Nighttime in the Everglades provides a natural silence: buzzes, whizzes, snapping branches, hoots and watery splashes work to muffle each other into a cacophonous sludge. A few alligators and crocodiles purposefully stir on the swampy bank, silently turn their bodies, slink into the waters and knowingly move towards their prey.
A strong moon is up in the sky, but the seemingly sentient trees have been assigned a task against light. The canopy is so strong – branches and vines are woven together – that light comes through only in sparse rays and patches. Animal, plant and earth turn shapeless and blend into one deep dark void.
Nighttime in the Everglades belongs to predators, and most of the ignorant have already fallen prey. Enter three people fording the waters, disturbing a total absence of man and his accompanying trinkets.
A frizz-haired and balding man moves clumsily through waist-high black waters. His large eyes and shaky movements are contrast with the painstakingly long intervals between steps – the mud below consumes his strides. He moves with a dazed and anguished look, as someone lethargically escaping certain death. A second man, rifle at the ready, squints and faithfully trudges through the waters. A woman near him, the rifleman’s lover, beckons their prey to give up. The rifleman finally sees his prey, takes aim, and gets eaten by an alligator.
This scene from the movie “Adaptation,” other than serving as the climax, provides a glimpse into waters that isn’t often shown on postcards and on tourist agency walls. The $3.9 billion film industry, according to a 2000 review by the Florida Film Commission, relies on the state’s uniqueness to attract movies.
“For me, the main attraction is very long days,” says Alla Baeva, director of the 1997 indie flick “The Shooter,” her main project while attaining a Masters in Fine Arts from Florida State University. “There is more day time in the warmer months, which means in Florida you get more shots than you would in New York or the Midwest.”
Southern California – No. 1 in the nation for motion picture production, followed by New York and Florida, respectively – also boasts an available full-year shooting schedule. So what else draws movie makers to this state? Water and everything that comes with it.
Aside from full-year shooting schedules, the Florida Film Commission — the entity charged with luring filmmakers to Florida — boasts about the state’s unique locations: an abundance of waterways, seaside hammlets, ports, swamps and painfully white and manicured beaches. So often are these locations sought after that the South Florida area — with its beaches, Everglades, tributaries, metropolitan areas, planned communities and ports — lead the state in all categories of motion picture production in a 2003 analysis.
Not to imply that all movies filmed in Florida are about the ocean or swamps; they’re not. “We subbed for Denmark in the 1800s, we have done New England, we’ve done the Midwest and we’ve even done snow-covered areas,” boasts Jeff Peel, director of the Miami Film Commission branch. “And we have the ocean — we can put people in the water year-round and not freeze them — we can shoot in the bay, we can be on islands and still be just 10 minutes outside of Miami, and the Everglades are just 30 minutes out of town. These things are very attractive to filmmakers that require such specific locations.”
The 40s B-film “Creature from the Black Lagoon” was shot in the crystalline springs of Alachua and Leon counties, as were the early Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller. “Wild Things” was principally shot in Miami. Scenes involving the Everglades in “Adaptation” were shot in the area, too. Films, big and small, indie and Hollywood, deal with characters — writers, botanists, adventurers and scheming students — and their interactions. That’s where the intrigue, conflict, emotion and overall interest arise. Yet, the settings fill out the characters and give them context. In this form, Florida’s waters house some of movie history’s most notorious creatures.
Whitewashed sand and crystal blue waters are the setting for Brian de Palma’s 1983 “Scarface” – a modern American dream tale with a Cuban-thug-turned-drug lord protagonist. “Adaptation” shows a different side of Florida, describing horrible black waters, sweltering heat, snakes and alligators.
Other examples abound — but in the end — Jude Hagen, Ocala branch director of the Florida Film Commission, says that the only conclusion is that Florida has very different and unique places. At one point lavish and carefree, at another mysterious and ominous.
