‘Runaway’ foreign film productions from a global South perspective: film workers’ memories and site-specific traces from Thailand

ABSTRACT

This article explores the subject known in the Anglophone context as ‘runaway’ film productions through examining records by peripheral film workers and the legacy associated with a specific film location in Thailand. Considering the post-Cold War period when ‘foreign’ filmmaking had just taken off and the more recent (post)-COVID-19 labour movement within the country, the article proposes a revisit to film production history via a consideration of on-the-fringe paratexts, sporadically circulated in the public domain, as a way to explore discourses associated with this kind of transnational film productions. The article draws on two key written records associated with the making of The Killing Fields (1984) namely a set diary by the late Sompol Sungkawess, a writer/translator who worked as a local assistant director for the film; and a published monologue by the late Spalding Gray, a playwright/performer who took a minor role in the movie. By conducting a ‘palimpsestuous reading’ of these accounts along with various site-specific traces, the article explores past and present conditions and practices with the aim to project alternative imaginaries of transnational screen service industry from a global South standpoint.

KEYWORDS:

• Runaway production
• film production history
• global South
• Thailand
• post-Cold war
• palimpsestuous reading

Introduction

This article explores an alternative way to approach the subject of ‘runaway production’ by drawing attention to the legacy of The Killing Fields (Joffé 1984), one of the key films shot in Thailand in the early 1980s when foreign film production and related tourism took off in a major way. The article draws attention to film production memories recorded by peripheral film workers and site-specific traces at a key film location. While acknowledging that this is an ‘old’ film albeit an important one for drawing global attention to the atrocities that took place in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979, the focus of the article is the production memories and its legacy that have been left off or smoothed out from official discourses on foreign/runaway film productions. The aim is to invite an analysis that takes into account aspects of transnational collaborations, complex colonial economic relations and alternative imaginaries for sustainable screen service industries. As the article will elaborate, the early days of large-scale Hollywood film productions in the 1970s and 1980s are also useful as a reference point to discuss the current screen labour movement in Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the pandemic, I have been collecting stories from below-the-line film crews and various alternative film venues about their livelihood, an on-going study to be completed by early 2023. At this time, I have also come across two historical records of foreign film production related to the film The Killing Fields. These include a set diary by the late Sompol Sungkawess (2000), – a writer/translator who worked as a local assistant director for the film, and a monologue by Spalding Gray – a playwright/performer who took a minor role in the movie. My interest in The Killing Fields and its production history was piqued earlier when I learned that the film might have saved the original building of the Railway Hotel (the first seaside hotel in Thailand) from demolition after it was used as a film set. The said building was constructed during the colonial era after the completion of the Southern Railway line connecting Thailand to Malaysia. The film also has different afterlives across different spaces over time. In 2017, The Killing Fields along with another Cold-War era movie The Deer Hunter (Cimino 1978) were selected as part of Thailand International Film Destination Festival (Ketbungkan 2017). The event was inaugurated in 2013 as a platform to highlight the country’s intention to promote Thai locations and invite investment from international film production companies (DeHart 2013).

The COVID-19 pandemic suspended global film production and festival events in the scale that had not happened since WWII. Nevertheless, as soon as overseas tourism had picked up, local authorities were enthusiastic to report on the revenues that the country gained from foreign film productions. An article in Creativethailand.org, for example, cited several films – including a Cold War production, The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Farrelly 2022) starring Russell Crowe, which took 49 days of shooting at the end of 2021 – that generated over 373 million Baht for the local economy (Srikrachang 2022). As of June 2022, the Thai cabinet has also approved an additional local tax exemption for foreign film stars to further encourage more projects (Bangprapa 2022). This kind of optimistic reporting around foreign film productions in the Thai press has persistently grown since 2017 when a tax rebate scheme was launched for projects that spend THB 1.5 million (US$45,194) or more in Thailand’¹ (Klemm 2017a). With the aim to make the country a competitive destination for location shootings, the subject of foreign film production was also included in the national ‘strategic plan to promote film and video industries’ documents (phase 2 in 2012–2016 and phase 3 in 2017–2021), which outline different areas that the government intended to support. Although these ‘foreign productions’ are not related to the state’s regulations on national cinema under the Ministry of Culture, they have been included in the policy as part of the ‘Thai film industry’ as a source of revenue and a form of ‘soft power’. The emphasis on financial gain, without addressing the aspect of film labour, has recently been criticized along with the development of the Creative Workers Union Thailand (CUT),² an unprecedented collective joined by many screen workers who were out of work for up to a year with limited financial aid during the pandemic.³

The development of CUT and the subject of film production history exist quite separately from past research on foreign film productions in Thailand, which have largely focused on the work of the Thailand Film Office (TFO) within the Department of Tourism, Ministry of Tourism and Sports, particularly the tax incentives programmes and destination marketing campaigns (Klemm 2017a, 2019). Another related area of research is on film-induced tourism related to blockbuster films such as The Beach (Boyle 2000) and Lost in Thailand (Zheng 2012).⁴ Furthermore, there are also studies related to foreign films that focus on longstanding neo-colonial representations when these projects portray Thailand as a country, instead of presenting it as a stand-in for other locations (Rusmeeviengchai 2017; Klemm 2017b). These works also differ significantly from the context of the U.S., where the term ‘runaway’ production originated.

