SOME PEOPLE SHOULD NOT HAVE PASSPORTS

If there's one thing I try and save for (and on the meagre wages of a freelance film journalist and occasional producer of Blu Ray supplements that means a lot of saving) it is travel. I remember John Waters - and it may have been in his book Shock Value, which I don't have handy at this very second - mentioning that it is impossible for him to be bored at an airport. To which I would suggest the poor bugger has never been stranded at LAX, but - regardless - it is a solid point: when you know you are going somewhere, how can you not be excited?

A passport is a thing to cherish and I am still baffled when I meet people who have the means to travel but choose not to. I'm sure I'll die penniless, I doubt I will ever be able to afford a car (I can't drive anyway) and goodness knows if I might ever be permitted a mortgage but if, on my deathbed, I've ticked off all of the places on my bucket list I will pass away happy. Travel opens your mind - to new languages, cultures, attitudes, religions... I would wager that the more you travel, the less patriotic you get - whilst still appreciating the best of your homeland. Or at least that is my experience.

However, just because you have the right to go somewhere does not mean you should act like a douchebag when you clear customs and set foot in your latest exotic destination. And this is the reason behind my new blog: asshats and passports. Take a look at the picture below:

This is a picture of The Bridge on the River Kwai, located in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. The story behind the building of this bridge is harrowing - allied POWS, from numerous nations, forced - under slave labour conditions and stuck in disease-ridden camps in the South East Asian jungle - to build a connecting train line between "neutral" Thailand and Japanese-controlled Burma (then a British colony and now known as Myanmar). Over 100,000 people died constructing this hellish project.

And in the above image you can see that some tourists have arrived here and decided the only sensible thing to do is to scribble graffiti on it.

Now look at this image:

This is Angkor Wat. Yes, the Angkor Wat. You know, the Hindu Temple (eventually becoming a Buddhist place of worship) that has awed people for centuries and centuries? You know, the ancient civilisation that can be traced back to over 1000 years? Located within a short driving distance of Siem Reap in Cambodia, Angkor Wat is one of the wonders of the world. The many temples which are located there are a must-see destination for millions of people. They withstood even Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge (indeed, prior to the Vietnamese liberation of Cambodia, ol' Saloth Sar himself - the man who had closed his own country and executed nearly a third of his people - was giving tourists from Thailand the opportunity for day trips to this incredible site - such was the obvious interest that Angkor Wat still held. Not to mention the obvious monetary benefits that come with it). 

But none of this is good enough for the above tourist - "Vanna" - who decided that, despite standing for over ten centuries - what Angkor Wat really needed was her name chipped into one of the pillars.

Unfortunately, immortalising herself as an ignorant asshole is not just Vanna's goal in life. It is the goal of plenty of other people. In fact, there is graffiti all over Angkor Wat and its neighbouring temples:

Depressing isn't it?

And here's another thing: Angkor Wat is still considered a place of great religious respect by both Buddhist and Hindu people alike. No matter what time of day it is, you will see young Buddhist scholars walking around the various temples:

Guesthouses, hostels and hotels all across Siem Reap ask visitors to Angkor Wat to show respect and cover up. I am a firm believer that men should not wear shorts and sandals anyway so that is never a problem for me. I don't care how hot it is (and Siem Reap is hot) - I don't want to inflict my man-legs on anyone. 

I understand it is a little trickier for women who, on holiday in a roasting hot climate, will want to show a little skin. But rules are rules. You don't like them? Go to Ibiza. 

Naomi, my travelling companion, was quick to respect these rules. Did she sweat lots? Yes. Did she get respect from the local people? Yes. It makes all the difference:

But, mostly, this 'ask' seemed like too much for many white tourists. Take a look at this lot (and this is just three pictures that I took, knowing - at the time - I'd need some examples for the blog I was then writing in my head):

Well, at least they didn't dress like that when they were visiting a mosque. Oh hold on, that actually did happen. It was in Kuala Lumpur. And once again, some of the tourists seemed shocked they were expected to cover up.  

Sigh...

