No, NO, NO, Lying City

Some background about the video might be necessary. It’s an excerpt from the once banned movie Saint Jack, starring Ben Gazzara and Denholm Elliot, about Singapore in the period of the Vietnam War. The movie was accurate in its portrayal of Singapore as a port city used as an R & R destination by American soldiers then. It also shows a Singapore plagued by triads, pimps and prostitutes. But I guess we did not want to project Singapore as that kind of place as attracting foreign investment was the order of the day and Singapore had to be seen as clean, and safe.
How things have changed. From a banned film by Pete Bogdanovich to one that is being recommended as a must-see today. And promoted by no less than the Singapore Tourism Board.
Younger Singaporean should get a copy of the movie, now available on DVD, to get a better understanding of what Singapore was like in the recent past. Exotic, colourful, vibrant and exciting?

LOL…”the dummy couldn’t tell a tiger from a lion”….

And now hundred years later, we couldn’t tell monkey a from a wise man.

Singapore is called one of the tiger economies of Asia.

Ah. The film itself I thought sucked, although it was nice to see a sort of “travelogue” from the eyes of drunken sex starved expats.

The funniest thing about the film was actually how the film got made. The production company go the green light form the S’pore govt by submitting a bogus script. When the film was made and cut into the version for release, there was egg-on-face everywhere.

The govt banned the film, only to give the film more attention than it deserved from its artistic merit alone.

Hugh Hefner (Playboy Inc) was one of the producers of the film. He must have been laughing. Hey, I would :)

The government got conned.

By foreigners.

Priceless, and classic.