Toby Miller and Marie Claire Leger highlight the increase in ‘overseas’ production of films and TV from the U.S. in the early 1990s from ‘7% of its total to 27%’ (2001, 104). The writers draw attention to the underlying ‘neo-liberalism’s mantra’ that prioritizes business freedom over the aspect of labour (Miller and Leger 2001, 90). Under ‘The New International Division of Cultural Labour’, a term which the writers drew from the work of Folker Frobel et al. published in 1980, the so called Third World countries have been positioned as ‘shadow-setters of the price of works, competing amongst themselves and with the First World for employment …’ (Miller and Leger 2001, 102). On the one hand, this has led to protests from American-based labour groups due to the outsourcing of jobs to other countries. On the other hand, the question of sustainability was raised as foreign film productions latently ‘carry the seeds of insecurity, because companies move on when tax incentives or other factors of production beckon’ (Miller and Leger 2001, 102).

Apart from the American narratives, Camille Johnson-Yale lists a number of countries which have been mentioned in academic works on runaway productions including Australia, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, India and Canada (Johnson-Yale 2008, 116). Her article highlights mixed responses circulated in the Canadian press, from the discourse on ‘cultural imperialism’ which led to the disadvantage of national/indigenous production and consumption, to the ‘pro-globalization’ discourse which suggests the flow of Canadian talents to Hollywood as a kind of ‘corporate transculturalism’ instead of the ‘talent drain’ (Johnson-Yale 2008, 122–123). Another discourse draws attention to the possibility of using the infrastructure of runaway productions for the benefit of the growth of the Canadian film industry itself (2008, 126–127). Apart from the trends during 1990s-2000s, a historical reflection on runaway productions in Europe in the post WWII context by Daniel Steinhart (2019) also reveals interesting industry and economic circumstances (the Paramount Antitrust ruling in 1948 that prevented the monopoly of film studios within the distribution sector), which led to the flow of film productions across the Atlantic.

Within the context of Thailand, the global suspension of overseas travel for runaway productions and the labour movement signal a high time to engage with critical and historical sides of foreign film production. With the various paper trails that I have encountered in recent years on The Killing Fields, the article proposes a ‘palimpestuous reading’ of textual and spatial paratexts with the aim to create dialogic and interregional conversations between existing narratives on runaway production and future economic/intercultural exchanges. This extension would also contribute to limited work on transnational screen service industry from global South perspectives. By the ‘global south’, I refer to the work of Franco Cassano as translated in English and edited by Norma Bouchard and Valerio Ferme (Cassano 2012). Though written in the context of the Mediterranean as ‘the South’, the aim of Cassano’s project is to critique the imbalance of power imposed by Occidentalism and to draw attention to the mode of knowledge production, agency and culture from within the site(s) of the South. His ideas will be used to reflect on practices associated with foreign film productions in Thailand.

Writings towards the ‘South’: peripheral film workers’ authorial positions and a palimpsestuous reading

Works on foreign film productions in Thailand often draw attention to the authority of the state, influential production service companies and foreign investors. As the introductory section suggests, this article is interested in the less commonly explored creative agency of ‘peripheral film workers’ or the cast and crew who have worked on the film set, often in minor roles. I opted for the term ‘peripheral film workers’ instead of ‘below-the-line’⁵ as these minor roles may also include those working closely with the ‘above-the-line’ creative division of the film production as well as the ‘below-the-line’ technicians/crews and unregulated extras. The notion of ‘peripheral’ also highlights the locality of the labour from Thailand as a global South country – servicing the multiple centres of global film trades including the U.S., Europe, India and China. These individuals are not part of the official promotional paratexts of the film (which often feature the director/producer/script writer/key stars). Stories of these workers are also often left out from academic contexts as they require access to the film set and close connections with related individuals. When these workers are sub-contractors/casual freelance staff without a formal union, they leave even lesser paper trails in the public domain. This circumstance has changed significantly during the social media era (more on this at the end of the article). However, in the 1980s, written records of stories from peripheral film workers were quite rare. Hence, the two accounts I encountered are unique in revealing the role of workers as narrators/authors in their own right.

In the author’s note to Swimming to Cambodia, Spalding Gray described himself as ‘a kind of “poetic reporter” or “an impressionist painter” as he did not focus on “reporting” the “facts” that took place on the film set “as quickly as possible” (Gray 1987, xiv). In fact, he began writing the monologue six months after his trip to Thailand and made the last adjustments two years afterward. With these gaps, it was said that stories were given a chance to “settle down until at last they blend, bubble and mix in the swamp of dream, memory and reflection” (Gray 1987, xiv). This kind of self-reflective positioning can also be found in Sompol Sungkawess’ preface to his book. Sungkawess remarked in disbelief that it had already been 18 years since the film The Killing Fields was made (Sungkawess 2000, Preface to the 2nd edition). He described the diary project as the work of an amateur writer who reported on each day on the film set, detailing what had happened and the problems that had occurred.

