Return to a Sexy Island Page 7

  Feeling rather facetious, I wondered if Saint Jack had a role to play in The Fullerton’s heritage. I approached a Filipino bellboy and enquired about the General Post Office.

  “Yes, sir, the old post office counter used to run right across there,” he said brightly, pointing towards the Post Bar. “Did you see the red pillar box? Many of our guests like the red pillar box.”

  “Yeah, it’s marvellous. But did you know a scene from a Hollywood movie was shot at that exact spot?” I said. “It’s still the only Hollywood movie to be filmed in its entirety in Singapore.”

  “Really? What’s it called?” the Filipino asked, genuinely interested.

  “Saint Jack,” I replied enthusiastically.

  “Oh, I’ve never heard of that one,” he said softly. He was hoping I was going to say Transformers.

  “Er, you know The Sopranos, right? ... Well, the psychiatrist who the psychiatrist sees, the guy with the big glasses ... He directed Saint Jack and is in a key scene right in front of this building.”

  Commendably conscientious, the bellboy took out a Fullerton Hotel pen and jotted down some indecipherable notes on a Fullerton Hotel notepad.

  “Wow, what’s the film about?”

  “Prostitution in Singapore,” I said matter-of-factly.

  His eyes widened.

  “Prostitution, really?”

  “Really ah? Prostitution?” repeated the Filipino’s colleague, looking up suddenly from his desk computer. I hadn’t noticed he was there. “Can I buy in Singapore?”

  “Yah, can I buy this film in Singapore?” the Filipino echoed.

  “You can now,” I said. “I’m not sure if there are any DVD copies left but the movie isn’t banned in Singapore anymore.”

  “People ask us about the hotel’s history all the time,” the young concierge said. “But I never knew they filmed a Hollywood movie here.”

  The Fullerton Hotel concierge promised to inform his upmarket clientele that a movie concerned with pimps and prostitutes was once filmed in their luxurious abode. Even those behind the Fullerton Heritage Precinct could never have possibly visualised old and new Singapore being pulled together by Bogdanovich’s murky masterpiece. I was suddenly inspired to search for Saint Jack. I provided my Filipino friend with some additional movie trivia and took my leave.

  “Hey, that film, ah,” his colleague piped up again. “It’s really about prostitution, ah?”

  Six

  I CRANED my head, peered up at the second floor of the New Taiwan Porridge Restaurant and recalled a Hollywood actor smirking down at me. The tastefully restored shophouse, standing at 110 Amoy Street and squeezed between the CBD and Chinatown, was evidently a popular lunchtime destination for the white-collar crowd. When I had seen the building the night before, it had housed a shipping chandler and the late American actor Ben Gazzara had been leaning against the window on the second floor, lazily watching the hawker stalls and the rickshaw drivers on the kerbside. In Saint Jack, just one skyscraper, the OCBC Building, loomed like a post-modern leviathan over the crumbling street. Today, the area is dwarfed by the encroaching high-rises creeping ever closer. Like a scene from War of the Worlds, old and new Singapore battle for supremacy around Amoy Street.

  In 1979, of course, old Singapore still held sway over the city in every sense. On its international release, Saint Jack was immediately banned in its country of origin. Residents were not granted permission to study Peter Bogdanovich’s portrayal of their neighbourhoods until a one-off screening at the Singapore International Film Festival in 1997. An entire generation missed the movie, which is a cultural travesty, not least because the making of the film is one of the most entertaining Singaporean stories—if not Hollywood stories—of all time.

  Chronicled in Ben Slater’s book, Kinda Hot: The Making of Saint Jack in Singapore, the movie’s evolution in its homeland mirrored that of the city’s cultural enlightenment. Despite government crackdowns (and official tourism brochures to the contrary), Singapore remained a breeding ground for gangsters, gambling, enterprising, productive pimps and rampant prostitution. Go to Bugis Street today and a spirited uncle will shove a leaflet advertising cheap Mandarin lessons into your hand. In 1978, the leaflet would more likely have been a dildo. Of course, that was all cleaned up in official crackdowns in the ensuing decades. (OK, none of the vices have been entirely cleaned up but the streets are very clean and very safe, even for the prostitutes and pimps.)

