Sorry for the language, but who would have fucking thought? Poor, plain Donny Paterson looking larger than life on the big screen? Pull the other one, eh? And signing autographs for admiring fans in New York? Wake up, you dreamer. It’s bloody well true, though.
On that first day in Colombo when Oscar pulled out the video camera and said he and Alison were going to shoot a lot of our experiences and ‘make a film’, I thought, ‘Sure, they’ll send me a copy and I’ll sit the family down and watch a home movie in the living room one day.’ But due to a correlation of events and the pure power and passion of our story, it grew much, much bigger than that.
I don’t know where they got the energy from but after Alison and Oscar returned from their second stint in Peraliya, they embarked on the project of sifting through over 250 hours of film and making a ninety-minute documentary. Through their contacts in the film industry, they were able to get the story of what we had done and some footage to producer Morgan Spurlock, who is best known for the documentaries Super Size Me and Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? Morgan loved what he saw and offered significant editing time and facilities free of charge; he also offered to be executive producer along with Joe Amodei.
You might remember the story about Petra Nemcova, the Czech beauty who was caught in the tsunami while holidaying in Thailand. The model-cum-actress clung to a palm tree, despite a broken pelvis, for eight hours to save her life but, tragically, her fiancé Simon Atlee, a fashion photographer, was washed away to his death. She was to become instrumental in ensuring that the wonderful story of our efforts in Peraliya were portrayed to many people around the world. Alison knew Petra and, obviously being someone who had a special connection with the tsunami victims and the relief work, they hoped she would be someone with ‘influence’ who might be able to help them. They arranged for a copy to be given to Petra to look at in the hope that she might be impressed by it and open up more doors in the film industry.
The first I knew of anything happening was when Alison contacted me in early 2007 to say the film had been completed and had received rave reviews from those in the industry she had shown it to. She vowed that the film would be released commercially and I’d be going to New York to ride in a stretch limo. Now, I had learned never to doubt what Alison said to me, but this one? ‘I’d believe it when I saw it,’ I said to myself.
Blow me down, a couple of months later I got an email from Alison saying the documentary was being shown at the famous Tribeca film festival in New York and someone would be sending over some money for me to use for airfares and spending money, and that they’d arranged for me to stay for a week at the Manhattan apartment of a friend who was going to be away, and then with them for a few days. I didn’t even know what a film festival was, but I bought myself a decent suit, booked the flight and was off to the Big Apple.
I met up with Alison and Oscar at their apartment where they showed me a promotional poster for the movie. Here I was, like a fucking celebrity actor, at the forefront of this big poster – slouch hat on the bald head and walking stick in hand, in front of the train and rubble from Peraliya. Until then I thought the movie would primarily be about Alison and Oscar and I would play some minor role. Shit, I was on the poster! The poster also had a brilliant ‘catch line’: ‘The first wave brought destruction, the second brought death and then hope arrived – THE THIRD WAVE’.
The screening was scheduled for the next night, 29 April 2007, at the beautiful AMC theatre on 34th Street in New York, and I admit I had no idea what to expect, from the night itself or from the film. It turned out absolutely unreal. Bizarre. I had been asked what my favourite car was and I said a Hummer. Well, can you believe a stretch Hummer swung by to pick us up? It had ten doors and twenty-seven of us got in it – it was just unfuckingbelieeeeevable! There was Bruce, Alison, Oscar, me and other people from our time in Peraliya, plus some I’d never met, all dressed up and going to downtown Manhattan like we were some kind of celebrities. Peraliya volunteers Captain Barry Frishman and his wife, Aleeda, were there; Peter Nossiter and his wife came from England; Stefan, another volunteer who stopped in at Peraliya periodically and entertained the children with a puppet show, came from Germany; and there were others too. All these people had been invited. Alison, Oscar, Bruce and I got the dead-set red carpet treatment, walking down a real carpet strip into the cinema and there were the film promotional posters on the walls on either side of us.
I met Morgan Spurlock at the first viewing and I liked him from the start. He seemed such a down-to-earth, decent bloke who was concerned about humanitarian issues like a lot of us. He was very generous and supportive of the film, providing funds for it to be made so professionally. In 2008 he invited Tracey and me down to Sydney for a special screening of Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? that he was in Australia promoting. We saw it at the Dendy Cinema at Circular Quay and went for a few drinks and a catch-up afterwards; Morgan signed a promo poster for me, which is a prized possession.
I cried when I watched The Third Wave for the first time that night in New York. It was pretty emotional, especially watching myself collapse and be taken to hospital. I cried because of what was being shown, but also because of how proud I felt to be one of four people who were the central figures of a documentary movie. Who in their life gets to be on the big screen in New York City, eh? Not people like me, you’d think. And I was so proud of Oscar and Alison for how good a job they had done. I didn’t know Alison had directed a movie before that, called High Times’ Potluck in 2002, which won an audience award for best feature film at the New York International Independent Film Festival, and best comedy at the Atlantic City Film Festival. Nor did I realise Oscar had produced or co-produced several movies and had been an executive at Stone Canyon Entertainment in Los Angeles.
I was overawed, too, just to be in that world, that environment of celebrity and money. Again, it was another world I never thought Donny Paterson would ever visit. There was a full house to watch the film and the audience gave it a standing ovation at the end before we stood at the front and had a question-and-answer session. People were asking me for my autograph for the first time in my life and some were ripping posters off the wall; they seemed so uplifted by it they wanted a souvenir. Never in my wildest dreams did I think they’d make a movie of our experiences, that the movie would be so successful and, as brief as it was, that I’d be treated like a movie star. It’s was surreal.