In addition to highlighting the creative and self-reflective positions of these peripheral yet creative film workers, these accounts also reveal the texts’ other functions in the public domain. The publisher of Sungkawess’ diary noted that apart from being a personal memory of a film crew, the diary was an unofficial textbook about working on a Hollywood-scale project with many Thai crew members involved. In the afterward of Gray’s account, James Leverett contextualized Gray’s performative monologue within his larger relationship with the American avant-garde theatre scene. With the multiple possible ways to approach these past records, this article aims to draw attention to hidden/underexplored aspects of this kind of transnational filmmaking that open up new ways of thinking about foreign film productions. As these materials could be considered as a film’s unofficial paratexts, I draw on the related notion of palimpsests to consider these writings as a site for recalling memories and creating new imaginaries.

Contemporary writings on the palimpsest from literary studies, cultural studies, memory studies and urban studies extend the term beyond the context of antique manuscript to a mode of reading a text/surface/site whereby layers of memories can be uncovered, particularly those ‘covert’ meanings that have been ‘struggling to surface over time’ (Kalogeras et al. 2021, 2). Two oft-cited texts associated with this revision of the term are Gerard Genette’s work Palimpsests (Genette 1997 [1982]) – written prior to Paratexts (Genette 1997), and Sarah Dillion’s monograph, The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory (Dillon 2007). For Genette, the term palimpsest refers to the relationship between a hypotext and a hypertext whereby a hypertext derives from a hypotext either by way of imitation or transformation. While Genette’s description suggests a close connection between palimpsests and intertextuality, Dillion elaborates that the aim of exploring a palimpsest is not to trace the origin but to explore the way the texts are related. In the words of Kalogeras et al., the idea of palimpsests can be used as ‘an inherently dialogical device that fosters intertextual conversations’ (Kalogeras et al. 2021, 6). Dillion compares the term ‘palimpsestic’ and ‘palimpsestuous’ to explain the kind of reading method available for exploring the past that may have been overlooked, suppressed or forgotten. While palimpsestic describes the layering process that makes up a palimpsest, a palimpsestuous reading is the process of exploring certain structure in the layers of texts and revealing other forgotten dimensions. In the process, we can examine the way ‘otherwise unrelated texts are involved and entangled, intricately interwoven, interrupting and inhabiting each other’ (Dillon 2007, 4). This process has also been applied to read urban spaces and politics of memories (Huyssen 2009). This kind of positioning coincides with the kind of ethnic and postcolonial reading of the palimpsests, which complicates the way certain history is remembered, structured and consecrated.

In the context of this article, I explore the way various texts and memories associated with the location shooting of The Killing Fields interact, illuminate or destabilize knowledge associated with runaway productions. These include the local framings of foreign film production in Thailand through the desire for foreign investment and the global debate on neoliberalism and the division of cultural labour. By creating a conversation between the literature on runaway production from the global north and discourses found in local contexts including those on local labour and the relationship with foreign capital, this kind of project also resonates with the theoretical approach of transnational film scholars such as Victor Fan (2015). Drawing on Chinese language materials and analysing them in relation to Western film theory, Fan aims to ‘restore an interregional conversation that was meant to be there in the first place, and allow those of us who work in this field to reevaluate how key concepts in cinema studies can be reconfigured’ (Fan 2015, 10). The subject of runaway/foreign film production when examined through the alternative paratexts/palimpsests and temporalities can open up transnational conversations previously excluded from studies of screen industries and production history. The following analysis sections are organized around key themes I identified in the unofficial paratexts/palimpsests which seek to foster new discursive spaces on foreign film productions.

Southern stories (in translation): workers’ micro economy and the currency of care

Bringing Sompol Sungkawess’ set diary into the surface of foreign film production discussion in the English language requires a process of translation. The diary was written in Thai for those interested in The Killing Fields, and the foreign filmmaking that took place in Thailand. The conversations Sungkawess had with various individuals on the set along with his self-reflections also reveal the process of his own translation to convey local circumstances to foreign cast and crew as part of an assistant director team who liaised with the locals during the location shooting. One of the distinct themes that emerges throughout Sungkawess’ diary is the micro economy of wages/allowances of people that Sungkawess came into contact with.⁶ This aspect reveals the long-standing economic conditions shaping runaway productions for countries with lower exchange rates and cheaper labour since the 1980s. Interestingly, the account reveals the aspect of care whereby consolations are expressed to offer a sense of concern towards individuals in disadvantaged financial positions. Sungkawess’s account seems to imply that this kind of noncountable ‘currency of care’ is crucial in maintaining the spirit of the staff and making sure the transnational production runs smoothly.

