THE fantasy finally came to an end on a soggy, rain-soaked afternoon in Kualoa. The cast and crew had been slogging through the mud surrounding the famous "hotel" set at the edge of Kaneohe Bay throughout the morning. Then, around 1 p.m., producer John Flynn appeared. Fantasy fades away
in the Kualoa rain"I walked on to the set and said, thank you very much, they've canceled us," Flynn said. And thus, another Hawaii-based television series bit the dust, or, in this case, the muck.
After six months, "Fantasy Island," the dark recreation of the '70s television show, was sunk. Finis. Kaput. Except, in television, even after the studio chops off your head, you still have to run around for a while. So, after lunch, Malcolm McDowell and guest stars Paulie Shore and Jay Thomas were back in the muck finishing up what Flynn thinks would have been one of "Fantasy's" best episodes. Next week, they'll put the final episode in the can.
Strange business, this television. Canned actors in a canned series still having to tromp around in a soggy banana patch beneath the majestic Koolau Mountains, one of the most beautiful locations in the world you could ever ask to be fired from.
I had to see it. So I zipped out to the country and found the unmarked mud road winding down toward the bay. Sitting in a clearing like some enormous Monopoly piece was the "hotel," as grand and fake as anything ever produced by Hollywood. And there was the famous tower where one of Mr. Roark's minions would ring the bell each week to announce that the seaplane full of fantasy seekers had landed.
I expected to find the cast and crew morose, moping around. It's not every day that a television series gets canceled. (Although, in Hawaii, it seems that way.)
But like the Grinch looking down on Whoville after stealing Christmas, I did not find sad little residents of this makeshift, soon-to-be-dismantled fantasyland weeping in their bottled water. No, everyone seemed, if not happy, then at least content.
MAYBE "relieved" is more like it. The fact is, the show had been sitting in the television equivalent of Dr. Kevorkian's waiting room for the past few weeks and everyone knew it.
"It's been an excruciating process," said Flynn. "Many times they just call you and say you're done. But in this case, for the last week and a half, they've been saying 'tomorrow.' It's been very, very hard, but everybody's been here before."
By "here," he means Tombstone. Jonestown. Cancelville. But ending a television series is just about as complicated as running one. You may be dead, but there's still stuff to do. Set decorator Rick Romer -- the guy responsible for finding every prop from machine guns to mai tai glasses -- already was standing in the mud near the catering truck trying to figure out what to do with a quarter-million dollars worth of props accumulated since the show began filming in July.
Flynn, who already had called his agent in California and told him he was available for work, studied video playback of a scene being shot in a patch of tall, wet grass. The union drivers shuttled actors and crew between the set and trailers, stand-ins stood in, cameras rolled and directors directed.
And I snuck off to fulfill my fantasy. I made my way past the facade of the grand hotel set with its sweeping wooden lanai. I opened the door to the little tower and climbed the ladder two stories up. I climbed through the trap door and shut it. I looked out at the sweep of the bay before me. Then I banged on the famous bell, pointed to the sky and became one of the last people on the set to utter those immortal words: "The plane! Boss! The plane!"
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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