Thirty seconds can be a lifetime to a commercialmaker. The same half-minute can also be the difference between a lifetime continuing or abruptly ending.
In last week’s e.dition (12/12), director Anthony Rose of Flying Fish, Sydney, and Moo Studios, Los Angeles, told SHOOT of his harrowing experience in Mumbai as he and his crew survived terrorist attacks which claimed the lives of 170 people in November. Rose and his colleagues were in the Taj Mahal Hotel when gunfire erupted and a siege of some 60 hours began across the city.
“I’m very proud of our crew and their staying calm under intense pressure,” related Rose. “Being in this business prepares you for those occasions when the ground shifts under your feet quickly.
“We worked as a unit,” he continued, “and relied on each other. But ultimately our survival was probably due more to good luck than it was good management.”
That luck was evident on several fronts. For one, if he decided to stay in the Taj lobby to have a drink and wind down after flying over from Sydney, he would have been killed.
“We’re talking a difference of about thirty seconds or so,” Rose said. “We were late for a meeting in the Sea Lounge, which was a small flight of stairs up from the lobby. Gunfire broke out less than a minute after I left the lobby.”
Rose and his crew spent the next seven hours hunkered down in an out of the way banquet room tucked away in the Sea Lounge.
“We were extremely lucky. If the gunmen had turned and looked left instead of right when they came up the stairs around a corner, they would have seen us.”
Lady luck also smiled when Rose and crew decided to leave their place of refuge after seven hours.
“We evacuated at the right time,” observed the director. “There was a saying in the film Master and Commander which went something along the lines that you have to be decisive to be a captain but not necessarily correct. You make a decision and go with it and that’s what we did when we left the Sea Lounge.”
Rose and his compatriots fashioned a make-shift rope made of torn curtains to facilitate a 30-foot drop to the street below.
“Nobody wanted to be the first to climb down the rope so I wound up doing it. It was scary,” related Rose. “Most of my crew slid down that way. We left all our gear behind.”
The Sea Lounge was subsequently destroyed by fire and grenade blasts.
Rose and his compatriots took cover in the lobby of another hotel and then a crew member’s hotel room during the ongoing siege.
Now Rose, who splits his time between Australia and the U.S. depending on where the work takes him, is back to more mundane matters, assessing what insurance will cover in terms of lost and damaged equipment, including cameras. His intent is to return to Mumbai sometime in March to shoot a television series project as originally planned.
Rose today takes nothing for granted and treasures just being alive. It’s a feeling of gratitude we should all carry with us this season and for that matter year ’round. Happy holidays!
Please note: This is our last e.dition of SHOOT for 2008. We’ll be back with our first e.dition of 2009 on Friday, January 9.
Gene Hackman Died Of Heart Disease; Hantavirus Claimed His Wife’s Life About One Week Prior
Actor Gene Hackman died of heart disease a full week after his wife died from hantavirus in their New Mexico hillside home, likely unaware that she was dead because he was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease, authorities revealed Friday. Both deaths were ruled to be from natural causes, chief medical examiner Dr. Heather Jarrell said alongside state fire and health officials at a news conference. "Mr. Hackman showed evidence of advanced Alzheimer's disease," Jarrell said. "He was in a very poor state of health. He had significant heart disease, and I think ultimately that's what resulted in his death." Authorities didn't suspect foul play after the bodies of Hackman, 95, and Betsy Arakawa, 65, were discovered Feb 26. Immediate tests for carbon monoxide poisoning were negative. Investigators found that the last known communication and activity from Arakawa was Feb. 11 when she visited a pharmacy, pet store and grocery before returning to their gated neighborhood that afternoon, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said Friday. Hackman's pacemaker last showed signs of activity a week later and that he had an abnormal heart rhythm Feb. 18, the day he likely died, Jarrell said. Although there was no reliable way to determine the date and time when both died, all signs point to their deaths coming a week apart, Jarrell said. "It's quite possible he was not aware she was deceased," Jarrell said. Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City medical examiner, said he believes Hackman was severely impaired due to Alzheimer's disease and unable to deal with his wife's death in the last week of his life. "You are talking about very severe Alzheimer's disease that normal people would be in a nursing home or have a nurse, but she was taking care... Read More