Sungkawess reflected on his own daily budget as the film production crew moved from Bangkok to shoot at the seaside town of Hua Hin three hours south, where the hotel breakfast cost 133 Baht (5.78 USD).⁷ He only received 200 Baht (8.7 USD) allowance per day and also needed to think about paying for laundry services (Sungkawess 2000, 94, 126). In the context of Hua Hin, Sungkawess also recalled a conversation with the ‘Thai kitchen’⁸ catering staff in which they said they did not have a place to stay and were forced to sleep in the car. Sungkawess was informed that they were given 100 Baht (4.3 USD) for accommodation while the initial promise had been 500 Baht (21.7 USD) (Sungkawess 2000, 146). As the film crew travelled to shoot further south in Phuket, Sungkawess wrote about a strike by the drivers after their 100 Baht (4.3 USD) extra allowance per day was cut; the situation was later settled. This made him ponder, ‘what about others who did not receive the extra 100 Baht per day all along?’ (Sungkawess 2000, 145). Around the same period of time, Sungkawess and his colleagues also shared a similar concern after hearing that one of their friends was to be let go after finishing the early parts of the film (Sungkawess 2000, 144). Sungkawess remarked that there were other ways to save costs such as the occasion when his colleague had to kill seven pigs [7,000 Baht (304 USD) each], but only three were used for the set. He lamented that ‘instead of wasting the money like this, with that amount they could have hired a skilled worker for a month’ (Sungkawess 2000, 143). Nevertheless, due to the division of labour and lack of negotiating power, Sungkawess was advised not to intervene over the staff cuts.

Upon reflection, the above circumstances coincide with the runaway production logic within ‘The New International Division of Cultural Labour’ which took off in the 1980s. Toby Miller elaborates on the term in relation to the ‘increasingly global competition for working-class labor as manufacturers looked to invest in places where employees were capable, cheap and compliant – the ultimate realization of a worldwide reserve army of workers’ (Miller 2016, 101). The manufacturing sectors in countries associated with ‘the capitalist states’ in the Cold War eras entered this production sphere, including those of ‘Asian Tigers/Dragons’ such as Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore (Miller 2016, 100). Thailand aspired to be the fifth Tiger seeking to attract foreign investments. In 1983 as the production of The Killing Fields was taking place, there was also a climate of capitalist growth and an eagerness to leave the Cold War hard power behind. In a historical book by Charnvit Kasetsiri, 1983 was noted as the year in which Thailand welcomed a foreign film crew for the Hollywood movie The Killing Fields, alongside the launch of its first ATM machine in the country and the occasion on which 5,000 communists in the North returned their arms to the authorities (Kasetsiri 2012, 185). In this new era, ‘culture became increasingly commodified and governmentalized and drew closer to the center of the world economy’, which led to the ‘same pressures’ being applied to film production as to manufacturing units (Miller 2016, 107). While the nature of cultural work means specific roles are not easily replaced, a new mode of employment associated with ‘casualized labor’ and ‘flexible specialization’ emerged (2016, 108). In this context, many workers, particularly sub-contractors had freedom of choice and were passionate about their work, yet their creative outputs and cultural translation rarely found their ways into the global screen industry or academic discourses.

By reporting on the financial circumstances of the workers in the diary, Sungkawess was also able to compare the division of pay rates between the Thai and foreign staff. For example, he drew attention to a case when a foreign extra wrote to the Bangkok Post newspapers complaining that their wages were low in comparison to the labour. He lamented that the foreign extras’ situation was drastically better than that of the Thais.

Foreign extras were being paid 500 Baht [21.7 USD] for day work and 1,000 Baht [43.4 USD] for night shift. There was air-con transportation from Rama Tower [hotel] to the location[s]. There were three meals provided with unlimited drinks … while the Thai crew were being paid 230 Baht [10 USD] a day, excluding food and transport. Night time shooting was 500 Baht a night [21.7 USD]. Some extras were also being taken advantage of by their brokers who deducted at least 20 Baht [1.15 USD] from each extra. These individuals could make 1,000 Baht a day by just bringing in 50 extras to the production …

(Sungkawess 2000, 67, my translation)

With no formalized union and limited government involvement in labour issues, both workers in the past, as well as today, have resorted to the press or their own channels to voice their concerns. Apart from the aspect of micro economy and labour on the film set, considering Sungkawes’s report as stories from ‘the South’, there are also micro managerial processes that reveal the skills of local staff in language and cultural translations to tackle problems that occurred on a daily basis. In the context of The Killing Fields, one of the issues relates to how local businesses and individuals ‘make hay while the sun shines’ (Sungkawess 2000, 67), with the arrival of Enigma Productions.

Sungkawess’ diary reveals how service industries in Hua Hin increased their prices to take advantage of having the foreign film production in town, including for accommodation, food and prostitutes (Sungkawess 2000, 96, 98). When the crew entered Thai rural areas standing in for rural Cambodia, news also spread that certain people were earning money, which encouraged others to get involved in the film production. Sungkawess reported that the cost for cutting coconut trees in the area was 2,000–5,000 Baht (87–217 USD) per tree (initially the villagers asked for more) (Sungkawess 2000, 165). The owner of a house used in the film set demanded 50,000 Baht (2,173 USD) while the neighbours asked for 10,000 (434.7 USD) and 5,000 Baht (217 USD). Interestingly, one of the houses rigged up a high television mast (although the village still did not have electricity) and the crew was asked to pay 10,000 Baht to take it down. The production team later altered the direction of the camera to resolve the situation. On another occasion, a monk’s ordination was using loudspeakers to broadcast the event, and when asked to turn off the sound, the host requested the crew to pay for the cost of the event – 30,000 Baht. The Thai staff solved the issue by offering ‘merit’ money of 2,000 Baht (Sungkawess 2000, 168).

