Bruce Parry's Tribe - with Will Benson

[00:00:00] And we're not to mention the nipples. I mean if they come up naturally in conversation, who's to say? It was withering production. Running up and action. All I knew is I wanted to try and understand the way the world works, the natural world.

[00:00:26] We explore because we are human. Science is the storytelling of our time. So me storytelling has always been the way to leave the heart. Hello and welcome to Who Moved the Tortoise, a podcast about science and wildlife filmmaking. I'm Alex Hemingway. And I'm Kate Dooley.

[00:00:52] And as usual we're joined by someone from the world of science or wildlife telly to talk about the film or TV show or other stuff that's inspired them. This time we're talking to producer director Will Benson Before travelling the world as a natural history specialist TV producer,

[00:01:08] he studied zoology at the University of Southampton and had a weekend job as tomorrow's world presenter Judith Hans Gardner. Since then he's written a book to accompany a David Atterborough series on plants and directed natural history films for PBS, Sky and Netflix.

[00:01:25] He's also run a sub three hour marathon, wrestled a deadly snake which turned out to be his own arm and nearly died from an incredibly rare parasitic infection he caught during a biodiversity project in Tanzania. Let's hope this recording is less dramatic than the rest of his life.

[00:01:40] Will's choice for the film or TV show that inspired him is Bruce Parry's 2005 BBC series Tribe. Deep in the rainforest of Central Africa an extraordinary initiation ritual is about to begin. This is Buiti, a unique religion based around the consumption of a powerful hallucinogen called Iboga.

[00:02:04] I'm about to be initiated into the Buiti faith by a group of Babongo tribesmen. The drug makes you violently sick, purging your body of sin. Then the visions come. The Babongo believe your soul leaves your body and is free to go on a great journey

[00:02:28] to speak with the spirits of animals and plants. They say Iboga allows you to see yourself as you really are from the inside out. Days later you emerge cleansed, reborn. But this rebirth is not without risk. People have died doing this.

[00:02:48] Their hearts failing as the drug pumps through their body. I'm a days walk from the nearest road, two days for medical help. This film tells the story of my journey into the heart of Buiti.

[00:03:02] First question, Will, is how easy a choice was it to pick something to talk about? It was an easy choice but between two. It was either this film or Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Why did you choose the other one? Apologies to Bruce Parry, but Indiana Jones...

[00:03:34] We haven't had anyone yet that has chosen something fictional. Everything so far has been a factual documentary. So what is it about Indiana Jones that was tempting? Well, going off on that curveball, Indiana Jones is just the film I watched a hundred times as a kid.

[00:03:55] Creeping downstairs, turning on the VHS player at about five o'clock in the morning to watch my recorded copy. And it was just... I just fell in love with the idea of this guy going off into jungles, facing down snakes and uncovering mysteries as he went.

[00:04:11] And I guess that was the beginning of what ignited my childhood ambition for adventure and going into the deepest, darkest depths to try and have some adventures of my own. But the Bruce Parry Tribe series and specifically that episode on the Bobongo in Gabon

[00:04:34] was for me, it was all about the context of when I first watched that film. That's what made that documentary and the journey that Bruce goes on in that film so inspiring and captivating for me. My name is Bruce Parry. I'm an explorer and expedition leader.

[00:04:57] I've spent a year visiting some of the world's most remote people to see how their lives are changing. I think there's only one way to really understand another culture and that's to live as they do, to become for a short while one of the tribe.

[00:05:16] I was watching that documentary in 2005 as a sort of young, impressionable guy that I'd just come back from this six month long work stint in Tanzania working on this really remote camp.

[00:05:35] This was sort of project work that I was doing before I was going to go off and start my university studies, studying zoology. But after having this sort of amazing expedition and this amazing stint working in Tanzania, I found myself three days after landing back in the UK.

[00:05:53] I was starting to get these horrible headaches and long story short, I rushed to hospital a few days later and I end up in an isolation ward and end up in a hospital for tropical diseases in London

[00:06:06] and then moved from various different hospitals as my body is slowly shutting down with this parasitic infection which I managed to catch in Tanzania. And it was during my recovery from that illness, having gone through a bit of a transformational process,

[00:06:23] convalescing in hospital and at home, learning to use my arms again and my legs again and I couldn't see out of my eyes, probably had an eye patch, my whole body was a bit of a mess.

[00:06:34] And during my time away in Tanzania, my parents had recorded this Bruce Parry documentary series for me and I couldn't do anything when I got out of hospital. I was just lying on a bed weak and pathetic, just trying to slowly heal

[00:06:49] and had this recording on my parents VHS player. So started watching the show and it was just for me, it was just a reminder of everything that had excited me about going off and doing this big adventure in Tanzania.

