$ - Sunday, October 28, 1990 - North Shore News

Looking into
the eye of
the Hurricane

God/Monster

WILMINGTON, Nerth
Carolina — Director Rennie
Harlin pulled his big four-
wheel-drive Jeep up in front
of what | would calla ‘‘Ray
Bradbury’’-style house per-
ched — so weirdly out of
place — on the edge of a
lonely sweep of beach, with
no one out walking, just a
mist and the sizzle incoming
Atlantic rollers.

Although based on a very
high-tech, ultramodern design, the
three-storey house seemed to have
its collar pulled up, as though it
was hunched forward, a huge
transformer toy trying to light up
a smoke against the wind.

For miles in either direction, the
entire stretch of sandbar, called
Huntington Beach, was covered
with houses like the one Rennie
was renting, except that Rennie’s
was maybe 10 feet closer to the
high-tide line, where the debris
from the ocean — wood chips,
logs, kelp, fragments of beaten
plastic — rimmed the dunes, and
no plant grew higher than my
calves.

What a thrilling spectacle! A
hurricane was closing in from
somewhere beyond the horizon.
As we climbed out of the Jeep
and scrambled into the house, !
was enveloped in a colossal hissing
of wind, mixed with a constant
sandblasting roar on the seaward
side of the house.

As well, I could hear the not-
too-distant sweeping and grinding
of new sand being manufactured
from stones and shells, lost coral
being crunched, glass-like crystals
forming, sparkling, as the ocean
beat pitilessly on the shallow sand.

There was not much land
separating any of these houses
along Huntington Beach from the
Angry Atlantic.

We made our way up to the
third floor, where Rennie poured
drinks and we settled in, some of
us clinging for a while to the
balcony overlooking the beach,
others huddled behind glass
sliding doors, while the Hurricane
God, sounding dreadfully
animate, howled for our bones
from across the frothing waters.

It was here, perched precarious-
ly in the path of wind and waves,
that we spent from early after-
noon onwards one day, bantering
about the ideas that creative types
like writers and directors must
consider in the process of trying
to make a movie. (Yours truly
happened to be sitting in the mid-
dle of this by virtue of having
written the book upon which the
script is to be based, the story of
the first seven years of the
Greenpeace movement.)

As we are yapping intensely
among ourselves, four men
hunkering around a candle
because the power has gone out,
carpenters speaking in wonderful
Southern drawls show up to start
hammering plywood sheets over
the sliding-glass doors and win-

. dows.

Director Harlin is fascinated
and excited by the entire experi-
ence. The power failure. The hur-
ticane. The idea, introduced by
the carpenters, that everyone on
Huntington Beach is going to be
forcibly evacuated before the hur-
ricane hits.

“‘What happens if you stay?’’
Harlin demands.

Bob
Hunter |

ECOLOGIC

“Y'all better have a lotta toilet
paper.”’

Giddy with the thought that we
are on the very edge of oblivion
from natural causes, director
Harlin, his aide, Brad Epstein,
writer John Brinley, and I try to
solve the problem of taking a
story from the West Coast of
Canada in the late '60s, early ’70s,
about the birth of a worldwide
movement, and translating it onto
the movie screen.

‘The point at which reality and
cinema merge (or separate) is
much more difficult to pin down
than one might think.

Amid such tofty considerations,
the writer, John, and [ have
another serious matter nagging the
back of our minds, namely, will
the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
survive the onslaught of the hur-
ricane long enough for us to get
our pictures taken with them?

This movie we happen to be
working on is being produced by
the same outfit that is currently
shooting the Teenage Mutant Tur-
tles sequel. We've both got kids,
you see, who would think we were
pretty cool fathers if we could
produce photos of ourselves with
the aforementioned mutant tur-
tles...

Such are the preoccupations of
a mature male in these times.

With the power out, the ice
machine didn’t work any longer,
precluding the possibility of en-
joying any more Pernod and Coca
Cola mixes.

The candle was almost out.

The howling of the Hurricane
God/Monster became palpable, a
dread wet breath on the hairs of
the back of our necks.

We fled, leaving the sandbar
with the rows of fragile grey Ray
Bradbury houses, white foaming
walls of angry sea gnashing just
beyond their balconies and patios.

The hurricane held off for
another night. Next day, John and
I got our pictures taken preten-
ding to karate-fight with two
famous Mutant Ninja Turtles,
Leonardo and Donatello.

I got out of town on a DC-10 at
dusk. We bucked all the way up
from the tarmac to well above the
clouds, with rain streaking the
window. They took my drink
away. Wilmington quickly
vanishing below and behind, as
though a shroud had been snap-
ped across it’s face, or the sea had
pounced and devoured it.

I Sst guilty, leaving my new-
found friends and the Turtles and
all those lonely Ray Bradbury
beach houses behind. But life
presses on, right?

No decision on new highway

From page 1

government had made no an-
nouncement of plans to build an
alternative highway route from the
Lower Mainland to Squamish.
Earlier this week the New
Democratic Party’s highways critic

blasted the Socred government for
the delays in reopening the
Squamish Highway.

Nanaimo MLA Dale Lovick
said Wednesday in an interview
that with no alternative route for
the highway, ‘‘you would think
that it) would have somewhat

greater priority in an emergency.”’

Lovick said the Squamish
Highway had ‘tan erosion prob-
lem of horrendous proportions,’’
and he predicted that there would
be more slides and closures along
the road.

Sympathetic touch important for diener

From page 3

He gets called in after hours to
service people's religious beliefs:
Russian orthodox, Jewish ortho-
dox and most major religious
denominations.

**We've had spirit dancers in.
They came in, brought the medi-
cine man in, a very, very pleasant
man, the family came in, there
was about 20 of them. It was a
young person that had been killed
unfortunately in a house fire. He
opened up his bag he had with
him and gave everybody an eagie
tail feather, and they chanted and
danced around the body for about
half an hour. That was very inter-

esting.”

Sudden, tragic deaths often
prevoke extreme reactions in peo-
ple that Baigent has to be wary
of.

“People just have extreme emo-
tional reactions. You really have
to watch sometimes. [I've had
people pound on the walls, run
into the walls with their heads —
just uncontrolled expressions of
grief. You have to be able to pro-
tect people from = injuring
themselves.”’

Regardless of the logic Baigent
sees in some of the requests he
receives, he does what he can to
accommodate grieving family and

friends.

‘A lot of people ask me if I
can wrap the bodies up to make
sure the don't get cold in the
fridge. That's quite a common re-
uerst. fF do it, too."*

Once when he was still at the
Vancouver coroner's office,
Baigent found a grand total of
$54,000 on a body.

“Some people don’t trust
banks,’’ he shrugs. ‘‘Sort of fun-
ny, elderly lady of European de-
scent and she was wearing it in a
kind of a money belt under her
girdle. It sure made me jump
when I found it, too.”’

Dr. David Oison and Dr. Dean Greenwood

are pleased to announce the relocation of their
Edgemont Chiropractic Clinic to

101-3155 Highland Blvd. (at Woodbine)

New Patients Welcome

For appointment call

986-5371

Tercdl

~~.

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2 door.
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