JOURNAL FOR I MIGHT BE CRYING VIDEO

Location1.
THE BRIDGE AT BEN TRE TOWN

I'm not wearing make-up in this video Tony [the director] says I don't need to. With the heat and everything [flies, for example] I feel this is a good decision. When women wear make-up here they favour the Elizabethan white face powder and when men do they tend towards bright red lipstick and thick black eyeliner. It's a bit odd.

MORNING
Because I start early -by- dawn - I am with the crew waiting for the good light. I'm a bit cranky mid-morning. I've got prickly heat and I'm sure everyone will look ravishing in this video and I'II just look a bit bumpy. After eating last night I had diahorrea this afternoon. I thought I'd failed in some way - but they cook next to the drain in our Vietnamese hotel and yesterday I saw a lot of blood in the drain, pretended not to and ate dinner.

FOOD
Food is very nice in Vietnam - it can be surprisingly delicate and refreshing. Yet we are in a very insanitary town. People throw all their rubbish in the river and that is the main water supply. People toilet in the street and cook in it. My manage, has resisted eating for 2 days. I eat lots of noodle soups -and feel reckless. [When I left Vietnam and met my mother, in Sarawak I was rather weakened and ill and my mother would mention "Vietmam" as if this explained everything].

THE HOTEL - BEN TRE TOWN
The hotel isn't finished. Meredyth [the producer] bought some mosquito repellent which actually works and everyone has these mosquito coils - burn out after a few seconds - this is a rather fortunate design fault as they leave such a suffocating smell they need to burn out so that a person can breathe.

There are more people working here than staying here.

THE RIVER
The Mekong. I was actually thinking about the River Seine when I wrote this song. The River Seine and Paris. I keep wandering what will happen if I fall into the River not dramatically, just that I'll smell really bad and who would rush to rescue me?

THE BRIDGE AT BEN TRE TOWN

Tony caused a bit of confusion with the camera in the early evening. There is a shot where the crowd is walking, pedaling or mopeding around me as I sing to the camera. However, most of the people who are supposed to be moving stop to watch the camera and I ran away because I thought the bridge was going to collapse and Tony said it was the best filming of the day.

THE SHOOT
I'm beginning to fantasise about the luxury of working in the rainforest with Werner Herzog.

THE PEOPLE
One cannot generalise about people but we are dealing with crowds and crowds are rarely inviting. Every occasion I have been talking to an individual who speaks English - a member has warned them off. The men here are rather mega macho and do that clearing of the throat and spitting thing all over the place. There is a big emphasis on the family. I can tell this because every five minutes I get asked how many children I have.

A lot of very beautiful faces, beautiful children. There must be a lot of pain too - the war is over but these people are still paying for it.

POVERTY
My manager said yesterday that Vietnam is officially the poorest country in the world.

MONEY
It's called Dong. The Vietnamese banks are a bit sniffy about it - and pretend to be closed when you want to change it back into Dollars.

THE FERRY TO HO CHI MINH CITY
[formerly Saigon]
I played that game with PC [my manager] and Tory where the person next to you sticks a piece of paper on your head and you guess which person you are. Two of the answers were "Tanita Tikaram". Desperate times.

Location 2.
KADOIST TEMPLE

KODOIST
Kadoism is the state religion. It is very suspect [as if America suddenly adopted Scientology as the national religion] - the philosophy of Buddhism Marxism and Victor Hugo were joined via a medium in 1926. All the monks seem suspect to, chain smoking not very Zen at all...

THE EYE
The all - seeing - eye is a symbol. I find it all a bit creepy. As ever when confronted by religion I find my spirit moved only by costume. In this case very nice white trouser, and a sort of white grandad shirt and white turban. It doesn't beat the Rumanian nun, who looked like they'd been dressed by Rei Kawakubo - it more like an affordable high street alternative. Anyway, Tony made me stand under the eye - and freaked the monks because it's forbidden to stand in front of it. However, to be standing in front of an all-seeing eye -isn't that an oxymoron? [I was secretly glad - moths take to the eye like a lamp and I don't like moths]. I think the temple looked kitsch.

THE CHILDREN WHO SELL CHEWING GUM
These children are very street-wise. As soon as we arrived at the temple they surround the crew; selling cigarettes and chewing gum, saying "chewing gum 3 000, cigarettes 5 000. You Buy?, Maybe later!" This became our mantra. Julia, the production design, advised them to diversify into selling bananas or other fruit as they all sell the same product. I wondered if these children were orphans. All the male orphans smoke by the age of six, other males by the age of sixteen [women never smoke so my lighting up on the set always caused a frisson of excitement]. I warmed to one of the boys because he warmed to me and spoke a little English. I bought some chewing gum off him - then everyone wanted me to buy chewing gum as if by buying one packet I would be prepared to buy ten!

THE SHOT ON THE ROAD OUTSIDE THE TEMPLE
It didn't happen. The monks kept making up rules about where we can and cannot shoot. They said the road is sacred - but Meredyth said that it can't be that sacred as it's covered in cigarette butts, there are motorcycles speeding across it and men, spitting all over it! [I suppose saliva is sort of sacred, it being part of the Body, etc].