Apart from these opportunistic dealings, there were also cases where the locals did not ask for money but the crew offered to pay anyway as an expression of their gratitude. For example, once when the team was set to shoot a scene of ‘the killing fields’, they noticed a house with a shiny corrugated roof on a hill in the distance in the direction of the shot (Sungkawess 2000, 185). Sungkawess remarked that one of his colleagues found a cotton tree to cover the roof. The tree was provided by a 90-year-old man who lived alone after his wife had passed away. The crew offered him 1,000 Baht, although he did not ask for any money (Sungkawess 2000, 185). Another time, the crew found a lady who offered to find a buffalo for the film set as her old one had died. She did not know how much to charge the team and merely asked for 100 Baht to give to her grandchild to buy snacks. Sungkawess offered her 500 Baht, and the staff received a big smile in return (Sungkawess 2000, 230). These micro-level stories, which could have easily been left out, are useful in revealing the economic conditions in the 1980s when limited financial resources were available in the provincial areas. The currency of care by the crew towards less advantaged members of the communities also highlights the way foreign filmmaking can contribute to better lives for locals and improved work conditions if and when opportunities arise to do so.

A thought from the South, according to the words of Franco Cassano, is to think of ‘a different grammar of poverty and wealth, to conceive the dignity of a different way of life’ (Cassano 2012, 2). Reflectively, this new international division of cultural labour deeply associated with the capitalist logic of foreign film productions may be able to lead to a more sustainable future when they systematically take into account the production site as a site ‘that can enrich and liberate’ (Miller 2016, 98), both in the short and the long term.

Performative self-reflections from a distant shore: actor/tourist & geopolitical critiques

Spalding Gray’s scripted and performed monologue Swimming to Cambodia, like Sungkawess’ diary, can be read from many viewpoints. Discussing it in juxtaposition with one another, Gray’s account reveals a series of attempts by the actor to get closer to Cambodia and the political context that informs his role as the American consul in the film. At the same time, the monologue also reveals Gray’s attempts to sarcastically problematize his own experience as a tourist in Thailand in the post-Cold War era influenced by the imaginaries of The Deer Hunter and the circumstances of being served and surrounded by beer, bodies (of local sex workers) and the search for ‘a perfect moment’ induced by drugs. His internal desires and self-deprecating reflections address both geopolitical conflicts of the American involvement in Southeast Asia during the Cold War and the perpetual colonial relations in everyday life.

Gray states in the preface that he spent time imagining ‘what went on in that country (Cambodia) during the gruesome period from 1966 to the present’ (Gray 1987, xiv). He gives credit to the book Sideshow – Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia recommended by Roland Joffé, the director of The Killing Fields which he used as ‘historical material’ (Gray 1987, xiv) along with the personal contributions by ‘Sidney Schanberg and Elizabeth Becker’ (Gray 1987, xv). Gray provides a background to the film as told to him by Joffé, explaining that it came from:

the story of a New York Times reporter named Sidney Schanberg and his sidekick, Dith Pran, who was a Cambodian photographer. It was about how they covered and reported the story of the Americans’ secret bombing of Cambodia, and how Schanberg and Pran stayed behind in Phnom Penh after the American embassy was evacuated because they wanted to cover what happened when the Khmer Rouge marched in (Gray 1987, 10).

He recalls wanting to take part in the film in any role offered, although he had told the director, ‘I know nothing about what you’ve told me. I’m not very political – in fact, I’ve never even voted in my life’ (Gray 1987, 10). The stories about Cambodia and Thailand were presented as a lecture in Gray’s theatrical performances with the distinct iconography of a map in the background, a desk, a notebook and a glass of water. In the script, Gray further recalls the director’s briefing such as:

… what an incredible country Cambodia was before it was colonized, that it had a strain of Buddhism so permissive and so sensual that the Cambodians seemed to have done away with unnecessary guilt. Compared to Cambodia, Thailand was a Nordic country – Thailand was like Sweden compared to Cambodia, which was more like Italy … The only thing, according to Roland, was that they had lost touch with evil. (Gray 1987, 14–15)

Later in a long episode, Gray goes on to describe the Vietnamese ‘sanctuaries’ along the border between Cambodia and Vietnam and the later bombing by the American Air Force which had the reverse effect. Instead of getting rid of the communist militants, it drove the military into the city and ceased control of the government (Gray 1987, 16). More personal reflections on the American military activities are provided in different parts of the monologue after Gray returned to the U.S. For example, during his train ride to Chicago from New York City, he recalled meeting a Navy officer who talked about being stationed at Guantanamo Bay and then moved to guard a battleship in a waterproof chamber in Philadelphia with a rocket that could reach Russia (Gray 1987, 22–24). This kind of political rumination is not the subject of Sungkawess’ account in any way, apart from a scene in which the Vietnamese military are providing food for the Cambodians as the families reunite. Sangkawess mentions that the head of the production team in Thailand sent him a letter to make sure the scene could not be taken as promotion of the Vietnamese (Sungkawess 2000, 194–195).

In an ironic fashion, apart from the above politically aware framings, throughout the book Gray intentionally projects himself as an American tourist on holiday in Thailand after finishing his key scenes. He recalls being in Hua Hin, which he spells ‘Waheen’ (p. 52), noting that on a day off all 130 crew took to lounging by the pool to rest. The observation was that of the waiters running around serving Kloster beer and overtly trying to please the foreigners. Gray lingers on the smile of a waiter while remarking that ‘Some say that the Thais are the nicest people that money can buy because they like to have fun’ and that ‘They never do anything that isn’t sanug [fun] – if it isn’t sanug they won’t touch it.’ (Gray 1987, 4).