[00:07:05] And it's a hard way to describe it, but it was almost... I'd had this epic adventure in Tanzania, it almost killed me and I guess when I was in hospital I was having all of these sort of questions about

[00:07:20] what I was going to do with the rest of my life, like was I going to be able to walk again, was I going to be able to see properly, I wasn't going to be able to go off and do these adventures,

[00:07:27] I wasn't going to be able to go off and have the adventurous life that as a young boy I always sort of imagined that I would do. But it was watching this Bruce Perry series, seeing this guy go on these journeys

[00:07:39] that I just thought I've just got to find a way to try and get involved in this world. The world is a big exciting place, it's full of amazing cultures and colourful characters and scary things, exciting things,

[00:07:54] things that I know nothing about and if I can get better, if I can heal I'm going to just find a way to go out and get into these hidden worlds and have some adventures and try and see these things for myself.

[00:08:07] What exactly was it that was wrong with you? If you don't mind me asking, how touch and go was it? So I started having these headaches and so I went to the GP and luckily the GP had spent a long part of her career studying parasites in Malawi

[00:08:28] and so bearing in mind this was a small little GP surgery in Gloucestershire the chances of having a GP that had extensive knowledge of tropical parasites was just a stroke of luck and instantly she spotted that there's something really quite wrong with me.

[00:08:40] So morphine injection in the bum, ambulance called after the local Swindon hospital and obviously they, you know, Swindon hospital has no experience of tropical medicine they had no idea what was going on, sort of stabilised me and put drips in me

[00:08:57] and had lumbar punches to try and reduce this pressure that was around my brain and my spine causing all of this swelling and then they put me in another ambulance sent me off to Hospital of Tropical Medicine, UCH was in an isolation ward there for several nights

[00:09:12] and they did all of the tests, they took my blood, they took samples of the fluid around my spine just trying to work out what was causing this infection and no one knew what was going on so they gave me parasitic antibiotics, they gave me viral antibiotics

[00:09:28] they gave me sort of steroids to reduce the swelling and more lumbar punches to try and drain this fluid from around my spine and my brain and sent samples of blood and spinal fluid to hospitals around the world

[00:09:40] to try and work out what this thing was inside me and the closest thing that they could probably work out that it was was a parasitic worm which had never been found in East Africa before it was an Asian parasite so that had them stumped

[00:09:55] but the worm they think it was is this thing called the common name is the rat lung worm angiostrongulus cantinensis that lives part of its life cycle in a rat and then the rat dies and slugs and snails climb over its body

[00:10:09] and those slugs and snails slither all over some vegetables or fruit and then me picks up an apple that maybe I've not washed in Dar es Salaam and Tanzania

[00:10:19] and you know a week later I'm led up in hospital with this parasite in my brain and in my spine so yeah the doctors didn't know exactly what it was that was causing this infection but they just threw everything at treating it

[00:10:33] but the pressure it built up around my brain and around my spine it basically crushed all of my nerves and so I literally half of my body shut down

[00:10:42] I mean it was you know a perfect science experiment in action of how our brain is divided in two halves and one half controls one side of your body and one half controls the other half as this pressure was clearly built up on one side

[00:10:53] I lost the use of half of my tongue, one of my eyes, one of my arms, one of my legs it was like you just drew a line down the middle of my body and so that was obviously pretty terrifying at the time

[00:11:03] but over a few days I slowly sort of the paralysis faded and I could use my arms and my legs again but it was just extremely weak and flat out so yeah that led to a month in hospital

[00:11:17] and then I came out of a hospital with an eye patch on because my eyes wouldn't, I could see out of both eyes but my eyes wouldn't work together and I'd been in a bed for a month so my whole body was just weak and shattered

[00:11:32] yeah I just sort of lay on the bed feeling sorry for myself not really sure whether I was going to regain full use of my limbs and whether my eyes would start working again properly sort of re-evaluating what I was going to do with my life

[00:11:46] because I'd, for you know all of my formative years up to that point I just had these grand plans of going off on adventures and expeditions going into jungles, going onto remote mountain plateaus

[00:11:59] and collecting specimens that was just this sort of idea that I had that I always wanted to do and suddenly I was lying in a bed in Gloucestershire couldn't use my legs properly, couldn't see properly

[00:12:10] and I sort of, I knew I wanted to still do something in that world I remember flicking through these copies of National Geographic magazine that I had by my bed and thinking okay I'll write for one of these magazines someone else will go and do the adventures

[00:12:24] and I can edit and write these magazines or I can be an editor for these sort of documentaries people could go off and have the adventures and then maybe I'll put them together back home

[00:12:35] if my body doesn't heal and I'm not able to go out and do these things again and it was within those months after coming out of hospital that I was watching this Bruce Parry series for the first time and just, it just reminded me that you know

[00:12:51] despite having this horrible illness on my last big trip into the tropics that I shouldn't let that dissuade me and that there was this big exciting world and if I could just get myself better again I was going to head out into it

