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.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Reach Divorce Settlement After 8 Years
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have reached a divorce settlement, ending one of the longest and most contentious divorces in Hollywood history but not every legal issue between the two.
Jolie and Pitt signed off on a default declaration filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, saying they have entered into a written agreement on their marital and property rights. The settlement was first reported by People magazine.
"More than eight years ago, Angelina filed for divorce from Mr. Pitt," Jolie's attorney, James Simon, said in a statement. "She and the children left all of the properties they had shared with Mr. Pitt, and since that time she has focused on finding peace and healing for their family. This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago. Frankly, Angelina is exhausted, but she is relieved this one part is over."
The filing says they give up the right to any future spousal financial support, but gives no other details. A judge will need to sign off on the agreement. An email late Monday night to Pitt's attorney seeking comment was not immediately answered.
Jolie, 49, and Pitt, 61, were among Hollywood's most prominent pairings for 12 years, two of them as a married couple. The Oscar winners have six children together.
Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, after a private jet flight from Europe during which she said Pitt physically abused her and their children. The FBI and child services officials investigated Pitt's actions on the flight. Two months later, the FBI released a statement saying it would not investigate further, and the U.S. attorney did not bring charges.
A heavily redacted FBI report obtained by The Associated Press in 2022 said that an agent provided a probable cause... Read More