hile making the Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola watched as his lead actor suffered cardiac arrest, the cost of his sets skyrocketed over budget, and his financial backers threatened to leave him all wet in the Philippine monsoons. Coppola laughed all the way to the Oscars once the movie was finished. But his experience cautioned anyone planning to make a movie in the tropics to think more than twice.

On my doughnut-shaped atoll of Marakei, where the International Dateline and the equator cross, villagers like to fire up their generators to watch videos sent by family members overseas. For as long as the gasoline doesn't expire, they will watch the same movie several times over. Monotony does not have a word in the Gilbertese language. To an I-Kiribati, if something is good once, it must be a thousand times better with repetition.

I had been living in this Central Pacific nation of Kiribati--thirty-three coral atolls that form part of Micronesia--nearly two years as a Peace Corps volunteer before falling for the temptation to make a movie. Call it a bad case of island fever that made me forget Coppola's travails, but making a movie seemed a fun way to address a serious health issue in this country: alcohol abuse. The fact that I would be making the movie with fellow amateurs in a place with virtually no electricity, sound-proof sets, or stunt doubles only made me more determined to pull it off. (How do you say "cowabunga!" in Gilbertese?) At the very least, it would be a distraction from the usual midday heat.

Producer's Log: June 2, 2003

My wife, Marian, left for America today for health reasons, so now it's just me, the dog, and the movie. Being the dry season, it's a good time to start production, but I'm worried about my Sony digital camcorder surviving the three-and-a-half weeks of shooting. Until now I've only shot home-movie footage, but this full-length feature will require hundreds of shots from different angles, even some shot on the water.

The camera has only a single, two-hour battery that takes more than an hour to charge on my home's solar panel, and the only other camcorder on the island is broken. Ketia, our storekeeper friend, used to have a camcorder, but recently she lent it to a friend who was visiting the United States. The story goes that it was confiscated at the airport--either an unfortunate Homeland Security act or a convenient excuse on the part of the borrower, who possibly dropped it in the dolphin tank at SeaWorld. It hardly matters, as the bubuti (which loosely means "undeniable favor") required Ketia to lend the camera, and the quick kabara au bure (meaning literally "forgive my sin") demanded she forgive the debt, no questions asked.

Ketia is married to a seaman who works on a German cargo ship. Sailors' incomes account for a huge chunk of this Pacific nation's revenue and most of the VCRs, TVs, and karaoke machines on Marakei. Often a seaman is gone from his family for more than a year, only to end up giving away more than half of his wages to extended relatives upon his return. "I hate it," Ketia says. "They come by every day with their hands out, and my husband can't say no." For a lot of reasons--but mainly because of a reputation for drinking and toughness--a seaman makes an easy target as the primary villain in our movie.

June 14

The first scene we film is at the island wharf, a place in the reef that has been blasted away so that fishing boats can dock more easily. Here the hero of the movie, Kiaua, and his friendly four-man gang are planning a hoax. In order to stall the marriage of Kiaua's girlfriend, Rita, to the evil seaman, they'll stage the death of the sailor and dress up one of the gang as the corpse. When the corpse sits up to scratch its back at the wake, participants will scream and run away. Now what could be funnier! Then when the real sailor arrives, they'll think he's a zombie--and run away again!

Striking the right note of humor in the movie would have been impossible when I first came here. Whenever I told a joke to a group of I-Kiribati, my punch lines were met with stony faces. I found, by contrast, that a person falling off a truck equates to gut-splitting hilarity. Westerners rationalize the seemingly cruel laughter of the Kiribati people by calling it "therapeutic"--gallows humor for a people who have survived scarcity on these coral atolls for generations--but even the most disengaged foreigner finds it hard to bear a funeral in which several people are snickering. The actors tell me they want Western audiences to see the video, but if the movie is ever going to be appreciated outside Kiribati, we'll have to walk a very thin line.

In addition to humor, the movie must have song and dance. The I-Kiribati like to sing a cappella while cutting toddy (collecting the sweet sap of coconut trees), during church services (mainly Catholic on my island), and during celebrations (a first birthday, a girl's first menstruation, the opening of a new meeting hall). Strong beats on a large wooden box accompany their voices during mwaie, a folk dance that often imitates the movements of birds and may be performed sitting or standing. Though the I-Kiribati are often described as shy in their interactions with one another (you'll rarely hear people from different families argue), when it's time to perform, their shyness goes right out the sides of buildings (as there are no windows, per se).

My writing partner in this affair is Taake, otherwise known as the Bill Cosby of Kiribati. A former seaman who electrocuted himself and spent six months in a Polish hospital, he is now an elementary-school principal and the funniest man on this island of 2,500. When Taake tells a joke, people actually laugh, and he likes to put together intricate English sentences such as "Indeed, I believe that it is quite necessary I imbibe a stimulating brew this fine morning" when you ask if he'd like a cup of coffee.

Unfortunately for the movie project, Taake has a day job, so I have to direct the actors bilingually myself until I can find a co-director to help me. My search is made more difficult because the small number of reliable vehicles (bikes, motorcycles, and exactly five trucks) makes it necessary for the co-director to live in this village for the duration of shooting. A bike ride to the farthest village, just ten miles away, can easily take an hour, and the crushed coral threatens puncture with every ride.

Another wrench is thrown into the works when a team arrives from the capital of Tarawa to inspect all seventy home solar systems on the island. They decide to start with mine. Their team leader introduces himself as Jertz, a German sent by the European Union. He looks at how my system has been jerry-rigged to allow for camcorder charging and shakes his head.

"This is illegal," he says, clicking his tongue.

June 18

The Catholic youth are proving to be the backbone of this project. They are all unmarried men and women in their late teens to late twenties who have a sort of limbo status in the culture--too old to be treated as children, but too unattached to be respected as full adults. To cast the movie, Taake and I held an actual screen test for the group, who then divided into teams to find props, locations, and adult actors. Most of the singles on Marakei are bored and glad to help, as there isn't anything resembling a mall here, or even a mall parking lot. The only real hangout is the one-room airport, which is open only the three days a week that a plane is due.

Unfortunately, many young people abuse alcohol to cope with their boredom. As in the U.S., where about half of all adults have a close family member who is an alcoholic, Kiribati struggles with the social ills of alcohol abuse, including heart and liver disease and domestic violence. Ketia, the storekeeper who can't seem to cut a break from the men in her life, was recently hit over the head with a coconut grater by her drunken brother-in-law. He was fined thirty Australian dollars and ordered to keep his distance, but, according to the culture, she can't go to live with her own family on her home island, even while her husband is overseas.

In our movie, which we've called Te Maraia or The Curse, Kiaua has to reform his alcoholic father before Rita's father will give his blessing to their marriage. In the end, Kiaua's dad learns that it's his own drinking, not a witch's curse, that is responsible for his life's failures, and he ultimately calls on his family and village to help him keep his vow of sobriety.