And here's the very clear entrance to the Royal Palace (and temple) in Pnomh Penh:

You see that? Is this clear enough? NO FREAKING SHORTS!!!!!


Here's the people in line in front us mulling over the likelihood of them being turned away:

Perhaps even worse was the graffiti I found on the walls of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum - a place where the Khmer Rouge murdered and slowly tortured thousands of people (up to 20,000 seems to be the rough estimate). I didn't take any pictures here (I don't think there's a reason for a camera to be out in a place like this) but there were tourist scribblings on the walls of places where bloodstains remain - where people, in agony you and I can never, ever comprehend - were starved for months and tortured for extended periods of time. A place so horrific, Naomi would not even walk into one of the cells.

Suffice to say, my faith in humanity crumbled even further when I saw people's scribbles all over Tuol Sleng - a place which still personifies an almost unthinkable terror.

Cambodia, and to a lesser extent Thailand, are both countries where the locals will attempt to sell you anything. You might haggle for something only to find you've been ripped off when, a few stalls later, someone has the same thing for $1 instead of $10. It's not so much dishonesty as it is the result of having no welfare state and a huge gap between rich and poor. Cambodia, in particular, is what would happen if Ron Paul's Randian lolbertarian ideal ever took place - mothers and children sleeping homeless, kid beggars, a lack of police on the street, unsafe roads and pavements, litter everywhere and mansions next to makeshift cardboard homes. 

So, no, I don't blame anyone in these developing nations for trying to get money any way how. I do, however, find it depressing seeing white men with young prostitutes on their arm in Phnom Penh or in Bangkok. I think it is disgraceful that tourists in the Thai capital and Phuket think it is acceptable to pay to see a women from a developing nation pull razor blades or live animals out of her nether regions or blow a whistle or fire ping pong balls at your spoilt, arrogant little tourist mug from the same bodily area. I can't even begin to explain my hatred for third world sex tourists (or any kind of sex tourist) who has not the slightest concept of the politics involved in this hateful industry. Go ahead and defend your idiotic actions but your sexual curiosity, or gratitude, is what gives tourists to Thailand and other South East Asian nations such a bad name. It is also what makes some of the locals see us as nothing more than a walking dollar sign - to be shamelessly exploited. Given the circumstances I cannot say I blame them.

Another thing that bothers me is idiots and animals in these countries.

In Patong I spent an evening drinking some Tiger Beers (Tiger Crystal Lite is now my alcoholic beverage of choice) and watching tourists having their pictures taken with exotic animals. How about a pic with a baby leopard? Or an iguana? Or a lemur? That would be cute wouldn't it? Nothing dodgy going on there. I can only mention my utter horror as person after person lined up to be pictured with a baby leopard which, after they scattered, was roughly hit by its handlers. And why wouldn't they hit it? It's a fucking wild animal. It's not a play thing for pricks with passports.

The worst offender of this has to be the various tiger "temples" that are all over Thailand. 

Now I love tigers. I'm sure you do too. But something is a bit fishy about paying to sit on their backs, or at their sides, or snuggling up to them. I mean, imagine if Edinburgh or London Zoo offered that? They would make a fortune! So why don't they, right? Well, maybe it is because the tigers in these Thai establishments are badly treated and even drugged. There are reports all over the internet about the bad treatment given to tigers in these places and, rest assured, if my old, beloved, late, great tabby cat of 17 years was consistently petted for 10 hours a day by strangers, it would attack your hand and leave you with some nasty gnaw and scratch marks. And that is a tabby cat. So the excuse that these tiger temples give - that the animals are just "tired" and used to human contact - is really quite ridiculous but, hey, some tourists will believe anything. Unfortunately, we saw a lot of people lining up to plan trips to these centres of reported big cat brutality whilst we were in Thailand. Depressing.

I've not even started on the abuse of elephants - from idiotic circus shows, to street begging to riding on their backs - but there is one final positive. It is called the Elephant Nature Park and it is a rescue centre based in Chaing Mai:

Elephant Nature Park

The subject of documentaries on National Geographic and Animal Channel, the owner is a wonderful woman called Ek, and her husband, who also save stray dogs and cats. The elephants in this incredible retreat range from animals blinded by circus lights or cruel owners to battered and bruised creatures who have spent their lives on the streets of Bangkok to gain money from tourists wanting a photo opportunity. The animals in Lek's park are well treated and, as a tourist, your money goes towards her amazing conservation efforts.