  Knowing that Paul Theroux’s original novel Saint Jack had been frowned upon by authorities, but not actually banned, director Bogdanovich assumed that permission to shoot the movie adaptation would be denied. Consequently, he pretended to shoot another movie instead, going so far as to write a treatment entitled Jack of Hearts, a gentle romantic comedy set in exotic Singapore, which he submitted to the Ministry of Culture. Astonishingly, Jack of Hearts was granted approval, even though many of the character names were the same as those in Theroux’s novel. Clearly, no one at the Ministry of Culture had read Saint Jack (they had far too much porn to get through).

  When the director arrived in Singapore to shoot Saint Jack, on a tourist visa, a customs officer enquired if he had any copies of Playboy. (Why have Singaporean civil servants been so long obsessed with porn? They must spend more time examining pornographic material than the most dangerous of perverts.) The American director confirmed that there were no copies of Hugh Hefner’s magazine in his suitcase but did not let on that he planned to make a movie on hookers that was partially financed by Hefner. That’s often the trouble with the average civil servant. They miss the wood for the trees. Too much porn really must ruin the eyesight.

  “So that was the window where Ben Gazzara looked from,” said Ben enthusiastically. After my chat with the staff at The Fullerton, I had contacted the author and Asian film aficionado. He kindly agreed to give me a tour of the movie’s remaining locations. There are not many left.

  Still, I was like a kid let loose in a sweet shop all afternoon. We left Saint Jack’s old employer and found a back alley between Amoy Street and Ann Siang Road. In one long take in Saint Jack, Ben Gazzara has a detailed conversation about his long-term ambitions with friend William Leigh (portrayed by the late Denholm Elliott, who went on to play Indiana Jones’s sidekick Marcus Brody and the scene-stealing butler in Trading Places). The alley itself was unaltered. Apart from the inevitable high-rises hovering behind the trees, the disorderly lane had not changed since 1978. Scruffy and unkempt, there were the backs of shophouses on one side, with their slated roofs and elegant, art deco spiral staircases. On the other, bikes and plant pots were propped up against the paint-chipped wall, which was partially obscured by the overhanging trees from the charming, if incongruous, Ann Siang Hill. Watch the movie (or find the clip on YouTube) and then venture into this Chinatown back alley. Gazzara and Elliot could have filmed there yesterday.

  We crossed Read Bridge at Clarke Quay and stopped near the point where Jack throws photographs of a naked US senator and a rent boy into the Singapore River in the movie’s final scene. Jack then interacts casually with the locals before meandering along North Boat Quay towards the old police station (now the multi-coloured MICA Building). Sampans swamped the Singapore River and ramshackle, crumbling shophouses hummed with the incessant loading and unloading of goods on the dock while merchants in grubby singlets climbed over pallets and boxes. The Clarke Quay of 1978 was abuzz with a vibrancy that the waterfront location has struggled to recreate ever since despite spending tens of millions along the way. Ben and I peered down at those otherworldly, already fading, white pod covers dotted along the riverbank to shelter diners from the equatorial elements. They looked like something ejected from an alien mothership.

  Continuing along River Valley Road, we wandered towards Oxley Road in search of a brothel. That juxtaposition is shamefully puerile, I know, but the close proximity of the movie’s major bordello on Institution Hill, where real prostitutes were hired as extras, to Oxley Road is a s
ource of eternal amusement. As we crossed Oxley Road, I recalled the last time I had been in the street. In 2008, I returned to Singapore briefly for a book launch and stayed at the nearby Lloyd’s Inn (if it’s not the cheapest hotel in the Orchard shopping belt, then it does a damn good impression). In a sleepy search for supper one night, I left the hotel and stumbled down Oxley Road. As I passed a sizeable property, an armed officer stopped me. We were the only people in the street.

  “Can you walk on the other side of the road, please, sir?” he said firmly.

  His request was framed as a question, but the tone unambiguous. I had no choice in the matter.

