REFLECTIONS

This witty and extremely well observed article was first published in The Age 'Good Weekend' magazine. It is re-published here with the kind permission of Jonathan Biggins. It is a great read for anyone - but particularly for actors. Enjoy.

Noah: My part in his downpour
Jonathan Biggins

You didn't know about the pirate ship that attacked Noah's Ark? Neither did actor Jonathan Biggins until he found himself playing a blind priest, shouting at Jon Voight and treading in peacock poo, in the TV version of the biblical epic.

My agent rings. "Funny," I say, "I was just going to ring you - thought my phone wasn't working..."

"Remember that audition you did six weeks ago? For the mini-series about Noah's ark?"

Ah yes, I remember that five-minute cattle call.

I was going for the part of Lot. Scene: the aftermath of the great battle between Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot warms himself at the fire. He turns as a weary Noah enters the tent: "What, not staying for the orgy, Noah?"

"Anyway," says my agent, "you didn't get it."

"Surprise me."

"But they want you to come back and audition for Priest One. Or Two, they're not sure which."

"I was Snooty Onlooker Two in The Munsters Scary Little Christmas movie. Can't you get me a part without a number after it?"

"You're booked in for tomorrow. 12.43."

June 11 The call-back. It's hard to evoke the passion and bloodlust of the sacrificial altar sitting on a Sebel modular lounge, but I give it my best shot in the required Standard English accent. The director simply says, "Yes, that seems priestly enough."

Things are looking up - at least I didn't get those three words that every actor dreads: "Thanks for coming."

June 18 "They want you for Priest One."

"Great! Now we can start contract negotiations."

"The contract's here. Come in and sign it."

"Fair enough."

July 14 My first day on the set for wardrobe fitting and make-up tests. They're shooting at a lonely, windswept spot on the RAAF's Point Cook base, just outside Melbourne. I'm met in the production office and driven a hundred metres to wardrobe (no-one walks on a film set), housed in an ancient Nissen hut on the edge of the airstrip. Hessian and calico dyed in every tone of the brown spectrum hang drying stiffly in the breeze. The costume designer, Marion Boyce, takes me into a fitting room and discusses the concept. This is 2000 BC from a Renaissance perspective and the designs are in the muted tones of a weathered Botticelli. She leaves me in the hands of an assistant.

Now, you must understand that, like any other workplace, the currency of a film shoot is gossip and speculation. It keeps the wheels turning and gives you something to fill in the time. So I plunge immediately into the lowdown of what's happening. The overseas stars are quite nice - some of them you've actually heard of: Jon Voight as Noah, Mary Steenburgen as his wife and F. Murray Abraham as Lot. Bastard! Oh well, better to lose out to an Oscar winner than a Daddo or Craig McLachlan.

"Now, I just need to measure you for a wetsuit."

"Sorry?"

"It's for when you're on the pirate ship attacking the ark."

"I thought the whole point of Noah's ark was that he was the only person who took God at his word and built a boat."

"Apparently there were other boats lying about."

"Makes sense. What's the catering like?"

Going out on a limb, I walk back to make-up, past the old hangars that house the interior sets; the special effects department, which is the size of a small factory; the art department and animal pavilion. The prow of the ark towers above the trees in the middle distance. A goat bleats.

I pursue my line of questioning in make-up where I'm tried with various combinations of beards and wigs. Who are these English actors playing the sons of Noah? Up and comings. One of the girlfriends is being played by Sidney Poitier. Seems rather odd casting. Oh, it's his daughter, Sydney.

"Now, you're the priest who goes blind."

"Sorry?"

"Haven't you read the script?"

"Not that bit."

"Don't worry, you'll have proper lenses fitted by an optical person. Keep trying with your own beard, but I think we'll have to use a false one - more realistic."

July 22 The script is delivered by a runner - that's film talk, he's actually in a Tarago. It's a weighty tome, four hours of prime-time NBC television.

I have 118 words not counting ad-libbed chants of "Kill Noah!" and "Aaarrrgh!" Not only do I go blind, my other priestly colleagues are struck dumb and deaf respectively, à la the Three Wise Monkeys. Our dialogue reads more like the Three Stooges, with hoary old chestnuts about the scarcity of virgins, but the rewritten script has shifted from Carry On Noah to Swiss Family Noah with attitude. I'm just up to the bit where First Priest (that's me, sounds better than Priest One) gets butted off the ark by an enraged goat when Ted, the unit nurse, arrives to take me to have my blind lenses fitted.

