The last of the fabulous sets built on Disney’s Stage 2 for the Pirates trilogy was Shipwreck Cove, where the raucous and divisive Brethren Court of pirate lords meets to make a last plan of action against the onslaughts of Beckett and the East India Trading Company armada. “Shipwreck Cove was conceived by Gore as kind of a retirement home for old pirates, comprised of the wrecked hulls of various ships hidden in a volcano,” notes Heinrichs.“The Brethren Court meet in one of those hulls, and outside of the structure we’ve extended the set with a 300-foot-long painted backing which has been beautifully designed and painted in the good, old-fashioned Hollywood tradition.”
The Brethren Court does have some foundation in history, note the screenwriters. “There was a loose confederation of pirates called the Brethren of the Coast,” says Ted Elliott. “And it’s just such a fun idea to have a whole bunch of pirates sitting around trying to come to decisions. Captain Sao Feng has a line of dialogue in which he says that pirates are either captain or crew, and nine captains charting a course is eight captains too many. We also wanted to get more international in flavor, so the pirate lords are from all over the world.”
In fact, although Elliott and Rossio cheerfully admit that they often play (“play” being the operative word) fast and loose with history, there are truths to be found amidst the fun. In fact, most of the Pirate Lords are based on historical buccaneers, and although they didn’t necessarily occupy the same chronological era depicted in “At World’s End,” Captain Chevalle, Ammand the Corsair, Gentleman Jocard, Mistress Ching, Captain Villanueva and Sri Subhajee all made their mark on the chronicles of high seas skullduggery.
On Heinrichs’ evocative set, rickety boardwalks connect one rotting old hull to another, with the Brethren Court meeting room gorgeously illuminated by some 3500 candles. Figureheads from plundered ships used as decoration are used for target practice by the rowdy pirate lords, pierced by an amusing array of swords, hatchets and daggers. The long wooden table at which the Pirate Lords meet was designed by Heinrichs and Cheryl Carasik, and constructed at a Walt Disney Studios workshop. “We also made a chandelier out of an anchor, which looks like iron but is actually fabricated from foam,” explains Carasik. “Then we took several cases of wax candles and dripped them over the top of the chandelier. We must have used thousands of candles to get this effect!”
The filming of the sequence, which took place over a momentous seven days in mid-September 2006, was pretty raucous itself. The set was crammed with the film’s stars and the wildly colorful array of pirate lords from the seven seas (portrayed by some very distinguished international actors, including Syria’s Ghassan Massoud, who coincidentally portrayed Saladin opposite Orlando Bloom in “Kingdom of Heaven”).
Then there was the matter of who would be chosen as Captain Teague, Keeper of the Code, the Pirata Codex, to which even the most dastardly scalawag must religiously adhere, at the peril of his own body and soul.
But the casting was pre-ordained. For nearly a year, rumors flew hither and yon that it would be none other than Keith Richards, legendary guitarist of the Rolling Stones, and a close mate of Johnny Depp…who very admittedly had modeled some of Captain Jack Sparrow’s style and characteristics on his great and good friend. And the rumors, for a refreshing change, were true.
“The sort of connection I made when first thinking about Captain Jack,” says Depp, “was the idea that pirates were the rock and roll stars of that era. Their myths or legends would arrive months before they would ever make port, much like rock stars.”
“It’s about freedom, baby,” adds Richards. “Open the cage, let the tigers out. Somebody’s gotta do the naughty work. It’s not so much about destroying the establishment. It’s to prevent them from destroying you.”
Richards was understandably somewhat wary at first of accepting the role of Captain Teague. “When I first heard about it, I was thinking, oh my God, this is an Elvis Presley thing. You pop in and sing. But when I saw how it fit into the whole scenario, then it felt quite natural to do it. And they’ve also made me a lovely guitar.”
Strumming that guitar-especially designed and built for him by the legendary instrument maker Danny Farrington at the request of propmaster Kris Peck-and wielding a mean flintlock pistol, Richards took the company, and the days on which he filmed, by hurricane force. “It was kind of a long shot to even think about getting Keith to do this,” says Depp. “The fact that he agreed was above and beyond a dream come true. Experiencing his arrival on set was unbelievable. Every single person on the crew, including people you hadn’t seen in months, suddenly showed up. It was a beautiful, perfect symmetry.”
