Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (59 page)

Talk to local journalists, sign some stock copies, explain about TJ’s nose, then we are unleashed on the public. The public are unfortunately not unleashed on us, and they come through in a very thin trickle – lots of buck-passing from shop to rep to sales department, but it’s clear that a midday Monday in Norwich is not a peak book-buying time.

On ‘Look East’ the big story of our visit is of course … Terry’s nose. With close-ups and everything. The nasal damage is worth more than any Fegg dummy.

The pleasantest part of the day is a half-hour break when TJ and I saunter round the cathedral. We walk the cloisters talking about the Lollards.

To the ‘Stuart Hall Radio Show’. Stuart Hall is not of this world as I know it. I just can’t work him out. At no point in our talk, or our interview, is
there the slightest evidence that he’s heard, or understood anything we’re saying. He’s not rude, he’s not loud or aggressive, he just doesn’t seem to be quite there. Only when he is talking about himself as a collector and showing us watches or magnifying glasses does he really seem to come alive. Quite curious really.

After breakfast – and confirmation that Reagan has won every state but two
¹¹²
– we begin our day’s work at Radio Aire. I feel rather perky today. Is it because I know it’s the last day? Is it perhaps because the Radio Aire interviewer is very grateful to me for speaking to him during
Private Function
in Bradford, when no-one else in the cast would? But it helps me through the day and I don’t feel as imbecile and facetiously trivial as on previous days.

Time for a run this morning before a busy day of
Private Function
publicity.

The questions are friendly and generally concern the pig, though I’m asked whether or not it was difficult to play a part so obviously suited to Alan Bennett with Alan Bennett present. I’d never really thought of it like that.

On to L’Escargot for dinner with Robert H and Erica.

Robert vehement that I should not let Weidenfeld have my novel. He says that Lord W is trying to sell the company, that its heyday is over, that it’s going to get terribly stung over the Jagger biog and that they are ‘celebrity’ publishers who will publish more because of who you are than what you’ve done. He’s very fierce. And John Curtis is his publisher.

Home after midnight.

As I eat breakfast I hear on the radio of the Lord Mayor’s Procession and, lured by the sun, I suggest that Rachel and I go down to see it. The procession is jolly, but full of floats it’s very hard to cheer – the National Clearing Banks, the Solicitors’ Society, Tate and Lyle Sugar, the Stock Exchange, British Telecom, British Airways. An uneasy mixture of rich modern companies in a curiously eighteenth-century-style procession.

‘Rule Britannia’ precedes the Lord Mayor’s coach. This is pure panto – a baroque gold-leaved extravaganza from which the Lord Mayor leans, beaming and waving as if just about to go into a song.

To cap our morning out we pass by Sir John Soane’s house on our way back. It is open, so I am able to introduce Rachel to this wonderful treasure trove, with so much more atmosphere than a modern museum. The sense of the continuity of the place with its maker suffuses the house quite magically.

A McDonald’s at Warren Street, then home. Make myself a smoked salmon sandwich and, with a glass of Puligny-Montrachet, settle up in my workroom to catch the last of the sunshine.

Don’t respond awfully well at first to the arrival of Julian Hough. He’s clearly on some downward self-destructive curve. He says he finds familiar places very comforting in his present state and claims to have visited Buckingham Palace twice already today. He fairly rapidly drinks two glasses of Puligny-Montrachet ’73, then, with that strange walk of his, arms by his sides hardly moving, he launches off into the outside world again. It’s like seeing someone in great pain and being powerless to help.

Taxi to Wardour Street at nine, for post-synch on
The Dress
. Waiting at the lift in Film House when Phyllis hurries in. She looks rushed and a bit tired. She’s come down from Glasgow on the sleeper.

A concentrated three and a half hours’ work, ending up with re-voicing (and re-noising!) our love scene most unromantically. Kissing with one eye on the screen. Passion to picture.

Eva, Clare D, Phyllis and I have lunch at the Golden Horn – a Turkish establishment with lots of unpronounceable dishes, one of which is
translated as ‘brain salad’.
The Dress
is to be premiered on the last day of the London Film Festival, after Louis Malle’s new film.