"I've got anaesthetic drops," he says cheerily.

"Great," say I, gloomily reconsidering my career choices.

The ocular prosthetist works out of a dilapidated Victorian terrace with a particularly Dickensian aspect. Inside is not much better, boasting a dusty bench with a Bunsen burner, a chipped kitchen dresser in one corner and a door with its architrave hanging off in the other. His speciality is prosthetic lenses for glass eyes or eyes left devoid of all feeling by accident or disease. Delicate peepers like my own are a rarity, although he has made similar lenses for a film shoot. However, they were worn for one shot, one take. The plan for me to wear them all day is new to him and one that he doesn't recommend. They can't be worn without anaesthetic drops, being hard plastic with a hole drilled through the middle so you can see enough to stop you bumping into the larger furniture.

Preparations are made for the fitting, rattling through the drawers of the kitchen dresser for two suction caps with hollow tubes. These, apparently, are placed onto the eyeballs and a paste is injected which sets into a soft mould. You won't feel a thing with the drops. Yersss ... The bloody drops feel like someone's pouring hot tea into my eyes but I'm now beyond the point of no return. As one suction cap is fitted, my good eye catches sight of Ted wincing and turning away. Encouraging.

"Now you will have a sensation of blindness as the paste covers both eyes." With a glop, the room blacks out. Minutes later, the caps are peeled off my eyes and I know how long the anaesthetic drops don't last. I stagger to the mirror and stare into two eyes that look like road maps of Red China.

Later, as I lie in my darkened room feeling like someone's had a go at my eyeballs with an orbital sander, I fumble for the phone and ring my agent. Thank God, 10 per cent still gets you sympathy. Minutes later the production office rings, apologising profusely and assuring me that alternative arrangements are well in hand.

July 25 Pre-shoot drinks at a bar in St Kilda. Normally I shy away from these things, worried that it's only going to be me, a few people from the office and a couple of lonely types from second unit. Not so, quite a decent turnout. It's a huge crew, about 210, which explains the latest budget rumour of $32 million. For four hours of TV!

That'd buy the Ten Network's Australian drama for four years. I meet Jon Voight, beaming affably at everyone, looking quite rakish in a red bandanna. Apparently it holds in the hair extensions he's had woven in for the role. His beard's managed to reach the required length. Bastard.

"Who's the active senior with the walking-stick working the room?" I ask a woman from the production office.

"That's the producer, head honcho from LA, Robert Halmi Snr."

Yikes! I'd better be careful. I thought he was someone's grandfather tagging along for the free beer. Mr Halmi Snr greets everyone, chatting politely about Melbourne and the opportunity to work in this beautiful country. He can afford to smile; the dollar's tumble probably just saved him four million.

The Australian actors (Old Zur, Grizzled Villager, Drowning Man One, etc) huddle together protectively trying to spot the imports.

August 1 The Australian actors are still huddling together protectively at the first read-through of the script in a conference room of the Hotel Como. The foreign cast are all being put up here so they can just nip next door for promotional appearances on Bert Newton's show. The room is set out for what looks like a sales conference: pads and pencils neatly before each seat, a crisp whiteboard to one side and individually wrapped designer mints the size of lentils.

Mary Steenburgen and F. Murray Abraham have arrived from LA. "Call me Muzza. That's what they call me in Australia." He's an actors' actor, which I think means he still does classes and reads obscure plays for pleasure.

With an imperious call from the director, we begin. Jon Voight reads in an intense whisper. You can see everyone leaning forward, straining to hear what he's saying, desperately not wanting to be the first person to miss a cue. F. Muzza, on the other hand, is very active, leaping about and getting all the laughs. Bastard. Maybe he's pitching for the Lot spin-off series.

We reach a scene where the three priests, humbled and crippled by a vengeful God, arrive with an angry mob to taunt Noah. Noah uses his new chums, the lions, to keep back the unruly crowd. First Priest notices that there are two lions.

"Umm ... how, er," I nervously ask, "...how do I know there are two lions if I'm blind?"

A deathly silence descends on the gathering and all eyes turn to the director. He looks at the script then fixes me with a steely glare.

"Let's move on, shall we."

I die inwardly and fumble with a designer mint as we move towards the triumphant conclusion. (If you don't know the end of the story, borrow a Bible.) The main cast are whisked off in limousines to a private box at the MCG for the afternoon's big game. The locals gather around the fruit and cheese platter.

August 6 My first day of shooting. In the pre-dawn darkness, Point Cook is a hive of activity.