As for the unique connection between Captains Jack and Teague, Depp notes, “You get the feeling that there was a real tough love relationship there. Teague is one of those pirates who would give you a hug one minute, and blow you away the next. Or maybe he’ll blow you away and then give you a hug. You don’t know what to expect from him.”
“It was really interesting to see the kind of mutual respect that Keith seemed to have for the actors and crew, and that they had for him, his artistry and his long, celebrated career,” notes Jerry Bruckheimer. “I think he had a lot of fun. In fact, he didn’t want to quite leave the set. Usually, when an actor is finished with a scene, they go to their trailer until the next set-up. But Keith was hanging around the set even in between his scenes. I think Keith took his personalized chair when he left as a remembrance of the experience, and I’m sure he took his costume. If he didn’t, I hope he did.”
“Keep to the Code” if an oft-heard slogan in the “Pirates” films, but it’s only in “At World’s End” that the audience actually gets a chance to see the Real Deal…the Pirata Codex, so-named in haughty Latin, a mighty volume of overwhelming size which, in reality, was nothing less than an objet d’art of surpassing craftsmanship.
“The Pirate Code book was something in the making for a very long time,” explains “Dead Man’s Chest” and “At World’s End” property master Kristopher E. Peck, “and we had many people working on it. It had never been done before, and had to be grand and spectacular. I also wanted to put a lot of detail in it, even if it never ended up on film. But I knew that Gore is very detail oriented, and I wanted to give him options to shoot.
“We had some trial and error with Gore, and I finally decided that he wouldn’t see it again for approval until we got it right. I got on the phone with two people from San Diego:Tom Mallory, who’s a writer for one of the city’s newspaper, and Mark Van Stone, who’s an expert in ancient calligraphy and manuscripts. I had both of them get in a car immediately and come up to L.A. and after our meeting we worked until two o’clock in the morning in the production office writing the text and setting it down as quickly as we could. Tom wrote the text based upon what we got from screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, things I’d discovered in my research, storyline points that needed to be factored in. By the time we walked out at two, we basically had the Pirate Code finished.”
Previously, Peck and Van Stone had combed through the manuscript archives of UCLA for inspiration. “We walked into the basement, and there was this beautiful, big library room, low key lighting as if you were going to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, and there was a 40 foot long beautiful wooden table covered with manuscripts. They laid all of these old books out for us to look at, and we studied them microscopically. Mark pointed out little details that I would never have picked up on, like showing that certain parchment were embedded with the follicle hairs of a pig. We spent ten hours there, and walked away with this great archive of researching photos that we wanted to implement. Parchment was scarce back then, so you would see where they would scratch off the ink and write over it, or sew additions on top of the original paper. We tried to put ourselves in the pirate world, wondering what they would be doing, what they would be eating. Maybe there was a parrot on someone’s shoulder, and the sunflower seeds that the bird was eating fell down into the middle of the book, or some ashes from a pipe they were smoking became ingrained into the paper.”
After Peck, Mallory and Van Stone completed their “first draft,” conceptual consultant James Ward Byrkit became involved in the process, drawing illustrations and creating other materials. “Jim came up with some wonderful stuff,” says Peck, “like how to attack a ship, or a castle. We have all kinds of things in the book, including recipes for beer, or where you can find the best brothel in Singapore. Jim helped us lay in the character and texture of the Pirate Code. We have wine stains, blood stains, sunflower seeds, wax stamps and seals, and addendums actually sewn onto the parchment pages.”
The final dimensions of the Pirata Codex were 20 X 28, with the embossed covers an inch bigger, and the “hero” version of the book weighed some 80 pounds and contained a thousand pages of textured parchment. “So we had to make two books,” Peck continues, “because we had these two little old men in the film, sort of like a 90-year-old ZZ Top with beards down to here, playing the pirate librarians, who have to carry it. And since Captain Teague, played by Keith Richards, is the Keeper of the Code, we wanted to give him something easier to work with. So the second version only weighed about ten pounds.”
Next Page – Chapter 10: The Climactic Maelstrom Scene
