Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (80 page)

It should be a very significant sort of day. Lightning and thunder and some stirring music should accompany its dawn, for this is the First Day of Filming.

Actually, it’s A First Day of Filming. I reckon it’s my tenth – if you include
Three Men in a Boat
, but not
Time Bandits
. The tenth time I’ve been through all this. But it’s two years and four months since I spent much time in front of a film camera and that’s the most significant.

That’s why I’ve lain awake most of the night – my body ready much too early. The signals hurtling from the brain to the four corners, waking nerve ends that should have been left to curl up and relax.

Into the Mercedes and down to the Isaac Newton Junior School off Portobello Road, where the vehicles are drawn up. It’s a cold, bright morning. Good conditions to start anything.

Charles S is a careful, quiet, but thorough director. I feel he’s watching
everything and he won’t let me be loose or lazy. As I want this to be an exceptionally good and consistent performance I’m pleased, but when my confidence in my ability and stamina sags I find his persistence hard to cope with. But the day’s work is done. And by 4.30 at that.

I feel rather like someone who, for the last two weeks, has been running alongside a rapidly-moving vehicle and not really able to get on board. I think I’m aboard now, but I’m pretty breathless still.

We have moved today to the Linley Sambourne House in Stafford Terrace, behind Kensington High Street. Sambourne was a
Punch
cartoonist and the house is now preserved as a museum of late-Victorian interior design and decoration. Dark and gloomy with heavy drapes, some intricate but rather well-hidden William Morris wallpaper, stuffed animals in glass cases and every inch of wall covered with an eclectic selection of his cartoons, and various etchings on all sorts of subjects – classical, French eighteenth-century stories, and so on. Presumably various leaves from books he’d illustrated.

My first scene with Rachel Kempson plays quite sweetly. Rachel is a lovely, very easy-going partner and I think Charles is quite pleased.

I realise that this is to be unlike anything else I’ve done. There can be no question of getting by on the first couple of takes with an accurate caricature, as we do so often in comedy – Sturridge is very fussy, very concerned to get things right and quite happy to go to seven or eight takes if necessary – and it always seems to be necessary.

Poor Rachel K hopes to have finished with our bedroom scene by lunchtime, for her ‘stays’ are killing her. She eats little at the catering van and tells me that the worst thing about the costume is that it encourages strange wind effects in her stomach.

We complete the scene and I make use of the Michael Palin Room (supplied as per contract) at the top of the house. Alan Polly, of props, is most solicitous and has provided me with Perrier and even a Thermos of coffee. So I sit squashed into a springless armchair, coat pulled round me against the cold, and a pile of books about Victorian life, which I thumb through, an eye open for suitable information for
American Friends
.

A difficult day ahead – perhaps the most difficult of the week. First scenes with Sarah, including our piano duet and some more emotional stuff around the fireside.

Charles takes me to one side and swells my confidence with genuine enthusiasm for my performance. The scene that made him feel so ‘buoyant’ was the Major’s bedroom scene with Rachel, which he says was very moving and suggested the sort of depth which he was hoping for in choosing me for the Major.

The afternoon spent largely on a very complicated lighting for the ‘war reminiscences’ scene. By the time we get to do our bit, it’s nearly 5.30.

But it is done. There are eleven or twelve takes. I try to imagine I’m seeing the horrors of war, when in fact I’m seeing 25 people, all standing ten feet away, directing all sorts of equipment at me. Fiona is easy to work with. A serious girl, but with an attractive Irish sense of madness just below the carefully controlled, non-smoking, non-drinking, body-exercising exterior.

The last scene set for the day has to be abandoned. This is the first time we’ve fallen behind. But I’m quite elated at the work done and pleased that I’ve survived a tough couple of days.

Collected at 7.30 and down to Banstead to a sprawling, but handsome collection of Victorian buildings which comprised, until only a few months ago, Banstead Mental Hospital. Today it is to be a hospital again – of 1918 vintage – and I am recovering from a gas attack.

