Cursed Films (2020): Season 2, Episode 4 - Cursed Films - full transcript

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It's kind of an
interesting question,

was this film cursed?

To take a Hollywood
film set to Haiti

in the immediate wake
of the revolution

was incredibly courageous.

That world of Haiti can
be very intimidating.

Famously people either
are repelled by Haiti

or they become absolute
obsessives about Haiti.

And I certainly was in
the latter category.

I became almost to a fault
an evangelist for Voodoo.

My name's Wade Davis,
I'm a Professor of Anthropology



at the University
of British Columbia,

and a writer.

Now, this began as a kind of
serendipitous assignment.

My great professor,
Richard Evans Schultes,

was very interested in this
rumored existence

of a folk poison in Haiti

that was said to bring on
a state of apparent death

so profound,
it could fool a physician.

So he casually asked me
if I was interested

in going down to the island
nation of Haiti,

and searching for the formula
of the drug

reputedly implicated in this
business of making zombies.

And naturally, I said yes.

Zombies, the living dead,



have for years been
the staple ingredient

of second-rate horror movies.

But is there any truth behind
the Hollywood fantasies?

A couple of years ago,
"Newsnight" took a look

behind the cinema clich, s,

and found that on the West
Indian island of Haiti,

truth is indeed stranger
than fiction.

- What drove the whole story
was the discovery

by a man called Lamarque Douyon,

of the case of Clairvius
Narcisse.

This is 62 years
old Clairvius Narcisse.

He's looking at the grave
in which he was buried

19 years ago.

The funeral was attended
by all his family and friends.

- He heard everything,
when he was put in the coffin,

when he was put in the grave.

And he was showing you...
- A scar here.

- A scar here, it was a nail
from his coffin.

So these lines
of evidence led Douyon

to go public, saying
he had found the first

verifiable instance
of the living dead.

And what he meant by that
is he had found an individual

who, by all accounts,
had been pronounced dead,

and turned back up into
the realm of the living.

These powders, of which
I have somewhere, uh...

this poison doesn't make
a zombie.

The question is, can this
poison make someone appear

to be dead?

It's a whole plethora
of ingredients:

Bufo marinus,
the Caribbean toad,

with these big parotid glands

with the cardioactive
steroids in them,

a number of toxic plants,

broken glass,

also um, human remains
for magical reasons.

And the most powerful
neurotoxin found on Earth.

It's called tetrodotoxin.

It comes from the viscera
and the skin of a couple

of different genera of puffer
fish, if you will,

which includes the legendary
fugu fish,

which is prepared by specially
licensed chefs

who are said in the West
to eliminate the toxin.

One of the things that I was
completely unprepared for

was how this would all
kind of explode

over the American media.

So I walked off the street
to a literary agent in London,

and secured a-a book advance.

And I used the book advance
to finish the research,

but then I had to write a book.

And that's how
"The Serpent and the Rainbow"

was actually written.

The book really did attempt
to take a phenomena,

the Haitian zombie,
that had been used

in an explicitly racist way

to denigrate a people
and their religion,

and it tried to make
sense out of it.

And I think David Ladd,
the producer, really got that.

And I think that was every
bit his intention.

- My name is David Ladd.

I was the producer of
"The Serpent and the Rainbow."

What I saw as a commercial
appeal was

the reality that zombies
actually exist.

I mean, zombies have been fodder

for films for years,
and years, and years.

But the fact that
they actually exist

was fascinating to me.

And the lead character
was a real life,

honest-to-God Indiana Jones.

He was the real deal.

- My favorite director
at that time was Peter Weir.

And I thought that "The Year
of Living Dangerously"

was a really remarkable template

for what I had actually
experienced in Haiti.

All of a sudden
Wes popped up and said,

"Gee, I'd really like
to do this."

And we couldn't resist.

Wes was the hottest genre
director in the business.

And you know, zombies,
Wes Craven,

who could pass on that?

Wade was both grateful
and horrified.

How can you do this?

This is a serious piece of work.

- No, I'm not at all
a horror film fan.

I really have no relationship
to the genre whatsoever.

- Well, I suppose I do now,
you know.

Wes was very keen to move out

of the horror genre at the time,

and I remember Wes saying
to me, sincerely,

that he thought
"The Serpent and the Rainbow"

would be his sort of
ticket out in a way.

My father was like
a-kind of renaissance man.

He didn't set out to be
a horror director.

I think that he was excited
to...

kind of leave horror
a little bit.

