UrbanWire

UrbanWire steals some private moments with Malcolm Watson, producer of Travellers & Magicians and a devout Buddhist.

An architecture graduate possessing a wealth of experience in civil engineering, financial and organisational management, Malcolm Watson now works the purse strings for his teacher and director, Khyentse Norbu, as producer of the latter's movies.

Traversing Bhutan, Canada and India since 1990, Watson has engaged himself in projects for charitable organisations of Khyentse Norbu and also the design and erection of retreat centres and schools of Buddhist philosophy. His loving friendship with Khyentse Norbu has led the duo to produce and direct the critically acclaimed film, The Cup.

Watson fills us in on the trials and tribulations and not forgetting, the joys of working on Travellers & Magicians in Bhutan as he continues on his search for spiritual enlightenment and arty edification in celluloid.

Malcolm Watson: "It's a really very interesting position. There's a constant dynamic because I started as his student, and then I went to work for him full-time, and then as a producer and director so there's a different relationship again, and so it's been a wonderful dynamic. I couldn't describe it in any one way other than being dynamic. I'm highly fortunate to be associated with such a person who is creative, intelligent, and talented. I'd say fortune is probably the overall flavour of my relationship.

Jeremy Thomas, he's executive producer on The Cup and Travellers & Magicians, and he said to me, 'Look, now you're going to have to act less like a student and more like a producer, because you've got the budget to run, you've got to free the director from those sorts of concerns, so you've got to try and sort of be the boss!'"

Malcolm Watson: "The Bhutanese are really quite special people. They're really hardy, with a wicked sense of humour, and because everything is always a bit difficult, they don't make a distinction between obstacle and habit. Everything is approached afresh and with such great ingenuity. My first 2 weeks I used to dread getting up in the morning because of everything that was going on. After that I slept really well, and I was excited to wake up, because I knew there was something to be done, and that was the joy of it, and that was from the Bhutanese people."

UW: Were there any difficulties experienced in such a remote place of the world?

Malcolm Watson: "We had our main camera [fall] off its tripod with no reason! The tripod was locked, no one's near it, [there was] no high wind. It just fell over! You can imagine a suit-and-tie sort of guy sitting in an office in Sydney, getting insurance reports. I described all the conditions, and what the damage [was], and my last line was, 'The Bhutanese people believed it was the intervention of spirits.'"

UW: Huh? Spirits?

Malcolm Watson: "They did a lot of tests but the film was found to be just fine. The Bhutanese believed that there was a demoness who had been affecting their lives for many years, and they also believed that it was the demoness responsible for the camera's fall.

While filming was going on, we had some monks doing Buddhist ceremonies to counteract the bad influences. The locals believed that during the filming, because of the presence of the Khyentse Norbu, who's a high lama, and the presence of another high lama in the crew, that by the end of the filming, the demoness had been subdued."

UW: Why did you decide to devote all your efforts to working on Khyentse Norbu's projects?

Malcolm Watson: "I was basically a bum. I'd gone straight from high school to university and studied architecture but I had no motivation to be an architect. I was an angry young man. I would demonstrate at the drop of a hat. I joined a political movement, the Australian Labour Party. I went to a state conference, and I saw that they weren't concerned about the issues. They were concerned about their egos and I became very despondent, and I then became very sceptical. I'd been brought up a Christian. I looked for answers there but it didn't supply any. And my friends told me to go to India and have a look at India, and so I went to India in the mid-80s, and I ran into these Buddhist monks, and I started to read about a little bit about it, and to me, it just made sense.

I met Khyentse Norbu in Australia in 1985. He taught a little bit, and he knocked my socks off completely. I found out that he wasn't just a high lama, he did other things, and actually he could do with someone with an architectural background, designing houses and retreats and stuff like that, so these sort of led to the filming, and it just keeps on going and there's always something new around the corner. And that's how I came to that."

Malcolm Watson: "I'd hope so. It's a really beautiful country, and I think there're a lot of stories there. I'd like the opportunity to work with the Bhutanese more because they're so nice, and I can learn from the way they approach things."

UW: You've been making art house films but do they translate well into dollars?

Malcolm Watson: "Khyentse Norbu is well aware of this, and he is going to write stories that are more commercially viable. If you look at the way the world is, it's like an unstoppable snowball coming down the mountain towards a village, and if you stand in front of it, you'll just get rolled over. The best viewpoint from Khyentse is to run beside the snowball, and push it ever so slightly so that it takes the less destructive path, accepting its nature and taking a softer approach. I know I sound rather too complex, but I hope you get what I mean."