During the day at the pool, he further reflects on the ‘Sparks’ or British electricians, particularly those who went to the red light district of Pat Pong in Bangkok that was featured in The Deer Hunter to ‘buy up women to travel with them’ (Gray 1987, 4). He describes Patpong as the highlight of Bangkok. ‘If you’ve been to Bangkok you’ve probably seen Pat Pong. (There’s nothing else to see in Bangkok but the Gold[en] Buddha. You can see the Gold[den] Buddha during the day and Pat Pong at night.)’ (Gray 1987, 40) While he notes that Pat Pong was the legacy of the Vietnam War (Gray 1987, 40), his preoccupation is on finding ‘a Perfect Moment’ (Gray 1987, 67) or a ‘Shangri La’ (Gray 1987, 43). These intentionally self-absorbed remarks and the lengthy descriptive passages on Thai prostitutes, function to reaffirm the colonial relations between the global North and South.⁹

Interestingly, towards the end of Gray’s trip to Thailand and upon his return to the U.S., Gray added moments of care for ‘the Other’. One of these moments is a long bus ride from Hua Hin to Phuket which he had to take along with other crew members (as he already completed his acting part and therefore had no ‘personal driver’) (Gray 1987, 68). Feeling somewhat downgraded, Gray spent time describing the cold temperature of the bus air conditioner that made him think of Vermont. However, outside the bus it was Thailand but a version ‘like no travel poster’ with the monsoon rain. This sense of liminality also gave him the opportunity to strike up conversations with the Cambodian extras amongst others. He recalled about:

Neevy Pal, a Cambodian who was related to Prince Sihanouk and a student at Whittier College. Neevy was sitting in front of me and trying to organize all of the Cambodians in the bus because she felt The Killing Fields was a neo-colonialist film, that the British were looking right through the Cambodians. They were polite to the Americans and to each other, but they looked right through the Cambodians and treated them like refugees. So she was pissed, and she was trying to organize all the Cambodians into a sort of Consciousness. Raising Group (1987, 69)

The thought of Cambodian refugees came up again during Gray’s journey in L.A. in a rented car after deciding to look for more work with the help of a Hollywood agent. While stuck in traffic with a broken seat, he pondered about ‘the Cambodian refugees in Far Rockaway’ and ‘the death image of Jean Donovan’ in El Salvador and dreamed about getting back to ‘where it all counts’ (Gray 1987, 124–125). Nevertheless, as the traffic picked up, his thoughts shift to the idea of staying in California and of his own theatre career. The performative and self-conflicted approach Gray takes to execute his monologue works to an extent to communicate the complexity of encounters of different groups of people, the politics of the post-Cold War era and his multiple selves as a tourist/writer/actor, while recalling the experience of being part of a foreign film crew in Thailand.

Franco Cassano discusses the figure of a tourist, including that of himself, that ‘[t]here is always something bitter each time we return from these tours, a feeling that, regardless of our tasting everything, an earnest and important flavor is missing from our palate and from our knowledge. The premise for every overture lies in the awareness that we cannot know a place, and that it will evade us and our experience, if we cannot understand that our being-there, in itself, could constitute an outrage’ (Cassano 2012, 51). With this complexity of encounters, he suggests that an approach to think towards ‘the south’ is to concern ‘its own contradiction’ and ‘relativism’ (2012, 51). Gray’s self-reflective and digressive mode of approaching a foreign film production may be one of the possible approaches to reach a kind of relativism that destabilizes the knowledge and relations about ‘the Other’. Nevertheless, the approach he invoked – with tensions, debates and self-deprecation – may be a unique circumstance shaped by his own struggles with depression, his involvement with the Wooster theatre group and his own transmedia authorship via a self-reflective script, live performances and the filmed version of his monologue.

A landmark foreign film and the legacy at the film location

The last two sections drew forth narratives emerging from personal reflections of peripheral film workers published in two different periods. This final section explores the legacy of The Killing Fields in a more recent intermedia era. I also reflect on my own encounter with one of the film locations in 2019 as part of a film fan tourism project.¹⁰ The specific site in question is the former Railway Hotel (now Centara Grand Beach Resort & Villas Hua Hin) which was used as a stand in for Hotel le Phnom in The Killing Fields. While the official publicity materials of the hotel do not make reference to the film or the various other screen productions that were filmed on location, in public accounts the hotel’s cinematic association with the Killing Fields is positioned as a key turning point for the hotel’s heritage restoration project. The ambivalent recognition of the hotel’s association with screen productions and fan tourism in the official accounts arguably highlights the hierarchy of cultural memories, in which the foreign and vernacular culture from the Cold War era was less preferred than the earlier European colonial history.

