The third degree with Kevin Bacon and Elephant White

The Nation's Phatarawadee Phataranawik today reports on her visit to the set of Elephant White, the Hollywood movie that Ong-Bak and Chocolate director Prachya Pinkaew is directing with Djimon Hounsou in the lead and Kevin Bacon in a supporting role.

After shooting scenes in Chinatown last Thursday, when a Nation photographer visited, the crew moved to a location in Minburi, a suburb on the eastern outskirts of the Bangkok metropolis.

The Nation talked to producer Frank DeMartini. Here's a snip:

Prachya is the biggest Asian action director right now. John Woo is an international name by now, but Prachya is probably the only one at that level who hasn't done an American film yet."

For his part, teamed with big foreign stars, Prachya feels like the rookie on the set - but a lucky one.

Bacon plays "Jimmy the Brit", an old aquaintance of the main character, Hounsou's Curtie Church, a mercenary who meets Mae, a young Thai woman who's given his life new meaning. She's played by Jirantanin Pitakporntrakul, making her film debut.

In supporting roles are Weeraprawat Wongpuapan, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Abhijati "Muek" Jasakul and Suteerush Channukool. Some 200 Thais dominate the crew.

"The movie," DeMartini explains, "is about a mercenary who's assigned to wipe out a gang, but he meets a 14-year-old girl who gets him wondering about right and wrong. By the end he's transformed.

"We're not supposed to say 14," he suddenly remembers with a laugh.

Read on for a few words from Kevin Bacon.

I actually supplied my Nation colleague with a few questions to ask him, including one about the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but the actor's manager tossed that question. Don't understand why, since according to the Wikipedia, "though he was initially dismayed by the game, the meme stuck, and Bacon eventually embraced it, forming the 'charitable initiative' SixDegrees.org". So I'd think he'd be keen to promote it. Guess his people wanted Bacon Number Zero to stay on point and promote Elephant White.

But, now that a co-worker has talked to Bacon, that gives her a Bacon number of 1, which means my Bacon number just shot up to 2.

Update: Kong Rithdee's Bacon number is now 1. And he talked to director Prachya Pinkaew on the set of Elephant White, which apparently will have an actual white elephant.


(Photos via Buddha Productions Inc.)