Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (87 page)

Kevin and Jamie are finished by lunchtime. Lunch with JC, who has reduced his waist by four inches since he started his pre-film diet, Robin Skynner, his straight-backed psychiatrist and fellow author, and two comedy writers – Renwick and Marshall. Having been one of a comedy duo, I recognise the identification problems. One automatically thinks they’re one interchangeable entity. Renshall and Marwick. They seem very amiable.

After lunch a couple of scenes with Tom Georgeson. At one point he seems very troubled by how to deliver the line ‘Un-be-fucking-lievable!’

At that point Charlie gives one of his occasional extraordinary performances which reveal a natural clown, or ham, whichever way you want it. He leaps up, flings his sticks to one side and bellows the line at top volume and with ferocious energy. Spontaneous applause breaks out in our smoky, crepuscular hall. Tom admits he can’t follow that.

For most of the afternoon I’m in black – balaclava and tracksuit and shoes – robbing safes of jewels. The set has an end-of-term feel to it, marooned as it is in the almost empty Studio 3.

Kevin arrives later, to see the rushes. He says he would like to direct. My view is that I wouldn’t like to perform and direct. Kevin says that’s what Laurence Olivier did, to which Charlie replies that Olivier could do it because he was a dictator on set.

Home, but not much time to relax, for Al is bubbling after reading
The Weekend
, which he thinks is absolutely marvellous, and does cause me to re-examine it. He also gives me a half-hour’s wisdom on ‘No. 27’, which he feels has more errors.

To Vasco and Piero’s for another splendid meal and a more gentle and thorough continuation of all we’ve talked about during the week. What is so agreeable about Al’s company is that he does care about people and how they are and how we depict them and, well, the struggle of the artist to find the truth, and all this makes me so glad to be with him rather than at the table across the gangway where they seem to manage to talk about the Spanish air controllers’ strike throughout a three-course meal.

To68a Delancey Street which, from September 1st, is now the Python, Mayday, Prominent address. It is Prominent Studios.

Amongst all the plaster and sawdust and stacks of gypsum board, and pipes and the sound of generators, hammers and drills, can be found various office staff – already quite cosily installed, though the walls need painting and the stairs are still under construction.

New additions to the staff include Liz Lehmans, Steve’s assistant, and John Roebuck, who looks even less like an accountant than Steve or Ian.
I’ve brought them a plant in a rather handsome glazed pot. Just to add to the chaos.

At last, after two or three days of lines crossing, make contact with Patrick Cassavetti. He has read ‘
AF
’. Felt the first half rather laboured – ‘stodgy’ is the word he uses – but as he read on he became involved and, finally, moved. As we talk it is clear that he is interested, would like to work on it with me, but is carefully and strategically hedging his bets.

He sees difficulties in attracting finance, as the film is not easy to target at an audience. I agree. It’s an act of faith, in a way. If we believe enough we’ll make it work. He is heavily committed at the moment to a David Hare film, which if it goes will keep him solidly involved until after Christmas. We agree to consult in three or four weeks. So … no producer yet.

Dinner with Jonathan B and Shirley at Strand on the Green. The approach to their house – or rather their complex, for it contains Shirley’s frock business as well – is very spectacular. An alleyway leads off the mundane side street to reveal the river and a darkly wooded island in the middle, the lights of Kew Bridge off to the right, a newly-painted iron railway bridge to the left, and towers and chimneys standing in sharp silhouette against a honey-coloured evening sky. Inside, wide, open-plan rooms.

Jonathan reveals that he shouted at Charlie yesterday for only the second time on the picture. Charlie then became extremely docile and repentant, leading Jonathan to think perhaps he’d over-reacted. ‘God, the man can drink though.’ Jonathan recounts that during the half-hour they spent together in the pub after Friday’s filming, Charlie downed eight scotches. ‘He’s like a pickled walnut,’ Jonathan declares, but agrees that he has survived amazingly well on a long shoot.

Ring Camden over the rubbish levels in God-forsaken Lismore Circus. Then write a long letter to Anne Bancroft.

To Seven Dials Restaurant in Covent Garden for lunch with Terry J.

The restaurant is, surprisingly, half-empty. Thierry, the maître d’, who used to be at Mon Plaisir, runs it now and greets me warmly. TJ is
celebrating not only
Personal Services
’ first prize at a Swiss comedy festival! but also
Nicobobinus
being No. l in children’s paperbacks. He has had a ‘marvellous’ hols in Corsica and admits that he is feeling much more confident these days.

