A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness.

Just like Mege confessed in last week’s post, I also stopped watching Game of Thrones after few seasons, not because I hadn’t initially found it riveting and exciting, but because the rampant sex, violence and surprise deaths had taken away pretty much all the characters I cared for by just the end of season 3 (especially in the infamous ‘Red Wedding’ episodes). My nerve-rattling and character-investing had largely been in vain, and so my friends and I called it quits.

Despite its abrupt and disillusioned ending, my first encounter with the series had incidentally been almost as suprising and exciting as one of its episodes (even though, admittedly, it didn’t feature any rampant sex and violence, as far as I remember…): I literally stumbled upon its making! And on the soon ten-year anniversary of this encounter, it’s worth looking back and telling the tale.

By late September of 2014, I had travelled the Balkans with a group of my colleagues, all history teachers, and their spouses for a good ten days. We had seen war-scarred Sarajevo with its incredible mix of influences between Ottoman, Habsburg and Titoist legacies and had passed through beautiful Mostar with its famous Ottoman bridge, by then thankfully rebuilt after the onslaught of civil war destruction in the 1990s.

Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast was to be our last stop, and one of my colleagues, who had done research there for a few months during his studies, showed us around off the beaten tourist tracks. The city with its stunningly intact city walls and the bright stone façades had already turned into a second Venice, with throngs of sightseeing-hungry travellers ejected from cruise ships and droves of coaches every morning. We soon discovered that waiting out the masses of visitors in one of the cafés on the main square was a clever strategy, because by late afternoon, the city had cleared and we were ready to do our own explorations.

It was over one of these cups of coffee that I started noticing groups of people in quasi-historical costumes passing the square in front of us, followed by technicians with film equipment. Of course I had to investigate! It’s important to mention that I had not heard anything about something called “Game of Thrones” by then, but I soon discovered its merchandise in the shop windows all over the city. I also reached out to my fellow movie geek friend Andy, whom I threw into a fit of excitement and inidgnant surprise that I did not realise what I had come upon: the filming of the series’ fifth season here in Dubrovnik!

Soon after, and now with an investigator’s focus, we started finding all kinds of props and equipment all over the city, always carefully protected by unassuming-looking men standing nearby. Once, at night, we wanted to have a closer look at some of the fake bread and vegetables made for an apparent market-based scene, and out of the shadows one of these guards bellowed at us to get lost. Nevertheless, we persisted.

By day two of these encounters, I had also identified a number of people I had seen on the town square, with Lena Heady’s Cersei Lannister and Dean-Charles Chapman’s Tommen Baratheon among them. My research showed that the latter had just lost his brother Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) in one of the most gruesome scenes of the entire series. Little did I know that the character behind it was one of my favourite actresses of all time, but I unfortunately didn’t come across her on that trip: Diana Rigg as Olena Tyrell, certainly one of the series’ main highlights.

I did come across another star of the series, however, and by complete coincidence the next morning: Our group had just assembled to visit one of the main churches, when I noticed an elderly gentleman exiting this very building, and I said to myself: “If that isn’t Jonathan Pryce!” Of course I couldn’t let such an opportunity pass by to talk to the star of Brazil, Evita, Tomorrow Never Dies and so I chatted him up: “Excuse me: You’re Jonathan Pryce, aren’t you?” – “Yes, I am” – in the course of which it transpired that he had just arrived in the city to start filming as a newly introduced character in that very season I was witnessing: the mysterious High Sparrow. We chatted for a bit and I confessed how much I had liked his performances in Carrington and as a Bond villain. We took a selfie, and thereupon I stood, mesmerized by the wonderful movie-making coincidences that my life had in store.

The explorations countinued over the next few days in Dubrovnik, during which I did some research on the series’ origins in George R. R. Martin’s mind, the first seasons’ impacts, and ways to watch it. At the same time, I was trying to find clues as to what was being filmed, who the High Sparrow would be as a character and, of course, whether we would see any actual filming going on. It seemed unthinkable to me how a film crew would pull off lensing anything in such a densely-crowded, heavily observed environment.

On the last morning we finally stumbled upon such a scene, and it was a green screen that caught my eye on top of long and wide stairs leading up to another church. We stopped and squeezed into a narrow passageway to get a good glimpse and there they were: the High Sparrow in now a less touristy cloak, a short-haired Cersei and her son Tommen beside her, as well as a crowd of extras cowering on the stairs. I could only guess what the green screen was meant to add in post-production, but my imagination certainly ran wild.

Understandably, I could not wait to find out in the finished season, whose release was still a year away. Upon my return from Dubrovnik, I did read the first book in the series and started watching the first seasons immediately, always building on the excitement of finally seeing the scenes I had witnessed in Croatia. I guess it’s testimony to the series dubitable qualities that I actually never made it to season 5, and I have never actually seen these scenes in context. Rather, my frustration and disinterest GoT the better of me!

To end on a more positive note, however: maybe my impressions of these filming locations and movie sets simply created the better film in my imagination and an episode that never actually saw the light of day.

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