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Saturday, June 18th, 1983.

Hua Hin, Gulf of Siam, Thailand.

It was the first day off in a long time,

and about 130 of us were trying to get a little rest and relaxation,

out by this pool at this very modern hotel

that looks something like a, a very modern prison.

Something like the prisons people or private prisons people

investing in here in the United States instead of hotels.

Something like a pleasure prison.

A kind of place that, say if you were taking a trip to Bangkok

and you took a side trip down to Hua Hin,

you might come and stay at this hotel,

but you probably wouldn't go off the grounds

because of the high barbed wire fence around the hotel to keep you in and the bandits out.

You probably wouldn't even go down to the Gulf of Siam

because of the dogs, some of them rabid,

that tend to intimidate you and drive you up against a wall

until you learn to pick up a piece of seaweed,

shake it in their face, and everything is hunky-dory.

And it was the first day off in a long time,

and the Thai waiters are running and smiling

and bringing us more Kloster, Kloster, Kloster beer.

Everyone is ordering the Kloster.

No one is drinking the local beer,

which is exported to the United States

because they say it has formaldehyde in it.

And the Thai waiters are running and jumping and smiling,

and they can't get to us fast enough,

and there's a saying that says the Thais are the nicest people money can buy.

And it's not a silly smile.

It's a deep smile because they have a philosophy, sanuk.

Sanuk, loosely translated, means fun, pleasure.

And they don't do anything if it isn't sanuk.

And they ask you first, and if it isn't sanuk,

they won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

Also, another idea that may have to do with a rather radical Thai Buddhism,

after they have the sanuk, they don't have to suffer for it afterwards.

And it was the first day off in a long time,

and some of the British crew had the good sense or bad sense,

depending on how you look at it, to buy women

as soon as they arrived in Bangkok.

I heard each man bought two

so he wouldn't risk falling in love when it came time to leave.

And there the crew were like these 250-pound beached whales

out by the swimming pool just lying there

with these skivvy little chickadees,

90-pound in from the country in two-piece bathing suits,

walking up and down in them, giving them shiatsu.

And it was the first day off in a long time,

and the Thai waiter is running to jump over hedges

to bring us more Kloster beer.

And all of a sudden, the waiter trips, falls.

The Kloster beers fall and explode on the cement by the pool.

And the waiter looks up with a great smile and says,

Sorry, sir, we've just run out of Kloster.

And Ivan, devil in my ear, Ivan Strasburg,

head of the second camera unit, a bit of a Mephistophene figure,

gray beard, handsome man, South African,

comes up to me and says,

Spalding man, hey, there's a party tonight up at the Gulf of Siam.

One of the workers' mothers got a summer house up there.

Hey, could I borrow your toenail clippers, man?

Sure. Come on over.

And do you want to smoke a Thai stick, hey?

Should I bring some marijuana, man?

Sure. Why not?

I mean, it's a party after all.

I hadn't smoked any marijuana since I've been...

Look, every time I am in a country

where the marijuana is supposed to be so good, you know,

India, Mexico, Northern California, now Thailand,

I always feel that I should try it, you know.

Maybe this time it would be different.

Maybe this time I would experience a sense of well-being

like everyone says they do, you know,

a sense of rest and relaxation, be able to sleep even.

You see, it tends to unlock my Kundalini in the worst way.

It gets stuck there in my lower chakra there like a snake,

like a fist, like a snake chasing its tail,

like a Studebaker stuck in sand.

Maybe I'll give it a try this time.

I thought, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait a minute.

I better speak with Renee first before I do it.

Renee, my girlfriend, was over there visiting me for 14 days,

and I had made a promise, a commitment, you see,

is to return, as soon as the film was over,

to return to her because we had rented a cabin

for the summer in upstate New York, in Krumville, New York,

you know, K-R-U-M-V-I-L-L-E.

And let me tell you, Krumville, New York,

was looking less and less interesting to me

the longer I was in Thailand, you see.

The other thing was that I hadn't had a perfect moment yet.

And it's very important for me to have perfect moments

in exotic countries like that, you know.

I always like to have to have them

because it gives you a good sense of closure, you know,

kind of lets you know when it's time to go home.

And you never know when you're going to have a perfect moment.

I mean, the best had alone,

and you never know when you're going to have one.

Look, I had a vision of myself by now

as a kind of wandering bachelor mendicant poet,

wandering all the way down the beaches of Malaysia,

eating magic mushrooms all the way as I went

until I reached Bali, evaporating in a state of ecstasy in the sunset.

But I wasn't telling Renee that.

But she could see that my will or what was left of it

was beginning to vacillate,

and we fell into a fight on the way to the party

at the Gulf of Siam, and we were fighting all the way,

and we got there to the Gulf of Siam,

and it was exquisite, you know, unlike the Hamptons

where you have a boat and a bigger boat

and then a ship and a bigger ship,

and desire and a carrot in a carrot in a carrot

and desire and desire and desire and desire.

There was nothing to buy out there in the Gulf of Siam.

I mean, it was like one big piece of calendar art.

I just said, look, look, look, Renee,

look at this beautiful sunset.

Please stop with the arguing.

I might be able to have a perfect moment right now

and we could go home together.

But she was very confrontational.

She always wanted to talk about what was going on

in the moment in the relationship,

not about perfect moments, what was going on,

and we fell into a fight and began,

she began crying, and we were fighting,

and we went back to our separate corners.

Renee went to Julian Sands, who was consoling her.

She was crying on his shoulder.

I went to Ivan in my corner, devil in my ear,

Ivan Strasburg, who said, Spalding, man,

hey don't let her get the upper hand in this argument.

I mean, after all, what's she going to do, man?

How many straight single men your age

are there left in New York City anyway?

I said, Ivan.

No.

And boom, bow,

we went back at it again from our corners

and began to clash, and Renee said,

all right, I'll give you an ultimatum.

Either you give me a date when you're coming home

or you marry me.

I said, all right.

July 8th.

I'll be home by July 8th, and now it was time to make up.

Now it was time to have the pleasure

because in our culture, first you suffer,

then you have the sinuk, that's the order of it.

So now it was time to have the pleasure,

and we went down by the Gulf of Siam,

and it was dark, and the party sounds were in the distance,

and the waves were lightly lapping,

and there we sat, Ivan, Renee, and I,

and Ivan lit that Thai stick

and passed it down.

I had no idea how strong it was. I took a few mild tokes.

And closing my eyes,

this overwhelming wave

of anxiety came over me.

And with my eyes closed,

I could see this pile of black and brown shit

steaming on the edge of a stainless steel counter,

and I knew that shit represented

all the negative energy in my mind.

And I could see a string going from my third eye

to that shit,

and I knew all I had to do was simply pull my head

and have done with it, pull all that negative shit

off the edge of the counter,

and as I was pulling, I saw beside it

a bubbling pile of pastel energy

that was floating and connected from tendrils

that went from pastel to shit brown,

and I realized the pastel energy

represented all the positive energy in my mind,

and that if I pulled the negative off the counter,

I would pull the positive with it, and I'd be left

with nothing but a stainless steel counter.

And all of the sudden the counter

turned into a tunnel that I was going down

at the speed of the Santa Cruz rollercoaster,

right toward the center of the earth.

I knew I was getting healthier this time.

The tunnel wasn't black, it was gold leaf.

And the gold leaf departing like an iris.

Still I couldn't stand the speed of it any longer,

and grab the beach and let out with a great,

ugh, oh, oh, huh, leaving that for Ivan to interpret.

I had no idea where I was.

Maybe in Southeast Asia.

I didn't know ratty palm trees in the different distance.

I mean, it felt like I was in a demented

Wallace Stevens poem with food poisoning.

Renee, I had no idea where Renee was.

Maybe going back to Krumville, maybe for a walk.

I saw in the distance what looked like

Thai Girl Scouts dancing around a bonfire.

Gals holding hands, not an hallucination.

I had the clear sense that if I got in that circle

and held hands with them, I would be healed.

I would be whole.

I would be back in time again.

And I got up and I began to stagger like a Bowery bum,

like a drunken teenager, like a fraternity brother

I've never been before in my life.

And all of a sudden I realized

I was gonna be very sick.

And I pulled off into a far corner of the beach

and up it came like a wretched Thai dog.

Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh.

And as the vomit came up, I covered it over with sand.

And the sand turned into a black gauze death mask

that flew up and covered my face.

So it'd be vomit, cover, sand, mask.

Vomit, cover, sand, mask.

Vomit, cover, sand, mask.

Until I looked down and saw that I'd built

my entire corpse out of sand.