Complete change of temperature after the tightness of the first few days – it’s now almost balmy. Breakfasts are sorely tempting. Black pudding has been my downfall this week and with it scrambled eggs – fresh and irresistible – and two rashers of bacon. It helps to pass the time, I suppose.

Talk to CS at one point. It’s as difficult to get things out of him as it was with Frears; it just isn’t his nature to gush or headline his feelings. But he has two problems. Colin Blakely, who is undergoing chemotherapy, and still appearing in the West End, has collapsed and will at the very least be unavailable for his first appearance on Monday.

More serious is that some of the scenes we shot earlier in the week may
be unusable. I can’t elicit exactly where the blame lies, but it seems the lighting is not everything that CS wants. Something to do with exposure. CS, however, refuses to see the setback as a negative thing, and hopes to win something out of it – more time, presumably.

This is less than good news in view of the effort put in this week, but you have to be prepared for everything and this is just another frustration to be absorbed.

The bed scene is not shot until quite late. We all wait around with our variously gruesome facial injuries. I listen to the
True Stories
soundtrack on the headphones.

Then a mad rush to shoot the last sequence of the week – the bathroom. All I have to do is sit in a hot bath with my eyes bandaged and not play with myself. Finish, with much shouting and wafting of steam, at seven o’clock.

Sunshine spills into the garden and it’s generous and unseasonable enough for me to be able to sit outside and read the papers and feel its warmth. My feeling of well-being is augmented by the lack of phone calls, the ability to potter round the house, the pleasurable anticipation of seeing the family again, and a quite different attitude to the 13 weeks’ work ahead than I had last weekend. Quite a lot of my uncertainty and anxiety has been laid to rest and replaced by glimmerings of control and confidence. And, dare I say, enjoyment.

Cleese rings and we talk a little about the part of Ken. I swallow for the moment my reservations about the film itself – well, I can’t say I don’t like it, that I find it everything I wouldn’t write myself: hard, uncompassionate, leering. I have a feeling this is the one I shall do for money, rather than love.

All the family back about 7.30. No fierce tans, but all looking well and full of praise for Mürren. For a moment I feel rather like Helen must do when I come home. My neat world invaded. How different from this time last week when I missed them all so much!

Buy two magnums of ’62 Leoville Lascases for Barry and Terry Cryer, whose 25th wedding anniversary we are invited to tonight.

Just as we are about to leave, Charles S calls. ‘Good news and bad news,’ he begins, with characteristic enigmatism. The good news is that all the heads of London Weekend’s various departments who’ve seen the film think my performance is wonderful. The bad news is that it’s so difficult to see the performance that they are suspending filming for a week.

Helen and I reflect on this stunning news as we drive out to nice, ordinary, uncomplicated Hatch End. A wonderful reunion evening with Ronnie Barker, Tim [Brooke-Taylor], Graham C, Eric, David Nobbs, Roy Castle, Kenny Everett and others.

Barry’s speech involves going round the room and thanking us all individually. Quite a brave feat. Once you’ve set out there’s no going back. But his ‘speech’ is capped by a very funny and composed series of one-liners from his 13-year-old son, Bob.

Not much time to talk to Barry, whose hair resembles more and more that of a Regency footman. Ronnie Barker, in striped blazer as if he’s just come off the beach, helps hustle me away after midnight from the clutches of a well-oiled K Everett.

Examine possibilities of a three-day break in the latter half of the week, if I’m really not required. Narrow down possibilities to Venice (most exotic, but familiar), Paris, the Lake District (have been enjoying W’s
Prelude
and fancy some contemplation).

See the evening off by a log fire, trying to make up my mind about early casting possibilities on
American Friends
. Anne Bancroft seems way ahead as Miss H; Brita has to be a new ‘star’. Ian Holm or Bob Hoskins would make a splendid Weeks, and D Day Lewis is quite a possibility for Syme. Difficult not to put Denholm or Maggie in as a matter of course.

To sleep easily. An hour later a mad lady bangs at the door and rings the bell. I panic. Helen quite sensibly calls the police.

Charles rings as I’m at my desk, about ten. The news on ‘Troubles’ is that there is likely to be a fight between union and management.