You might not be riding on their backs, but you can pat these amazing mammals and even feed them.

Those who do engage in some sort of ethical travel would be well advised to spread the word to others about respecting the countries we choose to visit and even recommend, as I'm doing, places such as the Elephant Nature Park. And if you see someone scrawling graffiti on a famous landmark? Don't be afraid to tell the relevant authorities. Remember: wherever we go in this world, we are the guests. Let's try and act like respectable and responsible ones because, as I said at the start of this blog, a passport is something to cherish. But some people don't deserve one.

The tigers are badly maltreated to make them compliant and perform for visitors, for example, it was observed that Temple staff would drag tigers into appealing photographic positions by pulling their tails or punching and beating the animals. Staff also controlled the tigers by squiring tiger urine from a bottle into the animal’s face, an act of extreme aggression in tiger behaviour. - See more at: http://www.careforthewild.com/what-we-do/campaigns/previous-campaigns/tiger-temple-the-truth/#sthash.pxbzpEXJ.dpuf

The tigers are badly maltreated to make them compliant and perform for visitors, for example, it was observed that Temple staff would drag tigers into appealing photographic positions by pulling their tails or punching and beating the animals. Staff also controlled the tigers by squiring tiger urine from a bottle into the animal’s face, an act of extreme aggression in tiger behaviour. - See more at: http://www.careforthewild.com/what-we-do/campaigns/previous-campaigns/tiger-temple-the-truth/#sthash.pxbzpEXJ.dpuf

The tigers are badly maltreated to make them compliant and perform for visitors, for example, it was observed that Temple staff would drag tigers into appealing photographic positions by pulling their tails or punching and beating the animals. Staff also controlled the tigers by squiring tiger urine from a bottle into the animal’s face, an act of extreme aggression in tiger behaviour. - See more at: http://www.careforthewild.com/what-we-do/campaigns/previous-campaigns/tiger-temple-the-truth/#sthash.pxbzpEXJ.dpu

THE PREMIERE OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

Life lessons from a critic-proof sequel... that really sucked

When Titan's Dreamwatch folded it became Total Sci-Fi, a web site presided over by my friend Matthew McAllister and a bloody good income source for yours truly as well (sadly Titan called it a day with their online presence in 2009). I was once asked by someone why I had only utilised a short number of words on a review of something (I forget what). The answer to that is simple: the difference between Total Sci-Fi, as an off-shoot from an actual newsstand publication, and many other genre-related web sites, is that Titan still paid by the word. This meant strict word counts on their reviews - usually between 200 and 300 words.

I miss Total Sci-Fi a great deal - as does my wallet!

My proudest moment on Total Sci-Fi was when I became one of the first people in the world to have their Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull review online.

Here was my email to Matt, accompanied by my review [below], which I sent about an hour after getting out of the Cannes world premiere:

I waited 90 minutes in the baking sun to get into this
monster so you can get this sucker up right away!

Sadly, it's pants. I know I know - I wasn't the only
one though. Think this is going to get a rough time
from critics. It got boos at the end credits in
Cannes (along with some cheers to be fair) and some
REAL boos for LeBeouf's character. He's AWFUL in it.

Walk outs before the end credits too. A lot of
deflated journalists and filmmakers.

Speak soon!

C

And how right I was.

My Indiana Jones review got a record number of views on Total Sci-Fi. Interestingly, the other critics - for far loftier (and better paying!) outlets than Titan - swallowed their pride and, doubtlessly worried about risking being alone in their disdain, sucked-up to ol' Steven on this one. A bit like how I imagine some of these enthusiastic Skyfall reviews have come about. The initial reviews from Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and elsewhere hailed The Crystal Skull as an outright masterpiece, with one of the trades (and I forget which one) even claiming the film met with an estactic ovation.

