 Pirates of the Caribbean Posters
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 Chapter 5: History and Pirate School Despite the fact that “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” is a tale of fantasy, the filmmakers were no less resolute in their quest to learn as much as they could about real pirates. To that end the studio hired respected historian Peter Twist.Twist is particularly interested in and knowledgeable about the years 1500 to 1900. He offered direction and advice, educating every department in production with general historical information: from customs of the day, to details regarding the style of dress and simple aspects of everyday life, to nautical minutiae and military history.
“A pirate is anybody who commits a crime on the high seas, so it's a very broad term,” notes Twist. “Theft, destruction of property, anything like that done on open water qualifies as piracy.” Although the pirate characters aren't based on any real pirates, the movie is “a compilation of a lot of the things that were done by real pirates, and pirate codes, and so it is fact based,” he stresses.
“Piracy has been around since man first put to sea,” asserts Twist. “Julius Caesar was captured by pirates, the histories of all ancient cultures refer to pirates, the Egyptians and so on. They've always existed.
“The original pirates operated as individuals, they were haphazard and undisciplined,” he says. “Over time piracy became more sophisticated. For example, in a war a government would grant `letters of mark' to people who would then go and attack the enemy's shipping. The sailors and the government would basically split the money, and this was quite legal.” A great many ship owners and sailors found this a profitable way to make a living… so profitable that they would continue the practice after the war ended and it was no longer legal. “That's piracy,” says Twist.
The islands in the Caribbean were particularly valuable, he explains. “Aside from the gold and silver, the crops and the goods produced there were highly valued and well worth stealing. So it was a natural place for pirates to operate.”
Twist says that the legendary pirate booty of buried treasure is simply a myth. “Buried treasure was something that virtually never happened. History tells us that typical pirates, after taking a prize, would divide the money and then head into a relatively pirate-friendly port for a drinking and womanizing binge that would make the Romans blush, so there was nothing left to bury.”
The most famous pirates had “rather short and violent careers,” according to Twist, “but they did amass huge amounts of money. It was the allure of the fast buck that made people turn to piracy.”
Despite the live-fast, die-young reputation of pirates, Verbinski sees some moral ambiguity in their trade. “It's illustrated when you look at the core of what piracy is,” says Verbinski. “Whose rules does society live by? Who are the people who created those rules? Are they simply rules created to keep the masses in their place and the ruling class in theirs? And ultimately for the pirate, what has he got to lose?”
The filmmakers made no secret about taking liberties with the time period in which their story takes place. “It's a fantasy, so we weren't married to any specific period,” explains Bruckheimer, “but we did want to be true to the overall feel of the era. We paid particular attention to the years between 1720 and 1750 in an effort to find an approximation.”
“I think it takes place roughly at the tail end of the Golden Age of Piracy, when the Morgans lived,” Verbinski asserts. “Maybe the late 1720s. Barbossa is one of the last dregs of piracy that needs to be removed and consequently he's the most difficult to get rid of. So we come into a world where the myth of pirates is way ahead of the actual characters, which was fun to play with.”
To maximize authenticity in the film, all of the actors playing pirates and some playing British naval officers spent weeks training with stunt coordinator George Marshall Ruge and his sword masters, Robert Anderson and Mark Ivie. Ruge originally met Anderson and Anderson's protégé, Ivie, while working on “The Mask of Zorro.”
“Bob is a legendary sword master,” says Ruge. “When he arrived in Los Angeles, the fight choreography was basically done, but I wanted the actors to have a chance to meet him and work with him just to give them that extra ten percent that only Bob can give because he's been doing it for 50 years. No one else has that expertise or spark. It was well worthwhile. Just the idea that the actors knew Bob's history and the fact that he's the best in the business, a legendary sword master, made them excited about training.”
Any pirate worth his salt has the scars, and oft times a missing body part or two, to prove his prowess with a sword. For the actors portraying pirates, the sessions with the sword masters were crucial, something akin to “Pirate School 101.”
Having starred in “Don Juan DeMarco” several years earlier, Johnny Depp had already received some training in the art of fencing. “I remembered the fencing I'd done as a total body workout,” recalls Depp. “It's a beautiful sport, very balletic and precise. On this film, the sword work, putting the `umph' into the attack, was much more involved. It was a lot more work and more moves to learn. Some of the fights felt like they lasted ten minutes. It was all about the choreography in those scenes, the words came later.”
As luck would have it, Orlando Bloom had already spent time with both Ruge and Anderson on “Lord of the Rings.” “It was great to work with Bob again,” says Bloom. “I'd done some fencing when I was in drama school in London, but working with someone as proficient as Bob is quite a different matter. I mean, this is the guy who trained Errol Flynn!
“I watched `The Master of Ballantrae,' where he doubled Errol,” Bloom continues. “It was awesome. What's so great about Bob is that he knows character; he understands the necessity of getting a fight to look slick and clean without losing the sense of character.”
“Bob understood acting with the sword,” agrees Geoffrey Rush, who primarily trained with a cutlass. “He said, `Just because it gets faster doesn't mean it's better.' The beats in between and the games that you play eyeball to eyeball are just as important as fast, dazzling work. He was great to have around.”
During Anderson's brief time with the actors, Ruge made certain he went over the fundamentals and imparted as much of his technical skill as possible. Learning to be a pirate was not only about imitating the swagger and demeanor of a brigand, it was a serious study in brandishing a boarding cutlass or rapier. “Pirates films are my favorite,” says Anderson. “But modern fencing, like the competitions you see in the Olympic Games, is highly technical and very precise in its actions, unlike screen fighting which is choreographed in such a way that the combatants make the action as large as they can for the camera. But whether it's ancient or modern swordplay, you start by learning to hold the sword properly and to manipulate it for attack and defense. And even though we use aluminum replicas, I'm religious about safety because working with any sword is dangerous.
“Swordplay is a conversation,” he explains. “The opponents talk to each other with their blades. The style of fighting varies with each character. If I can make the sword work talk about what's happening in the script in the same way the dialogue conveys the story, then I feel I've succeeded.”
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 Next: Production Begins |
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