It looks as if all the waiting staff from every Lebanese restaurant in Melbourne have arrived for a fancy-dress party. More than 600 extras are being used on the shoot, plucked from clubs, cultural societies and medieval re-enactment groups like the Society for Creative Anachronisms, aka the Australian Film Industry.

Having lines, I'm shunted to a wardrobe bus to put on my priestly robes. I'm given thermal long johns and a pair of ornamental shoes imported from Pakistan. They have curly toes like a Leunig cartoon and seem to be made out of Hardiplank. No wonder tempers are frayed on the sub-continent. Their feet must be killing them.

I hobble over to make-up, past a row of enormous motorhomes, each bearing the name of an incumbent star. Rumour has it that Mr Voight has a contract clause outlining his trailer requirements which ends with the appropriately biblical command: "And none shall be better."

I must read my contract for the clause "And none shall be smaller." The minor roles are sharing a van - just the eight of us in a twin-roomed affair, separated by a pump toilet. One side is decorated in a Target country cottage style, the other in a lacquered black and red Chinoiserie motif. Each has just enough room for a sofa and a stool. I suspect the van was last used for the male cast on a tour of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

In the busy make-up room, my pathetic beard is summarily dispatched and a false beard glued to my face, cunningly overlaid with individual strands of hair so you can't see the join - advanced facial hair, yeah yeah! I'm also given a long grey wig, stippled sunburn and teeth the colour of rotting meat. It quickly becomes clear that anyone destined to survive the Flood has perfect teeth and a fine complexion; everyone else looks like they've been dragged through a cesspit backwards. God is on the side of the orthodontists.

Suddenly there is panic. The director has changed his mind and wants to go with the priests first. I say farewell to the thermals as my legs are covered with body make-up and we're Taragoed down to the set, an elaborate temple interior built inside an old hangar. The Australian production designer, Les Binns, has done a beautiful job. Pillars soar into the air, faded Babylonian murals grace the wall beneath flaming torches and the place is packed with extras and crew.

We begin by carrying on a defiant Sydney Poitier (good teeth; she'll be on the ark) gagged and bound. She struggles with enthusiasm as we lay her on the sacrificial altar. I'm a little concerned about delivering my big speech - well, when I say big, I mean two sentences delivered consecutively - and because she's so enthusiastic I need the strength of Samson to hold her down. The director ponders the problem then points to a hapless extra who is appointed Temple Assistant (Sacrifices) on the spot. Stand-by wardrobe is hastily summoned. "Do you have any other priestly robes?"

Eyes glaze like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

"Yes. Fifteen minutes."

There in a nutshell is the secret of a good film crew member. Say yes to any request immediately then retire to secretly abuse those in authority as you desperately try to pander to their whim.

George (the former extra) returns in new garb, but precious time has been wasted. We shoot almost immediately. The extras are whipped into a frenzy, chanting "Mole!" (rain god, apparently) and the snakes and peacocks are brought out. The peacock nearest me has an appalling attack of first night nerves right where I have to walk - I can only hope my shoes are waterproof.

Sydney manages to land a good left foot in my stomach before I hand over to George, so I'm winded as I calm the bloodthirsty villagers. My big speech sounds like Frankie Howerd meets Harvey Fierstein. Mercifully, lunch is called.

Food is a big part of any filming experience. The caterer is a far more important individual than the director or the writer. Today, lunch is in two sittings because there are so many people, not counting the complete strangers who turn up with a knife and fork. It's incredibly easy to get a free feed on an Australian film set. Simply wear a beanie, a belt round your waist with clothes pegs on it and a T-shirt saying something rude about Val Kilmer. Join the line and hoe in.

After lunch, Noah's sons burst through the temple doors and fight their way to the altar, doing a lot of butch work with rubber knives. It's hard to take anyone in a short tunic and biblical puttees seriously, but we reel back in horror - must be something to do with their magic teeth. Gradually it dawns on us villagers that we outnumber them 100 to three and, just as things are looking sticky for our heroes, in stride Mr and Mrs Noah.

The angry mob turns on Noah, accusing him of bringing ruin on their lives. Suddenly the voices are from all corners of the globe - Japheth sounds as if he's down from Eton for the weekend; Jezer's from Brewarrina; Mrs Noah just flew in from Pennsylvania and First Priest spent his formative years touring the British Isles. We sound like a miffed subcommittee at the United Nations.

But we get no further. Moolah, the God of Overtime, has come down with a vengeance and the plug is pulled for the day. Later, in the shower, I think I'm haemorrhaging to death until I wearily remember the body make-up. God, I'm being picked up in six hours.

