact that we had done it at all. Terry had been trying to hustle interest and money for the film for three years before finally devising the spider web of financing with Alex Ho (producer) that got us into production—and even then only because Alex personally bank rolled our first day of shooting to keep us afloat. We fought an uphill battle against weather, the extras rioting (and rightly so), the payroll being stolen
twice
, and the normal things that plague all films with similar budgets shooting in foreign lands on tight schedules. But we knew we had a strong story to tell and at the very least could ‘get out of the road and just tell it,’ as Terry often put it.

There were and are thousands of stories in Africa, from every imaginable walk of life, and unimaginable as well. Our story was about one man and his desire to save his family and the greater family of man as best he could—that much was surely true and came clearly through. But would it pass muster out in the world? Would anyone even care to hear about it? If the response to the Rwanda genocide itself was any indication of how the film would be received, we had just made the most expensive home movie on the planet.

Paul, Terry, and I sit outside a little pub on the sidewalk drinking beers and spinning winter scenarios. Paul looks past Terry to me. ‘So, Don, what do you think about the Oscars?’

‘The Oscars. What do you mean?’

‘Will we be there?’

‘Oh, man, I don’t know.’

Terry coming in now: ‘Yeah, hold on there, Paul. First we gotta get people to see it. Africa movies ain’t exactly ... you know ...’

I knew. ‘Yep.’

Paul, shaking his head. ‘No. People will see this.’

I changed the subject to foreign beers, putting the Oscar talk to bed for the time being. It was enough for me that we had achieved at least our first goal—to tell the story. Award recognition was far from my thoughts; I agreed with Terry that we faced an uphill battle just getting butts in the seats. I have always been a cynic when it comes to those kinds of accolades anyway, seeing them as a kind of dessert that’s nice to have but not at all necessary after a satisfying meal. Little did I know how important that kind of recognition can be for the life of the film. For us, in fact, the Oscar nominations would become life support.

I got the call from Terry sometime in August confirming that our film had indeed been accepted into the Toronto International Film Festival, so I needed to pack a bag. This was great news for us. This is a major festival for ‘serious’ films like ours as well as being a serious marketplace to hawk your film and, for us, find foreign distribution as well. The life of the film can often be decided here, and we were all feeling the joy and the pressure.

School was just starting back up for our daughters, with thousands of miles of travel not yet out of their little bodies. We were very lucky this year; putting them in school during the filming in Africa had worked out just as good as the sisters travelling around with us during
Ocean’s Twelve.
But they would sit out Toronto with Mom, even if it wasn’t for another two weeks yet.

Bridgid and I fell asleep with the lights on talking all that night about Africa and the movie we’d made. Life was good.

September in Toronto was a quickening for me, as I had two films at the festival, with
Crash
premiering there as well.
Hotel Rwanda
was one of several Africa-themed films there that year—one of two about Rwanda. Paul Rusesabagina and his wife, Tatiana, were scheduled to attend, and you could cut the hype with a knife. Press from around the world had assembled for this event, and I felt the pessimist in me staking claim to my ego, sweating my credibility quotient once again being in such close proximity to the real McCoy. I had earlier considered ‘doing away’ with Paul—not harming him, mind you, but offering him money to go MIA until after the screening, so as not to court comparison. But I punked out, hesitated, and now the film was about to unspool in front of a packed house. Damn my civility. Whatever fate awaited me served me right.

I headed off in the limo to the screening with Sophie Okonedo, who played Tatiana in the film, her face on high animation, talking a mile a minute. I was thankful for the banter, which was calming me down. The experience of filming the movie had thrown us together, both of us feeling the weight of what we’d taken on, praying we’d come out the other side worthy of the task. Tonight, however, Sophie wasn’t worried. She was reminding me of the night she, Chiwetel Ejiofor (from
Dirty Pretty Things
and with whom I would later work), and one of his friends were roaming around Soweto, South Africa.

They had just left a party and begun wandering aimlessly around the streets, which can be a crazy thing to do in SA, or even LA for that matter. Sophie began to hear faraway singing, and the three followed her ears through the labyrinthine neighbourhood to a little house where nearly a hundred souls were gathered in the small front yard, singing praises to the Lord. Sophie and company had walked up to the fence to get a closer listen, when they were spotted and immediately ushered in as if they had been expected. Folks began pulling them along through the crowd, telling them, ‘She’s back in the back.’ One man took over, guiding them through the people and telling them, like someone out of a fable, that the ‘old woman’ had told the singers gathered there to expect the company of three strangers and to welcome them in once they’d arrived. This was the moment when those who are thoughtful would look to reason, but these were three artists, so curiosity trumped caution and they waded deeper into the house, finding an elderly woman who gestured to them to come close. She sat them down and told them that earlier that night she’d had a vision of strangers coming to visit and that they were a good omen for her ‘people’—practitioners of a sect of Judaism. The woman questioned them for a short period of time, and after she was convinced of their purity of purpose, she told them to follow her outside. The large group surrounded the three and resumed singing, but a different tune and tempo now. Though Sophie and her friends didn’t know the language of the song, they felt the singers’ intent (the pail of water that was thrown in their faces serving as punctuation): they were being blessed. They laughed and smiled their wet, blessed selves all the way home, as well they should have—God is good. This hadn’t been a polite sprinkle-of-holy-water blessing; it was a bucketful of safety that would eventually get us through all the adversity that was to come during the filming of this movie, in Sophie’s opinion. Now, she said, it was the spirits of Rwanda that were giving us permission to testify, or maybe even demanding we do. We were protected and supported, she assured me, by their grace. Talk like this from Sophie is what brought me to the theatre feeling that we might be all right after all.