That's the way the trades try and re-write history for their Hollywood over-lords. In this case it didn't happen, wasn't happening and, five years later, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is rightly seen as a disaster. A byword for ill-advised sequels.

Not to pat myself on the back or anything but I was the first voice of criticism out there. My only regret is going with 5/10. I wobbled about this - going back and forth between 4/10 and 5/10. I really did want to think that, maybe, I might want to watch this again sometime but, alas, I've never had the urge to go back and re-evaluate Kingdom of the Crystal Skull . Unlike Raiders of the Lost Ark, my memories of it are of mind numbing boredom, disappointment and that really stupid bit where the main cast keeps falling down massive waterfalls in a small boat, just like a Looney Tunes cartoon, but remain unharmed each time.

Anyway, with 300 words to spare here is the review I typed up immediately after getting out the screening...

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LeBeouf

Indiana Jones returns to action in 1957, where he becomes involved in a Soviet plot to locate the secrets behind the Akator – an ancient race of space aliens who hold the key to human mind control.

Oh dear, where to even start? If you hoped that the new Indiana Jones movie would feature extraterrestrial beings, comic relief meerkats and an obnoxious leather jacket wearing, rock ‘n’ roll lovin’ teenaged son for our title hero then this is the summer picture for you. However, if that brief description fills you with dread then prepare to be broken hearted.

Sure, Indy 4 comes up trumps with a small handful of set pieces but the plot is so daft, and the supporting characters so forgettable, that this long-awaited sequel soon becomes a drag to endure. Worst of all is Spielberg’s decision to bring back Allen as a love interest. Although the star of Raiders of the Lost Ark has aged well her performance in this boils down to nothing more than smiling like an 18 year old in love and mugging knowingly at the camera.

Likewise, LeBeouf as Indy Jnr. is too cocky and smug to be endearing and the sequence where he swings through vines in the Amazon wilderness (complete with “hilarious” CGI monkeys) is so cartoon-like that its very inclusion serves only to drag the viewer out of the plot at hand. Lead villainess Blanchett should be comedy gold as the flick’s sultry Soviet megalomaniac but, onscreen, she radiates a likeability and sexiness that makes her no threat at all to our hat-clad hero.

The end result is to the original Indiana Jones trilogy what Alien Resurrection was to its franchise – a tired, preposterous and, ultimately, pointless attempt at cash-fleecing from a group of Hollywood royalty that really should know better.

Verdict: 5/10

Back to blockbuster 101 class for you Mr. Spielberg!

Calum Waddell

Another one from the Dreamwatch archives: My interview with author Iain Banks, one of Scotland's most significant and sensational sci-fi minds. My own discovery of The Wasp Factory, during my first year at university, was game-changing: an indication that locally created horror fiction could be addictive, intelligent and terrifying. If you have to read this, it is highly recommended: a true contemporary classic!

Banking some Culture

Iain M Banks Interviewed

Famous for his creation of the Culture (a facet of many of his sci-fi novels, beginning with 1987’s  Consider Phlebas) 

and for shocking even the most jaded of horror readers with 1984’s The Wasp Factory, Iain M. Banks remains one of the 

genre’s most cherished authors. Calum Waddell caught up with him at the Edinburgh International Book Festival for the 

following exclusive interview. 

First off, care to give us a definitive answer on what is happening with the much rumoured film version of The Wasp 

Factory? 

Well, it is still rumoured! As they say in Hollywood, “don’t hold your breath.” The whole long, ghastly and - as it turned 

out – very expensive saga of The Wasp Factory not getting made into a film is one I long since stopped caring about, 

largely through despair. Litigation can do that.

All the same, if it theoretically did take place, who would be your ideal person to star as youthful killer Frank Cauldhame 

and who would be your choice of director?

I have no idea who would make the best Frank. As for a director... well, I have always said I would love the Coen brothers 

to make a book of mine into a film so I think I will stick with that. But the likelihood of any of this happening is, well, did I 

mention that thing about not holding one’s breath?

Of course some of the initial reviews of The Wasp Factory were quite scathing – with some critics being somewhat 

offended by the book. How do did you react to this?