August 7 More of the same. Noah calls on God to lend a hand, God obliges big-time. The temple roof is ripped off, the villagers scattered and the false priests punished by bolts of lightning from a special lamp that delivers a 75,000-watt burst of light. I foolishly look up as they let it off - why did I bother with the blind contact lenses?

The director Dusan Makavejev once described filmmaking as "the choreography of confusion". This big special effect sequence is choreography where no-one knows the steps. Unlike the theatre where you get the chance to rehearse these things, on a film set everything happens by a mysterious osmosis. Very few people know exactly what's going on. They talk constantly to each other on Motorolas (it must have been hell in the days of semaphore) but, like a great Chinese whisper, the message can get distorted along the way.

"So, do I go blind on the second lightning burst and is that after the debris rains down?"

"I thought I was doing debris on the third lightning burst."

"I thought that was when I go deaf."

"When's afternoon tea?"

A vein begins to pulse ominously in the director's neck. He explains the sequence one more time and promotes himself to cue the lightning. Disastrous. No-one can hear the cues because he's in another room looking at the monitor. The steam from his ears precedes him as he comes back on set. Mutterings in the corner and we go again, although this time he's so confused he yells "action" instead of "cut", but we all get the point.

It's time for my blind close-up. Jose, lens specialist from make-up, gets me in a headlock and puts the new contacts in. I can't see a thing and am led back to the altar like Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. We're rolling three cameras simultaneously so surely one of them gets my good side as I thrash about in newly blinded terror.

A curious sight greets me (lenses out) in the green room. Mrs Noah is placidly stitching a tapestry and Ham is having his back walked on while Jezer reads the poetry of Les Murray at Japheth's request. I back out of the room, not making eye contact.

August 10 For some reason I'm brought out here hours before the crew arrive. In an average 10-hour day, you can expect to do about four or five minutes of acting, the rest of the time you just hang around. Studying your part, of course. I wander down to the empty horizon tank. Sodom's been burnt and the village of Gerar now stands in it, complete in every Middle Eastern detail, from the ditch running down the main street filled with elephant urine to the decrepit market square dominated by the massive temple portico. Four 12-metre containers sit atop sluices on either side; they'll be filled with water to flood the place in one almighty rush. Giant palms wave in the on-shore breeze. Rumour has it they cost $10,000 each - more than a First Priest, not counting overtime.

In a field nearby, the stuntmen are practising a battle, hitting each other vigorously with polystyrene clubs as engineers and plumbers prepare the huge pumps to drown this beautiful set. Four elephants graze eacefully behind a wire fence. Why four? I can only assume two are stunt doubles.

August 17 In make-up at 3 pm; don't work until 9.30 pm. The village has now been flooded and Noah's sons paddle homemade rafts through the desolate streets. Rubber duckies ferry wet, cold extras wrapped in blankets from rooftops to shore.

September 7 First day back feels odd after such a long break. Today we're on the pirate ships attacking the ark, an episode removed from the Bible by an over-zealous sub-editor. The tattered ships, spectacularly festooned with skulls, spears and dead goats, are winched slowly across the tank towards the sheer side of the ark, towering 12 metres above.

F. Muzza is late. Having been kept waiting last Friday, he's decided to come in when he wants to. As we all hang about waiting, I query one of the crew:

"Does anyone know what the 'F' stands for?"

"Fuckhead."

The day drags on interminably. Very little seems to be happening. Occasionally we rush from one end of the boat to the other yelling the standard "Kill Noah!" To liven things up, I try a couple of takes with my eyes closed, to be sightless, to be in the moment. All I manage to do is pull Second Priest's wig off as I stumble about. He's shipped back to shore for running repairs.

September 8 I share a Tarago to set with Dino, personal hairdresser to Mr Voight for many years. Dino has a classic American style, he looks like a hot-tub advertising model from Popular Mechanics - you know, Cuban-heeled boots, chiselled features and perfectly moulded hair helmet in gunmetal grey. Second Priest thinks he looks like a recently retired Thunderbird. Anyway, Dino's getting married on Saturday to a woman he met on the first day of shooting. It's his eighth marriage, which might explain the knee support
bandages he wears.

High drama in the Chinoiserie room. Old Zur rushes from make-up bearing news of a major tantrum thrown by F. Muzza, a public, abusive tirade against, of all people, Mary Steenburgen! Apparently she'd had the temerity to politely and privately ask him to turn up on time. Muzza did not take kindly to this assault on his artistic integrity so let her have it with both barrels in front of everyone in the make-up room, who all sat there in stunned, embarrassed silence.