But I think that horror
did allow him to work out

some of his demons
from childhood.

He basically didn't have
a father.

His father left him when
he was very, very young,

and died when he was five.

His mother, Caroline,
my grandmother,

was constantly trying to get
my father

to stop making these terrible,
awful movies you're making.

In "The Last House,"
"Hills have Eyes" era,

he was a madman.
You know, that's it.

And people thought he should
be locked up.

I thought it was awesome that
he was making these films.

In those days,

when you said you did
those kind of movies,

people would make
little comments like,

"I never watch those."

So he was a little bit
insecure about that.

Well, when I first met Wes,
I had an interview with him.

Two days before the interview,

I watched "Nightmare on Elm
Street,"

and it was so scary.

And the night before, I watched
"The Last House on the Left,"

and that was a little daunting.

But then when I met him,

he was so nice and charming,

and he gave me a job as his
assistant on "Deadly Friend."

They sent us the book
"The Serpent and the Rainbow."

What a story! You know,
zombies and Haiti and...

This was a big studio movie.

Then we just started casting.

Bill, at the time,
did a movie for my brother

called "Spaceballs,"

which was how I was
introduced to him.

And I thought, Bill looks
a lot like Wade Davis.

- Barf!

- And so we brought him in,
and Wes fell in love with him.

And from that point on,
the part was his.

That was the third movie

that I was a part of.

The first one, a small part,
didn't shoot very long on it.

The second one,

a magnum opus, "Spaceballs,"

which was quite exotic.

But "The Serpent
and the Rainbow"

took it all to another level.

And I thought,

Is this is what my life
is gonna be like?

And it's only now
that I realize, no,

that never happened again.

Never had quite the experience
as we did

on "The Serpent
and the Rainbow."

After I did "Mona Lisa"

in 1986,

my agent mentioned
about this film,

"The Serpent and the Rainbow."

And of course the whole,
you know,

Voodoo for a Black person,

how Hollywood has interpreted
Voodoo in the past

as being these savages.

So I wanted to get this right.

A blonde captain

in the darkness of Voodoo land!

- Where do we get this idea
of Voodoo being

a black magic cult?

It largely comes from the fact
that the U.S. Marine Corps

occupied Haiti in the 1920s
and stayed for 20 years.

During the era of Jim Crow,

segregation in the South,

many of the Marines
were from the South,

and everybody above the rank
of sergeant

got a book contract.

And the books had names
like "Cannibal Cousins,"

and "Black Bagdad,"

"Voodoo Fire in Haiti,"

"A Puritan in Voodoo-Land,"

"The Magic Island,"

and all this pulp fiction that
gave rise to the RKO movies.

- She's making Voodoo.
- She's making Voo do what?

Voodoo!

- I do?
- Not "you do," Voodoo!

- "Zombies on Broadway,"
"Zombies of the Stratosphere,"

"The White Zombie Slave,"

were full of children
bred for the cauldron.

Pins and needles in Voodoo
dolls don't even exist.

And of course, notoriously,

zombies crawling out
of the grave to attack people.

It's very unfashionable
these days

to have any anti-Black images,
Man: Yes.

- But make 'em Voodoo priests,

because then we can absolutely
exploit them

in any way possible,
and I thought

there was a lot of not too far
under the surface racism

in this movie that really
offended me.

- My entire investigation

was trying to take this
phenomena

that had been used in a racist
way to denigrate a people,

and try to make sense
out of sensation.

Wade was very much
into the authenticity

of what we were doing.

No other people looked
like the Haitians

or had the kind of culture
of the Haitians.

That's something that lives
in that island.

I mean, what an adventure to go
and make a film in Haiti.

When I was getting
out of school I was interested

in writing and directing,
and all that stuff.

My father said, come on out,

and see what it's like
to be on a real film set.

Weirdly, when I was a really
little kid,

I was on "The Last House"
set like, twice.

On the Lower East Side
I had my balloon popped.

That had been the sum
of my experience on a set.

If you want to do this,
this is a really,

really hard business.

So if you're gonna work with me,

you're gonna work your way
up from the bottom.

David Anderson, who was doing
makeup effects for his father,

was somebody I hung out
with all the time.

David Anderson,
our makeup effects guy,

his dad took the job and said,
oh, you can have my son,

because Lance didn't want
to go to Haiti.

So we didn't know that
was David's first job.

"Serpent" was the first feature

that I was working
for my Dad on,

and he tapped me to go to set.