And my face was staring back at me

and my teeth were cutting through the rotting lips

and my ribs were coming through

the decomposing flesh of my side.

And Renee was standing over me going,

what's wrong, hon?

I said, I'm dying, that's what's wrong.

She said, oh gee, all this time I thought

you were having a good time building sand castles.

She was at a distance.

They carried me out in that drunken classic

Jesus sailor pose.

One arm over one man, one over the other,

feet dragging.

And I was mortified because the following day

I was supposed to do my big scene in the movie.

What pisses me off is that this country

has a lot of faults and a lot of strengths

and we have done nothing but play to the faults.

I'm telling you, Sid, I will be damn glad

to get out of here.

This thing is dragged on too long

for it to end in all sweetness and light.

After what the Khmer Rouge have been through,

I don't think they're going to be exactly

affectionate toward Westerners.

In February of 1983, I met this incredible

British documentary filmmaker, Roland Joffe.

Very intense man.

A combination of Zorro, Jesus, and Rasputin.

Body of Zorro, heart of Jesus, eyes of Rasputin.

And he'd been sent over by David Putnam,

who was producing a film called The Killing Fields,

and he'd sent over too cast for actors.

And he was seeing people and he was burning.

He was doing all the talking.

I was listening for 45 minutes.

He talked, he burned with his story.

I listened.

45 minutes he told me about the story of the film.

It was about a New York Times reporter, Sydney Schanberg,

who was covering the American secret bombing

of Cambodia for the New York Times,

and his sidekick, Dith Pran, a Cambodian photographer,

and how they were curious to see what would happen

when the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh,

and how after the American Embassy was evacuated

and Dith Pran sent his wife and children out

with the American evacuation,

Sydney Schanberg and Dith Pran fled to the French Embassy

to hide out.

And the Khmer Rouge came in and said,

all Cambodians out of the French Embassy

or everyone dies.

And they sent Dith Pran out to his certain death.

The only one that didn't give up hope

was searching with Sydney Schanberg.

And he searched for years until he located Dith Pran

in a Thai refugee camp.

And now Dith Pran is working for the New York Times.

I said, wow.

That's an incredible story.

It really, it's so hopeful.

It sounds like someone made it up.

I'm going to tell you right now,

I would do anything to be in your film.

I don't even know what roles you're looking for,

but I want to be really straight with you.

I'm not very political.

I don't know anything about secret bombing.

And in fact, I've never voted before in my life.

And Roland says, perfect.

We're looking for the American Ambassador's aid.

But I can't promise you anything.

I have to go out to the coast to cast out there.

We have to see how the whole puzzle shapes together.

I'll be back in the city in three months time.

We'll chat again then.

And I went out and I thought, you know,

I want this, I want to be involved in this project

more than any other project

I've almost been involved in.

But what can I do?

I'm going to tell you,

part of why I gave up professional acting

was I got so tired of waiting

for the big indifferent machine

to make up its so-called mind.

I wanted to have some influence over my own destiny,

my own life, you know?

So I wanted to be in this film.

I thought, what can I do to influence?

I mean, the first thing that occurred to me was prayer.

And I thought, mmm, it's balding.

It's been so long.

So the next thing that came to me

was that old rational voice that we all know so well.

Well, if I get it, I get it.

If I don't, I'll do something else.

After all, I can still see and walk.

And as my mother always said,

think of the starving Koreans, right?

So I was trying to think of the starving Koreans,

but my pre-conscious irrational voice

was not behaving so well.

It set up this kind of ritualized magical thinking.

I mean, it started innocently enough.

I literally could not go out of my apartment

until I turned my little KLH radio off

on a positive word.

Now it's there all morning some days.

The stock market is rising.

I could go out.

Consider moving Marines to safer positions.

I could go out.

Or you may go to a doctor who belongs to the AMA,

but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to the best.

I could go out.

And as I went out,

I found that I was turning the doorknob three times.

Threes became a crucial, very important magical number.

I was going one, two, three, one, two, three,

one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three,

one, two, three, one, two,

and knocking on wood when I could find wood.

Find wood, six sets of nine and six and three and nine

snapping on my way to the supermarket to buy soup.

Six sets of nine, nine times.

Every third can was fine.

The first two cans of soup had botulism, you see,

or cyanide.

And I thought, spalding,

you're going to end up in the insane asylum

before you get the role in the film.

And it was around about the time

that the little king took over.

I don't know if you know him, the super ego figure,

not exactly my best friend.

And the little king said,

spalding, if you will, something I also knew nothing about.

If you can will this magical thinking to stop,

this act of will will be the supremo supremo thing

that will get you the role in the film.

So around about the time I was developing a will,

I was asked to do my monologues out in Hollywood,

and I was doing a small theater out there.

I got good reviews.

And Warner Brothers television saw the reviews

and asked me to come in and read for a sitcom.

I said, well, please, you know,

come and see the monologue.

You get a better sense of what it is I do.

And they said, well, we'd love to,

but we go to bed early out here.

So can you please come in in the morning?

So I came in and read for the sitcom,

and the Lord works in strange ways.

No sooner was I going outside that office than there,

there was Roland Joffe,

who was casting for the killing fields

because Warner Brothers was putting money into it

and he was using their offices.

And he said, let's chat again.

So I went home and put on my tie and jacket,

and I came in.

And once again, once again, Roland burned.

He did all the talking for 45 minutes.

I listened.

This time, he was talking about Cambodia.

What a fantastic land it was.

Why, it was Shangri-La before it was colonized.

He said it was incredible.

He said Thailand was like a Nordic country

compared to Cambodia, right next to each other.

And he said that 90% of the land

was owned by the people.

It was earth, it was dirt,

but it was theirs and it was good.

And they knew how to have a good time.

They knew how to have a good time getting born,

a good time growing up,

a good time going through puberty,

a good time falling in love,

a good time staying in love,

a good time getting married,

a good time staying married,

a good time having children,

a good time raising children,

a good time growing old,

a good time dying.

They even knew how to have a good time on New Year's Eve.

I couldn't believe it.

The only thing was that Roland said,

because it was such a beautiful country,

that they had lost touch with evil.

Something like the Indian Tantric colonies

on the East Coast of India, BC,

they got so open and tantric and loving

that they were totally defenseless.

And the Huns came down and ate them up

like chocolate-covered cherries.

Now, Roland said that the Samoans,

which also have a beautiful culture,

did not risk this because they had ritualized tattooing,

in which they initiated their children to pain.

I didn't know what he was talking about.

My eyes are rolling in my head.

I mean, I was trying to get a fix on Cambodia.

All the time I was talking,

I thought I knew where it was,

and I didn't even have a map of it in my mind.

There it is.

About the size of the state of Missouri.

Roland told me that in 1965,

it had about seven million people in the entire country.

600,000 in the capital, Phnom Penh.

Lovely freshwater lake right in the middle

for all sorts of recreational activity,

fishing, more seaports along the Gulf of Siam here.

Then Roland told me that in 1966,

that happy, sexy, sax-playing prince, King Sihanouk,

maybe because of his Buddhist tolerance,

allowed the Viet Cong to put some few sanctuaries

along the border here.

Now, the American Air Force was very upset about this.

They had a theory that the sanctuaries

were being controlled by a central headquarters

up here in the jungle.

A central headquarters about the size of the Pentagon.

Maybe even a replica of the Pentagon.

And if they thought we could just send

some B-52s over from Bangkok here,

don't bother to tell the American public,

just a few raids would take care

of the central headquarters.

And they had a secret meeting at breakfast time

at the Pentagon, and they called it Operation Breakfast.

And at the secret meeting, they came up with the menu.

And here is a map of the menu.

Now, it's a bit of an odd diet.

Remember these bombers, the American bombers,

are coming over from Bangkok six miles up,

like airborne holiday inns,

and they're dropping their bombs by computer,

and they come over, and the first stop

is this sanctuary for supper.

Then around the Parrot's Peak for breakfast,

this sanctuary, then up for dinner,

then a dessert, a snack,

and then shooting straight up

to where they thought the central headquarters

was for lunch.

Now, Roland told me this had a reverse effect

on the Viet Cong.

Instead of driving them back into Vietnam,

it drove them further into the Cambodian jungles

where they hitched up with this weird bunch of rednecks

headed by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge,

and the Viet Cong began to teach the Khmer Rouge how to fight.

Now, no one knows how they got so weird up there.

They were eating barks, bugs, lizards, and leaves

up there for about five years,

basically going wacko.

Now, there are some theories.

One is Pol Pot was educated in Paris.

