Characters in "The Beach" (Book)
There are about thirty people who live on the beach. Sal is the unelected leader of the beach community who spends her time making sure everything runs smoothly. Jed is much an outsider who does his own thing. Everyone else belongs to one of four work details: fishing, gardening, cooking and carpentry.
The Fishing detail is made up of three groups:
- Gregorio, Richard, Etienne and Francoise
- Moshe and the two Yugoslavian girls
- Three Swedish guys (Karl, Sten and Christo)
The cooking detail is led by Unhygenix. "Kitchen duties didn't appeal at all. Aside from the hellish chore of cooking dinner for thirty people every day, the three cooks all carried a lingering odour of fish innards around with them."
The carpenters are run by Bugs.
The gardening detail is led by Jean. Other members include Keaty...
Bugs (Lars Arentz-Hansen)
"The carpenters were run by Bugs. Bugs was Sal's boyfriend, and he was a carpenter by trade. He'd been responsible for the longhouse and all the huts, and he'd had the idea of tying the branches together to make the canopy ceiling. from the way people treated him, it was obvious that Bugs was much respected. it was partly that everybody relied on the things he made, but it was also because he was Sal's boyfriend." p. 119
"I couldn't make my mind up about bugs. It was weird, because he was exactly the kind of guy that I felt I ought to like, almost out of obligation. He was broader and more muscular than me; as head of the carpentry detail, he had obvious skills; I also suspected he was pretty intelligent. This was harder to gauge because he didn't speak much, but when he did speak it seemed to be things worth saying. But despite all these fine characteristics, there was something about him that left me a little cold." p. 130
"Daffy had heard Cassie asking for a job in a Patpong bar." p.156
Christo (Staffan Kihlbom) - see Swedes, The three
"Sal had been on an eighteen-hour bus ride with Ella. Ella had a portable backgammon set." p.156
Etienne (Guillaume Canet)
"Last night I put him at eighteen or so, but in the daylight he looked older. Twenty or twenty-one. He had a Mediterranean look about him - short dark hair and a slim build. I could see him in a few years' time, a couple of stones heavier, a glass of Ricard in one hand and a boule in the other." p. 18
Francoise (Virginie Ledoyen)
"Her legs were brown and slim, her skirt short. She delicately padded through the cafe. We all watched her...we all saw the way she moved her hips to slide between the tables and the silver bracelets on her wrists. When her eyes glanced around the room we looked away, and when she turned to the street we looked back." p. 13
"Gregorio I warmed to at once. He had a kind face and a soft Latin lisp, and when we were introduced he said, 'I am very pleathed to meet you.'" p. 105
"Gregorio had met Daffy in Sumatra. Gregorio had been beaten up and robbed, and when Daffy found him he was trying to hitch his way to Jakarta so he could contact the Spannish Embassy. Daffy had offered him cash to get to Java. gregorio had been reluctant to accept, because he could see Daffy was short of money himself. Daffy had said 'F..... Java,' and told him about the beach." p.155
"I think 'drug lords' is a bit dramatic. I have a feeling the fields are owned by ex-fisherman from ko Samui, but I could be wrong. They turned up a couple of years ago and pretty much took over that half of the island. We can't go there now." p. 97
"He was young, maybe twenty, with a kick-boxer's build. His chest was bare and etched with muscle, and he wore military trousers - dark-green and baggy, with pouches sewn into the legs. In his hand was a long machete. Slung over his shoulder was an automatic rifle." p.80
"The head gardener was Jean, a farmer's son from south-western France who pronounced his name like he was clearing his throat, and he ran his garden with an iron fist."
"Bugs had worked with Jean, grape-picking in Blenheim, New Zealand." p.156
"He walked out of the trees a few metres away from me. If he hadn't been for his features and his full beard I could hardly have told he was Caucasian. His skin was as dark as an Asian's, although a slightly bronze colour hinted it had once been white. All he had on was a pair of tattered blue shorts and a necklace made of sea shells. With the beard it was hard to tell his age, but I didn't think he was much older than me." p. 85
"The only person who didn't have a clear working detail was Jed. He spent his days alone and was usually the first person to leave in the mornings and the last person to come back...every now and then he would disappear and spend the night somewhere on the island. When he turned up again he usually had fresh grass, obviously taken from the dope fields." p. 119-120
"Jed had just turned up. Jumped from the waterfall, walked into the camp with a canvas overnight bag and a soaking wet bushel of grass under his arm." p.156
Karl (Jukka Hiltunen) - see Swedes, The Three
"One face stood out. It belonged to a black guy sitting alone, his back against a storeroom hut. He looked around twenty, he had a shaved head, and his eyes were fixed intently on a small grey box in his hands - the Nintendo Gameboy I'd spotted earlier." p. 109
"Keaty was on the gardening detail and he used to complain about it all the time. He had to work over half an hour from the beach, up by the waterfall." p. 119
Keaty was on the beach for just over two years: "I met Sal in Chiang Rai and we got friendly. Hiked around a bit. Then she told me about this place and took me along." p.127
"Moshe was a tall Israeli with an ear-splitting laugh. He used it in the same way as a madman uses a gun, spraying it around with bewildering randomness." p.105
"Moshe had caught a Manilan pickpocket trying to razor Daffy's backpack." p.156
Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio)
"I feel affectionate towards Richard, but i also feel in certain ways he's stupid and vain. To me, richard was the kind of guy you would often meet travelling, and you would get fed up pretty quick and not want to travel with." Alex Garland talking to Ron Gluckman.