He said, I'm going to send
you to Tahiti.

And I was really excited.

And then I realized
it was to Haiti, not Tahiti.

Although, to me at that point,

there really wasn't a whole lot
of difference

between Haiti and Tahiti.

Uh, but there is now.

While I was getting off the
plane in Port-au-Prince, Haiti,

I kind of recognized
a couple of faces

that had been on the other
flight,

and soon realized that
we were on the same crew,

and that we were heading
to the same place.

This was such
an amazing adventure.

We were all similar in age,

and we were all earlyish
in our careers.

Wes loved it.
He was right there

in the middle of everything.

David Ladd called me up
and said,

Well, what do you wear
in Haiti? I said, I don't know,

but there's this outfit
in San Francisco

you've never heard of
called Banana Republic.

They make all these great
linen and cotton clothes.

At the time,
Banana Republic was a store

where you bought your stuff
to go on safari,

you know, become adventurers
like Indiana Jones.

I mean, they had the hats,
and I mean,

it was, you know,
you had a whole look.

When I got down to the set,

the whole goddamn production
from grip to the director

was dressed head-to-toe
in Banana Republic.

- It didn't really seem
the kind of stuff

that Wade would wear,
but David really said,

oh, wait 'til you meet him.
He dresses like this.

Yeah, this is how he dresses.

And um, David had begun
to dress like this.

And basically it was
Banana Republic stuff.

The pants with the
pockets on the side, and the...

it was great.

At the time when we first
went down there,

Baby Doc had fallen

as the dictator of Haiti.

- The president for life
they called Baby Doc

flew away from Haiti today,
to France.

- A few hours before dawn today,

an American military transport
plane

took off from Haiti's
capital of Port-au-Prince,

carrying President
Jean-Claude Duvalier,

members of his family,
and several staff people,

and security guards.

It brought to an end one
of the longest-running

and most brutal dictatorships
in the Caribbean.

As soon as the Haitian people
heard the news this morning,

there was dancing
in the streets,

along with numerous reports
of violence

against members of the dreaded
militia

associated with Baby Doc.

That was the Tonton Macoute,

which was the kind of secret
police of the Duvaliers

and their reign in Haiti.

It was a wild time down there.

And unfortunately, I mean,
Haiti has struggled ever since,

and-and before, long before.

- These are all from Haiti.

I was taught to take more
pictures than you need.

These are just continuity
from the script.

So this was obviously Bill,

and he just got hit
with the powder.

Aah!

- And this was from a scene
that David Ladd,

I believe, shot, the second
unit director scene.

That's where I learned
the term "magic hour."

It's "magic hour!"
What the fuck is "magic hour?"

Before we started filming,
we were all invited

to a Voodoo ceremony where
we were all gonna be blessed.

It was like, okay, you guys
are here in Haiti.

Well, guess what, you're
gonna come into the jungle,

you're gonna get hammered
on alcohol,

and then we're gonna show
you some shit.

And that's exactly
what happened.

- I don't know what the
producers were thinking.

We went out at night

into the heart of
the countryside

to a Voodoo ceremony.

- Women and men would come out
and do these dances,

and then allow themselves
to become possessed.

- You'd see that moment
of possession.

Now this person is being
ridden by a God.

- It was all real
at that moment.

These people believed it.

And after that evening,
so did we.

What it did is it turned
this group of strangers

into a family.

It was a ceremony to bless us,

and take away all the evil
spirits to protect us,

so that we could successfully
make this film in Haiti.

It felt to me that
every day was 16 or 18 hours.

It was an insanely ambitious
amount of material,

and not a lot of control.

Everything was shot on location,

so you're always in a village,

many which had never seen
a film crew before.

There were tons of extras
around,

and people that didn't know
not to look into camera,

and it was definitely not
a normal film set experience.

Thinking back on it,
I just think,

who was protecting us
as a film crew,

Because we did not come across
the Tonton Macoute,

but they were there.

I think the producers
really underestimated

the danger of Haiti.

I just kinda had a sense
that this isn't gonna be

as easy as you think.

I wasn't qualified
to be there at all.

You know, whether I was
a seasoned filmmaker or not,

nobody had an advantage over me,

because it was all new.

We were wanting to honor
their traditions,

and particularly their religion.

Part of it was I think
everybody knew

we needed to have them favor us.

And that if we didn't get
their favor,

we would have a hard
time shooting.

Things could turn bad.

No!

I had done some travelling.

