Roland Joffé and Julian Sands: how we made The Killing Fields

Roland Joffé, director

David Puttnam asked to see me, which in those days was a bit like being invited out to Hollywood. He gave me Bruce Robinson’s script, which was enormous, but it was so full of passion and energy I couldn’t put it down. I’d heard about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, but didn’t know much until I read it. I wrote to David saying that whoever made the film would have to be careful because it wasn’t just a war story: it was about human connection, how friendships are born and what they do to us. I didn’t hear from him for six months, then we bumped into one another and he said he’d interviewed most of the directors in the world – including some very big names who would make the studios happy – but no one had really understood it. “You’re the only man who has,” he said.

I’d done a lot of TV and theatre, but this was my first film and I was working with some highly experienced people: the cinematographer Chris Menges and the production designer Roy Walker, who had worked with Stanley Kubrick. The killing fields were where the Khmer Rouge executed people and dumped their bodies. We shot those scenes in the countryside outside Bangkok. Lots of very realistic looking corpses had been laid out. It was all very disturbing: you’d get a crawling feeling up your back during shooting. And there was a real panic when a farmer’s wife went out early in the morning and got a total shock when she saw them, poor woman.

Haing S Ngor, who played Dith Pran, was an extraordinary person, tormented and confused, but warm and friendly. He’d lived through all these events in Cambodia, but he was a doctor not an actor. He’d managed to escape and was now working in Long Beach, California. Pat Golden, who worked on casting, said: “You should look at this man Haing, he’s really interesting.” When we talked, Haing vividly told me about his experiences and I thought, “Hmm, there’s an actor in here.” I got him to talk through what had happened when he was in the operating theatre and had seen the Khmer Rouge approaching. I asked him to pretend Pat was the nurse and repeat exactly what he’d said. “Khmer Rouge are coming!” he said. “We must go! I’m telling you – GO!” Then he burst into tears. “Haing,” I said, “you have to do this film. There is a voice for Cambodia and you are that voice. It’s your duty to bring it to the world.”

It was quite a horrible, manipulative thing to say. During shooting, I would sometimes crawl below the camera and call out to him: “Remember how you felt!” He was such a brave man. At the wrap party, everyone came in costume and he came dressed as Khmer Rouge. He had the courage to face his demons.

Julian Sands, actor

Roland’s audition process was extraordinary. I was 24 and I’ve never come across anything as rigorous since. He was looking to put together a troupe of actors without much film experience, because he wanted the freshness of everything to resonate with us. He would gather lots of us in his office to improvise scenes. After about a month, he had a group he found interesting. John Malkovich, Sam Waterston and Haing S Ngor weren’t subject to that, but their meetings with him were still pretty intense. A lot was made of the fact that Haing hadn’t acted before, but John put it differently: he said Haing had been acting his whole life – you had to be a pretty good actor to survive the Khmer Rouge.

I spent some time with Jon Swain, the journalist I was playing. He was in Bangkok, taking photographs of me taking photographs as him. John, Sam, Haing and I had arrived in Thailand a month before shooting to acclimatise. We visited a Cambodian refugee camp and talked with survivors. Atmospherically, intellectually and culturally, we were marinated. I’d been cautioned by Roland to keep my distance from John because he was an unstable character. And John had been told by Roland to stay away from me, because I was a refined, sensible person who didn’t want to be distracted. In fact, we bonded instantly. We were always quoting and misquoting Pinter to one another.

One of the reasons the film worked so well was Bruce’s solid screenplay, which was based on Sydney Schanberg’s Pulitzer-prize-winning journalism. And Roland had tremendous willpower. I’ve been on films half as big that have fallen apart, but somehow he kept it all together.