Shooting for The beach

BANGKOK: Jodie Foster, Leonardo DiCaprio and a herd of elephants are among the characters in a high-stakes drama unfolding on the beaches...

BANGKOK: Jodie Foster, Leonardo DiCaprio and a herd of elephants are among the characters in a high-stakes drama unfolding on the beaches of southern Thailand and on hastily constructed movie sets in neighbouring Malaysia.

The plot centres on 20th Century Fox8217;s efforts to produce two big-budget movies: 8220;Anna And The King8221;, starring Foster and Hong Kong action star Chow Yun Fat, and 8220;The Beach8221;, a DiCaprio vehicle with a story reminiscent of 8220;Lord Of The Flies8221;, only with back-packers instead of children.Studio scouts decided that the ideal spot to shoot 8220;the beach8221; was on secluded Maya Bay on Phi Phi Island, 850 km south of Bangkok.

8220;We looked all over Samui Island, all over the national park in Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia. If we could have found somewhere, we would have used it. We didn8217;t take this decision lightly,8221; Fox producer Andrew MacDonald said in an interview with a Thai television station.

The fact that the island is inside a national park did not deter the film-makers,nor did the director8217;s insistence that a grove of coconut trees needed to be shipped in from the mainland to conform to Hollywood8217;s notion of a tropical paradise.

Nevertheless, studio executives expressed surprise when local environmentalists objected to the make-up job on picturesque Maya Bay.Ing Kanjanavanit, a local film-maker and environmentalist who has been campaigning for more than ten years to get government agencies to protect Thai national parks, said, 8220;The Beach8221; producers managed to secure permission to shoot in the park by throwing a lot of money at the government.8220;They8217;ve damaged the environment and the law. They bulldozed the sand dunes on Maya Bay, ripping out the native vegetation. They destroyed the top soil that was held together by roots. They brought in fully grown palm trees the size of telephone poles,8221; Ing said in an interview with DPA.

In addition the production crew damaged coral formations around the island when a boat hired to bring in heavy equipment came in at low tide,according to a group of protesting environmentalists camped on the beach in December.Fox paid a fee of five million baht 135,000 dollars to the Royal Thai forestry department to shoot on the island, plus a bond of four million baht to cover any environmental damage. Dicaprio, meanwhile, was reported to be receiving 20 million dollars to star in the movie.

8220;They8217;ve paid over the table instead of under the table,8221; Ing said. 8220;If you allow people to bulldoze a national park, what can they do next? they can do anything. So we had to put up a fight.8221;

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Local conservationists have held several demonstrations against the alteration of Maya Bay, but for now the battle has moved into the Thai courts.

Ing said she was proud that for the first time local people had challenged the all-powerful thai bureaucracy to protect the environment. But the rub is that the court case will not be heard until March 26, long after shooting is expected to be completed.

Meanwhile, the shooting of Anna And The King is underwayin Ipoh, Malaysia, because Thailand8217;s national film board turned down three versions of a script submitted by a separate group of Fox producers to shoot in Thailand. The studio is scrambling to re-create a Thai backdrop for the Malaysian shoot and recently announced plans to import ten Thai elephants and their trainers at a cost of 305,500 dollars.