Pictorial books such as Thai Garden Style (Tettoni and Warren 2003, 71–72) note that by the 1950s-1960s, the Railway Hotel, with its distinct topiary garden had gone into decline. It is said that The Killing Fields ‘saved’ the hotel’s original building after it renovated the old teak structure. The film production company also built an additional swimming pool and tennis court, which then led to further improvements. The writers remark that the renovation had inspired the Central Hotel Group – who leased the hotel from the State Railway for a potential business development – to preserve the site and construct a new building elsewhere in the compound (Tettoni and Warren 2003, 72). This kind of mention can also be found in other books of this genre such as Asia’s Legendary Hotels (Warren and Gocher 2013) which notes that the original colonial era hotel ‘was scheduled for demolition’ by the Central Group, but ‘by chance, the producers of The Killing Fields used it to portray a hotel in Phnom Penh. The owners were so beguiled by its unexpected beauty that they determined to preserve it and add other facilities on the property to meet more modern needs’ (Warren and Gocher 2013, 126).

Apart from The Killing Fields, the hotel’s colonial era building and its properties have also contributed to another film shot around the same era called Des Teufels Paradies/Devil’s Paradise (1987), directed by Vadim Glowna based on the novel Victory by Joseph Conrad. In a written account by Nikos Perakis, production designer for the project, the Railway Hotel was providing a ‘large number of antique furniture pieces and utensils’¹¹ to the set of Devil’s Paradise after its renovation including rattan chairs, ceiling fans and antique cutleries. Some of these items are now on display at the hotel’s former reception area which was constructed as the entrance of Hotel le Phnom in The Killing Fields. This spot is now a café/tea room called The Museum. A well-known spot for film fans, on TripAdvisor, a visitor shares the picture of himself at this café entrance (LittleYellowDuck 2018). It was mentioned that on the wall of the tea room entrance, there is a framed group photo of The Killing Fields’ cast and crew, which functions as a memento for the major moment that took place there in the 1980s.

Upon my visit at the actual location in 2019, I found that the location and the publicity brochures largely present the earlier ‘genteel image’ pre-1980s before the era of high-rise hotels in Hua Hin. The AA Key Guide to Thailand (Hatley 2006) addresses these genteel images in relation to the town’s association with King Rama VI and VII, the construction of royal palaces, and the construction of the Thailand-Malaysia railway line, which subsequently led to ‘the grand Railway Hotel’ being built in the 1920s (2006, 156). At the entrance and inside of the Museum tea room, various layers of memories associated with the hotel were peeled back by pictorial and physical displays. This included a sculpture of Prince Kamphaengphet Akrayothin, Commander of the Royal Railway Authority who led the national film unit during the 1920s-1930s that produced newsreels about the country’s affairs and facilitated early foreign film productions in Siam. On a nearby wall, there is a framed letter from a German guest there during WWII describing the hospitality he received at that time of conflict. In the surrounding area, there remain old items of furniture and posters advertising rail travel to ‘Hua-Hin-on-Sea’, Siam’s first seaside resort for those who could afford it in the colonial times. These kinds of displays are a far cry from the condition antique collector/actor Sam Walterson found it in 1983, prompting him to remark to Sungkawess that it was a shame about the lack of preservation of the Railway Hotel building (Sungkawess 2000, 107). However, the heritage presentation that punctuates the hotel’s colonial history somewhat resonates with Peleggi’s discussion of the Raffles Hotel and other colonial-turned- heritage hotels in the region that dismiss the complex and ‘less pleasurable realities of colonial life’ (2005, 262).

On this front, the hotel webpage also presents the rooms and suites as ‘adorned with colonial accents’ with the ‘seaside charm’ and ‘laidback luxury’.¹² The idea of romance by the seaside is presented by commercial photographs of Western couple at different parts of the hotel enjoying their holiday.¹³ The hotel’s romance with the colonial notion was particularly striking as the visitors enter and leave the site while being greeted with the ‘Colonial Hall’ 1 and 2. These multi-sited and textual encounters draw my attention again to Peleggi’s discussion of ‘colonial nostalgia’ in which the colonial association is being represented as ‘historic monuments of sorts, although the civic and educational attributes commonly associated with heritage status may prove elusive to identity’ (Peleggi 2005, 264). Arguably, the selective narratives at the location reveal the preferred European colonial era associations that allow the site to rework its history into the status of heritage and luxury more so than acknowledging the post-Cold War capitalism and screen culture involvement. As another associated aspect of runway film production, this kind of site-specific palimpsest reveals the power of foreign capital and set design in influencing the fate of a particular place as well as the possibility of thinking through questions of (trans)national spaces and their transformations in relation to screen productions.

Conclusion

This work reflects on the subject of runaway/foreign film productions in the context of Thailand by looking back at a major film made in the country in the early 1980s. In light of the call for solidarity among film crews and creative workers in Thailand towards creating their own union(s) during the COVID-19 pandemic, the rest of the conclusion will reflect on the bottom-up changes driven by social media and participatory cultures in recent times.

