Hello again from a slightly spooked Yarborough…

We've moved out of Modrany Studios for a couple of days on location. Now I've been on some strange sets in my time, but I think this one is one of the most memorable. We're working with the people from Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS and that's all the detail I want to give on that for the moment. After all, why should I be the only one stirred by this scene? I want you to have your own reaction to it when you see the film.

You might have heard of Body Worlds, the anatomical exhibition of real human bodies. As they've toured over 35 cities around the world and had about 20 million visitors to their exhibitions, the chances are you will have come across something about them. German anatomist, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, is the inventor of Plastination, a groundbreaking method of halting decomposition of the body after death and preserving it for anatomical study and display.

There's been a lot written about this so I was interested to meet Dr von Hagens in, so to speak, the flesh. But instead of his work, we're talking about his childhood and his knowledge of James Bond. He grew up in East Germany and at the age of 23, in 1969, was arrested trying to cross the border from the Czech Republic into Austria to escape the Communist regime. A prison sentence followed.

One of his enduring memories from growing up in a Communist society was watching James Bond films. Bizarrely, they showed the Bond films in Eastern Europe despite the fact 007 spent much of the Sixties wrestling and overthrowing Communist plots. So for Dr. von Hagens, actually standing on a Bond set is a particularly moving experience.

"Being here, I still have a problem believing it's real because I'm reminded of my time in East Germany where I spent two years in prison. I saw GOLDFINGER as a youngster, one of the first James Bond films. And now working with James Bond it's unbelievable."

There's a further wrinkle for von Hagens in that the set is actually at the Vitkov Monument, a former shrine to the Czechoslovak regime that was responsible for his arrest in 1969.

As David Minkowski, a local co-producer on the film, explains, it's an appropriate location for our Body Worlds' shoot.

"It was built in the Twenties, originally as a monument to the fallen soldiers of World War I but then it underwent a transformation when the country went communist after World War II and when the first Czech communist president died, they put him here and had his body on display sort of a Lenin's tomb of Czechoslovakia at the time. So historically, this place has always been a little strange for the locals because of its association. Now it's run by a national museum but it has very interesting history."

And our filming at this location has certainly added another twist to that interesting history.

Until next time
YARBOROUGH