Toilet on Set – And Other Cross-Cultural Nightmares There are many things you expect to deal with when working as a location scout and manager on a Hollywood-level production shooting abroad—language barriers, transportation logistics, weather surprises, weird local permits. But nothing, I repeat nothing, could’ve prepared me for the Great Swedish Outhouse Incident™. I was hired on the American production of The Postcard Killings, a dark, gritty thriller based on a novel by James Patterson and Liza Marklund. The plot? A New York detective, Jacob Kanon (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan), goes full Liam Neeson after his daughter and son-in-law are brutally murdered on their honeymoon. More couples start showing up dead across Europe, all arranged in weird, artsy poses and foreshadowed by ominous postcards. It’s grim, it’s moody, it’s got serious crime in Europe vibes. Now, one of those murder scenes was supposed to take place on a remote island in the Stockholm archipelago. If you’ve never heard of it, imagine a picturesque IKEA catalog exploded into 30,000 islands. My job? Find the perfect one. No pressure. After what felt like weeks of bouncing between boats, GPS coordinates, and seagulls with attitudes, I finally found it: a tiny, lonely island, just 150 meters across. One cabin, a couple of weathered sheds, and—here’s where the plot thickens—an outhouse. A real, old-school, don’t-breathe-through-your-nose, “hole in a bench” situation. Rustic charm, right? I immediately flagged this with the American producer—a formidable woman who looked like she could crush a lighting rig with her bare hands. I gently suggested we bring in a porta-potty boat. Her response? “Didn’t you say the island already has a toilet?” Me: “Well… it’s more of a, uh, Scandinavian open-air cultural experience.” Her: “We’re not spending money on a toilet boat.” End of discussion. Fast forward to shoot day. The crew arrives, star power and all. Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s hair is doing that perfect disheveled thing, the sky is cooperating, and everything’s going according to plan. For the first 30 minutes. Then one of the American crew members pulls me aside and whispers, “Hey, where’s the restroom?” I point toward the lonely little shack behind the bushes. “That’s it. There’s a latch on the inside. It’s… cozy.” Three minutes later, he comes back looking like he’s seen the ghost of Ingmar Bergman. “That thing is terrifying,” he says. “Somebody already used it. It reeks. There’s no flush. No sink. I think I got… something… on my shoes.” From that moment on, the outhouse was officially cursed. Nobody went near it. Word spread faster than a Netflix spoiler, and suddenly I had an entire Hollywood crew refusing to poop unless it was on solid, plumbing-equipped mainland. So what did we do? We improvised. Every hour, we stopped filming, loaded people onto boats, and shipped them back to shore just to use a bathroom. That cute little “authentic Swedish island vibe” cost us over three hours of lost production time and roughly half the crew’s will to live. Next time I’m scouting locations for an American crew? I’m either demanding a yacht with marble toilets, or I’m burning the outhouse in advance and blaming a wild animal. Skunk, raccoon, Midsommar cult—I don’t care. Never again.

The Iconic Chess Game with Death: Behind the Scenes of The Seventh Seal Few scenes in the history of cinema are as haunting, poetic, and visually enduring as the moment when a medieval knight plays chess with Death on a windswept Swedish shore. Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) captured not just a story, but an era, an existential mood, and a moment of artistic audacity. Today, we look back with humility and respect on how these legendary scenes were made — and how a few tourists may have helped shape cinematic history. A Shoreline That Echoes Mortality When Bergman began preparing The Seventh Seal, he knew he needed a landscape that could speak for the inner world of a man wrestling with God, silence, and the finality of death. That place was found on the rugged coast of Hovs Hallar in southern Sweden. Facing the vast expanse of the Kattegat Sea, the cliffs and boulders of Hovs Hallar became the perfect setting for the now-iconic chess match between knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) and Death (Bengt Ekerot). According to historical production notes, Bergman had initially considered shooting on Öland, but chose Hovs Hallar for its dramatic western sunset and bleak, elemental terrain. Cinematographer Gunnar Fischer remembered carrying heavy equipment down steep, slippery rocks to the beach — a technically difficult but artistically vital decision. “It was as if nature itself agreed to participate,” Fischer later said. Two Suns, One Death Interestingly, the chess scene was the first to be shot, on July 2, 1956. Though it was supposed to take place at dawn, Bergman opted for evening light. Fischer used backlighting to silhouette the figures, creating a spiritual visual aura. When asked why the sky seemed to feature two suns, Fischer famously replied: “If the audience can accept that Death plays chess, they can accept two suns.” That kind of bold, poetic logic lies at the heart of Bergman’s genius. The Final Scene: A Dance That Was Never Planned The now-famous “Dance of Death” — where the knight, Death, and a line of souls walk silhouetted along the ridge — wasn’t part of the original shooting plan. Toward the end of filming, one evening in August 1956, the crew was packing up when Bergman spotted a peculiar cloud formation above the sea. Spontaneously, he ordered the camera to be unpacked again. But many actors had already left for the day. So, with little time, Bergman asked remaining crew members and a few unsuspecting tourists to take the place of missing cast. They were told to hold hands and follow Death in a line across the hilltop. With only minutes of usable light left, the sequence was filmed — forever becoming one of the most unforgettable final shots in world cinema. A Dance That Belongs to All of Us There’s something deeply moving about how this final image — representing humanity’s dance toward death — was partially crafted by chance, nature, and ordinary people. It reminds us that great art doesn’t always come from precise planning. Sometimes, it arrives uninvited, like a cloud on the horizon. References Bergman, Ingmar. Images: My Life in Film. Arcade Publishing, 1990. Interviews with Gunnar Fischer, cinematographer Ingmar Bergman Foundation archives (ingmarbergman.se) Swedish Film Institute documentation Written by Rickard Molin, location manager. IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0596614/?ref_=fn_all_nme_1