A major new drama-documentary

Wednesday, September 23, 1992, 8.00pm (original UK air date)

HOSTAGES is a new two-hour film which, depicts - for the 
first time on television - the kidnapping, imprisonment and final release of some of the Western hostages in Lebanon.

It is'a uniquely powerful human story with important 
political overtones.

In drama-documentary format, it shows how the hostages 
themselves found the means and strength to survive 
appalling deprivation, brutality and hardship.

It shows how their relatives and friends struggled against official Indifference to propel the plight of their loved-ones into the public eye.

And it pieces together the politics behind this human 
tragedy the politics of the hostage-takers and of Western
governments.

Hostage-taking became an important issue in international
politics of the 1980's for more than five years. How why 
did it happen?

How was it possible for an Irish hostage to be released - 
Brian Keenan - when the USA and Britain seemed powerless to unlock the doors for its citizens?

HOSTAGES dramatises the imprisonment, of six of the Beirut captives - Terry Andersan, Tom Sutherland, Brian Keenan, John McCarthy, Frank Reed and Terry Waite.

Based on 18 months of research, the film also goes behind to portray the motives and methods of the hostage-takers and recounts the activities of the women who campaigned for their release - Jill Morrell, Brian Keenan's sisters Elaine and Brenda, and Terry Andersen's sister Peggy Say.

COLIN FIRTH ('Tumbledown', 'Valmont', 'A Month In the Country') plays John McCarthy;  CIARAN HINDS (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her 'Lover') plays Brian Keenan; HARRY DEAN STANTON ('Wild at Heart', 'Paris, Texas')' plays Frank Reed; JAY O SANDERS ('JFK' ,  'Meeting Venus') plays Terry Anderson; JOSEF SOMMER ('Witness') plays Tom Sutherland; NATASHA RICHARDSOH ('The Comfort of Strangers', 'Patty Hearst') plays Jill Morrell and Best Actress Oscar winner for 1990 's 'Misery' KATHY BATES 
plays Peggy Say.

HOSTAGES was filmed in Israel, Beirut [Lebanon] and England.

ALASDAIR PALMER, associate producer of HOSTAGES, was responsible for a major part of the research for the film.

The starting point for the programme is the speech Brian Keenan made at his press conference three days after his release.

"He spoke for about an hour and a half;" says Alasdair.

"It was probably the closest you'll ever get to the authentic hostage/experience. He talked so openly, baring his soul so completely, that it was extremely revealing very, very moving indeed."

Because the project began before most of the hostages were out it was obviously going to be quite difficult to identify sources and get information.

However, Alasdair made contact with as many people he could find who were willing to talk.

"By then two hostages had been released - Frank Reed and Brian Keenan - and I contacted both of them.

"Brian Keenan did not want to speak about his time as a hostage, but Frank Reed talked extensively about it. However, we weren't short of Keenan material because he had written extensively about his experiences. And of course there was his press conference."

Alasdair was able to get much detailed information about the conditions of the cells, the guards that were holding them and in particular the relationships between the hostages.

From that information he began building a clear picture of each of the men even before they ware released.

"Friends and relatives of the hostages were initially very helpful in providing information," says Alasdair.

"Jill Morrell and Chris Pearson of The Friends of John McCarthy, Brian Keenan's sisters Brenda Gilham and Elane Spence, along with Terry Anderson's sister Peggy Say and Tom Sutherland's brothers.

"All of them provided details which no-one else could have known." 

Several months after his release, John McCarthy made. his opposition to the film clear.

"His friends of course supported his decision and regretted the help they had given us," says Alasdair.

Once the hostages were free, Alasdair able to get information first hand.

Tom Sutherland, who was held in the same cell as Keenan and McCarthy for many months, gave us an enormous amount of detail on conditions in the cell and relationships between the hostages.

Some of the diplomats and politicians who had involved in negotiations for hostage release were also contacted, in particular Sayed Moussavian. Mottesavian was the Iranian diplomat in charge of the hostage issue during 1989-1990 and is credited with having negotiated the release of Frank Reed and Brian Keenan.

Alasdair also spoke quite extensively with two French hostages. They had been held by the same group who were holding the hostages who are the subject of the film.

These men were able to provide information on their captors, how they treated hostages, and their attitudes towards the West.

"Jean-Paul Kauffmanne one of the French hostages who was held for four years in Beirut, was extremely revealing about just how emotionally draining the whole experience was," says Alasdair.

"But the one thing that struck me the way all the hostages spoke about humour as the ultimate resource they used to keep themselves going.