Drive down to Camberwell for our first day’s work on
Secrets
¹¹³
with Paul Zimmerman. A long and ugly drive down in clogged traffic and as my feelings for the project itself are equivocal, I’m in rather a negative mood when Paul Z opens the door to me at five past ten.

Nor is there any chance of acclimatisation with Paul. He works from the moment he opens the door with a constant patter of quick Jewish patois. He’s very funny and very sharp, but in the end the remorselessness of the stream of asides, ideas, self-deprecations, is rather like facing an endless stream of ace serves. I’m constantly retrieving balls from the back of the court.

From this frenetic display of words very few constructive ideas appear. I worry that whatever Paul does to
Secrets
he won’t be able to make it English. He acknowledges this and expects that he will ‘sort out the structure … put the whole thing together’, then leave us to Anglicise it.

I leave for Terry’s at ten to nine. The fog lifts by the Thames and sunlight sparkles off St Paul’s dome and the river and from a thousand windows. Ahead South London is still mist-blanketed. The contrast is very beautiful.

On the way down I hear a vintage piece of phone-iniana. Peter Stringfellow, the Sheffield steelworker’s son turned millionaire London club owner, talks some good, homely nonsense but occasionally reveals alarming gaps in the otherwise almost cosmic scale of his knowledge. ‘Can I ask Mr Stringfellow for his views on vivisection?’ A pause, then, boldly and sincerely, ‘Well, I’m not against the operation, but I certainly wouldn’t like it done to me, only to find I meet a girl two weeks later who I fall in love with and want to start a family.’

After what seems like forever, Sarah Ward intervenes and sorts out the misunderstanding. There is much laughter and the questioner (who does not laugh) puts his question again … ‘Mr Stringfellow … what
do
you feel about vivisection?’ There is quite a long pause, then, finally, ‘Well, what is it for a start?’

William 14; we buy him a Toshiba head-set with radio and cassette, plus pens, pencils, a diary and all the stationery stuff he likes. Jolly breakfast.

To lunch at Sheekey’s with John Curtis and Victoria Petrie-Hay, of Weidenfeld, to hear the first publisher’s reaction to my novel. Curtis is, as I’d expected, middle-aged, with a roundish, ruddy face coming to a point at the chin. He looks neat and rather old-fashioned – more like a prosperous farmer than a publisher.

He runs the lunch whilst deferring to Victoria – a younger woman with dark hair and dark-rimmed eyes and a big, defiant face – on all matters of literary criticism. She is neither sycophantic nor tentative. She feels that the first third of the book is one of the best pieces of comic writing she’s come across and is not in doubt that such writing could stand on its own and I need not be defensive or bashful about it. She doesn’t like the Suffolk scenes and gives quite pithy reasons why not – too melodramatic, too many deaths, another change of scene, loss of good early characters, loss of early comic tone. I agree with her.

Having come along to the lunch feeling that I must be strong with myself and hold out for a completely new book (using this one as experience), I am swayed enough by her criticisms (echoed by Al and others) to consider the advantages of rewriting two-thirds of the book and carrying on with the character of Avery, who I’ve become quite fond of.

John wants something signed – would a contract help? I say no. Just good to know they’re very keen, and I also say I can’t be pushed into a date for further work, what with ‘First Love’ looming, but that I will come back to them first. ‘You can write,’ says the dark-eyed lady with great enthusiasm, and that is the best part of the lunch.

Cab down to Theatre Royal, Haymarket. ‘Panto rehearsal, is it?’ asks the driver solicitously. I tell him it’s a press reception for a new film. He sounds vaguely disappointed … ‘Ah, well … so long as you’re busy, that’s the main thing.’

At the portals of the Theatre Royal by 12.30; the daily press film critics have just seen the film. Denholm is there, with Liz Smith (faithful troopers) and the three of us are photographed with the poster – which looks very strong, perhaps Malcolm won his case after all.