In a strict Maoist doctrine,

and someone threw into the soup

a perverse bit of Rousseau,

which put him over the edge

and made him worser than Hitler even.

A back-to-the-land, pure agrarian, racist ideology

with no Jewish other to get, you see.

The only other they had was the urban other,

the city dweller here in Phnom Penh.

So you have to imagine something like 200,000 rednecks

rallying 90 miles upstate in New Pulse

about to move in in New York,

eating barks, bugs, lizards, and leaves.

Also, I think Pol Pot was in competition

with Father Mao.

He wanted to have a pure cultural revolution

alleviating all intellectuals, except for one, Pol Pot,

and not have any socialism in between.

Pure communist revolution.

Now, while all this was going on

and they were rallying up there,

Sihanouk, that happy, sexy sax playing prince,

was out of town for the day,

and there was possibly a CIA coup.

It was a coup, no one's sure exactly who inspired it,

but I can imagine.

And suddenly, Lon Nol is in office.

All of a sudden in a day.

Now, no one in America knew anything about Lon Nol.

The press didn't know anything about Lon Nol

except Lon Nol spelled backwards,

spell Lon Nol.

Now, while this was going on,

and again, leave it to a Brit

to tell you about your own history,

I didn't remember this,

our president Nixon was developing his madman theory

on the banks of Key Biscayne

with Bob Haldeman saying,

listen, Bob, just let the rumor get out

that I've gone mad.

And the Viet Cong will stop that bombing

because they'll be so sure

I'm gonna press the green button.

And while he's developing his madman theory,

he was taking military advice

from Bibi Riboso and John Mitchell

and watching reruns of Patton

starring George C. Scott on his bedroom wall

over and over again.

Now, while this was going on,

and again, leave it to a Brit

to remind me of my own history,

Kent State occurred.

Certainly I remember Kent State to my dying day,

but I'd always lumped it in with the Vietnam War.

I forgot that it had to do with the Americans,

specifically American invasion of Cambodia.

And it was a lovely May Day.

Granted, the kids were burning down

the ROTC training building.

And it was a lovely May Day

and Governor James Rhodes just happened to call out

the Ohio National Guard,

who happened to have live ammunition in their gun,

and they opened fire on the students.

15 were shot, four innocent bystanders killed.

This caused enormous dissension in America.

100,000 protesters marched on the White House.

Haig had troops in the basement of the White House

thinking there was going to be a siege.

Nixon didn't get any sleep that night.

He was up, he made over 50 phone calls.

Eight to Kissinger, seven to Haldeman,

one to Norman Vincent Peale, and one to Billy Graham.

And after one hour's sleep,

he got up and put on Rachmaninoff's piano

Concerto No. 1 on the record player.

And with his Cuban valet, Manolo Sanchez,

he went down to the Lincoln Monument

to talk to the protesters about surfing, football,

how travel broadens the mind.

In fact, one student said,

I hope it was because our president was tired,

but when he asked me, what school I was from,

and I told him, he said,

how's your team doing this year?

Yeah, the Cooper Church Amendment went through.

This was supposed to stop any close ground support troops

in a country where there was an undeclared war,

i.e. Cambodia.

But I found out only two years ago

that we're not living in a democracy.

Roland told me the president is commander in chief

of the armed forces and can bypass the Senate

and Congress to give orders for war,

and he did, he said, continue the bombing.

The only thing he did do was say,

no more American close ground support troops

more than 21 miles into Cambodia.

Now, how they were controlling this, I don't know,

whether the troops had odometers on their legs or what,

but more than 21 miles, you turn into a pumpkin

or you had to head back.

Now, someone had to go over to Phnom Penh

and tell Lon Nol of this new ruling.

Haig went over, broke it to him.

Lon Nol saw the downfall of Cambodia,

the writing was on the wall.

He turned to the window and wept openly in front of Haig.

Haig went back and reported this public weeping,

and they sent over a team of psychiatrists

to examine Lon Nol and came back with a report

that he was a vague, unstructured individual,

that he used astrological, folkloric,

and occult references in his addresses to the nation.

If you can imagine such a thing, I can actually.

Something like, my fellow Americans,

I'm not going out for the next two weeks

because my moon is in Gemini, type thing.

Now, the Cooper Church Amendment went through

and this bombing went on for five years.

The Supreme Court never passed any judgment on it,

and the military speaks with pride today

that five years of the bombing of Cambodia killed

16,000 of the so-called enemy.

That's 25% killed, and there's a military ruling

that says you cannot kill more than 10% of the enemy

without causing irreversible psychological damage.

So five years of bombing, a diet of barks, bugs,

lizards, and leaves up in the Cambodian jungles,

an education in Paris environs,

a strict Maoist doctrine with a touch of Rousseau,

and other things that we will probably never know about

in our lifetime, including perhaps an invisible cloud

of evil that circles the earth and lands at random

in places like Iran, Beirut, Germany, Cambodia, America.

Set the Khmer Rouge up to carry out

the worst auto-homeogenocide in modern history.

Whenever I travel, if I can do it,

if I can take the time, I'll travel by train

because I like to hang out in the lounge car.

People tell me fantastic stories there.

I think it's because we figure

we'll never see each other again.

I mean, for me, the Amtrak lounge car

is like one big rolling confessional.

Last year I was on my way up from New York City

to Chicago, and this guy comes up to me and says,

hi, I'm Jack Daniels.

Mind if I sit down?

I said, no, I'm Spalding Gray.

Have a seat.

What's up, Jack?

Oh, nothing much, I'm in the Navy.

Oh, really?

Where are you stationed?

Guantanamo Bay.

Oh, where's that?

Cuba.

Oh, I should have known that, shouldn't I?

What's Cuba like?

I've never been down there.

Oh, we don't get into Cuba, man.

We get free flights down the Virgin Islands

any time we want.

What do you do down there?

I get laid.

Oh, really, you go to horse, do you?

You kidding?

I never paid for sex in my life.

I get picked up by couples.

I'm into that, you know.

Threesomes, triangles, pyramids.

There's power in that.

I could see what he was talking about.

He was cute enough.

I could see how someone would pick him up.

He was in his civvies, though.

He wasn't in his Navy outfit,

but he had a nice little bod.

The only kind of weird and demented thing about him,

it was that his ears hadn't grown.

They were like these little pasta shells.

I mean, they,

it was as though his body had grown

and his ears hadn't caught up yet.

So I say to him,

so where are you off to, Jack?

Pittsburgh.

Really, what's up there?

My wife.

Oh, how long's it been?

A year.

Oh, I bet she's been doing some swinging, too, herself.

I bet she's been waiting for you all this time.

Oh no, I know her.

She's got fucking cobwebs growing between her legs.

But I wouldn't mind watching her get fucked by a guy

once I get up there, as long as I can watch.

I wouldn't mind that at all.

Oh, really?

You mean, you're going,

let's go over this again.

You're coming all the way from Cuba to Pittsburgh?

No, man, I'm not stationed in Guantanamo Bay anymore.

I'm stationed in Philly.

Philadelphia?

Really, what's going on there?

Can't tell.

No way, man.

Top secret.

Oh, come on, Jack.

Top secret in Philadelphia?

You can tell me.

No, no way.

And he proceeds to have five more rum cokes

and he tells me that in Philadelphia,

he is chained in a waterproof chamber down there

with his right arm chained to the wall

sitting next to a green button

that goes to a waterproof silo in this ship

with a nuclear missile in it

and a nuclear warhead on it.

And he's down there, high on blue flake cocaine,

a new breed up from Peru

that the Navy doesn't test for.

And he's down there, high on lots of coffee

and blue flake cocaine, just waiting with those earphones

on his little ears, waiting for a message

to fire his rocket at the Russians.

And I just turned to him and said,

why waterproof?

I mean, I just thought with the details and workout,

I could have started with why a green button?

And he goes, waterproof, man, waterproof.

You ask why waterproof?

I'll tell you why waterproof.

When my ship sinks in an ocean, any ocean, anywhere,

I'm still chained down there

in that waterproof chamber.

I press that green button, it activates that rocket.

It goes up out of its waterproof silo.

Up, up, up, up, up.

I get a fucking erection, man,

every time I think of firing a rocket at those Russians.

We're gonna win, we're gonna win,

we're gonna win this fucking war.

But I like the Navy, man.

I get to travel everywhere.

I've been to India, I've been to Africa,

I've been to Sweden.

I fucking didn't like Africa though, man.

I don't know why.

Black women just don't turn me on.

It's not that I'm prejudiced or nothing like that, man.

Now here's a guy,

if the women in the country don't turn him on,

he misses the entire landscape, you see?

