“The Bonsoir Diaries” by Kumar de Silva is a cocktail of chapters, bursting at their seams with pithy asides, a trail of faux pas, and tit-bits from behind the scenes, marinated with anecdotes and drizzled with nostalgia, revealing everything you never saw on your favourite television show…from the ‘80s through the ‘90s into 2000
[caption id="attachment_139700" align="alignright" width="212"]
Swarna Mallawarachchi[/caption]
Come May each year, the world’s cine glitterati and paparazzi converge on the French Riviera in a week-long extravaganza, as the Cannes International Film Festival pays its annual homage to the 7th art.
And as has been happening at the water’s edge around this time each year, for the past few decades, hopeful starlets bare their bosoms in that tortuous quest to be “discovered”.
A few Sri Lankans have also made it to Cannes both in and out of competition. The first was maestro Dr. Lester James Peries. Years later were Vimukthi Jayasundera, Asoka Handagama, Sanjeewa Pushpakumara, Nilendra Deshapriya, etc.
The Cannes Film Festival always took top billing on Bonsoir every year. With live reporting and the internet unheard of in the early years of Bonsoir, we had to rely on post-event recorded material from the French Foreign Ministry.
One year we heard that our very own award-winning actress Swarna Mallawarachchi was going to Cannes. This was great news! A quick call and I remember telling her to record as much footage as possible with her little video camera, and to “please get steady telecast-able images”.
So while Swarna flew off to Cannes and dazzled the French Riviera with her inimitable Sri Lankan charm and Asian mystique, Yasmin Rajapakse and I got to work and researched that year’s Festival.
We hit upon a make-believe plan and instantly set to work. Yes, the water-front terrace of the Mt. Lavinia Hotel looks much like a water-front hotel on the Côte d’Azur with its white-washed cement balustrades, its palm trees, the sun, the sand and the sea in the distance, the lounge chaises for sunbathing, and the sun umbrellas. Perfect +++.
We connived with Mt. Lavinia Hotel’s then-Public Relations Manager, the charming Oshadie de Silva, and planned our special programme, “Bonsoir goes to Cannes with Swarna Mallawarachchi”.
Swarna returned from Cannes with little “cassettes” full of good steady footage. Yasmin and I dressed up à la Cannes and had a rendez-vous with Swarna on the terrace of Mt. Lavinia Hotel. We said: “Good Evening chers amis and welcome to Bonsoir here on the French Riviera at the Cannes Film Festival, with Sri Lanka’s very own Swarna Mallawarachchi.”
We interviewed her and s-p-l-i-c-e-d the interview with real footage of Swarna at Cannes! She played her role to perfection, and even wore one of the same outfits she wore to Cannes, to lend credibility to our interviews.
Bonsoir’s viewers saw her walking into a Cannes Hotel Coffee Shop for breakfast and then chatting to us on the terrace outside. She took a break from the interview, hailed a French limo-taxi, and went sightseeing around Cannes. They saw her tripping the light fantastic in a Cannes nightclub.
And most importantly they saw her ascend the red-carpeted stairs to the Festival screenings… pausing and posing and smiling for the battery of photographers. And in between all this, Swarna was really chatting to us!
We got superb feedback on this programme. Viewers actually believed that Yasmin and I went to Cannes for the interviews. I wished we did BUT …. Bonsoir NEVER went to Cannes with Swarna M. It was intricate planning, a near-perfect and look-alike location, Chinthananda Abeysekera’s careful camera angles, and skillful editing which made it happen – at least on the television screen.
PS 01 - I still thank Oshadie de Silva for helping us shoo away the blasted Sri Lankan crows and keep Mt. Lavinia Hotel’s Sri Lankan stewards away from camera view, lest they gave the show away. Merci Oshie!
Swarna Mallawarachchi[/caption]
Come May each year, the world’s cine glitterati and paparazzi converge on the French Riviera in a week-long extravaganza, as the Cannes International Film Festival pays its annual homage to the 7th art.
And as has been happening at the water’s edge around this time each year, for the past few decades, hopeful starlets bare their bosoms in that tortuous quest to be “discovered”.
A few Sri Lankans have also made it to Cannes both in and out of competition. The first was maestro Dr. Lester James Peries. Years later were Vimukthi Jayasundera, Asoka Handagama, Sanjeewa Pushpakumara, Nilendra Deshapriya, etc.
The Cannes Film Festival always took top billing on Bonsoir every year. With live reporting and the internet unheard of in the early years of Bonsoir, we had to rely on post-event recorded material from the French Foreign Ministry.
One year we heard that our very own award-winning actress Swarna Mallawarachchi was going to Cannes. This was great news! A quick call and I remember telling her to record as much footage as possible with her little video camera, and to “please get steady telecast-able images”.
So while Swarna flew off to Cannes and dazzled the French Riviera with her inimitable Sri Lankan charm and Asian mystique, Yasmin Rajapakse and I got to work and researched that year’s Festival.
We hit upon a make-believe plan and instantly set to work. Yes, the water-front terrace of the Mt. Lavinia Hotel looks much like a water-front hotel on the Côte d’Azur with its white-washed cement balustrades, its palm trees, the sun, the sand and the sea in the distance, the lounge chaises for sunbathing, and the sun umbrellas. Perfect +++.
We connived with Mt. Lavinia Hotel’s then-Public Relations Manager, the charming Oshadie de Silva, and planned our special programme, “Bonsoir goes to Cannes with Swarna Mallawarachchi”.
Swarna returned from Cannes with little “cassettes” full of good steady footage. Yasmin and I dressed up à la Cannes and had a rendez-vous with Swarna on the terrace of Mt. Lavinia Hotel. We said: “Good Evening chers amis and welcome to Bonsoir here on the French Riviera at the Cannes Film Festival, with Sri Lanka’s very own Swarna Mallawarachchi.”
We interviewed her and s-p-l-i-c-e-d the interview with real footage of Swarna at Cannes! She played her role to perfection, and even wore one of the same outfits she wore to Cannes, to lend credibility to our interviews.
Bonsoir’s viewers saw her walking into a Cannes Hotel Coffee Shop for breakfast and then chatting to us on the terrace outside. She took a break from the interview, hailed a French limo-taxi, and went sightseeing around Cannes. They saw her tripping the light fantastic in a Cannes nightclub.
And most importantly they saw her ascend the red-carpeted stairs to the Festival screenings… pausing and posing and smiling for the battery of photographers. And in between all this, Swarna was really chatting to us!
We got superb feedback on this programme. Viewers actually believed that Yasmin and I went to Cannes for the interviews. I wished we did BUT …. Bonsoir NEVER went to Cannes with Swarna M. It was intricate planning, a near-perfect and look-alike location, Chinthananda Abeysekera’s careful camera angles, and skillful editing which made it happen – at least on the television screen.
PS 01 - I still thank Oshadie de Silva for helping us shoo away the blasted Sri Lankan crows and keep Mt. Lavinia Hotel’s Sri Lankan stewards away from camera view, lest they gave the show away. Merci Oshie!