[00:13:04] and I was going to find the next adventure I mean that's life changing stuff to happen when you're so young as well Yeah, I mean it really was life changing I don't think I realised at the time I think when you're going through something like that

[00:13:18] it just happens around you and you just get through it Yeah, I think everything that I've gone on to do afterwards is seen through a prism of that point in my life where I just feel very, very lucky that I survived

[00:13:32] and recovered, I'm healthy, don't have any long lasting side effects that I'm aware of and yeah, I just feel very fortunate to now have the ability to go and do these things and to have found myself in a career in TV documentaries

[00:13:46] to have the opportunity to go to these places to tell amazing stories of amazing landscapes, wilderness, animals it's, yeah I feel like it's the greatest privilege and it reminds me not to take anything for granted and to make the most of every opportunity that comes my way

[00:14:03] For sure So that happened before you went off to study zoology? Yeah, so that happened in the summer of 2005 and I initially told the university I'm not going to be coming to university this year I'll defer, I've had this big illness

[00:14:19] we'll see if I can start my course next year I did actually end up getting well enough to start that year obviously the disease had impacted my nerves so even when I sort of essentially healed my nervous system was still a little bit sort of fragile

[00:14:34] and obviously as soon as you drink any alcohol your nerves are one of the first things to slow down so Freshers Week was spent with a hand over one of my eyes because both of my eyes as soon as I had a drink

[00:14:44] would start looking in different directions but as adamant I wasn't going to start university with an eye patch on because I thought that was a name that I would never shake off otherwise I could just listen to your voice for hours as well

[00:14:55] You're having a little bromance name in here Alex If you could just leave us to it Kate, that'd be great Thanks I am available for a voiceover work This is the root of the aboga tree aboga tabanathne it contains a powerful combination of alkaloids

[00:15:11] that in high doses produce vivid hallucinations It's a powerful psychoactive drug the Bruteus believe it allows the user to wander in the realm of the dead where they will see visions that will change them forever So to put a bit of date context on the series itself

[00:15:32] it premiered in the January of 2005 The first episode of the first series was the third of January The episode that you've brought in for us was the fourth episode of that series which is the 24th of January

[00:15:44] but you're catching up on it a bit later than that by the sound of it Yeah, so I was watching it first recorded in the summer of 2005 sort of June, July time beautiful weather outside I remember I couldn't go outside I was just like fragile and weak

[00:16:00] and just inside sort of vicariously living Bruce's adventure through the TV and it just took me right back to being in the tropics you know, the film is so visceral I mean you watch it now and it looks very dated and it is dated in many respects

[00:16:19] but it's not full of fancy editing and sound effects there's very little music throughout it It's just sort of classic observational filming of Bruce and the Babongo people that he's with and it's quite raw what Bruce goes through you know, he puts himself through the ringer a bit

[00:16:42] he takes the aboga leaf and has this big transformational journey through that Yeah, it's pretty gritty I mean in the first 30 seconds of the show you've got Bruce sort of puking his guts out into the dirt and yeah, I watch it and it just...

[00:16:59] You watch it while eating lunch which was a bad plan Yeah, it's definitely... I should say for any listener who might be a little ematophobic it is, I think the most... Oh that's a fancy word Alex Come on, come on, what do you expect?

[00:17:15] I think it might be the lengthiest and visceral vomiting scene that I've ever seen on television or in film It's not for the faint hearted After six hours my stomach begins to heave I'm not... How about over here? No, no, no, it's good It's okay, I've got more

[00:17:43] No, no, and I mean that's the... I don't think you've seen the film Bridesmaids Do you know what, funnily enough I watched Bridesmaids only last week and I think this is worse, definitely Well because it's real Because it's real The cleansing process of taking aboga

[00:17:59] is to allow them to move on from their past lives The drug trip is apparently terrifying Emotionally exhausting and ultimately life changing I can't help but wonder what it will do for me I'm interested, Will, when you're watching this for the first time and it sounds like

[00:18:17] it's quite a profound moment as part of your the journey of your recovery Are you watching this and putting yourself in Bruce's shoes? Do you want to be Bruce, the all-conquering adventurer? Or are you imagining more generally Hey, I could make films like this

[00:18:32] I could be a camera man I could produce something like this Are you Bruce? I think the boyhood wonder in me always wanted to be Bruce and I probably watched it the first time thinking I would love to do that That would be an amazing job

[00:18:48] an amazing opportunity to front a show like that to go on those expeditions and to be given that opportunity But I think the humble side of me just to, you know, allad from a state school in Gloucestershire I never imagined that I would at that point

[00:19:03] I never imagined I would get involved in TV documentaries I thought, wow, what an amazing world to be involved in in some way but that's probably not for me I definitely thought that TV was the reserve of people who are very well connected or extremely intelligent

[00:19:20] I was certainly never academically gifted I studied zoology at university and loved that course but I wasn't great with maths I wasn't great with physics and chemistry I loved biology and I loved the study of ecology and landscapes and biological systems But I definitely didn't think

[00:19:42] oh, that looks like an amazing thing to do I'll go and sign myself up to work for the BBC documentary unit That was well beyond my sort of greatest imagination at that point It seems to be a common theme, doesn't it with the podcast so far, Kate?

