Director Ol Parker knew two things for sure when he made the film Ticket To Paradise wrote: Bali is the perfect location and Julia Roberts and George Clooney have to play the lead roles. He managed to tie the actors, but Bali was still closed in 2021 due to corona measures when Clooney and Roberts had time. So there was no other option: Bali had to be brought to Australia.
By Michiel Vos“We did not know how long we had to wait if we wanted to film in Bali and George and Julia only had a limited time in their busy schedules, so it had to happen during that period,” Parker tells NU.nl. Postponing the shooting and choosing other actors was not an option. “In the first conversations about the casting, I made one thing clear: Clooney and Roberts had to be it.”
“They are beautiful and brilliant actors. If you show a divorced couple, it has to be believable that they were once together. We have thirty years of images of George and Julia’s friendship that make this past together authentic. And They also have great chemistry together.”
Clooney and Roberts star in Ticket to Paradise the divorced parents of a daughter who falls in love with a Balinese and wants to marry him almost immediately. The director had to convince one of the two actors, because then the other would follow. “I literally wrote her: ‘I’ll do it if you do it too’. Julia said exactly the same thing. That was really the only way for us,” Clooney tells NU.nl. “Poor Ol wrote the movie with no second option in terms of actors in his head, so it would only work if we both went for it.”
“It felt important to create something uplifting together,” adds Roberts. “I read the script and there was so much fun in it. It was really a relief after many other scripts I read at the time and the news that you get.”
Bringing Bali to Australia
It was never Parker’s plan to film anywhere other than Bali, but he had no choice. “We were forced to make a radical change. When it became clear that Bali was not an option when George and Julia were available, the question became whether we should throw the project in the trash. Or find another way to make it work.”
Eventually they moved to the Whitsunday Islands in Australia. Parker is faced with the challenge of making it as believable as possible that the story takes place in Bali. “We had a crew in Bali who shot some background footage. And they ended up in the film using CGI. It was certainly a challenge, but that goes for any film made in times of COVID-19.”
Cultural advisors became actors
The white beaches and palm trees are all right, but the atmosphere and culture of Bali are just as important. “We hired advisors to teach us more about Balinese customs and a large part of our cast is Indonesian. None of them are professional actors,” explains the director. “The man who plays the father of the character Gede advised us on the rituals we wanted to show in the film. Then I saw how handsome and charming he is and I wanted him as an actor too.”
Still, Parker received some criticism online for the casting choices. He chose actor Maxime Bouttier, who has an Indonesian mother and French father, for the role of a Balinese man. Because he is partly of European descent, Western beauty ideals would be projected onto a Balinese character. “Maxime has a house in Bali. He lives there. We have spoken to many actors and he has become it. It was disappointing to read that. He was surprised himself. He sees himself as Balinese. I don’t know a single Balinese person who had a problem with this.”
Parker says it’s good to listen to the people who understand and treat the customs of another culture in a respectful way. “Reality is more important in this case than how you want to portray it as a filmmaker. If I had something in my head a certain way and they said it wouldn’t be like that in real life, we didn’t do it in the film. There is nothing more fun than showing a different culture with great respect.”
Ticket To Paradise is in cinemas from September 29.
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