He just turns into a big fuzzball, a black hole

that he steps through

that comes out on the other side of the world.

In Sweden, I fucking love Sweden, man.

You get to see real Ruskies there.

They march in at gunpoint, they're allowed two beers.

We drink all the fucking beers we want.

We're drunk on our asses, man.

We're over there yelling, hey, Ruskies!

What's it like in Moscow this time of year?

We hire Swedish whores to go over

and put their heads in their laps.

You see those fucking sweat, man.

They're stupid, you know?

They got liquid fuel in their rockets.

Their rockets are rusty.

They're gonna sputter, they're gonna pop.

They're gonna land in our cornfields.

I said, Jack, Jack, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait.

Haven't you been reading the literature?

I mean, really, it's bad enough

if the rockets land in the cornfields

with the radiation and everything.

No, you don't understand anything, man.

The Russians are stupid people.

They are backwards.

Do you know that on their ships,

they don't even have electrical intercoms?

They still speak through tubes.

Suddenly, I had this enormous fondness

for the Russian Navy, for the whole of Mother Russia.

The thought of these men, like innocent children,

speaking through empty toilet paper rolls,

empty paper towel rolls,

where you could still hear doubt,

confusion, brotherly love, ambivalence,

all those human tones coming through the tube.

Jack was very patriotic.

Hey, I forgot it exists.

I thought it was on the cover of Time and Newsweek only.

It's still there if you take the train up

from New York to Chicago.

Three-mile island nuclear power plant.

Jack stands up in salutes and sits back down.

Now, I can tell you, I felt to some extent

like I was looking my death in the face.

I'm not making up any of these stories

I'm telling you tonight, except for one.

Except for the fact that the banana

sticks to the wall when it hits.

That's the only one.

Everything else is true.

Now, I figure if Jack is making up this story

to frighten me, if he wasn't down there

in that waterproof chamber,

then he's probably down there now.

If he's white, he's in the Navy,

and he wants it enough, he can get it.

So I am trying to talk him out of it.

I'm making a small stand.

I'm saying, listen, listen, Jack,

you don't want to do it, right?

Look what happened to the guy

that dropped the bomb in Hiroshima.

He went crazy.

You don't want that to happen to you, do you?

He goes, that asshole?

He was not properly brainwashed.

I, he says with great pride,

have been properly brainwashed.

And also, it's a nuclear-destruct club, man.

It's a brotherhood of fear.

It's a whole bunch of people pressing those buttons,

not just one.

I said, I know, Jack, but if a whole bunch

of you press those buttons,

you're gonna blow up the world.

You don't want that.

I mean, think of all you have to live for.

Here I was hard-pressed.

The Blue Flake Cocaine, getting picked up by the couples,

blowing away the cobwebs between your wife's legs,

the Swedish whores, any of that.

He said, I'm not gonna die.

I said, how do you know?

We got pubs.

Everything was abbreviated.

What are pubs?

Pubs are Navy publications that tell them

where to go to avoid the radiation

after all of us have been vaporized.

And at that moment, I pictured him, actually,

down under in Tasmania,

starting a new, small-eared, red-faced,

pea-brained humanoid race after all of us have gone.

And I thought, you know, the mother needs a rest.

Mother Earth deserves a long, long rest

with no people on her.

Maybe if we're lucky,

after all of us have been vaporized,

Jack will end up in Africa.

Look, he could see I wasn't exactly on his side.

It was subtle, but he could see it.

And he turned to me,

and he was starting to get a little pissed,

and he said, listen, Mr. Spalding,

I think by now he is calling me Gary Spalding,

you would not be doing your,

what is it you do again for a living,

your talking cure.

If it was not for me and the United States Navy

protecting you from the Russians taking over,

the Russians taking over the world,

I thought, wait a minute, wait a minute,

maybe he's right.

Maybe the Russians are trying to take over the world.

Maybe I'm the one that's brainwashed.

Maybe I've been hanging out with liberals too long.

Maybe I'm deluded,

maybe all this time I thought

I was a conscientious pacifist.

I was really just a passive,

aggressive, unconscious coward.

I mean, and like any good liberal,

I should question everything, right?

So I should question this.

For instance, when did I last make a stand?

Just stand up, for instance,

let alone for the United States of America.

Every time I try to think of the United States of America,

I get the cold sweats.

I can't even look at a weather map anymore.

It's too big.

That's part of why I moved to Manhattan.

I wanted to move to an island off the coast of America,

somewhere between Europe and America

with only 17 million people

and clear boundaries,

outlines, something you can get a grasp of.

My girlfriend, Renee,

her upstairs neighbor is a member of the art mafia.

She first got involved with it

when she was working for the man

that defaced the Guernica and became famous for it

and now has galleries all over Soho.

Now she has her own gallery.

She plays her quadraphonic torture box,

full blast above us.

Every night it's Bob Dylan's Sarah.

Something must have happened to her way back then

and she really, it could be worse.

But every night it's unbelievable.

It's like you're in the room with it.

I mean, if it was just 1.30 in the morning,

fine, it'd be like feeding time.

You could get through it.

But it's diabolical.

It's 1.36 in the morning.

It's 2.10 in the morning.

It's 3.15 in the morning.

It's 4.11 in the morning.

What do you do?

You call the police.

They come, she turns it down.

They leave, she turns it up.

They come, she turns it down.

They leave, she turns it up.

I mean, she's up there.

She gets these guys in from the Midwest

that want to become rich and famous in a year,

make five figure number here in Soho.

They come in, they're sleeping

in sleeping bags on her floor.

Whenever we complain, she sends them down

and they go, hey, look, man,

New York is party city.

That's why we moved here, you see?

You can have parties on weeknights.

Now, if you don't dig it,

you should move to the country, old man.

I go back.

I'm trying to practice my Buddhist tolerance,

which in New York City could be translated

one big escapist rationalization, right?

I mean, I'm turning all my cheeks

to the wall at this point.

Renee is not practicing Buddhist tolerance.

She's walking up and down.

She's got steam screaming out of her navel.

And there are people that say,

we should start a collection to hire vigilante

to off this woman, to kill her.

And I find I'm not saying no.

That's how New York has changed me.

I'm willing to put money into the pot.

I mean, listen, listen, listen.

When I was back in Boston in 1964 with my people,

white bread homogenized brick wall Boston

back in 1964 when they had the,

what would you call it then?

It was a hi-fi.

Not to call it.

If a hi-fi was on too loud above me,

I would simply make a phone call.

I would just call up,

I would pick up the phone and go, hi.

Hi, Puffy.

Hi.

Hi, it's buddy Gray down here.

Hi, guys.

Yeah, just a few notches.

I wouldn't ask you to do it,

but I got an early dance class in the morning.

Right.

Yep, thanks a lot, Puff.

Merry Christmas to you too, guys.

Bye.

Write down.

We had the common language.

You know, Renee, Renee's father was in the Jewish mafia.

She knows the language.

She grew up in the streets of New York.

She calls up and goes:

Bet you wanna die, right bitch, cunt?

I'll beat your fucking face in with a baseball bat.

Bitch, cunt, die, die, die.

Goes louder.

Renee's convinced the woman's a masochist

and is getting off on the language.

The other day, I am walking out of her loft.

I have an empty Molson Gold bottle in my hand.

I don't know, I guess I was going to get my nickel back.

And I am seized with these party sounds upstairs.

I'm not out of control.

It's a classic Greek rage.

My head and gut are completely balanced.

My gut is wrenching with butterflies.

My head has that old adage,

that old ticker tape going across the far,

you know, that old adage,

all weakness tends to corrupt.

Impotence corrupts absolutely.

And I just took that bottle and,

zoom, hurled it.

It went up two flights of stairs, exploded,

boom, glass everywhere like a glass hand grenade.

They charged out with their bats and guns.

I ran.

Because it was an act of passion,

I forgot to tell Renee I was going to do it.

And she was way behind me

picking up plastic garbage bags.

So by the time she got to the door, they caught her.

But they didn't do anything because she was innocent.

She had no idea what they were talking about

and they recognized this innocence

so they didn't kill her.

So there's hope.

But I say, how does a country like America,

or rather, how does America,

because certainly there's no country like it,

begin to find the language to negotiate a talk

with a country like Russia or Libya?

If I can't even begin to get it with my people

on the corner of Broadway and John Street.

So I got the role.

And I went to Bangkok.

And I arrived, a 200 year old city

on a swamp and sinking 110 degrees.

I got a letter under the door that says,

welcome, Spalding Gray, Esquire.

The British boy you rotten.