[00:19:56] What is this? This is the ninth recording that we've done It seems to be a common theme that people are watching these amazing films that are transformational in some way to their lives but they're watching it from a position of thinking I couldn't possibly do that

[00:20:10] or that's working in TV that's not a real job I find that quite interesting and I wonder whether actually it's a little bit of a problem for our industry which is that people don't see it as viable career unless you're already well connected

[00:20:25] or related to people who already do it Speaking for myself I always wanted to be a journalist or work in the media whether it was print or radio or TV in some way but it was only a chance conversation with a parent of a friend at school

[00:20:41] who happened to work in television that opened the door to a couple of days of work experience that opened my mind to actually this is a real job that I could... this might actually happen for me but I'm conscious I was very fortunate with that

[00:20:56] but yeah, it really is a common theme isn't it Kate? Yeah, absolutely I never thought I wanted to go into TV until I left university didn't know what else to do and was watching so much TV I thought well that looks interesting let's try that

[00:21:09] and again it was my friend's dad worked in a TV company and just asked and begged for advice and showed willing by doing all the kind of hospital radio reading and making my own films and joining the local film club

[00:21:24] and finding a lovely man who gave me a job who made corporate films you know showed willing by doing all these things and then they were like okay well yeah, time to do some work experience and then they gave me my first job

[00:21:36] so it's difficult to get into and I think especially now it's difficult to get into both because if you don't see people like you working in TV or on TV it's difficult to see how you can get there so representation is huge but also companies

[00:21:54] just don't have as much money at the moment so there aren't as many opportunities so I think it's really tough so we were lucky in a way that we found our way in how did it happen for you? Well, how did you get into TV?

[00:22:06] Well, so I was first there were sort of two key points I think for me my weekend job as a young lad from the age of 13 I was a gardener and the couple whose garden I used to do was Judith Han who's the former presenter of Tomorrow's World

[00:22:22] first female science presenter on the BBC and her husband John Axelby who also used to work for the BBC was one of the co-founders of BBC World Service News wonderful couple, very very fortunate that this gardening job gave me contact with them

[00:22:38] but I was a sort of young squeaky voice teenager working for them and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life at that point I was just earning a bit of pocket money it was probably five or six years into doing gardening for Judith

[00:22:53] that I remember having a conversation over a cup of tea one afternoon and I just sort of inquired how do people get into TV? I assumed you have to be an academic or you had to be well connected or have a parent who worked in TV

[00:23:08] and is there a routine for someone that has none of those things I remember doing the thing what you would do, you would start as a runner which is sort of the entry job where you're offering your services around the office

[00:23:22] and you're doing maybe quite menial but important things to help the office run and then you'd become a researcher and then you would go on to become an assistant producer and then you would go on to produce and direct from there it was the first time

[00:23:35] that someone ever explained this very tangible route from zero experience in the industry to getting a job, getting a foot in the door to learning the skills to work your way up the ladder it was a real light bulb moment

[00:23:51] because it was the first time that I thought oh wow, this is open to someone like me I'm just a kid from the countryside who would love to work in documentaries I remember at that time thinking I would love to be a runner

[00:24:05] I would love to be a researcher wow, that would be like ultimate goal so I had really healthy low expectations of what I could do in the TV world that was a point where I thought okay, I could actually someone like me could get into this world

[00:24:21] but I didn't then think right, this is now my goal I still thought, okay, I'm going to go off to university I want to study something maybe marine biology, that was my first plan and then I thought, I know zoology that's a bit more sort of practical

[00:24:35] with less of the chemistry stuff which I was less of a fan of and it was during my university studies that we had a guest speaker come in who was David Barlow he's a guy you guys might be familiar with his name so he's a visual effects specialist

[00:24:53] specializing in scientific imagery and he creates amazing models of biological organisms I mean famously he did the models that were used for the In The Womb series he created these incredible models of dolphins in vitro and human babies growing in the womb

[00:25:09] all made out of rubber and plasticine and pipes and fluids and anyway David Barlow had a lab at Southampton University where he set up these incredible quite a lot of them were filming experiments he was one of the guys who sort of pioneered how you could film organs

[00:25:25] as if they were still living and pumping and breathing inside a human body and you know if you watched a sort of health show back in the 90s like 999 or something like that where someone is having a heart attack and the camera zooms inside their chest

[00:25:41] and you see this heart beating up and down so obviously not a camera shot inside someone's chest because that person would be dead it was David Barlow in his lab with a pigs heart pumping saline through it with these giant siphons

