Writer Ed Rampell likes to share the story about a conversation he had with two-time Oscar-winner Alexander Payne, the director/screenwriter whose 2011 movie "The Descendants" showcased Hawaii in its most accurate light to date.
He credits Payne with the idea for the new book Rampell co-authored with Luis I. Reyes, "The Hawaii Movie and Television Book" (Mutual Publishing, $23.95). It’s a follow-up of sorts to a similar work Rampell and Reyes co-authored in 1995. Payne told the writers that a sequel was in order, in part to include the nearly 50 films shot since the first book, but more importantly so the update could include "The Descendants."
Why say yes?
"Are you going to disregard the directions from an Academy Award-winning director?" Rampell said.
Of course not.
The book came out late last year as a tribute to the 100th anniversary of film in Hawaii. And while it focuses primarily on films and TV shows with a connection to Hawaii since 1995, it includes previous achievements that offer context and texture.
"It’s a celebration of the century of filmmaking that started with ‘Hawaiian Love’ and ‘The Shark God’ in 1913," said Rampell, 58, who lives in Los Angeles. "It’s movie history. It’s a guidebook. It’s a resource book. But let me add one more thing: It’s an examination and the interpretation of the screen image of Pacific islanders. How they were portrayed on the silver screen."
From the earliest feature films shot in the islands, Hawaii was a romanticized location for mainland moviegoers. Hawaii is the most filmed place in Polynesia, according to the authors.
"People learned about Hawaii through the power of the images they saw on movie screens, not only in the United States but all over the world," Reyes said. "Television, too. It brought Hawaii into your home. The images, the sites, the sounds, the music, the people — those images stayed with you."
Hawaii was always a visual treat, and the book’s 415 photographs are testimony to that.Only when you see them all together do you realize how often movie and TV cameras have been aimed at the island landscape.
(Payne will no doubt be happy to learn the book contains 15 photographs connected to "The Descendants" along with a six-page spread on the film.)
Four basic genres have been shot in Hawaii, according to Reyes, and each is represented throughout the book: South Seas cinema, World War II films, films in which Hawaii plays itself, and films in which Hawaii serves as another locale.
The book opens with a chapter on South Seas cinema — a time-worn genre of friendly natives in a utopian paradise who face an unsettling threat, from Western values to crime. The chapter serves as a Hawaii film primer because almost half of the South Seas genre movies have been set or made in Hawaii.
The book also has chapters called "Crime Fighters in Paradise," "Made in Paradise" and one that deals with iconic locations.
The writers didn’t include everything. Somehow they missed Paul Thomas Anderson’s "The Master," the 2012 film that shot scenes on Oahu’s North Shore, and they rejected the 2004 NBC show "Hawaii" because it was canceled before it could leave any lasting mark, Reyes said.
"We tried to appeal to different types of people as opposed to strictly movie fans," said Reyes, a 59-year-old author, archivist and publicist who lives in Pasadena, Calif. "We have movies and we have TV and we have locations. We have the history of film in Hawaii."
AND that’s a wrap …
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Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.