They refer to all the actors as artists.

The AD goes, will the artists please

get on the helicopters?

Will the artists please jump off the cliff?

I mean, they will get you to do anything that way.

Now, the first big scene of the film,

or rather my first big scene,

which felt like the first big scene,

was here in Bangkok, outside of Bangkok.

Remember, we are reenacting the events

of April of 75 that happened in Phnom Penh,

but we are doing it in Bangkok.

And the first big scene for me

is the reenacting of the evacuation

of the American Embassy in April of 75.

And I am there with the man that's playing

the American Ambassador, Ira Wheeler.

Interesting man.

He was vice president of Selenese Chemical,

and someone saw him singing in a glee club

here in New York after he retired.

They put him in the killing fields

thinking he looked like the American Ambassador,

so he's beginning his film career 64 years old.

He's playing the American Ambassador,

John Gunther Dean, who was the last

American Ambassador in Phnom Penh,

was flown out, now is American Ambassador

of Thailand in Bangkok.

John Gunther Dean.

I met politicians before, but I have never met statesmen.

This man was a noble, noble man,

a combination of a ship's captain,

we'll say the QE2, and a boarding school principal,

let's say Phillips Andover Academy, right?

He said, we saw Cambodia as a ship

floundering in heavy seas.

We wanted nothing more than to bring

that ship safely into port.

When we saw we weren't going to be able to do that,

we wanted to go off her with dignity.

I cut down the American flag you see here behind me

and wrapped it in plastic over my arm.

And sure enough, there was Ira Wheeler

playing the American Ambassador,

running with the American flag wrapped in plastic

over his arm.

Me, the American Ambassador's aide,

running beside him, headed for the Cadillac limousine.

The first thing that happens when we get there

is that the air conditioner breaks.

Then the electric windows break,

the radiator boils over, and the entire exhaust system

is dragging on the ground by the end of the day.

I am laughing, I find this very funny.

Ira is not laughing, he is sweating.

This man sweats like a, like a, like a,

like an Ira, I would have to say.

They are changing his shirt.

He is back there in a Slough of Despond

because for the first time in his life,

he's studying Stanislavski and acting,

and he's brought the textbook an actor prepares

and building a character,

and he's trying to do an emotional memory

because the director Roland Joffe has told him

to look like he's on the verge of tears,

and he's trying to be on the verge of tears all day,

just in case they turn the camera on.

He is in a Slough of Despond in the backseat

thinking about something awful from his past.

Up until then, we've been friends.

Now he's not talking to me.

I'm bored, so I'm talking to the driver.

He's an extra, an American expatriate

from San Francisco who says America has gone to the dogs,

gone to the wow-wows, he called it.

He's gone to Thailand, the pure land,

to become an elephant expert,

and he is working for the Thai Agricultural Committee

counting elephants.

That's what he does for a living.

He sleeps at night with the elephants on the ground.

The elephant sleeps standing up.

In the day, he gets up with his little elephant counter

and goes out counting the elephants.

The only problem is he said he has a bum leg now,

a game leg, and he can't outrun an elephant

if it charges, and it will charge in its sleep

if you wake it, and he said he may be killed

within the next month or so by an elephant.

In the middle of all this,

Ira Wheeler looks up and says,

will you stop it, please?

Will you stop whatever it is you're talking about up there?

I am trying to have an emotional memory.

I said, Ira, here is a man that's actually about

to be killed by an elephant.

Try working with that one.

And here we are, driving through black smoke,

pouring off of burning rubber tires

that they're making look like a real war,

headed for the non-existent Sikorsky helicopter.

We're supposed to get on.

It's not there, I assume,

because the American Air Force

has not given the Thai Air Force Sikorsky helicopters yet.

Just these little choppers driving through Marine guards.

Americans dressed as Marines, who are these guys?

I suppose some of them didn't get enough of the war,

so they're over there joining Bo Gritz,

who's starting his own foreign legion

to go in to look for MIAs and LAOs.

Others are Americans that are there dealing drugs,

which is extremely lucrative but very dangerous,

and others are Americans that are there for sex and drugs.

Capital S, small d,

because on one lower chakra level,

Bangkok is one big whorehouse.

Now, it's not all our fault for the R&R and the war,

the Australian tourists or the Japanese sex tourists

that come through in busloads.

Certainly the tradition of concubines

existed for thousands of years in Thailand,

but we kind of blew it out of hand with the Vietnam War.

We had quants of hearts filled with Thai prostitutes

that were drinking a kind of

Chinese herbal medicine for birth control,

so there were a lot of Amerasian children

born out of this experience.

Now, after the war, they knocked down those quants at huts

and moved all their prostitutes

back to the red light district, Pat Phong.

If you've been in Bangkok, I'm sure you've seen it.

There's not that much to see.

You can see the gold Buddha in the day

and Pat Phong at night.

If you saw the deer hunter recently,

those shots in Saigon were shot

in the Mississippi Queen bar in Pat Phong.

You go into the Mississippi Queen bar,

it's like they're still shooting the deer hunter.

There is no sense of seduction,

as in across a crowded room.

They fly to you and stick,

and their body is big enough

and they are small enough you feel like a Christmas tree.

You can hold six of them, two in your elbow,

two in your lap, two in your shoulders,

and they are laughing and giggling,

and they are so apparently happy

and they are grabbing at your tinkler

and grabbing at your wallet,

and they are so cute,

and if you can make up your mind which one you like,

you can go back to your hotel

and spend the entire night

for $26.00 a 500 Thai baht.

Now, if you don't want to do that

because you don't want to be kept awake

by a laughing, giggling Thai prostitute

and you want to be in control,

you can instead go to a massage parlor.

And the massage parlors

are very much like department stores.

Every floor has about 35 women,

fully dressed with numbers on,

sitting on tiers under fluorescent lights,

all looking at one point.

It's not the Buddha, it's the TV set.

Now, the men walk back and forth

by this one-way mirror like little sultans

until they see, if not the perfect woman,

at least the perfect body,

and then they say,

would you call number eight for me, please?

And the man goes, number eight?

And number eight stands up

and you can tell immediately by the expression on her face

it's not gonna be as great as you fantasize

because among other things,

you've interrupted her TV show.

And for a little bit of money,

you go down to a small room.

She stays fully dressed, you get completely naked,

and she gives you a mild tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak

massage, just surface, nothing right keen about it.

A little bit more money, she gets naked,

and now you're both naked,

and the mama-san is poking her head all the time

in to see that it's progressing financially.

She closes the door and goes out,

now you're both naked,

and she gives you another mild tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak

massage, nothing deep about it,

only occasionally you feel her warm flesh

brush up against your flesh.

And a little bit more money and you get a hand job.

And a little bit more money and you get to fuck her.

And a little bit more money

and you get the supremo, supremo, the body, body massage.

She takes you and puts you in a bathtub

and soaps you up into your slippery as bar of soap

and she doesn't rinse you.

Then she puts you on a water bed

and she gets in that same tub

and soaps herself up until she's as slippery

as a bar of soap and she doesn't rinse.

And she gets on one side of the room

and takes this running gallop

and goes, boom, and lands on top of you

and it's body, body, squiggle, squiggle,

bubbles coming out between you.

You sound like two huge sewer plungers.

There's nothing erotic about it.

It's downright hilarious.

And when she finishes with you for the finale

and I only heard about this.

I never saw it or had it.

It's called boobly-oobly.

It's a final facial massage.

The GIs loved it.

If she had large breasts, she'd part them.

They'd stick their faces in and she'd cry out,

boobly-oobly and let go.

Now, after you've been fucked, sucked,

had the tubes cleaned, nose cleaned, toes cleaned

and you're ready for more for rest and relaxation,

you can at last go to unwind at a live show

in which women do everything with their vaginas

except having babies.

It starts with ping pong balls and she's fully loaded.

So they fire an automatic into a soda fountain glass.

So it's pooh, pooh, pooh, pooh, pooh, pooh, pooh.

Then out comes the Coke bottle

and it's a king size Coke bottle,

a glass one I haven't seen in years.

And she shakes that bottle and she shakes it

and she shakes it and she shakes it.

She shakes it for so long,

you begin to think that's the whole act.

Just that shaking of that bottle.

And just to prove that that cap is on tight

and at last she opens it.

And I don't know how she does it.

I don't know if there is a bottle opener in there

or teeth, but it sprays all over the audience

brown, warm Coca-Cola.

And what's left of it she pours back into her vagina,

squirts over the bottle and refills it

like a Coca-Cola bottling machine.

Then out comes the banana.

