November 11-17, 2004

naked city

Great Gig

slippery slope: The Atlantis' 60-foot Leap of Faith slide shoots riders through a submerged shark pool. Photo By: Toby Zinman

Soaking up rays, and absurdity, at the junket for After the Sunset.

by Toby Zinman

Calling my new travel column "Sleeping Around" made me think about the places I'd slept recently: a yurt in the Yukon, a ducal manor house in Scotland, a small ship off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. However stiff the back, that "where am I?" moment of waking up is part of the thrill of traveling. Waking up last month in the total Bahamian luxury of my first movie junket was the beginning of a whole new kind of adventure.

New Line Cinema's After the Sunset, starring Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek, with Woody Harrelson, Don Cheadle and Naomie Harris, opens tomorrow. It's an amusing jewel heist/popcorn movie, shot on location in Nassau and at the lavish Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island. Gorgeous people, gorgeous scenery, gorgeous car chases. Its director, Brett Ratner, decided to hold the freebie-filled press junket in the Bahamas instead of the usual New York or Los Angeles. Media types from all over the world were whisked from the airport in black limousines with twinkly green lights. Yours Truly tried her best to be cool and not squeak with excitement.

I was invited as a travel writer, since the Bahamas is eager to tell tourists they have, literally, weathered the storm. The tops of some coconut palms were blown away in the hurricanes — new green tufts are already blooming — and a couple of small boats sank, but otherwise Nassau and Paradise Island are fine, with their usual magnificent turquoise blue water and matching stunning sky.

Unsurprisingly, the television interviewers here are all great-looking; radio and print media are not. General conversational mode is whining: the absurdity of the interview schedule, the absurdity of their lack of sleep, the absurdity of This is a symptom of Celebrity Fatigue. (CF sets in when you make a living chasing the R&F to glamorous locales.)

Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek are interviewed for five minutes by each of the journalists. Serena Williams, currently dating Ratner, is spotted on the tennis court. A Bahamian gardener, tending to hotel grounds near the interview tents, tells gawkers that Salma Hayek is Halle Berry.

Sample junket conversation:

Bahamian bartender (to expensively unkempt, 30-something Eurotrash with just-got-out-of-bed hair and three-day beard): "May I serve the lady first?"
Eurotrash (with a heavy accent):"But of course. I am French."
The Lady (aka, Yours Truly) laughs, assuming such a corny line is intended to be funny. One glance informs YT she is wrong. Backpedaling, she asks politely: "Where are you from?"
ET (with classic Gallic shrug): "Paris."
YT: laughs again

The Bahamian Prime Minister attended the premiere screening with heavy-duty military escort. Also there: the four Bahamian Olympic track gold medalists, known as "The Golden Girls," and the Minister of Tourism. Many locals in the audience recognized people and voices in the movie during the screening, and this caused much merriment.

The Atlantis' Bridge Suite, featured in the movie, goes for $25,000 per night; Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfrey and various Saudi sheiks are among those who have run up staggering bills. My room, although hardly the Bridge Suite, offered acres of bed and a magnificent sea view.

The Atlantis is a vast resort, somewhere between deluxe spa, Las Vegas casino and Disney theme park. Its subterranean "Dig" is a series of vast tunnels comprising the most spectacular aquarium I have ever seen. The prehistoric-looking green moray eels, the immense flapping rays, the creepy underbellies of spiny lobsters crawling in an overhead tank, the luminous backlit jellyfish, are all worth the trip themselves — if the lagoons and the beaches and the pools and the breathtakingly tall water slides (into glassed-off shark pools!) aren't tempting enough.

Interestingly, the people staying at the Atlantis look mostly like ordinary folks — unlike the Press Corps of the Caribbean: middle-class families (the woman sitting next to me on the plane was going to meet her brother and his kids to celebrate his return from Iraq), wedding parties, teenage birthday parties, fat people, thin people. The resort includes a casino that ranges from 25-cent slots to high-stakes blackjack tables.

The Bahamas is one of the hot new locations: Three films were shot there in the past year; five Bond movies were made in part there; CSI: Miami is going to use the traditional Bahamian festival Junkaroo (which takes place every December) in an episode; The Troubadour television pilot was filmed in Eleuthra, one of the outer islands; and a new film studio is being built on Grand Bahama. The first Bahamas International Film Festival is scheduled for this Dec. 9-12. What a gig that would be.

For information on traveling to the Bahamas, visit www.bahamas.com; for information on the Bahamas International Film Festival, visit www.bintlfilmfest.com.