[00:25:54] and he just sort of pioneered all these incredible techniques for filming you know how to make a lung look like it's sort of inhaling and getting a camera inside that so you can see how the alveola opening up as the air comes into the lungs

[00:26:08] or seeing how a heart pulses and squeezes blood through it and he was using these baroscope cameras that he was making and he gave this talk about the work he was doing and I remember specifically there was a video of some cells dividing

[00:26:22] I think it was sort of chromosomes lining up across a cell before they were dividing dividing through mitosis and it had this beautiful music to it I remember the music vividly it was a piece by French musician Yann Tiersen it was just this you know

[00:26:56] I'd probably seen cells dividing in timelapse before but just set to this music it was sort of this moment where I realised wow this is sort of science and art just combining to create something completely beautiful and I remember thinking maybe I'll chat to David

[00:27:10] maybe it has a job in his lab I'd love to make films where you can show scientific things or biological organisms but in a beautiful way and tell something beautiful about them and you know it creates something emotional from something scientific and so I pestered David after this

[00:27:26] talk that he gave would he take five minutes to have a coffee with me and we met up that week and I said studying zoology I don't really know exactly what I want to do but your talk really inspired me and I would love to get involved in

[00:27:42] something in this field and you know what can you suggest and he said well there's this production company that I do a lot of work for pioneer productions they're always looking for young people to come and get involved in their productions

[00:27:56] here's the details of their head of production dropper align say that you've spoken to me and that was my first in with a production company and I had a summer I had some work experience lined up with them and they gave me two weeks work experience

[00:28:10] and that turned into a month long job and then a six month long job and I think I spent three years at pioneer from that first work experience and I was sold I was in the industry I worked as a runner, as a researcher

[00:28:22] doing a bit of development and everything went from there am I right in saying we've all worked for pioneer at some point everyone's worked for pioneer at some point yeah we are, I mean it is the deepest concern I have is this element that it has

[00:28:40] that every person that's taking this drug has always talked about which is that it's a very inward looking drug you spend a great deal of your time looking at your life how you've lived your life and where your life will go in the future

[00:28:54] and also what you are like as a person and all those little faults that you kind of subconsciously overlook and persuade yourself that you are a nice normal human being but when you actually unlock all those doors and clear all the foliage

[00:29:10] and you take a deep strong hard look at yourself then maybe you might come up against something and realise that you're not the nice person you thought you were and that is the biggest worry there's no deny it, that's the one thing

[00:29:22] I think the first thing to say is that I am aware of Bruce Perry's stuff I've heard of him, I've heard of his series I've never watched one before before this, and I really enjoyed it should we talk about Bruce first actually because he was not at all

[00:29:38] what I was expecting you know when you sort of build a picture in your head of what someone's going to be like and he was much more calm and measured and thoughtful than I imagined a character going through these kind of adventures would be

[00:29:54] and I found that very compelling actually do you kind of relate to him at all when you were watching him for the first time? Yeah I think, absolutely I watch Bruce and I agree he's a very, he's a gentle character, especially considering he's former Marine Commando military material

[00:30:12] he's a hardcore guy but he always comes across as being very sort of sensitive and sincere and I'm aware that the Tribe series had a very profound effect on him he completely altered his direction in life and he's become very passionate about the work that he does

[00:30:30] protecting indigenous communities and you see that sort of unfolding across the series, you see how each of these interactions with the different people that he's spending time with are he's not just there as a gung-ho man to front the show just doing these things as stunts

[00:30:46] it is really him getting under the skin and allowing them to have a real connection with him, especially in the episode where he meets with the Babongo people and he goes through this quite dramatic hallucinogenic initiation ceremony but he's very open about how

[00:31:04] scared he is before he does it that it's basically going to force him to to address who he is, that he might not be the best person that he might have done bad things, that he might have hurt people and the whole

[00:31:22] deal with this hallucinogenic substance that he's taking is that it creates these visions that really force you to confront your own self quite deeply and powerfully. I mean I'm quite a, people who know me, I'm quite a soft, gentle character I would say and I think

[00:31:40] We know, we know. Alex, were you one time later, right? Exactly. But I think I think if Bruce was a gung-ho sort of gutsy guy just there to do something manly and tribal and I don't think it would have resonated

[00:32:00] with me in the same way but I think I definitely lent in to Bruce's character and that's what I've loved about all of the tribe series and everything that he's done is he's just him and the crew that he works with are clearly very sensitive to

[00:32:14] these people that they're given the opportunity to spend time with and I think that comes across. I really feel that I have been reborn you know, and it's it's just I haven't known these people long but they've given me something very special and

[00:32:34] I'll be taking a piece of this village wherever I go and the rest of my life there's been a lot of love and these last two days everything that they've done has all been towards myself and it's very strong and powerful to have all those

[00:32:48] people looking at you and feeling for you and holding you and giving you this thing. There's a word we like to use a lot in TV production and that is jeopardy and we're forever being sort of bombarded with notes or conversations etc from execs or whoever it

[00:33:04] might be about injecting a bit of jeopardy into our films to kind of drive the narrative this felt genuinely very, very risky. I don't know how they were allowed to do it. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I mean it's classic obsdoc I don't think they planned for half of

[00:33:24] what unfolded over the film and it's yeah there's some real within the first 20 minutes they're in that village and two villages die. Yeah, I mean it's a very sort of stark brutal portrayal of how fragile lots of people's lives are in these places.