And she takes a few lame shots

like the Russian rockets that are gonna sputter

and pop and land in our corn fields.

And for the finale she aims her vagina

down the main aisle like a great cannon,

loads it with a very ripe banana and thump, fires it.

Almost hits me in the eye,

almost hits an Australian housewife in the head,

hits the back wall and sticks.

And slowly it inches its way down until it lands

and is devoured instantly by an army of giant roaches.

April 12th, 1975 was the actual evacuation of Phnom Penh.

Lon Nol had long since fled to Hawaii.

Two million people in the city now instead of 600,000.

Khmer Rouge rockets coming in at random

and landing on hospitals, kids in the streets,

schools, whatever.

American ambassador John Gunther Dean says,

we have two and a half hours,

all Cambodian officials and Americans,

two and a half hours to evacuate the country.

Cambodians say, two and a half hours,

two and a half hours, we're ruined.

How are we gonna convince the Russians

in two and a half hours that we're socialists?

So this leaves behind the Cambodian officials,

Long Bure, Lan Nan and Prince Sirik Matak.

Lon Nol had two brothers, Lan Nan and Lan Nil.

Long Bure, Lan Nan and Prince Sirik Matak

decide to stay behind.

Prince Sirik Matak sends a letter

to the American ambassador telling him

that they've decided not to go out with the evacuation.

He reads, dear excellency and friend,

I thank you very sincerely for your letter

and for your offer to transport me toward freedom.

I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion.

As for you and in particular for your great country,

I never believed for a moment that you would have

the sentiment of abandoning a people

which has chosen liberty.

You have refused us your protection

and we can do nothing about it.

You leave and it is my wish that you and your country

will find happiness under the sky.

But mark it well that if I shall die here on the spot

and in the country that I love,

it is too bad because we are all born and must one day die.

I have only committed this mistake

of believing in you, the Americans.

Please accept, excellency, my dear friend,

my faithful and friendly sentiments, Sirik Matak.

In five days later, all three of their livers

were carried through the streets on sticks.

The Americans took off in their helicopters.

We took off. We thought it was going to be like Da Nang

with the Vietnamese riding and holding on

to the helicopter wheels, but the Cambodians didn't.

They just waved and went, Okay, bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

And as the last helicopter took off,

a Khmer Rouge rocket came in

and killed one of the innocent bystanders.

Five days later, April 17, 1975,

Cambodia, year zero.

The Khmer Rouge marched in in their black pajamas.

Lon Nol's army threw down their guns

and raced to embrace them,

thinking that the country would be reunited again.

But the Khmer Rouge did not smile back.

They took strategic positions in the town.

Some of the kids who grew up in the jungle

and never saw cars before jumped in

and started ramming them into first gear

and getting stuck in first gear,

driving into walls and trees.

And then the Khmer Rouge systematically began

to empty the city of Phnom Penh.

Out, they said.

Everyone, out, out, out!

Into the fields, they say.

The Americans are going to bomb, they say.

There's no more food left.

When the people ask who will provide for them,

they say, Anka!

Anka will provide.

Anka, like some perverse Wizard of Oz

Kafkaesque thunder cloud meant to rain down

manna on the people in the fields

and take nothing with you.

You had to go into the fields with no possessions.

And then if you couldn't walk her in the hospital,

they'd chuck you out the window.

Seven story, ten story,

kind of weird survival of the fittest.

And then the killing began.

Eyewitnesses said anyone that was educated was killed.

Any civil servant was killed.

Anyone carrying their own cooking pot was killed.

People wearing glasses would be killed.

The motto was, better to kill an innocent person

than to leave an enemy alive.

Bum, bum, dead, dead.

Kids were doing the killing.

Ten, eleven, twelve years old.

They were too weak from their diet from barks and bugs

and lizards and no more ammunition left.

So they were trying to knock in skulls

with these axe handles and hoe handles.

But they were too weak to knock them in.

So eyewitnesses said the kids were taking bets

on how many whacks it would take to knock in a skull.

And they were laughing.

A lot of laughter going on. A lot of laughter.

And eyewitnesses said if you pleaded for your life,

they would laugh harder.

If it was a woman pleading for her life,

the kids would laugh even harder.

And then they would take the half-dead bodies

and drag them into American bomb craters

which acted as a kind of perfect shallow grave.

And it was a kind of visitation of hell on earth.

Who needs metaphors for hell?

Or poetry about hell?

This actually happened here on this earth.

Pregnant mothers disemboweled,

eyes gouged out,

kids, children torn apart like fresh bread

in front of their mothers.

And this went on for years until

two million people were either systematically killed

or starved to death, by the same people

and no one can really figure out how something like that could have happened.

Certainly it could research that other Holocaust in Germany.

Because people speak a lot of German

and read and write German.

And Hitler's either dead or living in Argentina.

But Cambodia is far, far away.

And no one speaks enough Khmer.

And Pol Pot is still alive

and waiting up here on the Thai-Cambodian border

with 35,000 troops

supported by the Red Cross,

by the United Nations, and by the United States of America.

Because so many people

would rather see him back in Cambodia

with his nationalist coalition rather than

the Vietnamese who were in there.

And they came in in 1979.

Some people, the British particularly, saying that

it was a liberation. Others saying

it was a xenophobic piece of cake

just biting off Cambodia to protect

themselves from China. And I get very confused.

And Roland Joffe came to me and said,

Spalding, I hope this film

has taught you that morality

is not a moveable feast.

I get dizzy

cause I keep seeing it

moving all the time.

Now, the last big scene in the film,

or rather my last big scene,

which felt like the last big scene, was here.

Remember, we're in

Hua Hin, near Bangkok,

on the Gulf of Siam.

We are staying in the Pleasure Prison.

It's in Hua Hin. We're not shooting there.

But it's in that same town,

right in town in Hua Hin, is this

old hotel that looks very much like the Hotel

Phnom Penh, a Victorian hotel.

I'm told it looked exactly like it, except it didn't have a swimming

pool and a tennis court. So the film

built a swimming pool and a tennis court to make

the hotel authentic. Now,

I'm playing the American Ambassador's aide, and for my

last scene, all I have to do is simple is walk down

the steps. I'm leaking information to Sam

Waterston, who's playing Sydney

Schanberg. And I just have to say,

a computer malfunction

put out the wrong set of coordinates.

Seems a single B-52 opened up over

Nik Long. There's a homing beacon

right in the middle of town. Check it out, Sid.

Easy enough for some

actors. But for this,

I cannot do stuff like this. This technical

language is like doing algebra or geometry.

I have to make an internal

film, internal, to memorize this, right?

My own particular images. So I'm starting to go through it.

A computer malfunction.

I see a Macintosh with spaghetti coming

out of it. That works for me.

Put out a wrong set of coordinates.

I see an oscillator from 7th

grade science project. I don't know whose it was,

but I remember a grid work oscillator.

Seems a single B-52. Well,

God, I remember many B-52s from many a drunken

dinner in front of the TV watching that war

on television. Opened up over

Nik Long.

I was having trouble with that one.

It was a night shoot and I was all discombobulated.

Nik Long was a strategic

fairy town in Cambodia that had a homing beacon in it.

Homing beacons aren't supposed to be

dangerous. They're just beacons that the planes

take their coordinates off of and the navigator

six miles up on that airborne holiday inn

throws a switch and the bombs are dropped

over the jungle by computer.

No one really drops the bombs. But this

particular day the navigator threw the wrong

switch and dropped and his entire load of bombs

up the main street of Nik Long, killing over 250 people.

The navigator was fined $700

for his mistake. And Sydney

Schanberg told me that he heard about the mistake

and went in to cover it for the New York Times.

But the American Embassy put a press

lock on Nik Long and didn't allow him in.

So he snuck in. He bribed his way in

with Dithbron. He got in there

he said he saw blood and hair all over the

bushes and realized a lot of people had been killed.

Was about to get his story out to the New York

Times when he was put under arrest by the

Cambodians and held at gunpoint.

Now while he was under arrest, house

arrest, in flies the American Embassy

in a helicopter to give out $100 bills

to people who lost members of their family

in $50 bills to people who had lost legs

and arms in the bombing. And the Cambodians

were grateful. Now Sydney told

me that he thought he could probably safely

walk out in front of the American Embassy and not be

shot. He wasn't sure. He started

to walk and he said the Cambodians started screaming

and clicking the safeties on their guns

and he said never before had he felt

more alive in his life. Absolutely

all the adrenaline going

right on the edge of death. Absolutely

totally utterly alive. Let's go

boys and girls. Take 64.

It's a night shoot and we're up to take 64.