After lunch we're on the wretched pirate boats again, watching stuntmen fall off the ark as they clamber up grappling lines. We all run from one end of the boat to the other - no wonder we don't survive the flood if that's all we can do. Muzza is shipped aboard for his hero take: a rush from the stern to the prow, grab the rope and look as if you're about to launch yourself off. That's where we cut, okay?

Action! Muzza is a little too enthusiastic with his craft skills and overbalances, falling off the prow and swinging into the ark with a dull thwack. He has the presence of mind to hold onto the rope and dangles over the water as panic breaks out in the crew above.

"Get him back! Pull him back onto the boat! Get the nurse out there ASAP!"

He's yanked back aboard and lies senseless, crumpled in the arms of a sympathetic pirate, like Nelson at Trafalgar, every bone in his body seemingly broken. The urgency in the First AD's voice rises a notch as Nurse Ted speeds towards the fading star. With impeccable timing, Muzza's eyes flutter open and he lurches to his feet.

"No," he commands with a toss of his head. "Let's shoot this fucker!"

The extras break into spontaneous applause as the actors exchange sly looks and reach for the nausea pills. His finest piece of work all day.

September 10 Do absolutely nothing; the sky's not right or something. Watch the tiger going for a walk. I have a look at the 12-minute film they've cut together to celebrate the half-way point of the shoot. It's fantastic. The shot of the animals pounding two by two through the streets of Gerar is memorable, but I think we can afford to see a little more of First Priest.

September 14 My birthday, and I'm stuck in a field near Kilmore, an hour north of Melbourne, one of an angry mob confronting Noah (do we ever do anything else?) about the crippling drought and, lo! It buckets down.

The location is extraordinary, unspoilt green rolling hills as far as the eye can see, largely because the farmers have been paid to relocate their stock and take their fences down. Money is no object, although the Australian producer is on set today looking worried. They study Looking Worried at film school; it's the week after Signing the Cheques IIA. Clouds are rolling in so we can't do the first part of the scene and that means getting everybody back for another day. The expense could run a small African economy for a month.

Desperate attempts are made to re-schedule the dropped scene. Thursday's looking good for a minute but the tiger has got a commercial to do. Bloody thing works more than I do.

Mind you, we can do the rain bit. I'm given an ill-fitting wetsuit to wear beneath my tattered robes. Only problem is it shows through the tatters, so bits are cut off in an ad hoc fashion until I'm left with two small strips of rubber joined at the gusset. It affords little protection against the litres of water that are rained on us from a giant sprinkler hoisted aloft on a crane.

A particularly heavy drop lands right in my eye, folding my contact lens in two and forcing it up under my eyelid towards my brain as I dance about trying to look joy-filled. It's a living.

September 25 Probably the last day on set for the Australian actors, although we may have to come back later to do that scene with the goat. Sounds a bit continental, really. We're back in Kilmore beneath brilliant blue skies, actually they're black at 4.30 in the morning - I didn't know such an hour existed. Finally called onto the set at 11.30. Typical. The crew move like zombies on Prozac, I get the feeling they're well over it. Good thing the Aussie actors are back on set for a while, to give things a kick along with their self-deprecating humour and up-yours-boss larrikin japes!

Maybe it's spring, but things start moving. Up and down the hill we go to Noah's house, waving our crude weapons, shouting "Kill Noah!" or "Make Noah's life as uncomfortable as possible!" if we're feeling mischievous. Lunch is called with more in the can than expected and the mini-buses arrive to ferry everybody back to base camp in a festive mood.

I decide to walk and stride out across the meadows like a Babylonian Von Trapp, the sun shining and the breeze blowing through my robes in a mildly stimulating way. There are a lot of worse ways to make a living, I concede in a moment of occupational satisfaction.

But the thought occurs to me yet again: it's an awful lot of time, effort and money to spend on something that's really only there to keep the commercials apart. And when it's broadcast, it'll just fly out into space at the speed of light, not stopping until it reaches the edge of the universe and slowly begins to fold back towards us.

And who knows? Maybe some distant intelligent life form will receive the weak signal, play the sound and images on its cerebellum and say to itself: "Hmm. I think we could afford to see a little more of the First Priest."

This article has been re-produced with the permission of Jonathan Biggins and should not be copied or reproduced in any form without his consent.

© Jonathan Biggins. All rights Reserved.
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