"Part III dealt mainly with "errors of omission"; the sort of things that happen through ignorance, misinformation, accident, or circumstance. I'd like to turn now to things that were done deliberately, sometimes for what may have seemed at the time like a good reason; other times out of bull-headedness, stupidity, or even motives of personal gain or advancement. These are what I consider "errors of commission"; and they happened repeatedly, with varying degrees of harm being done. Starting at the top, one incident I was a part of was to have an impact on the sound quality of certain scenes.
You may recall, I had been told early on that I was being "saved" for use in scenes of the French camp. This translated to being a guest at General Montcalm's dinner table; and later in the surrender of the fort, commanding his garde d'honneur. I'll mention here that it's only in the latter scenes that I can be very briefly seen in the extreme left corner of the screen, hatless in salute like Montcalm, as Munro leads the English out of the fort. There are cuts to Cora searching the crowd for Nathaniel, and of him and the others in chains; but it comes back twice to the marching column, with me down in the corner. It's only in widescreen VHS or DVD formats that I show up at all, since I'm so far left of camera. Inside the tent, I'm barely seen in the shadowy interior sitting at table along with the actor playing Levis. In the VHS version, different camera angles were used, so I'm not seen at all. So much for Stardom! But filming these scenes allowed me to see things a lot "closer up", nearer the camera.
As usual for night scenes like this in Montcalm's tent, filming began around dark, and continued into the wee hours. I heard later that once again Michael Mann managed to make an enemy, this time Patrice Chereau, the French actor/director who was playing Montcalm. I didn't attempt to talk to Chereau during the filming, since I'd heard he didn't speak English; and my French is so bad, it's only useful for very basic reading, not conversation. He seemed in control throughout the seemingly endless takes and retakes; but I understand he was inwardly seething. This was his last night on set, out in the middle of nowhere at the Lake James site, and supposedly he had an early morning flight from the small Asheville airport. As usual, Mann did retake after retake; so it wasn't until nearly dawn that we "wrapped" for the day…"
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