".......May I start by saying a pox on those who do not love the cast....The young cast are frighteningly talented" Thank You! Yes, the cast was talented in a non-professional way and that is perhaps what made the film work. But the real story of how the film was made is this: Off set was very much like on set. We lived in an abandoned pineapple warehouse and all called each other by our movie names. There was a split in the cast - sort of one "gang" against another - although in the real life one Jack and Ralph were on the same side (the leader of the other gang being one of the other choir boys). The gangs would make "war" on each other with Jack and Ralph's bunch headquartered out in the cane fields while the other bunch had a metal scaffold "fort" near the warehouse. In the beginning the cast was more of less evenly split but in the end I found I was on the "losing" side since we were down to only two people! So, filming was not all that difficult for the kids and much of it was simply letting us go at it. For instance the hut building scene was turned into a contest of who could build the best hut with a watermelon being the prize. That the cameras were going was only a secondary concern for the kids. Anyways, it was fun and make for some great childhood memories. Kent Fletcher (Percival), Corvallis OR USA
