U.S. Filmmaker Tries to Level the Field

Now that peace reigns fitfully in Bosnia, can Hollywood be far behind? In fact, it’s been there all along, in the person of Phil Alden Robinson, director of “Field of Dreams” and “Sneakers.”

For the past three years he has been sending money, toothpaste, dental floss, aspirin, guitar strings and books to a beleaguered group of actors, dancers and singers who staged a production of “Hair” in Sarajevo. At the same time, he was engaged in a quixotic attempt to fly them out so they could tour the United States. Now he hopes to incorporate some of the things he has seen and learned--and perhaps done--into a new movie.

Originally Robinson was invited by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to tour Somalia and Sarajevo with a group of journalists. While in Sarajevo, he attended the hottest show--in fact the only show--in town, “Hair,” and fell in love with the production and its performers.

“They were all suffering the same problems that everyone in Sarajevo was,” Robinson says. “They were hungry, they didn’t have water, a lot of times didn’t have electricity. They would have to walk to the theater through sniper-infested areas.”

The theater was unheated and subject to shelling. Shows were free and promoted by word of mouth, so as not to invite Serbian artillery. The performers, who had kept the songs but changed part of the book to conform to their situation, included the biggest rock stars, ballerinas and actors in Bosnia. They were a mix of Muslims, Croats and Serbs, the very people who were fighting one another.

When Robinson returned home, he received a fax from the troupe asking him if he could assist them in organizing a tour of the United States. He said sure, not knowing what he was getting into. For the next year, to the exclusion of almost everything else, he acted as a fund-raiser and diplomat. He contacted the now-defunct Congressional Arts Caucus, which raised the $150,000 needed to finance the tour. He secured the signatures of 50-some senators and representatives inviting the troupe members over.

What he could not get, however, was anyone to agree to fly them out. The United Nations would not sanction a flight, because officials believed it would jeopardize the airlift agreement it had made with the Serbs, allowing supplies in--and only journalists, accredited personnel and people with medical emergencies out.

“I kept thinking, ‘You’re telling me that the Serbs will let the U.N. fly relief supplies into Sarajevo, thereby allowing the citizens to stand up to the siege, but if you try to fly a rock ‘n’ roll band out, they’ll shoot the plane down?’ ” Robinson says. “That doesn’t sound logical to me.”

There was some hope that the U.S. government might intervene. So Robinson made a second trip to Bosnia to talk to the U.N. and got officials to agree not to object to the Americans’ flying the group out. Arrangements were then made. The band met at a safe house, accumulating luggage during the course of several weeks so as not to attract suspicion. Vehicles that would not be stopped were found to take them to the airport. Then word came back from the States: It’s not going to happen--mainly because it wouldn’t look good.

The final blow came when yet another attempt was made, this time by an aid group called AmeriCares, which actually had a plane on the ground in Sarajevo waiting to fly the band out. At the last minute, the U.N. refused to let members into the airport.

Robinson has dozens of faxes from the band’s “mother,” Lila Samic, chronicling the heartbreak of these events.

“Believe me sometimes I make a wish that shell killed me, to cut off everything,” reads one such fax. “Forgive me please to be so black minded. I have been always an optimistic person, but this war pushed me right on the bottom of the life.”

The company disbanded, and members started leaving Sarajevo on their own. A particular friend of Robinson’s, lead guitarist Amir “Lazy” Beso, who packed a pistol to the theater and fought when he wasn’t playing, was hit by shrapnel from exploding shells and had brain surgery. In the weeks following the operation, Robinson was called upon to send medicine to save his life.

Today Samic is in Croatia. Other band members are scattered throughout Europe. Beso and Srdjan “Gino” Jevdjevic live in Seattle, where they have written an autobiographical musical about the “Hair” experience and play in a rock band. Beso may act as a consultant on Robinson’s movie.

Of this project, some of which will be inspired by the Anne Frank-like “Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo,” Robinson says: “The troupe will be a part of it because it was such a stunning thing. That in the middle of this war with the sound of shelling and sniping in the street, you go in this building and up three flights of stairs and there are all these people huddled together to hear, ‘How can people be so heartless?’ ”