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned the recent production of The Greatest Beer Run Ever in Thailand in 2021. As Russell Crowe was taking a break from the film shoot, he posted a picture on Twitter of the Bangkok sky that captured a confusing mesh of electrical and communication cables with the caption ‘Bangkok Dreaming’ (@russellcrowe 2021). The image has since gone viral as different groups retweeted and shared it across multiple social media platforms, adding their own reflections. Coconuts.co, a site focusing on pop culture in Southeast Asia for English speaking readers, published a featured paper on the ‘infamous electrical art installations’ of Bangkok and the sighting of Crowe roaming around the city (CoconutsBangkok 2021). The Guardian later picked up the viral news and interviews with various locals on the problem of the messy and dangerous wires. One interviewee remarked that Crowe might have ‘accelerate[d] the mission to move the wires out of sight’ (Root 2021). Another online news site picked up the story of culture minister thanking Crowe for his much-needed promotion of the country’s tourism in the (post)-pandemic era (NationThailand 2021). A Thai TV channel later invited Crowe to quiz candidates for Bangkok governor prior to the election (AFP 2022). In these instances, the actor/tourist self-reflection went on to be part of bigger conversations on the host city’s problem and tourism development.

Unlike the 1980s when local behind-the-scene stories were hard to find, today there are Facebook pages and groups such as Onelapap formed to share experiences of working on local and international film productions with the aim to advocate for new generations of staff, promote best practices and improve the quality of life for workers. The social media sphere also enables the locals and foreign visitors, particularly film stars, to contribute to their own self-reflective encounters. Nevertheless, the narratives of the global south in the academic discourses on runaway productions are still limited. Hence, overlooked narratives and circumstances that have long been part of this kind of transnational film production should be brought to the foreground to explore the possible theoretical approaches that take into account the multiple authorial bodies in transnational filmmaking (both human and non-human), the different contradictions exposed in the process of filmmaking in a ‘foreign’ country and the questions of sustainability of lives and sites in the long run.

Acknowledgements

The writer would like to thanks Prof. Kate Taylor-Jones for her valuable comments including suggesting the work of Victor Fan as a connection to the approach taken in this paper. Thanks toTik Xamavee Pummuang and Nutthanun Tiammek for industry insights and chats and Richard John Hiam for reading and improving my early draft. An appreciation also goes to Bliss Cua Lim for drawing my attention to the work of Franco Cassano during her keynote presentation at the Inter-Asia Intermediality Workshop. Lastly, thank you the anonymous reviewers, Deborah Shaw and the team for generous comments and help with the revision. This project has been supported by the MU-Talents grant 2022 by Mahidol University. The research has been approved by the Committee for Research Ethics (Social Sciences) MUSSIRB no. 2021/172 (B1). Certificate of Approval No. 2021/132.3011.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wikanda Promkhuntong

Wikanda Promkhuntong is a lecturer in Film and Cultural Studies at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia, Mahidol University. Her research engages with East Asian cinema and different forms of border-crossing. These include the phenomenon of transnational East Asian auteurs through the lens of paratexts and participatory cultures, and the relationships between film and travel within Thailand and Southeast Asia. Her work often explores the discourses around and practices of screen industry agents from auteur/stars, cinephiles/fans to above/below-the-line workers and the changing conditions that have shaped their lives and works over time. She completed her PhD in Film Studies at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK.

Notes

1. This figure has since increased to THB 50 m. (USD 1.65 m.) as reported by Klemm in his update in 2019 (Klemm 2019).

2. See for example, an article in Decode.plus which features an interview with a film crew member who worked on the film The Fast & Furious 9 that was shot in Thailand but had to take a delivery job during the COVID-19. Available at: https://decode.plus/20210215/.

3. Information gathered as part of the on-going research project ‘Multiple Mobilities and Thai Film Industry in the Time of Covid-19’ funded by Thai Humanities Forum, National Research Council of Thailand.

4. For studies on The Beach, see: (Burroughs 2014; Cohen 2005; Law, Bunnell, and Ong 2007; Taylor 2017) For other films including Lost in Thailand, see: (Paprach and Hashim 2018; Mostafanezhad, Coates, and Coates 2018).

5. For works that use the term for this kind of below-the-line ethnographic research, see for example (Caldwell 2008, Mayer, Banks and Caldwell 2014).

6. I used a coding system to identify recurring themes in the book. The aspect of money/micro economy was mentioned 42 times across the text. Other recurring themes found are working process and cultural negotiations (40 times), Hollywood and filmmaking in Thailand (19 times), reflections on the aspect of national culture and cinema (15 times), tourism and prostitution (10 times), heritage sites (7 times).

7. Based on the historical PACIFIC Exchange Rate. In 1983, 1 USD = 23 THB. See: https://fx.sauder.ubc.ca

8. Back in the 1980s, foreign film productions still brought their own catering team in addition to the local Thai catering. Sungkawess noted that there were 2 food trucks from the U.K. providing tea, sandwiches, foreign and Thai food (Sungkawess 2000, 24).

9. Similar to Sungkawess’ account, I used the coding system to identify key themes discussed in Gray’s work. These are American politics in relation to Southeast Asia (33 times), self-reflections (24), tourism and prostitution (21 times), drug (15 times), Hollywood film production (10), money and economic conditions (6).

10. See: www.filmfantourism.org.

11. See: http://www.nikosperakis.gr/production-design-detail-en.php?id=893/sketches/gallery/gall2/90

12. See: https://www.centarahotelsresorts.com/centaragrand/chbr/accommodation

13. See: https://www.centarahotelsresorts.com/centaragrand/sites/g/files/yplzxh121/files/2021-12/57389%20CHBR%20Brochure%20Rev3_1.pdf