Apparently management are strongly and unanimously on our side and Nick Elliott [LWT’s Head of Drama] has very forcibly warned the union about the consequences of trying to force their own lighting
cameraman back. As CS puts it, a dance now has to be played out with its own elaborate moves. The union will meet today and decide, on principle, to back their man. Later the management will, in response, cancel the project. Then the union’s employees who stand to lose a great amount of money from such a step will put pressure on and by Friday a compromise will have been reached.
¹⁴⁶

Apparently John Birt
¹⁴⁷
is in fighting mood and not mincing words. If the union prevails it will be the end of filming at LWT, so he says. Words, threats, poses – it’s all going to be very sour and probably quite childish. Equity are not supporting the ACTT.

CS didn’t think it a good idea for me to go as far as Venice, so I book up a Lake District hotel.

At 6.40, in my DJ, set out to address the Chelsea Clinical Society at the Berkeley Hotel. For various reasons, mainly ‘Troubles’, I have not had time to write them one of my prepared speeches, and, with unusually blithe confidence, haven’t worried.

Met by Stanley Rivlin, enthusiastic, very Jewish, like an unkempt bear. I’m told he only does one operation, that’s varicose veins, and he’s made a fortune. In even lower voice I’m told he did Mrs Thatcher.

Talk about my film career, de-glamorise, pig stories, etc. Amazed that these high-powered professionals not only listen but listen most appreciatively.

But the day is not over. After midnight Michael Colgan rings to tell me that ‘Troubles’ is now officially cancelled. John Birt gave his decision at eight o’clock.

Unlike CS this morning, Colgan is emotional and far less positive about a satisfactory outcome with LWT. He reiterates (‘It’s been said behind your back and now it should be said to your face’) that everyone is delighted with my performance, but his tone about the affair is quite different to Charles, more on the lines of ‘I want you to know that whenever this gets done you’ll be our Major …’

Colgan sounds weary both in the short and long term. He sounds like a man who wants to get as far away as possible from LWT and to make a fresh start with ‘Troubles’ as an independent feature.

Breakfast at 8.30, and drive east and south along Ullswater. Start walking at 10.15, along Martindale, realising that I’ve unthinkingly chosen a path straight into the wind, which flaps and tears at me in gusty assaults, threatening to remove the hat I bought this morning in Keswick.

After 15 minutes come to a small church, really just a simple rectangular building without tower or arches or any adornment – just grey stone walls and a slate roof. Set by the river, with a farmhouse a hundred yards away, otherwise quite isolated. Go inside and find an interior of such simplicity and dignity that it brings tears to the eyes. A plain stone floor, with some wooden movable pews, an ancient stone font, a table as an altar, and at the back a pulpit, carved, seventeenth-century. Nothing unnecessary, no show, no spiritual fireworks, but very affecting, especially as the wind batters at it. To me a much more profound and successful religious building than St Peter’s in Rome.

Walk along the road up the dale. A collection of deserted farm buildings, substantial stone constructions with broken roofs and holes in the walls. But all carpeted with snowdrops – in and out of the buildings.

Pass through farms full of free-range animals – chickens clucking, cockerels patting about with self-satisfaction, bulls in straw-floored stone barns. Good smells. Then the road ends and a track pulls up towards the ridge. The rain turns to sleet, which then turns to snow. A horse on its own, black and slightly-built, shelters behind a wall and yet comes out to walk with me for a while, as if pleased to see a friend.

I push on up, the snow gets heavier, the wind now blows all the time and drives the sleety-snow stinging onto my face. I’m not quite sure where I am, except that below me the gently protective dale recedes and a sweeping amphitheatre of rock curves away to the south.

At the top at last, I feel now completely alone and cut off from the world. The snow here is six inches deep at least and conditions seem to be worsening. Turn right and walk along the ridge between Martindale and Boredale. But the constant fierce presence of the wind persuades me that I must abandon the path and, in a long, controlled sideways slip, I descend into Boredale, sending a deer darting away round the edge of the hillside.