Oh I thought it was a hoot (laughs). I was a complete unknown and had hoped to get maybe a handful of short, careless 

reviews, perhaps just enough to make sure I’d get a second book published. It was entirely a case of “any publicity is good 

publicity” with The Wasp Factory. So being reviewed everywhere by everybody and finding them all disagreeing about it, 

and the controversy itself leaking out from the book reviews into the news sections of papers and magazines, was 

something I hadn’t even dreamed of.  And, frankly, I thought the more knickers-in-a-twist notices were just hilarious. I still 

take a slightly guilty delight in upsetting precisely the sort of people who started frothing at the mouth because The Wasp 

Factory featured cruelty to animals or a young protagonist who went about cheerfully murdering other children!

Does the Culture represent your own notion of an ideal utopia - i.e. a future where government is almost irrelevant?

Yup; it is my own secular heaven. It is where I want to go when I am still alive.  Never going to happen, of course, but a 

chap can dream...

And do you believe science fiction is a good place to explore personal politics?

Potentially it is the ideal genre, because you can control every variable in the story, including the history that leads to the 

set-up at the start, whereas, in reality, we are kind of stuck with the history we have; irregardless of the efforts of revisionists. 

As someone whose work commonly explores the great unknown, do you believe in life on other planets?

I think it would be a quite bizarre standpoint not to be open to the possibility of life on other planets. We live on one small 

planet in an unremarkable solar system within a galaxy filled with between two and four hundred billion other stars. 

Moreover - as our telescopes and techniques improve – we have just started to spot solar systems almost everywhere we 

look. Plus there are as many galaxies in the universe as there are stars in our galaxy. So, for a person, now, in our current 

state of ignorance, just to decide that there isn’t life anywhere else, in amongst all of that, would appear perverse to say the 

least.

Both The Wasp Factory and Complicity are set in unassuming areas of Scotland, perhaps indicating that the most 

shocking terror does not have to emerge from the most obvious of locations and scenarios. Can you comment on this?

Well, I guess terror can come from almost anywhere. You know - people have died tripping on the kitchen floor and falling 

onto a knife sticking up in the dishwasher! In fact, I heard - just the other day - of a guy who died after a camel sat on him! 

Believe it or not, he wasn’t discovered for six hours and they reckon he took four and a half of those to die. Can you 

imagine?  So a bit of imagination and you can conjure almost any emotion out of almost any setting – be it horror, humour or 

anything else… But, to be honest, I can’t take supernatural horror seriously at all and the rest I just don't get. I seem not to 

possess the circuitry that processes disgust or fear into a pleasurable experience (laughs).  

Do view your novel Complicity as a work of horror?

No, it is meant to be a thriller. I mean, there is some pretty horrific stuff in there, certainly, but the intention wasn’t to write a 

horror novel. But, in the end I don't really mind what terms get attached to the books. If people want to think of Complicity 

as a horror novel, that is fine by me.

Your 1994 book Feersum Endjinn indicates a suspicion, maybe even dislike, of technological advance. Is this a fair 

reading?

Nope, I didn’t mean that at all. In fact, I love technological advance; as a species, in a sense, we now are our technology. I 

would say it is what we do with it that is the problem.  I think it tells you a lot about us that the first question asked of any 

advance is “What are the military applications?”

Finally, an inevitable question: Can you name some of your favourite authors and books? 

In the last few years I have been very impressed with Alan Warner and David Mitchell. I also think that Alan Moore's Voice 

of the Fire is one of the great underrated novels of our time.

The Genius of Joffe

ON A MISSION WITH BRITISH CINEMA'S ONCE GREAT HOPE...

