Rambo’s Man in Laguna : He Provides Movie Costumes by Flying to Pakistan and Buying Them Off the Backs of Refugees

Though the Soviet army announced the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan nine days before “Rambo III” opened, anybody who has seen the movie might well believe they were driven out by Sylvester Stallone--with a bit of help from the Afghan resistance.

Sadiq Tawfiq, who owns an Afghan crafts shop in Laguna Beach called Khyber Pass, doesn’t mind if people get that idea. Americans know so little about the war in his native country, he maintains, that the movie will do wonders for their education--regardless of Stallone’s celluloid heroics.

“When the people of America see how the Russians destroy our villages,” said Tawfiq, who speaks in heavily accented English, “they will sympathize with us. I am sure this movie will raise the consciousness of the people of the world. This is not James Bond movie. Mr. Stallone is deeply doing this from his heart. He try to make this movie authentic.”

In fact, Tawfiq, who came to the United States 10 years ago, had a large hand in providing what turned out to be the only aspect of “Rambo III” that bears the actual stamp of Afghanistan: the costumes.

Stallone’s $60-million movie was filmed on location in Israel, Thailand and the California desert near Yuma, Ariz. Spaniards played the Afghan horsemen. Arabs and Israelis played the Afghan resistance. A Greek actor portrayed the leader of the rebels. Bedouins played the Afghan villagers.

“The movie company comes to me for merchandise,” Tawfiq, 33, recalled in a recent interview. “I think, ‘OK, they need a lot.’ Such big demand is not easy to supply from here. I think, ‘Let’s do something that will be the best.’ ”

He persuaded Tony Munafo, associate producer of “Rambo III” and Stallone’s former bodyguard, costume designer Richard La Motte and a production executive to take a trip with him to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where he planned to do some shopping.

“The film company was hesitating at first,” Tawfiq said. “They think it is too dangerous.” But he insisted that seeing the war’s reality firsthand would more than compensate for the danger.

And so for a week in January, 1987, the Laguna Beach businessman took them shopping in the Afghan refugee camps of Peshawar, Pakistan, where they bargained, he recounted, “under the nose of the KGB.” They bought 7 1/2 tons of used turbans, shirts, pants, boots, sandals, rugs, fabrics and enough village wares to stock the entire “Rambo III” prop shop--weapons not included.

In all, Tawfiq said, they spent about $100,000 on the outfits, many still stained with blood and purchased right off people’s backs. The worn look of the clothing would not only impart needed authenticity to the movie, he explained, it would make La Motte’s life easier on the set. He wouldn’t have to put new costumes through a soiling process to achieve the same effect.

“We filled up a 747,” Tawfiq said. “Nobody could believe it. One thing I do not tell people is, we are buying all this for a movie. The refugees do not have a good understanding of movies. They think movies are drinking and girls. They think Hollywood movie star puts on the clothes to go see women. We do not want to clash the cultures. So I tell them we are buying clothing for a cultural exhibition to help Afghanistan people, which is the reality, is it not?”

Sitting in his store, surrounded by handmade Afghan rugs and wall hangings, Tawfiq spoke with earnest passion of his country’s plight. His dark eyes shone. His bearded face looked fierce one moment, friendly the next. He seemed to radiate the charm of a courtly, even scholarly, businessman.

He was born in the city of Herat on the Afghan border near Iran and the Soviet Union, he said, and moved to the Afghan capital of Kabul, where he studied literature and education at the university there. In December, 1979, he came to the United States to earn a master’s degree in those subjects at UC Irvine, he said.

Only weeks after his departure, the Soviet Union launched its surprise invasion of Afghanistan, pouring 100,000 troops into the country virtually overnight. Although there had been earlier signs that Soviet-backed Afghan politicians would make a major play for power, Tawfiq recounted, “nobody knew we would have such an incredible takeover. The soldiers came and shut down everything, killed the president. It was total.”

Tawfiq suddenly found himself cut off from his family and from the money they had been sending him to pay for living expenses while he continued his education. For the next four months, he said, “I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t believe what happened. Then I realized my own situation was not good. How can I live?”

Because of his background--Tawfiq’s family had been traders for generations--he said he decided to go into business for himself instead of working for somebody else. His family’s fortunes had ebbed dramatically, he noted, but its import-export license had not been revoked. With access to handmade Afghan goods, Tawfiq soon established a thriving business.

“Now,” he said, “I send money back to my family.”

Given Tawfiq’s expertise, the film company decided to put him on salary as a consultant and take him to Israel for three months of location shooting. There, in a hotel by the Dead Sea, the “Afghanistan adviser,” as he is called in the credits, met Stallone for the first time.

“The question I ask him is, ‘Why you make this movie?’ ” Tawfiq said. “He said, ‘Afghanistan is on fire. We cannot close our eyes to such a thing.’ It was an answer that I really liked.”

The two got along so well, Tawfiq said, that he was soon working as dialect coach, dialogue writer and--for a brief time--as an actor, in addition to advising about costumes, customs and set decoration.

At one point, Stallone sent Tawfiq back to Pakistan during the filming to round up a team of refugees who could play bozkatshe , the Afghan national sport that is done on horseback and has its roots in ancient war games.

“I spent two weeks getting the horsemen together,” Tawfiq recounted. “But the government of Pakistan was not happy to send these people to Israel. It didn’t work.”

Tawfiq does not kid himself that “Rambo III,” for all its high-minded intentions, has turned out to be a potboiler glorifying a cartoon character instead of the epic tale of the Afghan war that he hoped it would be.

Nevertheless, he still believes Stallone meant what he said when he told him: “Your country has so many heroes it is worth making this movie.”

Tawfiq shook his head sadly.

“My brother has just come from Kabul,” he said. “Half of the people in the street are missing an arm or a leg. The other half are in a state of mental shock.”

He knows a story like that would be box-office poison, with or without Stallone.