all." "I'm a story teller," said Milius. "I'm a modern technology version of the Borneo tribal storyteller who squats near the fire in the long house and tells his tale. We're all telling the same tale. It's about the struggle of people to survive and, more important, to be free. It's about the necessity of making moral choices - and their costs. But it seems more real when you see where it really happened - and the people it really happened to. It's set in the 1940s and many people lost their freedom in the 1940s and were taking action and having adventures to get it back. Human beings like to hear stories about how they've survived and stayed free." Filming Filming started 24 August 1987. The film was shot on location in Borneo (Bau District, Sarawak, Malaysia). Nolte arrived in Borneo a month before filming began. "We could have shot this film in the Philippines for a lot less money", he says. "But this is where it happened. These are the real people. These are real Iban. This is the land of Rajah Brooke. You know, the older I get, the more I feel I am like a Viking." "This is a tough film, but you kind of like the toughness of it here", said Milius on location. "This is an adventure. If you're a romantic like me, you think of yourself out building the Panama Canal, or being the Rajah Brooke. You can't think of that if you're in a rainstorm in the San Fernando Valley." Milius' then-girlfriend played Haver's fiancée. Editing Post-production was to be done in England but the falling US dollar meant that it was done in Los Angeles. According to Milius, the film was his best movie but it was "completely cut to pieces" by executives at the studio. In February 1989 he said, "Orion isn't behind it. They don't think it is going to be big at the box office. You put all the sweat and blood you can into it, and the outcome is whatever happens." Milius would have liked to have been able to exceed the two-hour running time limit by 10 minutes, and preferred his silent action sequences accompanied by Basil Poledouris music over the release print's realistic, percussive sound effects. "The music was played down," he said. "It was a beautiful score. The producers' attitude is: `We paid for