​

​

"There was one time, only  partly amusing, where Somalian border inhabitants shot at my entire company. 
Burton  and Speke had a caravan of helpers. They carried the weight of the expedition.  All were dressed in 19th century skins. The Somalians opened fire.  They weren’t dressed too differently.  My guys just turned around and walked the other way, perhaps a little more quickly.  I was in the lead of this retreat.
Only one guy took a bullet.  He never mentioned it ‘til late that night .

 

Once we were shooting near the equator. It was 134 degrees. Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in such swelter. The heat waves created something special for the camera and man , Roger Deakens knew it and that’s the way it looks in the movie...HOT.

The biggest injury on the film, was my producer trying to show a native African how to throw a spear. He wound up throwing it into his own foot. 

The two stars, Burton and Speke,learned how to do their own makeup. I did sound. We would split off from the main company, and with a five man crew and two actors shoot large chunks of the movie. 
I also edit my work in the camera as I’m shooting. Why bother to shoot an angle if you don’t really need it. The film is cut in my head. I’ve done this on all my movies. It’s the only way to work low budget. 

I think the most dangerous part is the research...but for me it’s also the most rewarding and the most fun.Making the movie is sometimes anticlimactic.

I logged 800 miles walking in Africa.  Some before the “Mountains” research.  Most  later.  A lot of it by myself.  Some when others I met along the way. 

Once I was trying to figure out how Burton and Speke would have been able to walk from the ocean inland.  It’s all heavy brush and thorns. 

This time I was in an open  1943 Jeep.  A Dane was driving.  And an old man , totally ignorant of the terrain, sat on the hood pointing  randomly the way. 
We were driving from inland. Finally we got to the ocean,pretty messed up. There at sunset was one of the happiest moments of my life.  Elephants were watering themselves on the beach.  We cooked some food and I congratulated myself as if I had led a year’s expedition.  I couldn’t have been happier.

Or more deluded.  I had slept on a sandy mound of fierce red ants. 
When we we made it back we left our gear in the Jeep to get medicine.  We paid a guy to watch the car.

 We came out.   My bag was gone.  1000 pages of notes, photos, etc. 
It was a weird satchel, army surplus Khaki.

Strangely enough the thief was spotted staggering under its heft.

He was arrested.  Almost impossible.  Thieves near Mombassa are never caught.

 

All I had to do was travel a few miles north.  There was a fort, now a prison, built in the 16th century by the Portuguese.  It was conversely named Fort Jesus.  I had five joints in the bag.  Whose were they they, the thief’s or the American’s!!!?  

Beatings and lock up in a hostile cell ensued.  I tried to protect my "nuts" in a dungeon with 150  black men all of them wanting a squeeze.

 

I’ve been imprisoned and tortured on three continents. I wasn't always innocent. I was unfailingly stupid.  

All the sergeant wanted was a bribe.

But I had integrity. Fuck him. He weighed at least Three hundred pounds.  A double for Idi Amin.

He kept the dope. I was released.  But I went back for my joints. We wound up splitting them.  He got the one with the angel dust.  A drug so powerful it would paralyze you inside your own visions.  I proffered that one and immediately boarded a train to Nigeria. 

 

I don’t sleep more than two hours a night. Churchill did this . He would meet in a bunker with his chiefs of staff. And once an hour they were dismissed. Churchill slept ten minutes on the hour. Every hour. 

So for the most part I camped away from the tents and the vehicles.  I’d  sleep in my bag, wake up, map the next day's shoot and howl at the moon.  In Africa the moon howls back. Or some animal does."

-BOB RAFELSON