Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [54]
“Okay, cut,” Jay says, rushing in. Jay's our super-motivated new director for this show, taking up where Mark left off. “How was that, Kevin?”
Oh, yes, and we have a different cameraman.
After a quick check of the tape, Kevin shakes his head. Not enough light.
Back come the monks, pattering softly in loose sandals, to fan around my sleeping bag for a second time, looking amused at the idea that reality can be relived. Though why that would bother them I don't know. Isn't it the very essence of reincarnation?
This time a brighter indoor lamp is positioned in one corner and we go again.
“Well, Cash,”—nyeeeerk—“tonight you will sleep alone here. Is it comfortable?”
“It is. Thank you very much. I'll see you in the morning for breakfast. Good night.” Relieved, I close my eyes and roll over.
The room I'm in seems to be some kind of run-down auditorium. Intimate and musty with a high, raftered ceiling and a small raised platform at one end, it's like something the Southeast Asian touring company of Call Me Madam might rehearse in. The platform is where I'll be sleeping tonight. Or trying to. Because, after a few seconds of snoozing, I realize that the monks haven't gone away. They're still outside the mosquito netting, staring down at me.
“No, no, cut!”
Jay circles the room in big purposeful strides and explains again. “After Cash says good night, you all need to move away from him. Go this way,”—he outlines a path to the door—“the way you did the first time.”
Vim translates for the others. Nyeeeeerk. They get it.
“Good. Let's go again. Action.”
“So, Cash, tonight you sleep here alone. This place doesn't have any …” nyeeeeeeerk “… sound to disturb you. We will see you in the morning for breakfast.”
“All right, thank you very much. Good night.”
Through the wall of my makeshift sarcophagus I see four shaven heads bob this way and that, each checking to see what the others are doing, before maneuvering themselves with anything but certainty toward the door.
“Aaaaaand … cut!” Convinced that mild confusion is the best he can hope for from these guys, Jay puts us out of our agony. “All right, that's it for today. Thank you.”
Yay!
The lights are switched off, along with the camera. Hot but relieved, everyone disperses into the fresh air, leaving me lying on bare boards in the dark, because I have to stay here for the entire night now—that's the new rule. Previously, we didn't think this was important. We weren't making a survival show, it was entertainment, remember? But then I started to hear rumblings. Rumblings and grumblings.
“Don't question me about it,” a slightly testy Tasha said when I asked, running a hand through her bleached ends to flatten them, then giving three sharp tosses of the head to make it all look wild again. “I'm not allowed to say. All I know is, you have to spend the whole night in each place from now on.”
“Really? Who said?”
But she wouldn't be drawn. Nor would the rest of the crew, nor anyone at the office when we got back. How frustrating. This whole TV production process is so threaded with intrigue and secret lines of communication, I doubt anyone fully understands what's going on. But if they do, then they're not leaking any of it to me. However, if I had to take a crazy stab at a guess, I'd say that Vanuatu is at the back of this somehow, and here's why.
The week after we finished shooting on Tanna, I came across a short puff piece on a Vanuatan news website, proclaiming in its own peculiar form of English:
The program … has ended with a positive note for a visitor to experience reality on an island. For this episode, the host is dropped off at a location unknown to him. Over the course of the show, Cash and the viewers at home experience a new place together with Cash showing viewers how to survive in a tropical island, what to do, what to eat, what one is expecting to see and what not to do on the island.
The article carried on to say that the show: