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On Set: Buffalo Soldiers The adults have arrived. Before today, everyone on the Buffalo Soldiers set, deep in the Black Forest of South West Germany, has been engaged in a phoney war. Joaquin Phoenix, who plays 'anti-hero' Ray Elwood, has been leading the troops of the 317th Supply Battalion in a merry dance, practically skipping between the trailer and the set. "I'm having a great time," he smirks, when Empire catches him smoking between takes. This morning, though, the guns were put in place. Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Dean Stockwell, Elizabeth McGovern and Anna Paquin — an honorary adult on account of her Oscar — all turned up for work this am. For Australian director Gregor Jordan, it's all a bit daunting. "It's scary for me to work with really good, really experienced actore, because these are people who have worked with directors who know what they are talking about," he jokes in the November sunshine, which has been messing with continuity. Nevertheless, all the actors seem happy to be there, drawn in equal parts by Jordan's debut feature, the little-seen comedy Two Hands — "It was sort of an Ozzie Lock, Stock..." explains Glenn — and Jordan's script for this movie, an adaptation of Robert O'Connor's acclaimed novel. A notoriously tough nut to crack, Jordan was in fact the last in a succession of screenwriters to attempt to turn the tail of American soldiers fighting nothing but boredom in Germany, 1989 — the year the wall came down — into a workable screenplay. The results are very impressive and very ambitious. Schemer Elwood is at the centre of scams involving heroin and stolen weapons — not to mention the General's wife and the Sergeant's teenage daughter. Oh, and it's a comedy. "There'd better be humour," confirms Harris, "but it's pretty dark. Dr. Strangelove is one of Gregor's favourite films, and he mentioned the book Catch-22, but I think it should have a certain sense of originality to it." Also impressed with Jordan's shooting script were Film Four, who decided that Buffalo Soldiers was exactly the kind of international project they'd been shopping for, and stumped up most of the cash. Although the $15million budget is tight — "I went to school with Roland Emmerich," producer Rainer Grupe shrugs. "He does $120million movies and he says money is always tight" — Jordan has nothing but praise for Film Four's contribution. "The first round of script notes arrive from Film Four and I'm like, 'Oh no.' Then I read them and thought, 'Hang on, these notes are good. Fuck, they're really good.'" So, we've ended up with an Australian director, on a largely British-financed film, with an all-American cast, shooting in Germany. "Kind of weird, isn't it?" laughs Jordan. And yet if he judges the tone correctly, and Phoenix catches Elwood's twinkling sense of mischief ("He's been phenomenal," says Jordan), then the end product could well be considered an international success. |