Nate and Hayes - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Nate and Hayes or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Nate and Hayes

[jesse]

The veteran British director, J. Lee Thompson, was the producers' original choice to shoot this film. However Thompson was already busy working on a Charles Bronson picture in Los Angeles so he recommended Ferdinand Fairfax to them. Although Fairfax had only directed for television and in educational films, he had worked with Thompson as an assistant director several years before, had shown an aptitude for directing action scenes, working fast and not going over budget. He had also been nominated for a BAFTA not long before. Thompson would get to direct his own Victorian set action/adventure film King Solomon's Mines (1985) just two year later at the age of 70.

[carl]

In retrospect this film is often thought of as an Indiana Jones derivative, however two notable scenes from this film (the rope bridge scene and the attempted female sacrifice scene over a huge fire) would also appear in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). As this film was in it's final post production stages by the time the Indiana Jones started filming, and as both films were released by Paramount Pictures this seems like quite a coincidence.

[kenzi]

The term "blackbirders", used in the movie, is a nineteenth century alternate expression for a form of slave-trading, where people were recruited for laboring through trickery and kidnapping, the practice was common in the South Seas, where this movie was set, and filmed.

[kyle]

In the 1970 biography "Captain Bully Hayes: blackbirder and bigamist", Frank Clune stated that the real William Henry Hayes was often described as a "rogue, villain, cheat, swindler, barrator, buccaneer, bilker, bigamist, freebooter, polygamist, seducer, murderer, pirate, slave trader, robber, rapist, hooligan, and bully", but was "never convicted in any civil court of law for any serious criminal offense."

[lonnie]

The Captain William Henry Hayes' nickname of "Bully", the name used for the Tommy Lee Jones character in this film, has two origins that have been put forward. The first is that it is derived from the Samoan language's "Bulli" which translates as evasive or elusive. The second, and more likely, is that it is a reflection of his bullying personality and character, where Hayes intimidated people including his crew, given his reputation of notoriety.

[claude]

Released onto VHS and Betamax home rental markets in April 1984.

[francisco]

One of numerous pirate movies made between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s which were flops at the box-office. The films include Pirates (1987), Yellowbeard (1983), Swashbuckler (1976), Savage Islands (1983), The Pirate Movie (1982), and Cutthroat Island (1995).

[aaron]

The name of Bully Hayes' scow vessel was the "Rona", while the name of Ben Pease's boat was the "Leonora".

[cameron]

Sets constructed for this movie included an entire Fijian native village, a full Samoan business port of the late 1800s, the transformation of a fishing vessel into a sinister steam-powered German gunboat, rope bridges across dangerous ravines, as well as vicious and lethal sacrificial set-ups.

[tammy]

This picture was part of a cycle of films in the Indiana Jones mold which were made after the box-office success of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Others included Sky Pirates (1986), King Solomon's Mines (1985), Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986), River of Death (1989), and High Road to China (1983).

[jesus]

The Bully Hayes character has also appeared in one other movie, His Majesty O'Keefe (1954) where Charles Horvath played him. That picture's exteriors were also shot in the same South Pacific region.

[beth]

Captain Bully Hayes was, in real-life, a ship Captain called William Henry ("Bully") Hayes, who sailed in the South Pacific Seas during the mid nineteenth century, until he was murdered in 1877.

[jesse]

In real-life, Captain William Henry Hayes (a.k.a. "Bully" Hayes) was born around 1827-1829, and lived until 1877 when he was aged around forty-eight to fifty. Hayes has inaccurately been described by some writers as "the last of the Buccaneers".

[alyssa]

According to the book "New Zealand Film 1912-1996", this picture "was financed by New Zealand investors taking advantage of tax loopholes. It was on-sold to Paramount Pictures, who released it worldwide. It was directed by an Englishman, produced by New Zealanders, and cast in Los Angeles, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. Post-production was done in London."

[linda]

Whilst it is true that this film was not a box office success, it may be unfair to blame the public completely for it. Paramount studios had agreed to bankroll this medium budget project, which was being filmed thousands of miles away in New Zealand. When the studio were presented with the final cut of it in the summer of 1983 they were concerned at some of the stylistic similarities with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) (which had proven to be a huge hit for Paramount two years previously). During the summer of 1983 Steven Spielberg was already in pre-production with the Raiders sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) with a view to it being Paramount's tent-pole release for the summer of 1984. Not wanting to have two old fashioned swashbuckling adventure films released within a year of each other for fear of effecting the advertising, publicity and box office potential of the Spielberg film (and remember Harrison Ford was a hugely popular star by this point whereas Tommy Lee Jones was practically unknown), Paramount Pictures decided to cut their losses and give this film only a small, relatively publicity free release, to meet contractual obligations. It was released in the fall of 1983 where it would go unnoticed, sandwiched between the likes of James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983) and the Clint Eastwood thriller Sudden Impact (1983). The Indiana Jones film was subsequently released just over half a year later where it was, unsurprisingly, a huge hit, earning back more than ten times its budget.