“As a filmmaker, your first priority is the movie, and that is where most of the budget goes,” says Baeva, now an assistant professor at St. John’s University in New York. “Then if you have something left over, you can find a good location. But for indie films the budgets are small. You have to improvise, be creative and sometimes cut settings completely out.”
“Big budget Hollywood movies have more money to spend on locations and sets. Those filmmakers choose locations that have their own mystique and use it for the movie. Hollywood movies want to sell and make money, and you do that with mystery, danger, action and novelty.”
So, are indie flicks more likely to show a truer Florida than a Hollywood big budget film? Not necessarily. “Creature from the Black Lagoon” was a small budget enterprise, filmed in Wakulla Springs and Silver Springs, and it was rather fantastic. The movie’s premise not only asked the audience to accept a prehistoric creature that lived underwater, but its lagoon was also in the Amazon.
“ For ‘Creature’ they left everything the way it was, but they dressed it a little more and added the creature,” says Jude Hagen, director of the Florida Film Commission’s Ocala branch, which oversees filming in Silver Springs. “Otherwise, everything on screen looked exactly is it did in real life.”
Even South Florida, which attracts four to five big budget movies per year, according to Peel, has a “nice mix” between indie and medium and big budget films.
“We get everything ranging from students in film school up to folks making movies for the festival circuit to New York indie filmmakers.”
Seemingly, though there isn’t one specific way to portray Florida on film, Florida waters on the big screen do seem to be more hazardous than not. Usually.
“Adaptation” shows alligators attacking a man in the Fakahatchee River; “Creature” has an ancient creature that isn’t quite “good”; “Wild Things” shows the Everglades as a place with alligators swimming just below the surface, waiting to attack any piece of meat that drops into the waters; “Tarzan” has cheetahs and alligators at every corner.
The danger inherent in Florida waters seems justified. After all, the Everglades aren’t really a place where one does go without a guide or a fan boat. The waters of Florida’s springs really do contain hordes of alligators and snakes.
“We’ve had one or two alligator incidents since the park opened in 1947,” says Rick Cook, public affairs officer with the Everglades National Park. “But, that speaks more to our cautious attitude than the park’s danger. The animals are living in the wild and have little human contact. We have four kinds of native poisonous snakes, panthers, crocodiles and alligators living out in the wild. But mostly, the animals are as wary of people as we try to make people of them.”
“We are pretty strict on enforcing rules on feeding wildlife and we educate our visitors. When you’re out in the wild we teach ‘maintain some distance.’”
For traversing the park on one’s own, camping, boating or going into the “backwoods” areas, there’s a system of permits that allow the park officers to track a person’s itinerary: when they entered, where they will be and when they should be arriving back. Pamphlets, rangers and seminars on the rules of the park and safety issues also educate visitors throughout. Lots of paperwork, education and planning are involved in traveling a dangerous wildlife preserve.
So, Kaufman, of “Adaptation”, seems justified in fearing the Everglades. Superficially, it is like many parks: beautiful, green and wholesome. But, the well-worn road eventually ends and so does any trace of comfort. A manicured front is washed away by swampy water revealing an ancient and dreadful core. Coming in contact with the murky waters of the Everglades is so traumatic that it seems to bring on the fight-or-flight response. As Kaufman rushes into the water to escape his two assailants, his face is a mask of panic. He is running through waters so black that he is unable to see what danger is below the surface — alligators, snakes and other dangerous creatures, all viable options.
At Wakulla Springs the only activity involving wildlife is watching it while on glass-bottom boats. A swimming area is netted off from the rest of the park.
The Florida waters have such a strong quality and presence in the movies that it almost seems as if they’re actors. There are techniques — choosing a location to paint a surrounding that will enhance the dealings of the characters — that cast a location, a setting, a place, as a character. Sometimes the location is nice and calm, and that allows for sweet interactions. But for serious and dramatic effect, a gritty and unyielding place can bring out very raw emotions in characters. In Florida’s case, that comes naturally.