was not working so he decided to recast. Several actors auditioned, including Bob Balaban and Wallace Shawn, when Weir saw a photo of Linda Hunt. He asked for her to audition and decided to cast her. Weir said on casting Hunt, "I never would have started out looking for a woman, But from the moment I saw her test, I knew she was appropriate." To accomplish the role during production, Hunt shortened "her hair and dye[d] it black[,] wore padding around her waist, shaved her eyebrows, and carried something in her shirt pocket." In her 1986 interview with Bomb magazine, Hunt agreed with the interviewer's remarks that Billy Kwan "is supra-personal [with] layers of sexual ambiguity[.]" Filming Although originally set to be filmed in Jakarta, permission to film in Indonesia was denied, so the bulk of the film was shot in the Philippines, in Manila's Quiapo district and the Banaue Rice Terraces. Weir said, "All slums look alike, after all." Death threats against Weir and Gibson from Muslims who believed the film would be anti-Islam forced the production to move to Australia. The crew moved to Sydney in early April 1982 during its fifth week of the six-week Philippine shoot with only a few small scenes remaining. Filming in Australia was for another six weeks. Gibson downplayed the death threats, saying, "It wasn't really that bad. We got a lot of death threats to be sure, but I just assumed that when there are so many, it must mean nothing is really going to happen. I mean, if they meant to kill us, why send a note?" Gibson described his character Guy, saying, "He's not a silver-tongued devil. He's kind of immature and he has some rough edges and I guess you could say the same for me." Music "L'Enfant", a track from Vangelis' 1979 album Opera sauvage, was featured in the film. Release The Year of Living Dangerously opened in Australia on 16 December 1982 at Sydney’s Pitt Centre. The film was entered into the 1983 Cannes Film Festival attended by Weir, Gibson and Weaver to promote it, where it was well received by audiences and critics. Gibson attended the festival during a break from filming The Bounty in London. Home media The film was released for sale or rental in Australia on VHS in 1984 and on LaserDisc in 1985 with a runtime of 117-minute cut. Warner Bros.