"It may seem extraordinary that you've got five men in a room without light, without hope, without anything - and they're able to laugh." 

Granada has been a pioneer in bringing the technique of dramatising real events to the television screen.

THE MAN WHO WOULDN'T KEEP QUIET in 1970, based on the
smuggled, diaries of Soviet dissident General Piotr Grigorenko, to more recent productions including WHO BOMBED BIRMINGHAM?, WHY LOCKERBIE? both In 1990, and THATCHER - THE FINAL DAYS in 1991. Granada has used the specialised format of drama-documentary to explore contemporary issues.

The latest of these is HOSTAGES.

HOSTAGES while following the same journalistic route as all previous drama-documentaries breaks new ground.

IAN McBRIDE who heads Granada's drama-documentary unit says:

"Many of our drama-documentaries have been re-enactments, where we have been able to develop the story from perhaps a court transcript, a diary, or tape-recording of events conversations.

"This is more a dramatisation of events which illustrate
circumstances and attitudes, and show context.

"Its basis lies in our factual, journalistic research into what happened and we use dramatic techniques to portray that on film.

"We have explored the detail of known key incidents which portray important aspects of 'hostage experience' and dramatised them."

"The other major area of where HOSTAGES differs from Granada's previous drama-documentary is in much of the dialogue.

"Some of the scenes in the film use dialogue that was well documented at the time.

"But we no record of who was saying precisely what to whom during those long years in the Beirut cells."

Research material was gathered in exactly the same way as for previous drama-documentaries contacting as many sources as possible and corroborating recollections of events.

The writer drew upon the detailed research about the personalities and characters of the individuals to create dialogue within the scenes where no recorded dialogue was available. 

"HOSTAGES is not the story of any one individual hostage or any particular relationship.  It is a film about hostage taking, hostage survival and hostage release," says Ian.

"And while the writer has been able to address some of the incidents, many of which were a very well documented, and to use a lot of material about the individual characters, we are not trying to say it is a particular person's story.

"In our two-hour programme we are dealing with a timespan of more than five years and at lot of events involving many different people.

"So of course we have had to condense the timescale of events in order to make sense of such a long period of time."

One of the advantages of using the drama-documentary technique is that it allows a camera to go to inaccessible places.

"Obviously we couldn't have taken a caiiara into the cells in Beirut, documentary allows us to try and get inside and understand complex event that took place in one of the most inaccessible places on earth."

The hostage issue occupied the world's attention for the best part of a decade.

"Now that it's over, there's a danger that it will all slip away out of focus, without any of us actually realising what happened and why it happened and how it was resolved,"says Ian.

"What HOSTAGES sets out to do is to address that issue in an accessible way so that, we understand those events, and what they represent, while they're still fresh in our minds."

The fact that HOSTAGES is a drama-led programme will be explained at the beginning of the film:

"The viewer will be left in no doubt at all about what he or is watching," says Ian.

"We are not saying that every single, word uttered in the film was uttered in reality. What we are saying is that this is a carefully researched dramatisation of the totality of the hostage experience."

Production Designer STEPHEN FINEREN spent weeks working on the design of sets that meticulously recreate the squalid Beirut cells featured in HOSTAGES.

The designer whose previous productions include THE MAGIC 
TOYSHOP, THE CLONING OF JOANNA MAY and immersed himself in the world of Lebanon at war - with the hostages  held in the labyrinthine chaos of Beirut.

"I read all the research done by Allasdair Palmer," he says, "And I searched through all the library cuttings on the subject."

He read and itemised all the information given by the hostages on their release. And also watched hours and hours of videotape material.

When it came to designing the 'prison cells', Stephen had no pictures to work from.

"All I had was the odd word or description saying 'they were held in a concrete cell',  'the walls, were lined with breeze block', 'the floor was concrete' or 'the floor was wooden.'

He also learned that the hostages were often chained, either to the floor, to the walls, to radiators and pipes.

Using all the scraps of information lie could - Stephen designed five cells for the production.

"The hostages were actually held in several different locations," he says, "So I created an amalgam of all of the cells."

He designed five cells to cover the period of the film. The first cell was the worst and as their captivity continued over the years conditions gradually improved.

"The first cell had nothing, completely bare and without light."

"Then things would start to 'improve'. In the next cell there was a mattress, a chain, and hardly any light.  But by the time they got to Cell 5 they had light, it was cleaner, they'd have greater access to toilets and sometimes even a television and video.

"The last cell the hostages called the Ritz."

Host of the filming inside the cells was done in a large sports centre in Warrington, a few miles from Manchester. [Granada's headquarters is Manchester]

"We built four of the 'five cells there," says Stephen.

