Sean Flynn was in almost every way larger than life. Tall, handsome and a motorbike-riding war photographer to boot, he was the living breathing incarnation of the movie characters played by his matinee idol father, swashbuckling ladies’ man Errol Flynn. At the end of the 1960s, Flynn The Younger abandoned a floundering movie career and heading to Southeast Asia with his camera to document the Vietnam and Cambodia conflicts. Like many others, he never made it home. Abducted by Khmer Rouge on the Vietnamese border along with fellow photographer Dana Stone, Flynn was murdered.
With Flynn throughout his final months, although not at the time of the abduction, was Tim Page. A green war photographer from London, he became close to Flynn during his four years in Vietnam, before a shrapnel hit to the head put Page out of the action. He returned to Southeast Asia in 1990 to search for the bodies of Flynn and Stone, and for the true story of how they died. Along the way he made a documentary, as any true journalist might. Danger On The Edge Of Town, on at Meta House, follows Page on his quest.
Page takes the search beyond Kampong Cham and into a deserted banana grove where, according to local accounts, the Khmer Rouge beheaded Flynn and Stone with hoes. Although he found no actual bodies, Page told The Sabotage Times: “My gut, my inner sense from talking to the Buddha, says I’ve got Flynn.”
Handsome and a hit with the ladies he may have been, but Flynn was far from a war hero. Stories circulate of him toting guns rather than cameras, driving off into battlefields and getting whacked out on hallucinogens. He freely admitted he “grooved on the danger of war”. Like Flynn, Tim Page is also something of a maverick. Best known for his early work when he was part of the gang of gung-ho combat photographers bringing shocking images of a war gone wrong to Western audiences, Page was gonzo enough (and high enough) to become the inspiration behind Dennis Hopper’s fevered character in Apocalypse Now. After being invalided out of Vietnam he went on to photograph in Sri Lanka and Cuba, among other places. But the fate of Flynn, who was “like a brother” in Page’s eyes, drew him back time and again.
“There are still a number of slightly loose ends,” Page told The Cambodia Daily in 2008, when he again returned to find out more about Flynn’s fate. He’s not joking about the loose ends. Flynn and Stone’s deaths, and to a certain extent their conduct before they died, has come in for heavy scrutiny over the years; even Page’s claim to have uncovered the mystery of what happened has been contested.
In 2010 David Macmillan and Keith Rotheram, an Australian and a Brit, claimed to have found Flynn and Stone’s remains while digging (for what remains rather misty) around in Kampong Cham. The US Embassy claims the bones probably belong to a Southeast Asian; the rookie exhumers say they were working on behalf of Flynn’s sister and Page’s claims are hogwash. Page, predictably, refutes MacMillan and Rotheram’s find.
While Danger On The Edge Of Town might not bring you any closer to actually discovering what happened to Sean Flynn, it is an awesome gonzo journey into man’s heart of darkness and the final days of a tripped-out action hero. And really, why not take a leaf out of Tim Page’s book: why spoil a great story when you can just kick back and let your inner sense from Buddha enjoy the ride?
WHO: Sean Flynn in spirit, Tim Page in the director’s chair
WHAT: Danger On The Edge Of Town screening
WHERE: Meta House, Sothearos Boulevard
WHEN: 4pm August 11
WHY: We’re all just grooving off war, aren’t we, really? No? Oh, OK. Me neither, then.
