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Excerpt from an Interview with Chad Allen
CA: I had never heard of this story before I got a phone call from my agency. I had just moved back to Los Angeles and was kind of unsure what I wanted to do next. I had been acting since I was 4 ½ or 5 years old and done a lot of what I wanted to do. Wasn't sure if acting was doing it for me anymore, or where I wanted to go, was thinking of opening a production company. So they sent me the script and I was immediately taken by the script, and had no idea the fame of the story or the fact that the story had already affected so many people before it came to us. But I went in and met [casting director] Mark Fincannon and Jim [Hanon], the director, and I think Bill [Ewing] was at the first meeting. They seemed like great guys, we had a good time, we auditioned a little bit, played around with the character a little bit and I walked away and that's all I heard about it. Every now and then I would get a phone call from Mark Fincannon and I placed one myself. I said, "Mark, as I leave this piece in my mind it keeps speaking to me, it keeps calling my name. What's going on with it?" Mark kept saying it's going to happen buddy, I promise to keep you in the loop. That was August of 2003 when I first met them, and then I think it was November or December 2003 when they called back and said it's going, we're going to shoot the first of next year and we want you to be involved. We were going to be teaming up on a project that was nothing I had ever done before and I agreed to do it. The first letter I got from Jim he promised this would be an adventure that was unlike any in my life time. And so far he's been absolutely right. Q: Let's talk about the first time you met Steve Saint, and your relationship with him. CA: I called the producers and the director and said I need everything that's ever been written or recorded about Nate Saint as soon as you can find it for me. They laughed and said they'll get together everything they could. They sent me some tapes of Marj that were from the documentary [Beyond the Gates of Splendor]. The extended tapes, everything they recorded. I said this is great, but I need Steve too and I know that those tapes exist. But they were already here in Panama and said they're in storage in Oklahoma, they said don't worry you'll meet Steve as soon as you get here. I was like "ok, but I need one on one time with Steve Saint." They said we got it. Then I got an e-mail not too long after that. Steve had gotten on a plane headed to Panama, and sat next to a couple from Panama. He began to tell the story and it was being made into a movie, they got excited and asked who's playing your father. He said an actor named Chad, and he knew some of the things I had done. They said "not Chad Allen?" He said, "yeah that could be him, yeah." They said, "he's a good friend of ours and he used to date our daughter when we used to live in Long Beach, California where Chad grew up." Then they got in touch with me. I got this message from Steve, and in the mean time everybody's telling me "Steve Saint, Steve Saint he's so amazing, wait until you meet Steve Saint, he's so incredible, he's got this light, and he changes you, and his stories..." It wasn't unlike reading about his father, this hero. I had a hard time diving into Nate and finding the real person underneath all the stories. He's such a story book hero. I was anxious to meet Steve and when I did, in the most perfect sense Steve was the realest person I'd met. When I met him he was going through a lot, I could see right away the process of making this movie wasn't easy. He was caring a lot of stress and anxiety and fears. The weight of being the steward of this story for himself and the rest of the family and the families of the other martyrs, it was a lot. I had said before I got here it must be something to have somebody come play you, but it's something else entirely to have some actor from Hollywood come play your father you lost when you were 5 years old and has become this hero to so many people. And that was made very clear to me in our first meeting. He looked at me and said I know that once this movie comes out when the people read this story they will no longer think of my father, they'll be thinking of you. That's a lot of responsibility, for him certainly and me sitting there. I was very grateful that what I met was not a story book version of a man, selfishly as an actor and as a person. The person that I met in Steve Saint is very real. He cried in our first meeting over dinner, I cried, Bill Ewing cried. I walked away that night, went to my room, I kept telling myself to breath through this, you're the right person you were brought here to. I wrote in my journals about it and I remember writing, at the end of the day coming up on 30 years old in that strange period in my life when you're thinking about the kind of man you want to be and I said if nothing else comes of this movie-this was before we started shooting-that's the kind of man I want to be. Steve Saint, at first meeting we can sit there, and he can cry and show me his fears. That more than anything has been the guiding factor for me in developing the character Steve Saint in the movie is different than the real person. I'm not here to do an impression of Steve Saint. But to develop a character that's realistic based upon the man that serves the story, and that's what I've done with Nate as well. And trust that I've done a good enough job with it. Q: Share when you first got to Panama and seeing his difficulty understanding the film business. CA: When I first arrived here, the first dinner I had was with Steve Saint he made it very clear that so far up to that point he knew very little about making movies and that he was going to need a lot of help. He asked for my help that very first night. Which I thought was extraordinary. You take a story like this and you place it in the largest medium that we now have, the biggest social medium, lives could change, cultures could change. We made a pact that night at dinner to help each other. Q: As a seasoned actor what was it like to work with the Embera? CA: When I first read the script, [I knew] it could be an incredible story, it could be an incredible movie, but it might be impossible to make. I did a lot of work with Native Americans with the series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and you had a lot of actors available for those parts who were anxious to work, and got to together, but this was something else. To capture the spirit of the people that didn't have an awareness, it was going to be very hard to do. The point of view of this film is theirs, if you couldn't really capture that, then we didn't have a movie, we didn't have story to tell. Then Mark said we would be working with the Embera tribe. Then I began to get the stories they were setting up an acting school. I went "whoa, man, this is a lot to ask." I've been training to do this for 25 years now. It is hard stuff, I still wonder how it happens sometimes. Then they began telling me it's going well and I took it with a grain of salt. Then we got here and my first day on the set when I was meeting everybody I was certainly intimidated at first. We spoke a different language. They didn't know me, I didn't know them. We're from different worlds. Would I do the right thing? My first day at Palm Beach, which is where we started shooting my stuff, I met the actor playing Nenkiwi and I remember that big smile on his face and his eyes. "Hola, Hola amigo," I speak just enough Spanish to say "hi." Before we could even finish that first take I could see how excited he was. © typepad.com |
Q: What was your introduction to the story? How did you get involved?