[00:33:42] It feels really real doesn't it? The scene with the grieving children rising on the floor is one of the most terrific things I've ever seen incredibly powerful. Yeah, I mean they couldn't have planned for any of that and I think that's what I enjoy about that series

[00:33:58] and that episode is that it doesn't feel produced, it doesn't feel like you're being told a version of events it's quite a classic travelogue, obsdoc Bruce going on this journey and what happens happens and I think there's probably scenes in that film that nowadays

[00:34:14] people would say maybe we don't keep this in, maybe we rethink this episode but I think it is stronger for it just being allowed to it is the story of what happens it's not pretty and it's not entertaining throughout it is just what happens But it's fascinating.

[00:34:32] Bruce is saying we're trying to back away they're saying it's okay stay you know after after those people die he's constantly talking to the camera either explaining what's going on or trying to explain what they're doing In the backs of our minds

[00:34:48] we just don't know where to put ourselves we want them to do their normal thing and we don't want to get in their way so it's kind of been a bit of a yo-yo of them saying please come and partake in the festivity

[00:35:02] which it is, it's a festivity it's a celebration of life almost it's a beautiful way that they do a funeral here but because we don't kind of know whether they're doing it to be nice to us or whether they really want us to or want us to come

[00:35:18] it's just very difficult It's quite visceral watching isn't it and you can see it's uncomfortable for Bruce and the crew and they're not really sure what's around the next corner I think that's part of what draws you in as a viewer you just... you're there with them

[00:35:38] I hope you understand what I mean by this but he struck me as a very un-presentary presenter very natural I was experiencing the real him and I have no idea whether that's true or not but yeah, it felt very refreshing in that respect I think you're right

[00:35:52] everything that... I'm a bit of a Bruce Perry fan and I've watched Endless Videos and clips and more recent things as well talks that he's given and seems consistently Bruce throughout all of them I feel like there is that one version of him

[00:36:06] I feel like he is just very natural on camera I wonder if that's a more of a early 2000s style presenter it's less produced, there's less expectation for things to be bombastic the whole production feels very stripped back it's simple camera work and simple pieces to camera filming

[00:36:30] which I think is what I like about it it just feels real, it feels like your journey took them on when you're watching it You said earlier you thought it looked a bit dated I just wondered what you meant by that

[00:36:42] I'm so used to seeing things in 4K plus these days that as soon as you see something shot on a XD cam possibly... it might have been HD but it very possibly was SD yeah, it stands out to me very quickly

[00:36:58] I'm not paying attention to any of that when I'm watching one of those episodes the visuals are so rich the story is so rich that it could be shot on a potato and I'd still be leaning in to watch the story unfold Gabon sits at the western edge

[00:37:12] of the Congo Basin the second largest area of tropical forest on the planet it's a globally important habitat for many of the world's most endangered species from gorilla to forest elephant but even here the forests are under threat Gabon has already lost between 20 and 30% of its original forest

[00:37:32] and it's estimated that a further third has been sold to the logging companies that had a really strong eco-message right from the very beginning is that something that also interested you at the time? yeah, not to bang on about it but I'd just come back from 6 months

[00:37:48] in Tanzania again, come on sorry Mel and we've been living in this yeah, this very remote camp but we were doing biodiversity service as part of some work which was being done to work out which areas were going to be protected as special sites of

[00:38:08] high biodiversity in which sites could be given over to teak plantations this big expansion of teak plantations all across southern Tanzania so I was really aware of the very real effects of habitat loss and that it was a lot of pristine habitats

[00:38:24] being turned over to farming and agriculture and forestry and that that's just the reality of 21st century world and that that's happening in Asia and Africa so I think having seen that first hand so recently, watching this documentary being very frank about that and showing those scenes of

[00:38:44] giant hardwood trees coming out of the forest again, but was part of what just made me lean into it and feel like, okay this is real this is what the world is like this is a real story unfolding and that's what draws me to those sorts of films

[00:39:00] I think almost my earliest wildlife documentary memories are watching BBC natural worlds on a Sunday night with the family secret life of plants and life of mammals and those shows which those big early blue chip shows were all rightly so celebratory of the wonders of nature