After one of the showings we went to an ‘after party’ at the Apple store in Soho, a three-storey building which had a party on each floor. The Tribeca festival was sponsored by Jameson’s whiskey and Budweiser beer and plenty of the products were laid on. What a great night; what a great week. The movie was shown at four venues during the festival and received warm reviews and great audience response, with four rousing, prolonged standing ovations.
After the film festival was over Oscar and Alison were great hosts and showed me many of the sights of New York. I made a point of also visiting a New York Knights rugby league team’s training session, after making contact with one of the guys on the internet before I left – you’ve got to keep the flag flying for the sport, eh! The Newcastle Knights gear steward and stadium manager, Neville Allan, was able to provide a set of jerseys to give to them, which was gratefully received. Rugby league is obviously very small-time in the US but they have a healthy little competition going around New York and the north-east corner.
I was fortunate to also be invited down to Chincoteague Island in Virginia by ‘Captain Barry’, and I was treated to a wonderful few days by him and Aleeda. Barry owns a cruising adventure outfit and he took me out on the water; what a beautiful part of the world it is. Barry was yet another kind-hearted person who took off for Sri Lanka independently to help out, and he proved pretty handy with the hammer and saw during his few weeks there, and we hit it off pretty well – yet another friendship for life to come out of the natural disaster. He has since spent many of the American winters drilling and repairing wells in Third World countries including Liberia, Guatemala and Peru.
Three months later, in June 2007, The Third Wave was shown as part of the Sydney Film Festival, and Tracey, the kids and I were invited to attend. Oscar and Alison came out as guests but unfortunately Bruce was busy touring and couldn’t make it. It was really special for the film to be shown in our home country and I was so proud and looking forward to being at the screening, and to have my family all there to witness it. But, unbelievably, we couldn’t get there because of fierce storms in Newcastle and the Hunter region. Many roads around the area were flooded and we couldn’t get to the freeway that links Newcastle with Sydney. The trains were also out of action and we couldn’t even get to an airport; we were trapped. At one stage Oscar was talking about hiring a helicopter to get us there but that didn’t eventuate. We were so disappointed that we couldn’t make it down. Fortunately I was still able to catch up with Oscar and Alison when they came up to our place in Newcastle on their way to far north Queensland. We went with them to see Alison’s cousin at Crowdy Head on the New South Wales north coast and had a great few days there with them.
The storms caused an incredible amount of damage in the Hunter and the Central Coast areas north of Sydney, with ten people killed in flash flooding and 4000 people having to be evacuated. We were even affected in our street at Kotara Heights, although our house was fine. Cory and Cooper Vuna, who hadn’t been with the Newcastle Knights very long, were outside helping in the neighbourhood; Cooper was getting on with the neighbours like he’d lived there all his life. Karah and Krystal were also getting amongst the mop-up action; a tree went through one lady’s house so we invited her to stay with us for a couple of days until the State Emergency Services could come along and remove it and tarp up her roof.
Can you believe that also showing at the Sydney Film Festival at the same time was the doco Bomb Harvest, which was created and produced by an old army mate of mine, Laith Stevens. It is about Laos being the most heavily bombed place, per population, in the world and the effect it had on the country during and after the Vietnam War – a subject that became very close to my heart. Laith led a bomb disposal team into Laos and filmed some of his exploits; it’s pretty gripping stuff and the movie was nominated for a few awards in Australia. What are the odds that the two of us very ordinary blokes who worked together at the School of Military Engineering in Sydney would one day feature in the same film festival but with different films? Laith still works in the explosive ordnance disposal industry and was working in Kenya recently.
The Third Wave has also been shown at film festivals in Melbourne, Denver, Prague, Toronto, Colorado and Tokyo, the Directors Guild of America festival in Los Angeles, and the Reel Women Film Festival, also in LA, where it won best documentary. Negotiations have been in train for a while now for it to be released worldwide on DVD, including in Australia. It has been taken on by Arts Alliance America and some of the proceeds go to the Happy Hearts Foundation, which was founded by Petra Nemcova.
Back home, I showed the film one night in December 2007 at the Greater Union cinema in Newcastle as a one-off fundraiser for MiVAC, a cause I have become passionate about. Again it received an overwhelming response and the Newcastle Knights players and their coach Brian Smith were really supportive, attending the night and helping with fundraising. People were very responsive; some were quite emotional, gobsmacked really. They knew Donny had gone over there, got a bit crook and come home then went back for a while, but they had no idea what a difference the four of us made. Over three hundred people, mostly friends, family and football connections, attended and we ended up raising $4000 for MiVAC, which funded me going to Laos on a reconnaissance visit to check out some jobs I could do there later. I went over to Laos via Bangkok with a guy called Walter Kopek, who spends half a year in Bangkok and half in the US, and is a devoted worker for MiVAC.
The local newspaper, the Newcastle Herald, did a double-page spread leading up to the movie premiere, after having done a few stories on my Sri Lankan adventures previously. At that stage the movie still hadn’t been shown extensively in the US or Australia, nor had it been released on DVD. It didn’t matter to me; the plight of those affected by the tsunami and the efforts of a special group of volunteers had been shared by probably a couple of thousand extra people from the film festival viewings and our experience had enlightened some people about life elsewhere. To see that given a lasting record by way of a documentary was magic beyond any expectations I had.
Along the way I had a brief moment of fame, and that was just a bonus. It was then back to the regular life for Donald Thomas Paterson. Well, so I thought. The crème de le crème of worldly experiences was about to arrive – in Cannes, during the world’s most famous film festival, with some of the world’s most famous people, and witnessing opulence I never thought I’d be part of. Bugger me, I still have to pinch myself to remind me that it’s not a dream.