"VERY" interesting," is how a diplomatic Gary Sweet describes his recent experiences filming the romantic film Angkor in the Philippines.
"We had two typhoons, and that was after an earthquake that scored a six in the Richter scale! Yes it was very interesting and very humid," he says, hinting it wasn't the most enjoyable experience.
"Suffice to say, filming in and around Sydney on Police Rescue is different to the outskirts of Manila."
Gary's co-stars in the new film are Sigrid Thornton and Frenchman Jacques Perrin. Ankor is a romance set during the period when the Khmer Rouge was coming to power in cambodia. In the $4.9 million French-Australian co-production, Gary plays Eddie, a character based on award-winning Australian wartime cameraman Neil Davies, who went to cover a Thai coup in the Eighties and ended up filming his own death.
Sigrid plays Shelly Kincaird, who returns to Cambodia after fleeing an unhappy marriage. On arrival, she discovers her brother has been accused of deserting the army in Vietnam.
Tha cast is under the direction of Carl Schultz (Careful, He Might Hear You). "It was great working with Jacques (Perrin)," Gary says. "He starred in the Academy Award-winning foreign film Z 27 years ago. It was great to be working with Sigrid, too."
Gary has now returned from Manila and is in Queensland working on the film's last scenes.
"Even the flight home was delayed by a typhoon!" he says with a laugh.
An unusual aspect of the production is it is being filmed in two languages, English and French. Unlike the other English-speaking cast, whose voices will be dubbed, Gary has filmed his lines in both languages.
I basically did two films at the same time," he says. "I'd do one tale with Jacques speaking English, the we'd do another one in French."
"Yes, it was very interesting. We had 225 crew!"
After Queensland, it's back to work in Sydney on his new high-flying series, Big Sky. Gary will play Chris Manning, a maverick bush pilot in the new Network Ten drama, which will premiere in 1997.
(David Brown, TV Week)