[00:39:18] and the endless depths of forests and wilderness it was almost infinite and untouchable and it would be wild place and wild animals forever and then the more you see of the world the more you travel and the more I was able to see

[00:39:34] through my travels, you realise very quickly that's not what the world is like anymore and there are these very real concerns with habitat loss and the balance between expansion of human development and human needs for food and farming etc and these beautiful wild places

[00:39:50] that people want to protect and that should be treated with respect and so I think that's why watching the tribe series and seeing how they wore that on their sleeve, that this wasn't just a celebration of beautiful tribal people in beautiful places this is the reality for

[00:40:08] indigenous communities who are trying to live traditional ways of life but for many of them their habitat is disappearing for many of them they want to use their habitat they want to cut down their trees and sell them and that's also, you know, they're right

[00:40:22] as owners of the land so it's, yeah, that was something which I loved in the tribe series and the subsequent series that Bruce Parry did I think there is a real challenge isn't there particularly at the moment in natural history filmmaking which is that we're

[00:40:38] on the one hand we were sort of expected to kind of rock up in whatever location we're in and make it the most spectacular, the most beautiful and yet quite often that requires us to frame certain things out point the camera in a certain direction you know ignore

[00:40:54] the quite significant ecological issues that are happening in these places to create an almost artificial version of the natural world and kind of striking that balance is becoming ever trickier and I think perhaps that's a duty to be a bit more honest

[00:41:10] with some of our storytelling in that respect Yeah, definitely I think there's an argument for showcasing both I think people need to see the majesty of nature to remember what's worth protecting for a whole new generation to fall in love with it and that's, you know, nature documentaries

[00:41:28] have a huge part to play making people care about protecting the natural world but also people don't know to protect it see the realities of, you know, how quickly things are disappearing and I think there's been a good sea change with that in the last

[00:41:44] five, six years that broadcasters are in some instances more willing to be very frank and show the quite brutal truth I think people often cite Blue Planet 2 as that turning point where the BBC was suddenly being very open about the dire state of some of

[00:42:00] the oceans and ocean habitats and I think that's a good thing You don't want to watch that all day long because it would become increasingly depressing but people need to see what's going on and that's our job as filmmakers, storytellers documentary makers is to bring

[00:42:14] stories from around the world to people's screen so they can know what's going on and have a view on it So, I mean, speaking hypothetically you get a phone call next week saying, Will, we want you to come and make a new series

[00:42:28] of Tribe. We're gonna go back to the Babongo We'd like you to present it as well actually My question to you the $6 million question would you go through the ritual that Bruce did? Would you put yourself through that? That's a good question Good question

[00:42:46] I feel like the sort of the strong manly thing to say is, yeah, of course I would do that but I don't know if I would I think watching Bruce's journey is amazing and it's great to see but do we need another, you know, Brit

[00:43:04] going over to Gabon doing the initiation ceremony? It almost seems an indulgent thing to go and do it and I don't think that I would see the value in going to do it. Also, it looks absolutely horrible A contrasting question actually that I'd not

[00:43:22] considered until you just answered that question which is was it necessary for the success of that film for him to do that? I mean I can picture the conversation with the producers before and I can imagine that it was all about that episode was about Bruce going

[00:43:38] to meet these people who the aboga plant has such a strong role in their society and their spirituality and their religion for Bruce not to physically experience that would be sort of missing out a large chapter of that story. I think it was probably editorially seen

[00:43:58] as necessary and I do think it has a place in the story. I don't watch it and I think this is gratuitous, this is just a guy doing a stunt. There is a small element of that obviously I'm sure, you know, academics

[00:44:08] would point their fingers at the series and say this is just a white guy going out to you know, indigenous communities doing a collection of outrageous things but I do think that Bruce and the crew handle it with a sensitivity. It really helps the viewer understand how powerful

[00:44:24] this thing is and how it can be such a powerful totem for the Babongo people so I think there was real purpose for it being done in the show. No, I would agree. Would you take it Alex? I mean the short answer to that question is

[00:44:38] I think no and I think for the same reason that Will gave actually particularly the fact that it just looked like a horrifically grotesque and very risky thing to put yourself through but I found what he learned from it quite compelling

[00:44:52] and I think if I could take that bit of it and not the sort of 24 hours of continual vomiting I think I'd maybe do it but no, I don't think so. Would you, Kate? No. It was a serious thing that he undertook I mean he literally signs

[00:45:08] a piece of paper doesn't he in the film to say that if I die I won't sue you so yeah, I mean it's serious stuff. I think it was testament to how well they handled it that it didn't feel like a stunt actually, you know, that

[00:45:18] they obviously got it right. Yeah. Did your illness change you? Is that something that still kind of bubbles up in your brain at all like nearly 20 years down the line? Yeah, I don't bubbles up in my brain is that deliberate? Sorry that's actually a really horrendous