 By Calum Waddell

I conducted this interview at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. It has never been seen before. oland Joffe was in town to promote You and I, a film which stars Mischa Barton and the girl-pop group t.A.T.u. The film was finally released a year ago and has been seen by practically no one. It is a shame that Joffe ended up directing a movie based upon the years-after-the-sell-by-date appeal of one-hit-wonder pseudo-lesbian chart moppets t.A.T.u (whose 'one hit' was, to be fair, actually really good) given that he was once hailed as the future of the British film industry. Acclaimed after his first two movies, 1984’s The Killing Fields and 1986’s The Mission, as the darling of our national cinema, the filmmaker nevertheless saw his career hit hard times. For instance, 1992’s follow-up drama - City of Joy, failed to set the box office on fire and met with a lukewarm critical reception, whilst 1993’s disastrous video game adaptation Super Mario Bros. is rightly forgotten about. 1995’s Demi Moore vehicle The Scarlet Letter was an attempt to return to artier material, but proved dead on arrival, whilst 2000’s black comedy Vital met with similar commercial silence. His entry into the 'torture porn' horror genre with 2007's occasionally stylish Captivity saw Joffe back in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. His film was slammed for its misogynistic advertising campaign and, even worse, the Elisha Cuthbert-starring slasher picture failed to illicit even the sleazy shocks that its marketing promised.

It is a curious story but, unlike most of the bored press hacks I came across ("Just doing this to meet t.A.T.u really") I was fascinated by the prospect of speaking to Joffe. For a start, he made one of the greatest, and most important, films of all time in The Killing Fields. Ask yourself how many filmmakers make even one great feature. Very few. But Joffe has. Moreover, anyone who has read my blog on Hamburger Hill will know that the Vietnam War is a personal interest of mine - and there is no discussing that torrid period in US foreign policy without speaking about Cambodia and its fall to the Khmer Rouge.

The Killing Fields remains the best [fictonal] feature to date about Pol Pot's attempt to create "year zero" and its star, the actual genocide survivor Haing Ngor, who wrote the essential book "Survival in the Killing Fields", won an Oscar for his role in Joffe's production. Unfortunately, Ngor - whose wife and unborn child lost their lives under the Khmer Rouge - would be shot on the streets of Los Angeles in 1996. A tragic end to a tragic life.

Naturally, I spoke to Joffe about Ngor - and I am happy to finally have these words available. For anyone who has not seen The Killing Fields: shame on you. It comes highly recommended, along with The Mission - evidence of an artist at the prime of his power and someone who, by rights, should have gone on to form a legacy of provocative and thought provoking productions...

What was it that attracted you to your new movie, You and I?

There are a couple of things that drew me to this film and I am unsure which was the most attractive. However, first of all there was the idea of making a film in modern day Moscow. If someone asked me what Moscow looked like before I actually went there then I could describe the Kremlin and a couple of other things, but it really lives in your head in the way that other cities do not. You see, life is so frenetic in modern Moscow, and so brutally different for different groups of people, that you are not quite the same person when you leave. So the more time you spend in modern Moscow the more you see a city in total change. I think that the Russians are trying to work out who they are right now and they are going through an incredible crisis over this and what part they have in the world. I believe that part of this is also related to their relationship to capitalism. Does capitalism mean that you only make money and that is the most important thing? You know, the more money you make the more powerful you are? Or does capitalism mean that you give everyone the chance to makes some money? Or does capitalism mean that you turn everyone into a consumer so that those who have the money hold the power and everyone else is stuck like flies to flypaper just being consumers? Perhaps that is a hell of a lot smarter than trying to hold fixed elections as a communist country. All of these things are being debated right now by people in Moscow and that was one part of the story which I really loved. But I when I was doing The Killing Fields it was, primarily, a story of friendship because you can only understand war if you understand friendship. As long as you understand that then you can understand the price of war – otherwise it is just “bang, bang, you’re dead.”

Yeah, I want to touch upon The Killing Fields. Can you talk about your memories of the late Haing Ngor?

Haing was a very exceptional man because of the life that he had led. He never thought that he was a very nice person. He was a bit of a playboy when he was young and he felt dreadful about what happened to his own wife. I think that Haing could never expiate this terrible conundrum that life had given him but he never shrank from it.

He had never acted when you put him in The Killing Fields...