THE SHOT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TEMPLE
A crowd makes towards the camera, waving their hands in the air and smiling. After a few takes the Communist Party Official makes us stop the waving because he doesn't want it to look as if the crowd surrendering to the Americans.

TOURISTS
This must be a tourist Temple. PC told one group of tourists that we were doing the preliminary shots for a film staring Kevin Costner and Julia Roberts called "I Might Be Crying". He also told them that they were arriving later. This was a rather unfortunate wind-up as some tourists stayed to see them arrive.

NEW YEAR'S EVE - HO CHI MINH CITY
Went to a French restaurant. We ended up in a bar called Q-Bar and got very drunk.

 

Location 3.
HO CHI MINH
[FORMERLY SAIGON]

SHOOT IN THE SQUARE SURROUNDEDBY TRAFFIC
I stand inside a sort of giant sandwich board health warning against polio. I feel vary silly singing inside a sandwich board. There is much hustle and bustle and I can hardly breathe because of exhaust fumes. I hope a rather sooty grimace comes across yearning on film.

BUDDHIST MONKS
Being a Buddhist is very difficult in Vietnam as they are not really allowed. We saw two walking in the square. These two are on a walking pilgrimage: they do not talk and they walk bare foot very, very slowly all day long and stop beside you when they want a donation. They do not acknowledge donations - they are in a higher state than the rest of us

HAWKERS
Everybody is selling something in the streets. I even saw a woman with domestic weighing scales and she charges you to weigh yourself. I have yet to see anyone buy anything.

COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN VIETNAMESE CREW AND ENGLISH/AMERICAN CREW
Could be better. Meredyth has lost her voice - communication has reduced itself to lots of arm waving and strained faces. Wah, the head of Vietnamese crew and translator, sometimes disappears into a cafe and does not own up to being Wah.

THE HEAT
Very hot. Most sensible Vietnamese take to the shade during the hottest part of the day. Our crew battles on, hopefully, looking like mad artists and not mad foreigners.

SHOT IN BUILDING
- looking French Colonial but rather dilapidated
A fading orange wall on the first floor. I lean against it singing to the camera and PC seems a bit miffed to think we came all the way to Vietnam to film and orange wall! I'm just happy to in the shade [and access to a toilet]

CHILDREN
Children here are adorable, much loved by their parents and carried proudly about town in bright colour. So far Tony has shot about 192 children, usually on the back of their parents bicycles. I wander how many children on the backs of bicycles can one director fit into a video for a song about a river!

It's a low groove song that may suffer with fast editing. However, my faith in Tony is infinite - I really think he is a genius - the only genius I've met in my life so I do not say anything.

 

Location 4.
BRIDGE IN HO CHI
[SAIGON]

THE RIVER
The river looks like a river of oil - in fact it probably is. It smells like a river of something else. Tempers are very very frayed today. I keep getting pinched by the local transvestites, the heat is stifling, the crowd are dancing but not in the way I envisaged. Perhaps we are taking the "dirty river" metaphor too far?

THE BRIDGE
I'm totally over bridges. This one looks like the one that falls down about ten times daily in Universal Studios - but without high tech engineering. However, I seem to have my own personal Zen by dusk and keep grinning stupidly at everybody and making love dedications in Italian to my partner, who is standing in the crowd, which forms at the bottom of the bridge behind the camera crew.

ARGUMENTS / CONFLICTS
There was one on the set [well, the bottom of the bridge]. I do not like arguments but was truly above it all on top of the bridge wandering if this would affect the shot. I can be quite selfish and distant sometimes especially when I can't hear what's going on.

Location 5.
MARKET SCENE

BALCONY SHOT
I entered what must have been a beautiful colonial house in the early part of the century - a very nice group of Vietnamese women with their children gathered behind me, patiently sitting on the bed while I was on the balcony singing. The bed was huge and wooden and I wanted to take it home. I was shot from every single angle possible and I'm over balconies too.

SHOT IN MARKET
This shot was for close-ups. My face is exceedingly puffy - I'm not sure why I hope the camera was tight and arty, as opposed to portraiture. I had to stand in the road and a crowd formed either side of me, making it impossible for anyone to pass and I was glad that I had to leave for the airport at 9 00 am, otherwise I think I would have imploded. There is a kind of hysteria when shooting in places where little shooting has been done - the people at the back of the crowd cannot see what is going on at the front and I'm sure if they could they wouldn't be standing around watching.

COCKROACH
During one take a cockroach crawled up my leg [I have an insect phobia]. I ran into the crowd and started kicking Meredyth [not intentionally, I was hysterical]. The cockroach was very, very big. My Auntie in Sarawak narrowed down my poorness not to Vietnam but to the trauma of the cockroach incident and I've been drinking her home made tea and washing my face in the leaves as a cure. I don't quite know how the cockroach can cause a bronchial infection but I have complete faith in Malay medicine.

END OF SHOOT
I ran off. I did kiss people. I did feel vaguely elated by being here. However, this is a wounded country and an impoverished one - our own country, it, to, has created an underclass of the poor but not to this extent - and it was not to understand these things that we came but to shoot a pop video. So I feel a bit lost - but I always do, and not very wise.

26th December 1994: HO CHI MINH CITY
27th December 1994: BEN TRE TOWN
28th December 1994 - 3rd January 1995: HO CHI MINH CITY