But you still get culture shock

when you're somewhere like that.

And everyone had culture shock,

especially a lot of the actors
had culture shock.

Um... many people,

a few people had nervous
breakdowns over there.

We had a writer,
Richard Maxwell,

who literally was possessed
at a certain point.

That was one of the most odd
experiences of the film,

and of the making of it.

Richard was down there,
and of course, uh,

he wanted to be exposed

to as many of the authentic
characters and places

as he could possibly be,

as he was doing a kind of
final rewrite with Wes.

And I don't remember
the specifics of it,

but Richard got involved
with a Voodoo practitioner

who he thought had put
a curse on him.

- Richard was a nice guy.

But... and he was very sincere
about Voodoo,

but he got so shaken
by the experience

he had a nervous breakdown
on the set.

I think they sent
Jill Simpson to his room

to see how he was doing,

and he was only in a t-shirt.

And as I recall, it like,
had a bullseye on it,

and that was it.
Nothing else.

- You know, it was-it was...

- So obviously, she came back,
she said, oh my God,

we're in trouble.

I'd see him at dinner
or something, and...

"how are the rewrites goin'?"

But it was the moment
when he said, yeah,

I really got a lot done.

I, you know, there was...

trouble with the original
name for my character,

and uh, it had...

Eventually the lawyers

decided that "Dennis"

would be a good first name,
and I hated that name.

I just never liked Dennis.

But that's what he had to do.

And I remember he said,
uh, I got a lot done.

I've changed all the names.

So every one of 'em
says "Dennis."

And then I realized,
oh, that's like, a click,

with software.

- This one morning,
we, we found him

standing outside Wes's door
completely naked.

And around him were

25 cigarette butts.

- Wes opened the door
and there he was,

and he's just like, I'm sorry,
man, I can't do it.

- And he just stood there
and smoked

until Wes got up.

And Wes came and got me.

I got on a plane with him
and got him to Miami,

handed him off to his wife,
and he was flown home.

But he-he was completely
under some kind of a...

What he thought
was a Voodoo spell.

Other people
had nervous breakdowns.

Who else had a nervous
breakdown?

- I don't know if I can
tell you.

It might have been one
of the actors.

And I think they had...
a nightmare or a vision.

- Uh...

really, I always have a hard
time talking about this,

because I don't know
the audience.

You know, I don't know
people's openness.

I went through this ceremony,

and um, just a really...

Some-some unsettling
things happened

in that-in terms of things
that I perceived about myself,

and different environments
and everything, and so...

The-right away, Wes says,
like, what'd you take?

What'd you drink?
Did you smoke anything?

You know.

Some of it is pretty much um...

some things that people
probably have experienced

in different times
with clairvoyance

or a sense of past lives
or something.

I had a lot of uh,

sequences to do with travelling
really quickly

over the surface of Africa.

And moving towards a gathering
of people

out in the middle of nowhere.

And I realized that it was
a convocation of people

of all skin tones and colors.

And that there was this...
Steps with an oration.

That was an experience
where I was so disturbed,

I cancelled the rehearsals
the next day.

They said, what's the matter
with you?

And I didn't want to talk
about it, you know.

I just, but Wes was really like,

this is why we came here.

We shot a scene
in a cemetery at night.

And I actually had to get
into an open grave

that one of our skeletons
had to go in,

that I had to get in and dress.

That's just one of those
moments where you just go,

what the fuck am I doing here?

Getting into the hole,

I'll never forget looking
and seeing the rocks

around the wall of the hole
that they had dug for me,

and coming to the realization

that those were not rocks,
that those were bones.

And they were at all levels.

There were bones, people
piled on top of people.

- Oh shit! Oh sh...
- Are you okay?

And we just dug...

this horrible hole right
in the middle of it all,

And excavated all these
body parts, and bodies,

and put 'em aside, and put
our fake skeleton in there,

and shot the scene.

And uh...

for that I'm probably
goin' to Hell.

There's all these
scenes with piles of skulls

and piles of bones everywhere,
right?

The set dressing
was three or four

enormous gunny sacks
of human bones.

And I never asked where
they got 'em.

I didn't want to know.

Should I even be talking
about this?

Like, I-I don't even know
that this is cool, you know.

This is not cool.
Like...

We had several members
of local crew.

And this one woman in particular

was going to help us wrangle
some bones for an altar

that we were creating.

And um, when she delivered
the bones,

we realized they were real
human bones.

