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in the UN The UN also rejected requests by half a dozen others, including Hollywood star Michael Douglas, whose 1998 movie The Perfect Murder was shot only in the shadow of the UN secretariat in New York. But in a dramatic turnaround last year, the UN eventually caved in-- perhaps as a public relations move at a time when it is under fire for waste and mismanagement. Asked if the world body was accepting payment for use of its facilities, UN Under-Secretary-General for Communication and Public Information Shashi Tharoor said bluntly: "The UN is not for hire. " The privilege of being the first "made-in-UN" movie in the organisation's 60-year-history will go to a $80 million Hollywood thriller titled The Interpreter starring Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman due to be released in mid-February. At a press conference at the UN last year, Academy-award winning director Sydney Pollack said he was "terribly excited" to shoot his film inside the UN which will help capture the political excitement in the cavernous General Assembly hall where an African political leader is about to be assassinated. The movie has a Sri Lankan angle to it because one of the "extras" picked to play the role of a diplomat representing the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius is an ex-UN staffer Indrani Lionel, wife of the late Dr. N.D.W. Lionel, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and a onetime consultant to the World Health Organisation. Indrani, who is currently a consultant to the UN in both New York and Geneva in a post-retirement stint, was fortunate to be picked for the cameo role from hundreds of would-be actors and actresses who lined up in New York from as early as six o'clock in the morning for interviews. She is the only Sri Lankan in the movie from among the 100 slots available to UN staffers. Paradoxically, an Indian woman was picked to sit on the Sri Lankan delegation seat. "While waiting, the movie people were walking past us, sizing us up, and a young woman stuck a red label on my lapel and said, 'you are going to be a delegate' in the movie," she said. "I was stunned, totally flummoxed. One of the best extra parts in the world had just dropped into my lap without me even lifting a finger,'' she said. "I have been a moviegoer all my life and I thought this was going to be a chance of a lifetime for me. It was a glorious six weeks of movie-making," said Indrani, who is currently vacationing in Sri Lanka. Since the seating in the General Assembly hall is in alphabetical order, Indrani is seated across the aisle from where all the action takes place. Mauritius, which she is representing, is dangerously close to the fictitious African country of Matobo, whose representative is targeted for assassination. When the cameras cranked for the action shots in the Assembly Hall, Indrani said she dropped her head and her upper body on the table, while other delegates in and around her fell on the floor or crouched under their tables to avoid the line of fire. Sean Penn, who plays the role of the UN security head honcho, and Nicole Kidman, who plays the role of an interpreter who overhears the plot to kill the African leader, are both Academy-award winning actors.Pollack, who is himself an award-winning director, said the Interpreter was not a propaganda film extolling the virtues of the UN. The movie, he added, was "synchronous with the value of the UN" and it conveyed an anti-violence message of resolving problems by diplomacy. "It's imperfect, but it is the best we have, and the film will reflect that," Pollack added. The extras also included 500 professionals who belong to the Hollywood actors’union. In one unintended touch of authenticity, said one newspaper report, some of the extras playing diplomats fell asleep at their seats in the General Assembly hall. Call it realism. |
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