  “I’m just going for some supper,” I reasoned.

  “Walk on the other side of the street, please, sir.”

  The question had given way to an order. I noticed the street sign: Oxley Road. I examined the gloomy building behind the dense foliage that served as a screening. The cogs move slowly when I’m tired and hungry.

  “Ah, this is Lee Kuan Yew’s house,” I exclaimed, genuinely intrigued. “Is he at home now?”

  “On the other side of the road, please, sir.”

  Reluctantly, I did as I was told and trudged over to the other side. From the supposed safety of the opposite kerb, I faced off with the police officer. We were at least an impenetrable 5 metres apart. National security had been preserved for another day.

  From my point of view, we looked ready for a game of “kerbsy”. For those not familiar with kerbsy (which, in fairness, would probably include just about anyone who hasn’t grown up on a British housing estate), the game consists of two players standing on opposite sides of a road who try to score points by accurately throwing a football at the opponent’s kerb so it bounces back into their arms. Had I been handed a football at that moment, the temptation might have been impossible to resist—a game of kerbsy with Lee Kuan Yew’s security officer is the stuff of dreams.

  “Look, mate, I’ve got to ask. What do you think I can’t do over here that I can do over there?” I wondered.

  “Everyone must walk on that side of the road,” he replied flatly. “There are no exceptions, sir.”

  “But I’m wearing a pair of shorts and a singlet. What could I possibly do in a pair of flip-flops? Click and clack all the way down the street? You could hear me coming a mile off.”

  He smiled, but didn’t answer. I wanted to query the legality of asking a pedestrian to step off the pavement of a public road but thought better of it.

  Passing Oxley Road, Ben and I sweated our way to the top of Institution Hill in pursuit of our brothel. Jack’s Dunroamin’ Club was filmed at the transformed 6B Institution Hill (the decaying, derelict, some say haunted, colonial house on the hill was barely standing before the film crew intervened). The house had long since been replaced by the swanky condo Aspen Heights, its residents oblivious to the fact that their apartments were built on the site of the swankiest Singaporean brothel ever seen on a cinema screen. Moving aside to allow a BMW to pass through the security barriers, I thought about those who frequented the fictional Dunroamin’ Club and how much they had in common with those now living at Aspen Heights. With property prices exploding, they’re still getting screwed on Institution Hill.

  One legendary brothel still standing is the Goodwood Park Hotel. The Khoo family-owned landmark on Scotts Road is famous for three reasons. First, The Kinks played their only Singaporean gig there in 1965. Second, I was cast to play Stamford Raffles in Talking Cock the Movie there. And finally, the hotel served as Saint Jack’s military rest and recreation compound (where American troops were supplied with prostitutes while on leave from the Vietnam War). Admittedly, the first two are only famous to me. But a teenage Eric Khoo did hang around the set while Bogdanovich shot key scenes in his family’s hotel. Despite extensive renovations in the ensuing years, the layout of Goodwood’s swimming pool is little different to the one depicted in Saint Jack, minus the dozens of horny American servicemen slavishly dribbling over Asian prostitutes (you have to go to Orchard Towers to see that now).

  After the Goodwood Park Hotel, we followed in the footsteps of James Bond. In Saint Jack’s final act, Gazzara’s character finds himself embroiled in a seedy covert CIA plot. He must blackmail a bisexual American senator by taking photos of him in uncompromising positions. George Lazenby played the US senator. George Lazenby succeeded Sean Connery as 007 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, one of the most unsettling Bond movies (and the only film in the franchise with a downbeat ending). The entire sequence took place, on foot, in real time, from the Shangri-La Hotel, along the winding Orange Grove Road, down into Orchard Road and ended at the Singapore Hilton with Lazenby, complete with superb seventies moustache, propositioning a young Chinese chap. Behind them, a street poster promoted the retail wonders of the new Specialists’ Shopping Centre, where I was gainfully employed for my first three years in Singapore. Specialists’ Shopping Centre has since been bulldozed, despite being a relatively new mall when the film was made. A road in rapid transition, Orchard was a peculiar place in 1978. There were still green spaces between the malls. Crickets chirruping in the background betrayed the street’s agricultural past. The Singapore Hilton was a glimpse of the future.