And she had uh, robbed a grave.

- Ah! There's a lot of stories

I don't know if I want to tell,

I don't even know if I
should've told the bone story,

- but um...
- Too late.

Yeah!

When they go to make the Voodoo
potion in the cemetery,

there's a shot where the camera

kinda dollies through
the gravestones.

And I don't want to accuse
anybody of this,

somebody told me like,
we're gonna put

a dolly track down here,

so those two headstones
have to move, and...

and you-you know,
clear the path.

Like, make a level path.

And um, the graves
were not deep.

And the bodies didn't seem
to be in coffins.

So there was sort of
some moving of bones,

and you'd kind of move
a headst... you know,

take a picture of the
headstones, and move it,

and put it back later.

I think we may have...
desecrated some stuff.

I'm not sure.
But I don't remember.

I could-it could all be
a hallucination.

Please don't hold me
to any of this.

To me, when a bunch of Americans

try to recreate something
that's happening

in Haitian culture,
that's enough to be

a little nerve-wracking
right there.

If we had disrupted something
there by doing something wrong,

would we have called in a God
that was angry at us?

I don't know.

At this point we'd been there

for a number of weeks.

But nobody had really dealt

with the desperation
of the people.

So it was kind of a little
bit shocking,

and a little bit frightening

to see this all of a sudden
change

in the way that it had.

We were shooting
the giant procession.

So we had our main characters,

and literally thousands
of Haitian extras.

I think there were 2,000.

They hired like, 1,500 extras,

but of course it quickly grew
to 3,000 or 4,000 in Haiti.

Then they had the naivete
to think

that the assistant director
could go, "cut!"

Well, you don't let loose
4,000 Haitians,

drums, night, torches,
and music,

and song, and chant,
and go, "cut!"

I mean, this was a full-on
ceremony at this point.

And rumor went out
that everybody

wasn't gonna get paid.

- Some of the extras found out
that other people

were getting more money.

And so they all were demanding
to be paid

the greater amount of money.

And it may have been the
difference of a dollar

to ten dollars, which, it...

You know, that many years ago,
in Haiti,

was an, an incredible
amount of money.

There was a lot of people.

Even before we came down there,
that said,

you're gonna come into Haiti,

and you have an insane
amount of money

for this conditions that these
people live in here.

The average pay a day
is a dollar

for cuttin' sugar cane,

one of the worst jobs you could
ever have in this life.

And I think production
was trying to get...

Well, we'll give 'em
three dollars a day.

- They felt that we were
underpaying them,

and I think we probably were.

And they wanted more money.

You know, suddenly
I began to get a feeling

that people were getting
anxious.

And I was hearing from ADs
that there was uh,

talk of a strike,

that the extras
were gonna strike.

And then, you know, that kinda
became louder and louder,

and then it became more like
a little bit of an unrest.

- And I'll never forget,
at this point,

I thought I had a great
bond with these people.

And I got up on top of a bus,

and I was trying to negotiate
with them.

- I remember him with a mic...
A megaphone,

in his Banana Republic outfit.

And on top of this building
with the megaphone

and a translator,

trying to talk everybody down.

- And I looked down, and they
all had rocks in their hands.

- And the negotiations
fell apart,

and they revolted, and started
throwing rocks at us.

- And they started
to kind of riot.

- We had to leave our
camera equipment,

everybody had to...
We had to run into a church,

and lock the door.

- We were surrounded, and...

we... we needed to get out.

In the meantime,
Doug had ensconced himself

in a house,
and was paying the extras

with what money he had.

The word was out that
we are out of here.

And I literally ran straight
from set into a bus,

got in the bus, and off we went.

And I was in one of the first
buses that left,

um, with rocks pelting the back
of the bus as we left.

We went straight
from that location

straight to a running plane,

and straight to the Dominican
Republic.

That was it for Haiti.

I-I do like to be an adventurer.

But with adventure

comes responsibility as well.

No one had thought
about, you know,

you're gonna gather a thousand
people together

who are making three
dollars a day.

I think it was a naive decision.

We all got over
to Dominican Republic,

Santa Domingo.

Everybody is completely
exhausted.

And uh, the luggage
doesn't appear.

Obviously there's a scam
happening,

So I got on the luggage rack
and I crawled through the door

and went out on the tarmac,

and came around the side
of the luggage van

with-filled with luggage
from the plane.

And I saw like,
five Dominican cops

trying on everybody's clothes.

Caught them red-handed.