Roland is really covering his ass

on this one. Alright?

A computer malfunction put out the wrong

set of coordinates.

By the way, I played one of those

American Embassy officials that

come in in the helicopters. There was no way I was

going to get on a helicopter, right? But they

promised me that it would just go up 10 feet and land.

They just wanted a shot of it landing.

So the AD said would the artist

please get on the choppers. Artist on the

helicopters please. Boom!

Right on like Pavlov's dog. You know, call me an artist.

I am on.

Ready to go up. Up it goes.

Straight up.

The helicopter goes up a thousand feet.

Straight up. I'm looking down out the door.

There is no safety belt. The door is wide open.

I felt like I was in a movie.

Then I thought I was in

apocalypse now. I had nothing else to relate it to.

And then I realized I was

in a movie. They were shooting one.

I had no fear because the camera

eroticizes the space it aims at.

You know, it's like Colgate Gardol.

Somehow you know you're larger than life.

You'll be protected. Even if the helicopter

crashes, I knew there would be rushes my friends

could show at New Year's Eve in the

performing garage. Something would

come of this. And after about

the sixth time up I looked out and see

my God, look how much of the

jungle this movie controls.

All the way up the Chao Phrya River you could

see Thai peasants paid to put

burning rubber tires on a fire to make it look

like a real war. And I thought of

course, war therapy.

Every country must

and should make a major motion

war film every year.

Put people to work, get the economy up,

get your rocks off, do an invasion,

a movie of invading Libya, skip the

invasion. You land. You don't have

to method act when those blades are going

over your head. Bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah.

You're shouting. You don't have

to method act when you look down and see Thai

peasants lying there for 12 hours

with chicken giblets and fake blood all

over them. They're getting paid $5

or a 12 hour day smiling back at

you. And if they're real amputees

they get $7.50

for the day. You don't have to act.

It's very much like the real event.

Let's go boys and girls. Take 65.

A computer malfunction

put out the wrong set of coordinates.

Seems a single B-52

opened up over Nik Long.

There's a...

I didn't get the image.

I didn't get the image for homing beacon

and I just blanked and I went there's a

there's a housing device right in

the middle of town. Cut.

I knew... listen please. I knew

I should have never drank that booze and had the

marijuana the night before. How unprofessional.

My, my, my, my, my concentration

was... but Roland Joffe told me

my character would be drinking a lot, you understand?

So I thought I was in character.

You would be amazed what people did in this film

to get in character. Let's go boys

and girls. Take 66.

At last I got the image

for it. For the homing beacon I saw

a pigeon, a homing pigeon

flying toward a beacon

in a children's story book, a little

lighthouse. Alright? I've got it.

Let's go. Take 66.

A computer malfunction put out the wrong set of coordinates.

Seems a single B-52

opened up over Nik Long. There's a...

I knew it didn't matter what I was

thinking because the audience would just project on the screen

but they were thinking it's all about projection as long as I had an idea

there's a homing beacon

right in the middle of town.

Check it out, Sid.

Alright, you've heard of pilot error?

Computer malfunction?

They screwed up on the coordinates.

A single B-52 dropped its

entire load on Nik Long.

There's a homing beacon in the middle of the town.

Check it out, Sid.

The entire crew burst into applause.

66 takes later and five hours into the night

we have finished with my first scene

and my last scene of the movie, their first scene of the evening.

They're going till dawn.

I am told that all of what I did that night

if it was processed and the crew was paid

it would cost $30,000.

When I get back to New York City I am called in

to re-dub the entire scene

because of the sound of crickets.

But the film is over for me.

I am finished and Renee flies back to America

to give her man some space,

to give her man some room to have his perfect moment.

And I hear that the film is relocating

to this magical island, Phuket,

here in the Indian Ocean off the southern coast of Thailand.

And I hear everyone's going down there

and they serve you magic mushrooms for breakfast

and an omelet whether you order them or not.

I thought if I don't have an organic perfect moment

I will induce one.

So it's off to Phuket and I ask if I can come along.

They tell me no, I can't.

I don't have a private driver anymore

because I'm not with the film.

But if I'd like to come along it's all right

to ride on the artist's bus.

Fine! I hear I have to get up at 5 in the morning.

It's a 15 hour trip on a dirt road.

I get up, I get on this old converted greyhound.

There's no artist I've ever seen on that before.

I don't recognize any artist.

It's mainly crew.

In the front row, Uberto Pasolini, of the Pasolini Banking and film family.

He's dropped out of banking at 28 years old to carry orangeade

for the killing fields to work his way up as a producer.

He is sitting in the very front row of the bus

pretending his head is a 35 millimeter camera

and he's practicing pans of that meaningless jungle

for the entire 15 hours, right.

He's happy.

Next to him are the Cambodian refugees from Long Beach.

Social workers because Pol Pot killed all the Cambodian actors

and they had to hire social workers from Long Beach

to play small roles.

Next to me on my left is the British cook

who's saying, Spalding, what's going on here?

Where's your private driver?

I would complain to British Equity if I were you.

I said, well, I'm not really with the film anymore.

Oh, on for a freebie, are you?

Well, that's good if you can get it.

15 hours later, which is a whole other monologue

unto itself, we arrive at Phuket

and we're staying in the rattiest old hotel

so far, the Phuket Merlin.

And we have two days off in a row

because we've worked so hard, and we hear

that Shangri-La exists, the most beautiful beach

in the world, and a bunch of us rent a tuk-tuk

and go down there through those winding

down 20-minute drive-through rice patties

and water buffalo, and we come out

on this exquisite beach.

I was unprepared for it.

I mean, there was no

flotsam, there was no jetsam,

there were no tourists, there were no

beer cans, no trash bags,

just beach and huge Indian

ocean pounding on under black

monsoon skies, white

sea birds blowing sideways,

ratty palm trees ripping in the wind,

rainbows arching. It was a

number nine on a scale of one to ten

for perfect moments. It was fantastic.

Down the far end of the beach, water

buffalo posing like they were stuffed in the

mist, and Ivan, Ivan

Strasburg, devil in my ear, the two of us, like

the two kids, charge right into that water.

The others go down to have brunch.

It is fantastic. Body temperature.

I am going, oh, oh, shit, my money!

Oh, fuck, Ivan, I've got $600

worth of Thai baht in my ocean briefs.

I've got to put it in the hotel. What will I do with it?

I was saving up my per diem just in case I didn't

have a perfect moment, I would buy one to get out

of there. What do I do with it, Ivan? He says,

oh, Spalding, just put it up on the beach there with my cameras,

man, on the high part of the beach.

And we start into the water again, you know, and he turns

to me and he says, you know, in Africa, I put my cameras

up there on the beach and the natives would run right out of the

jungle and steal them. What are you going to do?

Chase the natives back into the jungle?

So I was a little bit back and forth with my money,

you know, a little nervous, not sure

about Ivan, and we started a little further,

and he goes, Spalding, man, stay, stay.

On the next day off, I'm going to take you

scuba diving. You'll have rapture

of the deep, man. You'll see fish the

color you've never seen before. It is

fantastic. And I've never

been scuba diving. In all my life,

I've wanted to do, I thought, this is it,

this is a mission. It's not just a film

that I was here for, it's all coming together now

Look, I'm basically

a very fearful person.

I call it phobic. I'm a phobic person

and sharks and bears are at the

top of the list. I mean, I swim

like this, oh, oh, oh,

so they can't get a grip, you know.

I swim really fast. I check out swimming pools

before I go in them. So,

what I need is a man that I trust

that can guide me through these phobias

so I can get in touch with rapture of the deep. I need

a guru, a scuba guru.

Ivan is going to be my scuba guru

and then Ivan turns to me and says,

Spalding man, beware, because

there are these stonefish, eh?

And if you step on one,

you're dead in seven seconds.

No remedy, man, eh?

So wear your sneakers.

Ah, here's a bit of a sadist playing into my masochism.

I'm not saying I'm not inviting it,

but by now he's out in the high surf,

calling into me, Spalding man,

I see you like the little waves, man.

Come out in the high waves, man.

And I am so terrified, the water,

my heart is in my throat, this rolling, roaring surf.

Also I don't feel as though I deserve to be there.

This is my, instead of pinching myself

to prove that I'm there,

I'm running down the beach to look back, to see myself,

and I run down the beach and look back

and miss myself every time,

and down the beach and back,

and down the beach and back,

and down the beach and back,

and the third time back,

Ivan is gone, and I go, oh no, oh shit, oh fuck,

oh he's drowned, I can't believe this is happening to me.

I don't believe it.

People do drown, I've read about it.

We got a notice under our door saying,

be careful when you swim at Phuket

because of the rip tides.

Oh no, and the first thing that went through my head,

and I'm telling you, it went so fast,

I can't even speak as fast as the images went,

the first rationalization that went through my head was,

of course, making a film about this much death,

some real person actually has to go.

The next thing that went through my head was,

it's not my fault, not mine.

Nope, he was suicidal.

The next thing that went through my head was quickly,

find the most responsible man you can.

There was no way I was going out in that high surf,

and the man that occurred to me was John Swain,

the Paris correspondent in the London Times,

who had been in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge marched in,

and perhaps the most narcissistic of the reporters,

had come to watch himself be played

by Julian Sands in the movie.

So he happened to be there at brunch,

and I just went, John, John Swain, come quickly,

I can't see Ivaaaaaaaaaan!

And everyone slowly put down their chopsticks

at that brunch and charged.

Some came through the swamp,

some came over the bridge over the swamp.

Judy Arthur, the publicist, was the first to reach the beach.

I found out later that she was a lifeguard

in a past incarnation,

and had the good sense to run on the high part

of the beach.

I was down by the dip of the lip of the water

and couldn't see out.

I was down there with my knees shaking about to vomit,

and people were around me going,

don't worry, Spalding, don't worry,

he won't have drowned, he'll be all right.

He can't have drowned, he's from South Africa.

And meanwhile, I'm trying to interpret this,

meanwhile, Judy Arthur spots him bobbing out there.

He's rode a rip, this guy knows how to ride

a riptide for fun and circle back in,

and he comes in, she calls him in,

and I go, Ivan, no,

I'm never going swimming with you again.

How could you ever do anything like this?

And he says, I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry,

you mustn't worry, Spalding.

I had no idea that you were looking for me,

but don't worry, I would never have drowned, man.

I'm from South Africa.

So everyone goes back to the brunch,

and they leave Ivan and I standing there by the ocean,

and he looks up at me and he says,

by the way, Spalding, when you called, how many came?

Did Judy Freeman come, mon?

Yes, Judy Freeman came, Judy Arthur came,

all the Judies came.

The next day off, there was no doubting where we were going.

Down to Caron Beach, it was fantastic.

Ivan passed me a Thai stick, I took a few tokes,

I didn't care if my Kundalini got loose on the beach

and went wild, even ran away,

I never wanted to see it again.

A little mild paranoia came over me.

Where to hide my money this time?

I began to dig holes in the sand.

Then I thought, no, under the rubber mat in the truck,

and I thought, you know, Spalding,

thinking this much about hiding your money

is putting out waves the Thais can read.

Let them have it, leave it on the beach

where anyone can take it.

By now, Ivan is out in the highways going,

Spalding, mon, you don't know what it is to be a mon yet,

mon, until you get out in the big waves, mon.

And I thought, I'm gonna be a mon today if it kills me.

And I'm starting out a little further and a little further

and I'm seeing hallucinations of gray sharks all around me

and every time I think of a shark biting me,

I feel all the anxiety come together in my stomach

and go out the top of my head in a gray arrow

that lands on my money.

And every time I think about being bitten by a shark,

I think of my money being stolen

and suddenly I have no fear

and I'm getting further and further out in that ocean

and further and further out

until I'm further out in that ocean

than I've ever been in any ocean in my life.

I am beyond Ivan even.

I can tell I'm further out because of the view of the shore.

I've never had a view like that before.

And suddenly there is no fear

because there is no body to bite.

There are no more outlines.

There's no means.

There's this great body temperature, Indian Ocean,

this great, warm Indian Ocean

with this smiling, baffling pumpkin head perceiver on top.

And up the ocean goes and up the perceiver goes

and down the ocean goes and down the perceiver goes

and wall of water comes up around the perceiver

and the perceiver looks both ways.

It could be in the middle of the Indian Ocean,

no land in sight.

And wall of water goes down and lifts the perceiver

and the perceiver looks down a great bank of water,

far below John Swain and Judy Arthur,

body surfing like an Hawaiian travel poster.

And wall of water lifts the perceiver

and suddenly a human voice wakes it

and brings it back in time.

It's Ivan calling, Spalding man, come back, come back.

I haven't tested those waters yet.

And boom, ah, I'm back in time.

I'm back in fear.

And I'm swimming into Ivan water

pouring through my nose saying it was fantastic, Ivan.

I mean, it was a perfect moment.

It was fantastic.

And he says, Spalding,

I have to go out and test those waters.

Now he swims out to where I was

and I'm back with water pouring through his nose

going Spalding, Spalding.

I almost drowned man.

I came this close to drowning.

Now I know the experience of drowning man.

And I thought, oh shit.

Now I'm gonna have to go out and almost drown.

I'll be damned if I'll be caught

in this male competitive trap.

I know what Ivan's idea of a perfect moment is.

It's death.

So having had my perfect moment, I swam in.

Now elated from having had it depressed,

knowing that I had to go home,

I went and searched for my audience

to tell the perfect moment too,

which is almost as important as having it.

Athel Fugard, my new father confessor,

the most fantastic audience back at the hotel.

Athel who had just given up drinking

and I think to some extent

was living vicariously through me.

At the end of every day would say,

Spalding, come, come to the bar.

I'll buy you a beer, I'll have an orange.

Tell me about your day.

And at first I wanted to tell him

about my new theory of displacement of anxiety.

And I said Athel, Athel, Athel, Athel.

If ever you lack the courage to do something

and you need that courage,

just take a big pile of money

and leave it somewhere where it can be stolen

and go do that thing.

Then I told him about my perfect moment

in the Indian Ocean and he listened,

raising an eyebrow and putting his pipe down.

He turned to me and said,

Spalding, the sea's a lovely lady

when you play in her.

But if you play with her, she is a bitch.

Play in the sea, yes, but never play with her.

You're lucky to be here.

You're lucky to be alive.

I believed him and I went to bed and slept

like a kid again in Jerusalem, Rhode Island.

The entire bed rocking, sand in the bottom of the bed,

wrapped in the arms of the sea, fantastic sleep.

And the following day I got up

and a little kid was raging inside of me

and the adult was there too saying I should go home

and the little kid is going more and more,

I get more, where that came from, stay, stay, stay

and the adult is going, I've had my perfect moment,

it's time to go.

And I thought how will I get out of here?

How will I be decisive?

And I thought, you know, maybe I'll try acting

like a decisive man.

If I can't be one, I'll act like one.

And I went out of the hotel and said goodbye

to all my mates as though I were going.

Goodbye mate, we'll work together again one day.

Hey, you better believe I believe in this film.

Fucking A.

Hey big guy, look out for those whores

and don't you drink too much, we'll meet again.

All right.

I got to Athol Fugard

and he looked right through me.

So Spalding, you're leaving paradise after all.

I said Athol, you know, I woke up this morning,

I was thinking I was eating magic mushrooms... [gibberish]

Spalding.

Go back to Renee, she's a lovely lady.

Take what you've learned here in Thailand back to Krumville.

There is no difference between Thailand and Krumville.

I wanted to believe him.

I also wondered who he'd been studying with.

So I did it.

I got in the car for the final ride to the airport

and as I was riding, I felt like I was going

to the gallows, I couldn't believe it.

Why was I doing this?

Why did I feel mainly, why did I feel so inflated?

I'd been there eight weeks and I'd worked eight days,

was waiting that difficult, I felt all puffed up,

but on the way I thought, my God,

I will never see a little piece of heaven like this

again, this is the end.

And as I was riding, I said a silent benediction,

a silent farewell to all that I had had

and would miss, farewell to the fantastic breakfast,

free every morning, you walk down in there,

they are waiting on you with the papaya, mango,

and pineapple like I'd never tasted before.

Farewell to the Thai maids with the king-sized

cotton sheets and the big king-sized bed.

Farewell to the lunches, fresh meat

flown in from America daily,

roast potatoes, green beans, and roast lamb

at 110 degrees under a circus tent

according to British equity.

Farewell to the drivers with the tinted glasses

and the Mercedes with the tinted windows.

Farewell to the cakes and teas and ices

every day exactly at four o'clock.

Farewell to those beautiful, smiling people.

Farewell to that single fresh rose in a vase

on my bureau in a hotel every day.

And just as I was climbing into that first class seat

and wrapping myself in a blanket,

just as I was adjusting the pillow from behind my head

and having a sip of that champagne,

just as I was adjusting and bringing down

my Thai purple sleep mask, I had an inkling.

I had a flash.

I suddenly thought I knew what it was

that had killed Marilyn Monroe.