[00:45:34] choice of words. Parasites in the brain. You know what, let's leave it in. So luckily there's no bubbling in the brain, the parasites are gone and I don't think about it daily but I have no doubt that the fact that I had an illness which

[00:45:50] doctors didn't think I'd desperately survive and if I did that I would probably lose my hearing or lose use of a couple of my limbs. The fact that I've got through that with no lasting side effects, I mean I feel like everything afterwards has been

[00:46:04] a bit of a bonus. I do feel like everything's, you know, I'm extremely fortunate to be healthy and able to continue working and living happy life and yeah it's a good thing to dig into if things get tough or you know, work projects fall through

[00:46:22] life gets hard, you know if this is all bonus time and maybe it was potentially taken away from me 20 years ago then yeah I'll take the bonus time thanks. And re-watching this film nearly 20 years down the line, how do

[00:46:38] you feel about it now and what does it mean to you? Having listened to all of the other episodes, I mean everyone's different and it's good that all these episodes are different, I've always been aware that my connection to this film and the way

[00:46:50] it's inspired me as a documentary maker and how it's led to, you know how it's been one of the pieces of the puzzle of my journey is not so much that I saw it and I thought okay I want to make films like this. I sort of saw

[00:47:04] it and it was at a time that I was in this sort of great flux, I didn't know what was going to be going on in my life and it just sort of hit me at a sweet spot and it sort of stayed with me.

[00:47:16] But I almost feel like it was a yeah, I can't quite explain why this film at that point just resonated but I feel like there was a drop that fell in the water at that point in my life and those ripples are still sort of

[00:47:32] permeating through what I'm doing and what I want to do and yeah. It's one of those things actually I think there's a similarity with quite a lot of our guests that it didn't make sense at the time but looking back on it from the outside

[00:47:48] certainly I don't know if it does to you Will but from the outside it makes perfect sense now. Well no that's what I in a way almost think that's what's different for me I can't quite make sense of why that film at that point grabbed me

[00:48:02] in such a way. I just know it did I just know that I don't think you know you were in a very particular situation though weren't you at the time. You know you were you know physically you had been struggling and you were recuperating and you were

[00:48:18] recovering but also I'm assuming mentally it was a challenging time as well because you literally didn't know what the future held and perhaps some of the dreams that you had maybe were no longer achievable so I think there's a lot of talk about

[00:48:36] the times in your life where you're very receptive to culture whether it's music or film or things like that and it's often said to be you know you're mid to late teenage years but also I would imagine kind of traumatic events and traumatic situations kind of just make

[00:48:50] you much more receptive to things and it happened to be this film that you saw at that particular time. Yeah yeah and I don't think after watching it I don't think the next day I was left with a sudden feeling of well okay I've

[00:49:02] witnessed something and this has changed something in me I think it planted a seed that probably popped up again three years later during my degree when I thought okay there's a tangible route for me into television here if I can get some experience work with the company

[00:49:16] the sorts of projects I'd love to work on would be things like these adventurous series where you know a crew goes off to meet you know remote people to go to you know unchartered lands so I think it was probably watching the Bruce Parry series first in 2005

[00:49:38] planted a seed which definitely I only really realised its impact on me probably four or five years down the line. Ironically I've never made an anthropology show it was definitely you know among all of the early shows that I loved watching Benedict Allen and Bruce Parry

[00:49:54] and like a bunch of these early sort of and Michael Palin I guess in a way they're very much anthropological series I love them I've loved them up and read all of the series books and definitely when I first got into TV the sorts of production

[00:50:08] companies I was contacting were the companies that had made these these Obstock anthropological travelogues but you know the nature of TV you work on the shows that looking for staff at that time and I ended up the first show I worked on was for how the

[00:50:24] earth was made series at Pioneer making an episode about man-made super diamonds and then I got into working on other science documentaries and it was only you know four or five years down the line that I honed in on working on wildlife documentaries specifically

[00:50:40] and then you know it's the nature of the industry once you become specialised within a field and you get you know more exposure to a certain place and you become a bit of an expert in a certain area of natural history filming

[00:50:54] you're almost closing off a few doors and so I've never made any anthropological films that I would love to. I feel like maybe I don't have the skillset because they are delicate subjects and I think that's one of the things I often think as a natural history

[00:51:08] filmmaker that as the director the producer you know as the crew you point your camera at the animals and obviously through your understanding of nature and through working with ecologists and scientists you hopefully tell the accurate story of those animals but those animals don't have any say in

[00:51:26] how they present them and they can't opt to not be filmed but obviously something like the anthropological series, the tribe series you're dealing with human stories it's a very different sensitive thing and that's a very I see there's a great art in doing that

[00:51:42] well and when it's done well I love watching those shows because I think that they're really important bits of documentary Well thank you for bringing it in and please can we do Indiana Jones another time Yes