One of the reasons I wanted him to be in The Killing Fields was because he was telling me all about his own ordeal one day and I thought “I cannot put an actor in this film.” I turned to him and said, “Haing, why don’t you tell me that story again? But act it.” He said “Oh no, I can’t act.” So I told him to go and stand at the window and to tell me about when the Khmer Rouge came and he began to act. At a certain point he turned to me and he said “you have to leave now!” He began crying after that. I said to him, “Haing, I am sorry about this but I have to blackmail you – for the sake of your country you need to play this part because no one else can do it better.” He didn’t speak any English, really, mainly French – so I had to lie to Warner Bros. and then, during the filming, run around the floor underneath the camera and say all kinds of terrible director things to get his emotions going. But I loved him very much. He had tremendous grace and was very, very giving. When he died they found his Oscar in his room. All the gold had been wiped off it because he treasured it so much. And that was a big thing.

At the time Cambodia was operating under Pol Pot, Noam Chomsky, perhaps surprisingly, expressed considerable denial about the genocide that was taking place under the regime. He would later blame the Khmer Rouge's rise to power on the Vietnam War and America's bombing of Cambodia and infiltration of her borders - something that I would largely agree with. That said, this in no way justifies slamming the press reports, of the time, which rightly indicated the Khmer Rouge was murdering hundreds of thousands of people. I am surprised that Chomsky has not been more vocal in apologising for his, let's say, soft-handed approach towards a form of government that was as cruel as the National Socialists... (For a solid report on this see: Chomsky and the Khmer Rouge)

Yes, I was offended by him. It comes back to something I feel about belief. Noam Chomsky reminded me of it actually. When I agreed to do The Killing Fields I got a visit from two members of the WRP (note: Worker’s Revolutionary Party) who told me I should not do the movie because I would be attacking a young socialist state that was only trying to find its feet. I said “Well yes, but can you see the shortcomings of this argument?” they told me they could not. I said “You want me to gloss over what happened in order to do what?” And they told me “to protect socialism.” I said, “I am sure socialism is strong enough to take the criticism.” I then said, “I don’t think I am betraying socialism at all, but if I am then I will live with it.” Chomsky had the same problem.

Right, I also fail to see why criticising the gross inhumanity of the Khmer Rouge - which owed little to the ideals of Marx and Engels anyway - is attacking any sort of left-wing order. Chomsky is a great mind, but he really should have known better...

Chomsky is a very, very bright man but you have to ask, “Why did he go blind in that area?” Well he went blind in the area that we all go blind in and that is why I have never tried to make a movie about a specific political point of view. Belief and personality is so interwoven that we are often deformed by them. They become us. So Noam Chomsky, who could be so observant about language, could not bring himself to see what had happened in Cambodia. He could only read it as propaganda. I don’t think he was bad – but his comments did make me think, “If Noam Chomsky is that smart and he can’t get out of that trap then why would you believe you could?” That is why I have not tried to make my career as a movie director attached to politics. Rather it has been as a movie director attached to people.

You mentioned there that you do not make movies with a specific point of view but, judging from what you said earlier about You and I, you seem to be a little taken aback by Russia’s open armed acceptance of free market capitalism. Is that a fair statement?

Well if you can take this from a very ignorant human being… If we accept that capitalism is just a system in the same way that our bodies are just a system and the movie industry is just a system… For me, if we lay aside any criticism of it and look at how the system operates – no system operates without checks and balances. The body checks that your liver doesn’t turn into your spleen for example… So capitalism, of itself, is not necessarily bad, but it is designed to make profits and we need to ask what the profits should be. You see, of itself it won’t stop – it is like cancer, it wants to keep growing, but when cancer grows it eventually kills the body. Capitalism is exactly the same – it will just keep growing.

I agree. I think we can see by the exhaustion of our natural resources, global warming and the life opportunities afforded to those in developing nations - illustrated by sweatshop labour and so forth - that unregulated market capitalism is of benefit to only a small minority of people who have little interest in the morality of how they are making their millions or billions.

