The Third Wave_ A Volunteer Story - Alison Thompson [74]
The Cannes Film Festival was an extraordinary experience. Sean Penn was present at every film viewing and function. I have never seen anyone work so hard in all my life, and it inspired me to work harder. Bruce and Donny also came, and people swarmed around Donny, asking for his autograph and calling him the real Indiana Jones. When Donny met famous people, he would know that they looked familiar but wouldn’t realize that he had seen them in movies, so he’d often ask if they had met previously at the local football club back in Australia. This had us in stitches. We watched as Donny approached a confused Woody Harrelson, who seemed to be wondering if Donny was for real. The supermodel Petra Nemcova also offered incredible support for our film, as did many other celebrities, friends, and total strangers.
Bruce, Oscar, me, and Donny at the Cannes Film Festival
A few days before our film screened, huge earthquakes struck China, killing more than 100,000 people, and a hurricane also flooded Burma, leaving another 100,000 dead. The new disasters tugged at my sleeves and I wanted to go and help, but I knew it was important to share our message about volunteering with the world. On the day of the screening, Bono and Sean walked the red carpet with us. They had invited the whole Cannes jury to the show. Our film received a standing ovation and worldwide attention. I will always be grateful for the opportunity Sean gave us at Cannes. I will always be grateful for his incredible generosity.
ACT III
HAITI
CHAPTER 14
Oscar and I were practically living in a darkroom in New York City. Although the romance between us had died, we were still very close friends and were working together every day on The Third Wave and a documentary about the volunteering trip we’d taken with Sean Pean. Editing the second documentary had dragged on for months longer than we’d anticipated, and I was aching to get back out in the field as a volunteer. We finished mixing the sound and called the film a wrap on January 14, 2010. Literally that same afternoon, I heard my phone beep and picked it up to glance at the text message that had arrived. It was from Sean Penn, and it read: “Haiti??” I wrote back at once: “Yes, let’s go!”
A catastrophic 7.0 earthquake had struck the poorest area in the Northern Hemisphere two days earlier, killing a quarter of a million people in Haiti and rendering most of the survivors homeless. Reports were coming in from journalists and aid workers on the ground that conditions in Haiti were horrendous. An estimated 300,000 people had suffered injuries, and yet with an inept government, and the United Nations as well as other NGOs in shambles, the Haitians had limited access to medical care, food, and fresh water. It seemed like a summons from on high—one that I neither could, nor wanted to, ignore.
For the next few days, Sean, Oscar, and I raced around like crazy, Sean in Los Angeles, we in New York City. My primary task was to gather medical professionals to accompany our relief mission. An ER doctor from Manhattan’s Metropolitan Hospital had coincidentally friended me on Facebook a few days earlier, asking for my advice on international aid work. He had been all set to go to Guatemala, but when the Haiti quake happened, I wrote to him and said, “You have to join me.” He and I both posted to our Facebook pages that we were seeking medical volunteers, and within days we had ten doctors on our team. A couple of them were even Haitian and spoke Creole (Kreyol). My friend Randy Slavin and his mother, Nava, donated thirty boxes of medical supplies, including medications and equipment. Meanwhile, Sean raised half a million dollars from Diana Jenkins, a former Bosnian refugee