Maggie arrives later, setting up a flurry of cameras and notebooks. Indicating the extraordinarily close proximity of the boxes at stage level, she says ‘Olivier was there last night. A bit disconcerting. He has to be as close as possible, poor dear. Deaf as a post.’ [Maggie was currently appearing at the Theatre Royal as Millamant in
The Way of the World
.]

The high point of the occasion is having Dilys Powell introduced to me. She’s small and frail and moves with difficulty, but I’ve rarely been opposite a face with such a combination of keenness, charity and warmth. Her big eyes sparkle with life and interest and awareness and make the noise and bustle all around seem tiresome.

Both the grannies now assembled in the kitchen.

At 6.40 our taxi arrives. The weather has turned against us after a very tolerable day and it’s raining hard as we draw up outside the Odeon Haymarket [for the Royal Premiere of
A Private Function
].

Talk to various friends before having to go up on stage at 7.35 for that part of the evening described forbiddingly in the programme as ‘Michael Palin entertains’.

After about ten or fifteen minutes I still haven’t received the signal that the Royal Person has arrived, but I’ve run out of things to say so I thank everyone and am shepherded back up the auditorium to await with my fellow thespians. Denholm has gone to Marrakesh, Maggie and Alan are both acting, so the line consists of Liz Smith, Alison S, John Normington, Bill P, Richard Griffiths and myself.

The Princess walks down from ‘Foyer 1’, where she’s met Malcolm and Val, his wife, and is introduced to us. I have quite a long chat about the film, acting with pigs and future plans.

Then we follow her into the auditorium of the Odeon. I don’t think I shall ever make such an entry to a cinema again. Distant memories of slinking furtively into the grubby darkness of the Palace Union Street nearly 30 years ago come into my mind, but tonight I am entering the Odeon Haymarket behind Princess Anne to the sound of a fanfare.

Well-combed, expensively coiffured heads turn as we file into Row T. Princess Anne’s place is denoted by a lone antimacassar carefully laid over the back of the seat. The National Anthem is played and I feel terribly important. Just in front and to the right my little mother cranes round for a better view. Poor Princess Anne has to sit with a programme and a bouquet of flowers on her lap throughout.

The film looks and sounds very good and there is plenty of laughter, though the various royal references – ‘My wife has two topics of conversation – one is the Royal Family, the other is her bowels’ – take on a new frisson of significance.

At the end Princess Anne, with Helen, myself and the Mowbrays dutifully following, file out in a silent line. Then she is gone and we soon follow – to a reception at Maxim’s.

As the two grannies, Angela, Veryan, Helen and myself struggle past the Comedy Theatre (scene of my first London acting appearance 20 years ago) in the wind and rain, the photographers suddenly surge forward and, pushing us to one side, direct a salvo of flashes at a long, sleek, black limousine, from which emerge Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach and Olivia Harrison.

Once the Princess has gone we move to a sit-down supper. Goulash is very ordinary and my bridge comes out in it. Neither Malcolm nor Maggie show up, which I find remarkable, but the rest of us enjoy ourselves.

A wonderful review in the
Guardian
– ‘nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see this film in the top box-office earners next week’ – but the expected dampener from
Time Out
. Richard Rayner takes the same view as the
Melody Maker
– the acting is fine, but the film is a mess. A Bennett taken to task for not facing ‘the realities’ of the rationing period. It’s a slipshod review, praising, in the cast, one ‘Richardson’, which shows how accurately they have faced up to the realities of the film.

Work on ‘First Love’ in the morning and limericks in the afternoon.
Tea-time greatly improved by a rave Alexander Walker review in the
Standard
. ‘I’m glad I lived long enough to see it!’

Ring Mother who sounds a bit low. She’s ‘coping’, but I’m a little worried. Probably suffering post-Royal Premiere depression.

To lunch with Richard Loncraine at L’Étoile. Tells a good story of actor Lou Gossett, with whom RL worked, for a while, on
Enemy Mine
. RL once asked him, in one of their rare moments of philosophical intimacy, what was the one thing Lou really enjoyed. ‘I’ll tell you, Richard – it’s fucking and sushi.’ ‘That’s two, Lou,’ suggested RL … ‘Hell, it’s the same thing to me,’ replied the megastar cryptically.