And I just said, no.
You know, I speak Spanish.

I said, yeah, no, no.

No es posible, hermanos,
por favor.

When you make a film,
you become a family.

This is a group of people
that are brought together

anywhere from three
or four months' worth of time

to a year's time.

And you share your life
with them,

and they share their lives
with you.

And Marianne, she and Jill,

this is Jill Simpson here,

were this dynamic duo.

And without them, I don't think
Wes could have functioned.

"The Serpent and the Rainbow"

was the movie that Wes and I
decided to become partners on.

I started working with Wes
as a producer on "Shocker."

We did "Shocker,"
and "People Under The Stairs"

for Universal.

We clicked, and we were
really good friends,

and we just had a really
good partnership.

I just thought Wes was
gonna be here forever,

because he was so full of life
and interested,

and intriguing.

And it-it just kind of doesn't
make sense that he's gone

even to me now.

It was family.

Obviously for David as well.

I mean, he met his wife through
"Serpent and the Rainbow."

I had to ask for his
approval to marry Heather,

basically.

I didn't even ask
Heather's father.

I had to ask Wes Craven.

So, there you have it.

Thank you, Wes.

People loved him.

People went through Hell
for him,

and did it gladly.

Like, were happy to be there.

You know for me it could be
challenging at times

because I was like, the film
crew is really your family.

Everybody worked with my father,

and people would interface
with him and interviewed him,

and knew him, oh my God,
he's such a great guy.

And he was.
He was a great guy.

He was not a great father.

I've talked to a lot of people
about it.

It just-it just wasn't
something that he could

really wrap his head around.

He wanted to, I think, but...

he didn't want to do that more
than he wanted to be a director

and wanted to be
who he had become.

He tried to branch out
and do other things.

He's-he comes back to horror.

That's where the opportunity is,

and that's where he gets
to process

whatever happened
to him as a child,

which, I know broad strokes of.

There's definitely trauma there.

I think he did what
he did really well,

and he put everything into it.

And he had a lot of compassion
for the people

who were around him.

I think he had a lot
of compassion for me

and my sister.

I think he didn't always
know how to connect.

And uh, and that's...
that's true for a lot of people,

a lot of fathers and sons.

We're not gonna be like,
super cozy as father and son.

But we were able to come
together on film sets,

and that was a beautiful thing.

When the film came out,

I was disappointed.

These gratuitous horror
elements,

to my mind, completely
deflated the power

of the truth of the story.

But I also clearly recognize
that it wasn't my film.

It was Wes Craven's film.

In my book I had targeted
these movies

as being the perpetrators

of the grotesque stereotypes
about Voodoo.

- And then suddenly,
I'm held responsible

for a Wes Craven movie
that by all accounts

essentially perpetuates
that same stereotype.

That's when I started
to think about representation.

And I guess, you know,
the white saviorism.

Probably the protagonist
would be Black now.

I felt that Bill was
the right actor, though.

He was very sensitive
to his role,

you know, and other people.

I think for young Black
actresses now,

there's a record of somebody
who worked there in 1988,

and did the female lead.

I'm proud of that legacy.

I think that Wade, you know,

he has very mixed emotions
about it,

because on the one hand,
you know,

he felt that maybe we had,
to a degree,

bastardized this serious
piece of work.

- But on the other hand,

it made Wade Davis, Wade Davis.

I literally went from
being kind of the darling

of the Haitian community,

to being a so-called
controversial figure.

So it was a very bittersweet

convergence of forces
that occurred.

That said, I totally
honored the people

that worked so hard to make it.

And I left it all behind me,
without bitterness

or contempt, and only joy.

But then I just went on with
a new phase of my life,

and became an activist

working on behalf
of the last nomadic people

of the rainforest of Southeast
Asia.

And I have not been back
to Haiti since.

All in all,
when I look back on it,

I believe there was a curse.

I believe there are curses.

I believe we were actually
blessed and protected.

What may have happened had
we not gotten that blessing,

you know, God only knows.

But there was a certain
confidence that was given

to us all that night.

I basically learned my craft
through all of these people

that I was now on
an island with.

Every experience
just got soaked in,

and filed, and became like,
the foundation.

- David LeRoy Anderson,
for "The Nutty Professor."

- And what I was able
to achieve there

with this film crew,

and with this film community,

was enough to make my Dad proud,

and make me feel successful,

and make me come home excited
about what I had done.

But very, very aware of the fact

that I didn't do
any of it alone.