Get yer own Free Home Page, matey!The whole adventure began on July 19th, 1986 --- with a motion picture called "Roman Polanski's PIRATES."
Now, if you wish to fully understand the real story behind my journey into membership in the legendary and eternal Brethren of the Coast, you need to know a few things about how Captain Thomas Bartholomew Red swashbuckled his way into my life --- thereby transforming me into the grumpy, occasionally twisted merrymakin' ol' coot who's now responsible for this here gaggle of Internet webpages.
The year is 1974. Film and stage director Roman Polanski has just come off of perhaps one of his greatest successes as a moviemaker to date: Chinatown, starring Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson. It is, simply, the definitive American film noir of the mid-1970's. In fact, Polanski himself enjoyed directing Chinatown so much, he wrote himself a small, brief walk-on role, in which we see him slice the nose of Nicholson's character, the wild-eyed detective Jake Gittes.Two decades or so later --- and to this day I do not believe Roman knows it --- that walk-on would have a profound impact, not only upon his subsequent film career, but upon my own life in general as well.
Later that same year, back in Paris, Polanski and his longtime writing partner, Gerard Brach, are sitting around throwing a few ideas together --- ideas that they can use for their next big movie. Before long, they come up with the following unlikely scenario:
Suppose we did something exciting..... something dangerous..... something --- swashbuckling? Why don't we put together something that the people can describe as "THE definitive swashbuckler of the latter portion of the 20th Century?"
Polanski and Brach thought about these things long and hard; and finally, they settled on a story concept and background for their definitive swashbuckler.
They would call this project simply: "PIRATES."
They didn't know it at the time, but their actions in 1974 would have profound consequences half a world away, in New York City.... and I should know. Because of Roman Polanski, I was to become..... a PIRATE!
And this is the saga of how it all happened........
They were some of the most dangerous pices of filth to ever walk the earth during the 17th Century. So ferocious and terrible were they in terms of their reputation and expertise that they were feared by even their own parents! Yet they dared to take on an entire arsenal's worth of snooty Spaniards, whilst, and at the same time, filchin' the Great Throne occupied of old by the legendary Aztec god-king Kapatec-Anhuac. What's more, even in the midst of all the chaos they eventually caused, they wound up forging one of the true swashbuckling legends of our age.
These, then, were......Roman Polanski's PIRATES!
Their incredible saga begins with the idea developed by Roman Polanski and Gerard Brach, his longtime co-writing collaborator, in 1974. Having directed 1968's Rosemary's Baby, and Chinatown six years later, Polanski now turned his attention towards developing a vehicle for himself and Jack Nicholson. The concept took the form of a classic Pirate story, with Jack in the lead role of the Cockney-spouting, bloodthirstily fanatical, gold-obsessed cannibal of a Buccaneer, Captain Thomas Bartholomew Red; whereas Roman himself would take on the role of the Captain's naive and long-suffering, yet always faithful first mate, Jean-Baptiste, alias "the Frog".
As Polanski saw it, the adventure that Captain Red and the Frog would share was to be no less than Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean --- Polanski-style --- in the tradition of his 1967 salute to Dracula and fiends, The Fearless Vampire Killers, or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth are in my Neck!
Alas! From the midsummer of 1974 to the winter of 1979, obtaining the necessary financing for the Pirate project became a constant struggle for the Polish-born, Paris-based former Holocaust survivor. Then, at the close of December 1979, reality intervened --- as a desperate Polanski, apparently distrustful of America's judicial system, fled the States after being accused of raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson's house while on assignment for the French edition of Vogue Magazine.
That case has never been completely resolved, and all parties involved have long since died, retired or simply gone on with their lives. Still, one must wonder about the emotional turmoil Polanski underwent in the wake of these incidents; but it is not the place of this website's creators whether or not to ask if this man is willing to once more confront his inner demons --- some 26 or so years after the fact.
Anyway, by the mid-1980s, it was not long before Captain Red and the Frog found their savior, so to speak, in the person of Tunisian-born financier Tarak Ben Ammar [who, from this point on, shall be known as simply TBA]. PIRATES would not be Ben Ammar's first credit as a film producer; one of earliest such productions was a fully-staged adaptation of Verdi's La Traviata, designed and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. But now, armed with TBA's financial strength, Polanski could raise a sizable amount --- namely, $31 million --- to bring his long-planned Pirate adventure to the screen.
Of that $31 million, $8 million needed to be spent on enough personnel and equipment to simply construct His Majesty's Good Ship Neptune --- that mighty Spanish galleon with the likeness of His Oceanic Majesty as its figurehead, and aboard which most of our story's first half would take place.
© 1997 pirate1_power@hotmail.com
Get yer own Free Home Page, matey!