There was also ten days filming in Israel. Originally only five filming was planned.

That was before Stephen discovered a "lovely, ruined old farmhouse" 'in Zichron, near Haifa.

It was an ideal location for Bekka Valley where Brian Keenan and John McCarthy were incarcerated with American hostages Terry Andersen, Tom Sutherland and Frank Reed.

"When I found the farmhouse, I convinced the director that using it was the right thing to do."

Israel also proved to be an ideal location for Beirut, and the kidnappings of Andersen, Sutherland and McCarthy were filmed there.

Another aspect of the design which concerned Stephen - and the Director of Photography John Hooper - was light.

"How were we going to see the action taking place, when in reality the hostages were held in what were effectively black boxes?

"Having said that, light always seems to sneak through wherever you are." 

Using his imagination he decided even if a window blocked up with breeze blocks "they "would have done it in such an amateurish way there would be gaps between the blocks where chinks of light could filter through".

Other 'light' ideas included cutting a 2" strip of the bottom of one cell door ("this actually happened," says Stephen), ventilation holes with metal grills, and in one cell a wooden slatted roof filtered light from the room above.

HOSTAGES Producer SITA WILLIAMS says of the final result:

"It was a tremendous challenge to create an environment almost entirely without light in which the drama could be enacted.

"Stephen and gave an atmosphere rarely captured on film.

GLENDA WOOD, Make up supervisor on HOSTAGES, describes how she made the actors look as if they'd been Incarcerated for years:

First of all she did a lot of research, looking at photographs in medical books, even seeking advice from a doctor.

"We had to decide what the years of darkness would have dome to them," she says.

"It would obviously make them very, very pale. The dirtiness in the cells would make them constantly grubby.

"They didn't have proper washing facilities. They had ten-minutes a day in which to wash themselves, their clothes, go to the lavatory and back to the cell.

"And of course when it was summer they had flea bites, mosquito bites and ringworm.

"So they had all sorts of skin problems which we varied throughout the seasons."

Making up each of the hostages took about 45 minutes.

"It didn't stop with their faces," says Glenda, "we had to do their whole bodies.

"And when the hostages were taped up for transportation, we had an even bigger job. The taping made their bodies swell up and bruise and gave them deep red wheal marks."

Originally Glenda and her make up team were going to use small red marks. 

"But when we saw what was actually happening to their bodies - being bruised by the taping - we thought this is going to be much worse than we had imagined.

"One of the actors still had the bruises that were caused by the taping nearly a fortnight later.

"So what the real hostages must have put up with for hours In the bottom of a lorry must have been just horrible."

TERRY ANDERSON
Kidnapped: March 16, 1985 
Freed: December 4, 1991
Terry Anderson was the Associated Press Bureau chief in Beirut and their chief Middle East correspondent.
Ha was kidnapped on his way back from a game of tennis.

TOM SUTHERLAND
Kidnapped: June 9, 1985 
Freed: November 18, 1991
Sutherland was the acting Dean of Agriculture at the American University Beirut.
He was kidnapped on his way from the airport after a trip to the USA for his daughter's graduation.

BRIAN KEENAN
Kidnapped: April 11, 1986
Freed: August 24, 1990
Brian Keenan, from Northern Ireland, was a lecturer at the American University, Beirut. 
He was captured on his way to a lecture.

JOHN McCARTHY
Kidnapped: April 17, 1986 
Freed; August 7, 1991
John McCarthy had been in the Lebanon only four weeks.  He was a news script writer at the TV agency WTN.  He had gone to Beirut to fill in while the regular correspondent was on holiday. 
He was kidnapped on the airport road, on his way home to England.

FRANK REED
Kidnapped: September 9, 1986 
Freed:' April 30, 1990
Frank Reed was the principal of a private school he had founded in Beirut after the school that employed him had destroyed by a bomb.

TERRY WAITE
Kidnapped: January 21, 1987 
Freed: NOVEMBER 18, 1991
Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy, was kidnapped while on a mission to free the British and American hostages in Beirut.

COLIN FIRTH plays the part of kidnapped journalist John McCarthy.

He portrays McCarthy from the moment of his capture and incarceration in Beirut, to his eventual re-union with Jill Morrell at RAF Lyneham.

He is shown being held in the most appalling conditions - beaten, blindfolded and chained to a wall in an underground cell.

"In terms of physical torment, one of the worst things was the way Keenan and McCarthy were transported from one hiding place to another," says Colin Firth.