I think that Milton Friedman’s idea of an unregulated market was totally banal and utterly, utterly immoral and disgraceful. Yet the Victorians, who we criticise, at least had the balls and the guts to know that was a mistake and Teddy Roosevelt, who was a Republican, at least understood that if you don’t put checks and balances on those train and coal barons the country would fall apart. But here we are 70 years later running around thinking that free market trading is the answer to everything and it can’t be, because if you allow capitalism to run wild it becomes a cancer in its own right. Human beings love to trade and to banter and capitalism is based on trading and banter. Human being also like power – we like it because it makes us feel safe but too much power is a nightmare. Russia is totally dedicated to power and committed to using capitalism for that means in a way that no one in the West has dared to do since the days of the old train and coal barons. It is a throwback to the way capitalism was and that is very scary… They think they are ahead of the curve and they are not.

According to the excellent book My Indecision Is Final: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Goldcrest Films you were told during the making of The Mission that if your movie failed to make a profit Goldcrest would go under. What kind of pressure did that put you under? (Note: The Mission failed to go into profit during its initial release and Goldcrest folded)

It was very strange in a way (laughs). I recall being told, in the middle of shooting, “we need to cut $5 million out of the budget and the movie still has to work,” and everyone at Goldcrest was very distressed. I said to them, “Right now Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro don’t like each other, I am working with a waterfall which does what it wants, not what I want, and I am responsible for group of Indians - who I have flown over 235 miles across Colombia - and who have a rat infestation in their village. And now I have to add Goldcrest to the list?” I thought to myself, “Well if it really comes down to it, I have to protect the Indians first, DeNiro and Jeremy second and Goldcrest third.” It had to be in that order. I just had to get on with making the movie and you never know if a film is going to work. It is an exercise in faith and trust.

Why didn’t DeNiro and Irons get along?

They came from very, very different acting areas. Bobby is very interior – he finds his way outside by going in and Jeremy finds his way inside by having been out. He wants to know what his costume is, what his clothes are, where he is going to do and what he has done. But Bobby doesn’t want to know anything. He wants to find his interior. So I had to be the bridge between them both. But that is what I am paid to do.

You shot the movie in Colombia, in the rain forest, what were the conditions like?

The conditions varied. We also shot it in the middle of an area used for coke trafficking, which led to some problems because we were in their way. I remember we had to leave the set one weekend for that reason. However, because I am not a sadist, and I didn’t want the crew to have a bad time we all stayed in hotels. In truth, when I was scouting the movie and I went down the river by boat and lived in an Indian village for two weeks, it was pretty fascinating to me but also tough in its own way. I tried to locate the set somewhere that we could reconstruct all of that, but also be near a hotel so that we could always go back and relax at night. If you really, really look at the end battle scene you can see, under camouflage netting, the main Transamerica highway with things going backwards and forwards on it. That was also the highway where the coke trafficking was going on.

How did you feel about the accusations of misogyny that greeted Captivity? 

(Sighs) Whatever people say about you, you have to live with it but if it is not true then it should not worry you. Captivity is not a misogynistic film at all but I had a different end to it. At the end of my version of the movie you see a vigilante killing and it turns out that the character played by Elisha Cuthbert had actually done this before she was kidnapped. So in my version of the movie the message was “if you treat women with violence then they will become violent back.” Personally I was furious that they changed the end. I just could not come out and say anything at the time but I can now. So the misogyny in that film was not my fault. I don’t believe it is a misogynistic movie but, on the other hand, you cannot fault the press for coming to something with an attitude. You hope that some journalist will say it is not misogynistic – and some did – but if you adopt any kind of public persona then you have to take the knocks. I spent a lot of my life with people saying I was a moralist and I was too emotional so it was quite funny to be labelled as something else entirely.

The marketing for Captivity also came under scrutiny because it highlighted a series of very visceral advertisements with women being tortured…

Again, it all got sucked it into some kind of marketing system that I had no control over. I said to them “if you show this movie to women with my ending then they will say that it does raise some serious issues.” If a woman is raped is she not entitled to be angry? A lot of women have written that when they were raped, people were angry at them for being angry. They would say “I want to kill this man and castrate him” and they were told that they could not have those feelings. That argument kind of fell on deaf ears - although I made it to the press as much as I could and as often as I could… Eventually, however, I had to shut up because I didn’t feel like I should sabotage the movie. I didn’t realise that they had changed the end, which I thought would justify everything, but what can you do?