‘Season’ of Compromise Pays Off for Euzhan Palcy

Euzhan Palcy may be a relative newcomer to Hollywood, a black woman in a clubby, white-controlled business, but already she knows how to get what she wants out of the studios--and when to make concessions to get it.

The 32-year-old director originally hoped to make a film about South Africa from a black perspective, with victims of apartheid at the center of her story. “A Dry White Season,” which opened here last week, is the compromise project she eventually settled on, without regret.

“A very fair compromise,” says the young woman from Martinique, so slight she looks barely able to carry a huge box of clippings about the film that are sitting at her side.

After her international success in 1984 with “Sugar Cane Alley,” a look at racial tensions in her native country that won top awards in France and at the Venice Film Festival, Palcy shopped around a movie proposal that would have revealed the horrors of apartheid through the eyes of a young black girl. It was not surprising, given the major studios’ track record on racial themes, that no one even nibbled.

“Very quickly I understood it was a waste of time,” Palcy says in a lilting French accent. “Nobody wanted to follow me on that track. So I began to look for a film where I would be happy and the people who put up the money would be happy.”

She settled on Andre Brink’s 1979 novel “A Dry White Season,” a thriller told from the point of view of a white man, a loyal Afrikaner who begins to question the racist system his compatriots built after he is exposed to the ugliest sides of apartheid.

“In fact, the book was in total opposition to what I wanted to do originally,” says Palcy. “But what was interesting about the book was that, even if it was a white man’s story, the writer put in black people and I imagined what I could do with that. I decided to change the focus of the book, to make it about black people and white people, two families.

“Even if I made my film from a black perspective,” Palcy says, “you would need white people because they are the cause of apartheid.”

The result is a film in which whites play the central roles: Donald Sutherland as the Afrikaner lead, Ben du Toit, and South African-born actress Janet Suzman (the niece of former liberal Parliament member Helen Suzman) as his embittered wife. Marlon Brando makes a cameo appearance as a cynical anti-apartheid lawyer; Susan Sarandon plays a liberal journalist, and Jurgen Prochnow portrays a murderous Special Branch officer.

The blacks in the film are secondary to Du Toit’s story, but Palcy, who served as co-screenwriter with Colin Welland (“Chariots of Fire”) has made sure that several strong and compelling characters step out of the ramshackle huts of Soweto. One of most interesting is a worldly cab driver, played by Zakes Mokae, a South African now in exile here, who introduces Du Toit to the harsh realities of apartheid.

Despite their activism and the expertise of the black professionals who surround them in Soweto, the black characters must turn to a white man, Du Toit, for help--first when the son of Du Toit’s gardener is jailed and killed, later when the gardener himself is arrested, tortured and murdered.

“Yes,” Palcy says of this aspect of the plot, “but that’s very important in order to show what apartheid is. Why did they go to the white man? Because we’re in South Africa and the blacks, they have no voice. The only person who can go and question (the authorities) is Ben du Toit. Why? Because he’s white.”

Once Palcy decided she wanted to turn “A Dry White Season” into a film, she had little trouble generating interest from Hollywood. “They always love to have a white lead,” she says, her thin, braceleted arms flying passionately. “The American guy, the white guy going there to become the savior of humanity. They love that. The book was typically Hollywood in Hollywood. But, of course, in South Africa that wasn’t the purpose of the writer.”

Warner Bros. originally took on the project, assigning British producer David Puttnam to develop a script. In 1986, shortly after he hired Welland to write a first draft, Puttnam was gone--off to Columbia Pictures for a short-lived stint as the studio’s chief. Paula Weinstein, a former talent agent who had served as an executive at several Hollywood studios, replaced him.

“Of course in the beginning I didn’t trust her,” Palcy says of Weinstein. “David wasn’t a Hollywood producer, but she was. I was very scared that she wouldn’t understand me, wouldn’t share my point of view about the project.”

But Weinstein also happened to be a liberal activist and was developing her own project on South Africa when she was assigned to “A Dry White Season.” Among the first words out of her mouth was an assurance that she wasn’t interested in making an anti-apartheid film about whites.

“There was no point for Euzhan to make a picture focusing just on the problem--the Afrikaners,” says Weinstein. “I was adamant about bringing black characters to the fore.”

Shortly before Warners’ anti-apartheid “Cry Freedom” was released in 1987, the studio canceled the “Dry White Season” project. But within days, Weinstein got a green light from Alan Ladd Jr., then chief executive of MGM. And days later, Ladd’s right-hand man, Jay Kanter--who had once acted as Brando’s talent agent--persuaded the elusive actor to read the script and meet Palcy.

It was his first film in eight years, but the aging Brando was so convinced of the importance of the project that he offered to do the part for free. In the end, the producers of the $9-million film paid him the minimum required under union rules.

Separately, Weinstein and Palcy went to South Africa to research the film, which was actually filmed in Zimbabwe. Fearful about being able to secure visas, both lied to the South African authorities about the purpose of their trips--Weinstein said she was representing some business interests, Palcy concocted a story about a comedy she was filming.

At the South African consulate in Paris, an official “was waiting for me in a big, cold room,” recalls Palcy. “She pushed a button under her desk and the big doors closed. She started to talk to me, she was very uncomfortable, trying to justify things (in South Africa). I tried to be very relaxed, saying, ‘Ah, I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure everything will be fine. (The racial problem) is like a marriage where people have to compromise.”’

After a few minutes, Palcy said she would like to obtain a visa to visit the country. When the official asked why, Palcy responded: “American producers have approached me about a comedy in Zimbabwe, but I have to go to South Africa because the best technicians and equipment are there. I need to go check that instead of moving everything from England or the States.”

When the official wanted more details about the film project, the ever-ready Palcy pulled out a synopsis of a comedy that another director actually planned to shoot there.

“We continued to laugh and talk, then suddenly (the official) said, ‘What about ‘A Dry White Season?’ ” The book was at first banned by South African censors after its publication, and Brink--now a professor of Afrikaans and Dutch literature at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa--has been under police surveillance since 1974.

Palcy didn’t miss a beat when the official brought up Brink’s book. “I said, ‘Well, a film maker must have several projects in the fire because you never know which one will come to be. That project is dead for the moment. Maybe someday I’ll do it but at the moment no one is interested in financing it.”’

Palcy got her visa, surreptitiously arranged meetings in Soweto, and then flew to South Africa, where she actually started out her trip by checking out equipment for the fictional comedy. “I had to,” she says. “Suppose they were following me.”

Weinstein said she will not try to distribute the film in South Africa for two reasons: She is confident it will fail the test of the government’s censors (see related story on page 1), and she is concerned about breaking the cultural boycott of the country. However, the South African government is permitting a screening of the film at the Weekly Mail Film Festival at the end of this month.

Palcy’s film has drawn generally favorable critical reaction, though many reviewers seem tired seeing another film about apartheid through white eyes. After bemoaning the appearance of another film in which a white liberal comes to radical consciousness after an intimate look at apartheid, Time magazine’s Richard Schickel said of “A Dry White Season”: “It stirs you to outrage.” Janet Maslin of the New York Times complimented the film’s “frankness and sincerity” and called Palcy’s direction “more agile, less self-important” than Sir Richard Attenborough’s work in “Cry Freedom.”

So far, Palcy isn’t about to take her rapid rise in Hollywood for granted. “My experience I consider an accident in the Hollywood system,” she says. “I don’t believe it should be a reference for a black film maker, or an example for any young film maker, because it’s purely luck.”