Sal (Tilda Swinton)
"A Buddha sat cross-legged at the foot of my bed, palms resting flat on ochre knees. An unusual Buddha, female, with a US accent, heavy breasts clearly outlined through a saffron T-shirt, and long hair tied back from her perfectly round face. Around her neck was a necklace of sea shells." p. 93
"If there was a leader, it was Sal. When she talked, people listened. She spent her days wandering around the lagoon, checking on the different work details and making sure things were running smoothly." p. 119
Sammy (Jerry Swindall)
"They were Harvard students. Sammy was studying law, Zepth was studying Afro-American literature. Their surf act was a reaction to the condescending Europeans they kept meeting in Asia." p. 45
Sten (Magnus Lindgren) - see Swedes, The Three
Karl (Jukka Hiltunen); Sten (Magnus Lindgren); and Christo (Staffan Kihlbom).
"Like Jed, the Swedes had arrived at the beach uninvited, and although they'd probably found it easier to get accepted, having arrived second, it partly explained why they chose to fish outside the lagoon. They'd never been involved in beach life as everyone else. They were around but kept mainly to themselves, all sharing a single tent and often eating away from the crowd. The only times I ever saw them socially participating was on Sundays. They were good footballers and everyone wanted them for their team. If they had found untegration difficult, it can't have helped that only one of them, Sten could speak fluent English. Christo could just about muddle along but Karl was hopeless. As far as I knew, his vocabularly was limited to a few words based around fishing, like 'fish' and 'spear', a couple of pleasantries. He would greet me with an uncertain, 'huloo Ruchard,' and would bid me good morning even if hew was just about to go to bed." p. 275
"I suppose their epitaph must be this: If you've ever sat down with an old school friend and tried to remember all the kids that used to be in your class, the Swedes were the kids you remembered last." p. 276
Unhygenix (Daniel Caltagirone)
"The head cook, whose nickname was unhygenix, had his own private store of soap in his tent. He seemed to get through a bar a week, but it didn't do any good." p. 119
"Unhygenix had cooked Bugs a six-course meal on a houseboat in Srinagar, starting with hot coconut soup and ending with a mango split." p. 156
"Two haughty Yugoslavian girls whose names I could never pronounce and certainly never spell, and who made a big deal about being from Sarajevo." p. 105
Zepth (Peter Youngblood Hills)
"They were Harvard students. Sammy was studying law, Zepth was studying Afro-American literature. Their surf act was a reaction to the condescending Europeans they kept meeting in Asia." p. 45
Notes on characters from interviews:
Alex Garland was asked about the casting and Leo as Richard: "I've heard a lot of criticism of him, because he's an American and in the book, Richard is British. Genuinely, the only thing that I felt when I wrote about the characters of the book, I wanted to get a spread of nationalities, that was the idea. That's how it is when you meet people when you are travelling. I think you can't really differentiate amongst them beyond their experience, where they have been and what they have done. In the book, Richard was British and Sal was American. In the movie, richard is American and sal is British. To me, it really doesn't matter. To be honest, the person I see as Richard is me, aged 17-18."
Interview by Ron Gluckman
"In the script, we naturally amalgamted characters, eliminated events, and condensed."
Andrew Macdonald, producer, talking to Ron Gluckman.
As in most adaptations, characters have been combined, events telescoped. "The first time I read the script it was partly flattering, partly unsettling," admits Garland, the novel's 28-year-old author. Among the major changes: a reduction in gruesome violence and the addition of love scenes, which allow DiCaprio to get passionate with French actress Virginie Ledoyen. "I'm slightly worried if I can see it with my mother or not," says Garland. "There's certainly no way I'll sit next to her."
Screenwriter John Hodge, who has collaborated on all Boyle's movies, felt the picture needed sex to succeed, especially since DiCaprio's character Richard develops a crush on a fellow traveler's girlfriend. "My friends all read the book and said, 'He's got to shag the French girl,'" Hodge notes. "Alex set up a perfect triangle but didn't follow through--it's probably more realistic because guys usually don't get to shag the French girl. Life isn't like that. But movies are. Novels are subtle, screenplays blunt."
Explaining why he downplayed the orgy of mayhem in the book, he paraphrases Hitchcock: "The anticipation of violence is much more effective than actual violence." Not that the movie lacks shock value. A bad trip on magic mushrooms, shark attacks, brutal shootings and witnessing a suicide are just a few of the horrors DiCaprio's character experiences.
Time Magazine (1 March 1999)
DiCaprio wasn't the first choice for the role. In the novel, Richard is a Brit, and Boyle had planned to cast Ewan McGregor, the young Scottish actor who appeared in all three of his earlier films (and who stars as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the upcoming Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace). However, DiCaprio had expressed strong interest in working with Boyle ever since they crossed paths at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996. DiCaprio had recently made The Basketball Diaries, a dark indie film about heroin addicts, while Boyle was there with Trainspotting, a light indie film about heroin addicts. Back then DiCaprio lobbied Boyle's team for a shot at a future film; two years later, in the wake of Titanic, the Brits were chasing him down to take the part of Richard.
Time Magazine (1 March 1999)