  Saint Jack had inadvertently captured the country at a crossroads, halfway between third world and first. For this scene alone, Bogdanovich deserves a medal in the National Day Awards for documenting—and preserving—Singapore’s most famous street while it was coming to grips with its metamorphosis.

  Retracing the steps of Lazenby along Orchard Road, Ben and I discussed the legacy of Saint Jack. The banned film finally had a one-off screening in Singapore in 1997 at Chinatown’s Majestic Cinema (also closed, although a rat once ran across my feet in that cinema so my suriphobia makes me less sympathetic to its demise).

  “And the DVD was finally released, even in Singapore,” Ben pointed out. “And it sold pretty well here, too. I don’t think there are any copies left. The only place that I know of where Saint Jack is still on the shelves is Australia.”

  “But it belongs in a museum,” I pleaded, channelling Indiana Jones in melodramatic fashion. “Every Singaporean should watch Saint Jack.”

  Ben eyed me sceptically.

  “Well, all right, not every Singaporean. Every Singaporean adult at least,” I corrected. “Even then, film clips could be played on a loop continuously at places like The Fullerton and in museums. That great 360-degree panoramic shot in the opening scene that captures the entire waterfront, the post office scenes, old Clarke Quay ... kids can see all that stuff.”

  “The National Museum did show the film in 2009. They even enquired about getting a print of Saint Jack,” Ben added. “But there are issues over the film’s rights. They did enquire though.”

  They must enquire again. Like the MINT Museum, Saint Jack liberates long suppressed memories, depicting a time and place so alien to new Singapore that it might as well have concluded with those awful alien pods at Clarke Quay usurping the city. Future generations will grow up ignorant of Singapore’s original borders, unaware that Marina Bay Sands has not always been the southern tip of the country. It used to be Fullerton Road, marked by Bogdanovich sitting on an elaborate bench decorated with Chinese characters. Saint Jack can be for young Singaporeans what I thought Made in Dagenham was going to be for me. Set in my hometown in the 1960s, Made in Dagenham chronicled the world’s first all-female industrial strike action at the town’s Ford Motor Company’s car plant. The 2010 movie was entertaining, but geographically inaccurate. Today’s Dagenham bears only a passing resemblance to its swinging sixties’ predecessor so a disused factory in the Welsh town of Merthyr Tydfil doubled for my old home. I cannot overemphasise my horror when I discovered this geographical travesty. Using a Welsh town to represent my childhood home constitutes a crime against humanity.

  Nostalgia can be addictive. I suspect that is why I am uncontrollably attracted to the creaking British cop show Dempsey and Makepeace. Filmed on l
ocation in London in 1985, the programme looked dated by 1986, which was probably the last time I watched it. Then I returned to Singapore in 2011 and discovered a cable TV channel repeated episodes every Thursday night. For those unfamiliar with the programme, a rugged cop from New York (Dempsey) was partnered with an upper-class, private school-educated peroxide blonde detective (Makepeace) to take down organised crime in London (don’t ask). At a time when no police officer carried a gun in the UK, Dempsey pulled his gun at the drop of a hat. If his mug of tea was served cold in an East London cafe, he pulled a gun and shot the bacon slicer. Despite sporting a startling range of knitwear not seen since Bing Crosby sang “Little Drummer Boy” with David Bowie, Dempsey bedded every woman in London except Princess Diana and, of course, Makepeace.

  Surprisingly enough, the show does not hold up well. But London’s locations, particularly in the East End not far from where I grew up, resurrected a town that had long ago been crushed by Canary Wharf. As a procedural cop drama, Dempsey and Makepeace makes a terrific comedy. The programme fairs much better in resuscitating a city that perished years ago.

  The Singapore of Paul Theroux’s novel has also long gone but it has been preserved by Bogdanovich’s movie. New Singapore has determined that its people are now mature enough to watch Saint Jack (there’s more than enough porno DVDs going around for censorship civil servants to earn their 13th month bonus).