"They were wrapped up like Egyptian mummies in tape. There's nothing left sticking out except your nose, so all you become is a brain that can breathe and hear.  You're just a blind thing, and you've totally had your body taken from you. There's nothing left of you except what's inside.

"As actors we were wrapped up for a couple of hours like that. But you don't feel you have the right to remark on any of the unpleasantness of that because you know the experience of the real hostages was out of that league.

"I suppose it just teased my imagination a little bit about the actual experience."

Colin Firth found the ability of the hostages to survive their ordeal 'a wonderful story'.

And the mixture of cultures that were involved intrigued him:

"You've got a working-class Belfast man sitting next to an English public school boy.  These aren't two people who were ever likely to find themselves next to each other in this society at all, and yet here they are chained almost naked next to other - for years. It's an amazing thing to try and get to grips with."

He was also struck by how well the hostages coped with returning to 'ordinary' life on their releases:

"You watch these men get out and give a press conference, as if they've just had a bad night, or something. And you're talking about a five year absence from their families.  It's hard to comprehend.

"I was amazed that these men could walk and talk as normal human beings. So for me, as an actor, it's been quite a tightrope to walk between the terrible horror, the emotional upheaval of the experience and to catch what must have become to some extent, an everyday quality."

CIARAN HINDS, who plays the part of Brian Keenan. also comes from Belfast.

Ciaran Hinds was first attracted to the role by the script 
written by another fellow-Belfastman Bernard MacLaverty.

"I think he is a wonderful writer," says Ciaran.

"In the script he's captured the world of the hostages, the
feelings of the families were left behind and the political world in which they were ail victims.

"There were three different levels of a story going on." 

In order to get into the role Ciaran, along with the other actors watched videos of news reports on the hostages and the press conferences they gave on their release.

Ciaran was particularly moved when he saw  the conference
Brian Keenan gave on his release:

"When you see that press conference - you realise he become such an extraordinary human being.  I don't know, but I feel he learned something in there that I don't think many of us will ever touch, ever, in our lives.

"'But there's no point in pretending I can be Brian Keenan," he says.

"You just do whatever you think is relevant to a particular
scene."

One of the scenes in the film recalls the time Keenan was told he was going to be released:

"I believe when they took him out he argued with them for two hours not to let him go without John.

"I mean, imagine somebody you your freedom and says you're free to go.

"I don't know what's inside a man that is charged with such an affinity for another human being that makes him argue with the captors for so long, to go back.

"It must have been extraordinary.  I don't know the word that defines it."

NATASHA RICHARDSON plays the part of John McCarthy's girlfriend Jill Morrell.

Natasha Richardson admits to having "boundless admiration" for Jill Morrell.

"She kept on coming up against so much red tape and brick walls.

"She could have just curled into a heap in a corner, but she didn't.  She fought, and continued to fight.  So I have enormous respect for her."

Playing a real-life character is not a new experience for Natasha, who played the part of 'Patty Hearst in a film of the same name. 

"You do an enormous amount of research to find out what actually happened and how they felt at the time, " she   says. 

"In a way it's just the same as playing a fictional character.

"I can never be Jill Morrell - I've just had to become her in that situation so you protect yourself.  You imagine what it would be like.

"It's a leap of imagination, really, putting yourself in those circumstances, seeing how you feel and think."

Natasha believes the film tells a story that is of interest to everyone:

"It's a universal story because it could have happened to anybody.

"It's something we can all sympathise with."
 

Oscar® winning actress KATHY BATES plays the part of Peggy Say the 'sister of American kidnap victim Terry Anderson.

Like most of the actors HOSTAGES Kathy Bates was attracted to the role by the quality of the script:

"It was the best script I've read in a while," she says.

"I admired the fact that it shows that women are capable of doing these things in the world. I think so often women are looked at as appendages or objects in film and television."

She was also impressed by the real Peggy Say:

"She didn't scream and yell and she was just very still and said what she had to say.  She just spoke the truth."

And she says of her role:

"I think it's a different experience for an actor to be playing someone who is really alive.

"I have a lot of respect for Peggy Say, but there's no way I can really know  went through her mind and what kind of an ordeal it was for her.

"Looking from the outside I someone who rose to a sense of
confidence about herself in an incredibly difficult situation which is inspiring to me as a woman and I think inspiring to other women as well,"

But she doesn't feel that Peggy Say and the other women portrayed in HOSTAGES are particularly unusual in the way they acted:

"I don't think they are extraordinary.  I think women are extraordinary and these are some examples of those women.

"I think that's what's great about seeing them in a situation like this and making this kind of film.

"They're ordlnary, everyday women and they can do it. And they did it. That's what's great about it."