Light, camera, elephants

Thailand is the new, cheaper, Tinseltown, Oliver Stone tells The Guardian in a recent story.

We can shoot anywhere. We couldn't have made Alexander in Hollywood - the human resources were too expensive. It's impossible to make a movie like Alexander in America any more.

We have to look further afield - and my first choice was Thailand because of its technical proficiency, its terrific crew and the elephants. The elephant schools here are second to none - well managed and willing to work until it's right.

The writer, David Smith, makes a big deal in the article about Bangkok being a "party capital". This is pretty odd, because right now the government plans to have all the bars close at midnight, from March 1 on. What's even odder is that David wrote about this very issue just a few days before his article about filmmaking came out.

It's the latest big news after the bird flu, and could possibly be even more devastating, say the tourism operators and night-life businesspeople. Myself, I could really care less. The government will do whatever it wants. I guess it will take daily police harassment of checkpoints and "papers please" to get my attention and make me think about leaving Thailand for good.