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 UK..
ITV 1 Network April 9-10 @ 9.00pm
For the first
time David Jason reveals why he’s got so much riding on the success of
ITV’s brand new two part epic drama Ghostboat:
“I stumbled across Ghostboat (a novel by George E Simpson and Neal R
Burger) by accident. It was while we were shooting an episode of Frost.
We were filming a scene in which a robbery had just been taken place and
the whole flat had been trashed.”
“The place looked like a bomb had hit it, all over the floor there
were books, drawers of cosmetics and the victim’s personal
possessions.”
“The lighting and cameramen were setting up the next shot, so I’m
sitting there waiting. I would usually go back and sit in the caravan,
but they reckoned they’d only take ten minutes to set up so I thought
I can’t be bothered going back I may as well stay on set.”
“So I was just waiting there, knee-deep in the stuff and moved my foot
and this book caught my eye so I picked it up. I read the back cover and
I thought ‘that sounds interesting so I started to turn the pages
…it started off with a great word, so I put it in my pocket.”
When challenged about stealing Yorkshire Television props David
laughs; “Well yes I did kind of borrow it! I thought I’d read it
later and covered up the spot where it had been. When I started to turn
the pages, I was totally hooked.”
Having turned his hand to directing as well as acting over the last
few years, Jason has been known for his public criticism of dumbed-down
reality programmes and endless repeats.
“It was about the same time that I’d read an article by one of the
TV critics that got me thinking. The article said; “What’s happening
to television these days, it’s so predictable it’s got to be either
a police or hospital drama if not soap, don’t we have any inventive
telly anymore?”
“When I read Ghostboat, I realised if we turned this into a piece of
television, it could be a fantastic because it’s very original and
daring. I also realised it would be very expensive to do it justice. I
got a bit carried away thinking about it and got hold of David Reynolds
and told him to grab himself a copy and see what he thought.”
“Luckily he agreed it was extremely gripping. So the wheels were set
in motion and the slow process of adapting the book into a two part
drama began. Several changes had to be made to factual parts of the
storyline in order to make it work as a script.”
Having been given the green light, scriptwriter Guy Burt was brought
in to turn the novel into two ninety minute episodes with David Jason
heavily involved in each stage of development.
“Basically I wanted to take the audience on a journey and wanted them
to leave all prejudices behind and trust us with the story.”
This is one of the most expensive dramas ever filmed by ITV and part
of that cost is the amount of special effects, especially Computer
Generated Imaging,
“I think it cost about £1000 per second to add the effects, so it
really is something special. We needed the interior of a submarine and
we tried two or three places and thought of filming in Portsmouth but
none of these were ideal and then we heard that there was an interior of
a submarine in Italy of all places, and it hadn’t been used for years.
It was on the back lot gathering dust and a lot of it had been stolen.
So we had to all go, lock stock and barrel over to Italy, which was
great for us but not the budget!”
Interior shots of the submarine were filmed in late Summer in Italy,
while to some this may sound idyllic David explains why it wasn’t all
one long holiday.
“It was late Summer in Italy so potentially could have been very
uncomfortable filming in a submarine all day with the studio lights
glaring. Fortunately for us we had two air conditioning units so the
minute we stopped filming we would instantly turn them both on and it
would immediately cool the interior of the sub down to a more bearable
temperature. However, right next to where we were filming was a water
cooling plant which was a breeding ground for mosquito’s so every time
anyone came off set they were bitten to death. I know people think that
being on a film set in Italy in the height of Summer is terribly
glamorous, but let me tell you that if every time you want a tea break
or leave work you are eaten alive by mosquitoes it ain’t fun! On our
days off a few of us would go out and find lovely little Italian
restaurants which was great fun and I managed to see a lot of Rome on my
days off. But those days were very far and few between as most days were
seven in the morning till eight at night and then I would just get back
to the hotel and collapse!”
To make the drama more realistic filming also took place in Malta.
“We filmed more of the sea shots there and Malta dock yards has got a
fantastic history – they kept open and running all the way through the
Second World War, it was constantly being bombed by the Germans and was
totally annihilated and they have all these caves that everyone would
run into. It was steeped in history. Again, there were lots of long
hours but as this project was so special to me, as I found it, I really
gave it my best shot as did everyone else on set – it was really
super.”
David Jason, known for his love of aeroplanes and flying, tells if
filming this drama has also given him a taste for a life on the sea.
“Not really. When doing my research for this project I found out that
being trapped in a submarine is widely considered by service men to be
the worst nightmare imaginable. So much so that the Germans used to call
them the iron coffin! Another terrifying statistic was that submarine
crew had a 70% fatality rate so if you were commissioned to go on a
submarine in the war you only had a 30% chance of coming back home! It
gave me a tremendous amount of respect for all the men who went to work
in a submarine.” |