TJ’s lack of confidence may not have been evident, cloaked as it was by Welsh directness, bonhomie and strong opinions. But I think TJ means creatively and here we tangle a bit. We talk about collaboration – or rather Terry talks about collaboration, for I have nothing to offer at the moment. Whether he wants me to rewrite or addend
Erik the Viking
or not, I don’t know. Anyway, the discussion turns into quite a minefield.

TJ telling me how he felt
The Missionary
should have been written. Fortescue as a very highly-sexed man – not a man avoiding sex. I
do
accept TJ’s point and think he’s right, but TJ plants yet another mine, very close to where I might tread, suggesting that the ‘wrong’ course the film took was the result of my personal approach to life.

Whether I like it or not, I do regard TJ as a bit of a conscience and this hits home. Perhaps I am too tight, controlled, careful.

As usual we drink too much, and end up being treated to 1942 Armagnac by Thierry, who’s having his dinner on the other side of the restaurant. I leave with a vague sense of dissatisfaction. We haven’t quarrelled, but we’ve bristled at each other.

I have a two-hour briefing with Susan H at the T2000 office. Find it very hard to keep awake. But cups of tea help and am much sobered when the time comes to drive to the BBC.

Will Wyatt, head of documentaries, looks like an airline pilot, as do the other two whom he calls in to talk to me. Their offer is for me to write and present a recreation of Phileas Fogg’s journey
Around the World in 80 Days
for the BBC. Would try and travel round the world, on surface transport only, in the allotted time, accompanied by two film crews – one filming me, the other everything around me. Six 50-minute programmes would come out of it (hopefully). Drink Perrier and play it very cool. Must put my own film first, but as an autumn/winter ’88 job it’s very tempting.

Woken at 7.15 by a phone call from the London
Evening News
to say they have a news item that Jonathan Ross is planning the first all-nude chat
show and that myself and Simon Callow would be stripping off. Could I comment?

Drive down to Marylebone Road to Radio London for another interview re the AIDS show.

With me on the interview is a young man called Nick who has AIDS. Like Princess Di I shake his hand and feel no threat. He has been a PWA (Person With AIDS), as they like to call themselves, since June. He doesn’t look ill. He is pink-skinned, short-haired and very sensible and straightforward. Almost impossible to fully comprehend that he will die soon.

Buy some gifts for people on
Wanda
– including some old travel maps of France which I’ve decided to give to Jonathan B because I can’t think of anyone – myself included – who’ll get more out of them.

Alarm at 6.15. At 6.45 collected, with Hazel.

Chin-wag as we proceed across London heading for a pet cemetery in Cobham.

My last ‘official’ day of filming is in amongst graves with marble tablets beneath which lie ‘Spotty’, ‘Susie, Naughty But Nice’ and, ironically, the one I have as my opening mark, ‘Monty, 1970-1981’!

Charlie says ‘As this is your last day, I’m going to show you how to act’ and he clambers over the gravestones with complete disregard for their occupants and the little plastic fencing that surrounds them.

My last shot is me looking terribly unhappy behind a tree. In fact, apart from a nagging feeling of inadequate sleep, I feel the opposite. The crew give me a little round of applause, Charlie says, with quite palpable sincerity, ‘I think you’re quite a good actor’. Joe Steeples interviews me for the
Sunday Times
, who take photos of me, scratched and bandaged, amongst the graves, various of the crew want autographs and, to cap it all, Iain Johnstone’s camera crew hover for a last interview.

Jonathan Benson is very delighted with his maps, but apprehensive of his invitation tomorrow to Kevin and Shamberg’s – when ‘charades’ are to be performed. JB hates charades. ‘That’s what we spend the whole week doing,’ he mutters, rather grumpily.

At half past five I leave for a charity show for Frontliners at the Piccadilly.
¹⁶⁰
A cluster of thin, ill-looking men determined to be brave sit in the front seats at rehearsal. Drag queens abound. Funny that homosexual men should go to such lengths to imitate the female – like vegetarians making cutlets, I suppose. In the line-up Liz Smith, Graham Chapman and Sheila Steafel and Paul Gambaccini.

I’m first on. I read ‘Biggles’. Audience receptive, but not ecstatic. In the second half I do the ‘Martyrdom of Brian’, which goes well and I do smoothly. We all sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ at the end. Sea of male faces in the front rows lighting up with pleasure at being part of it all. Really quite moving.

Back at my desk – call comes from Colin Brough of Akela Productions, who has read
The Weekend
, as have his two assistants. They all like it very much and feel that, apart from some updating, it is in very good shape and they would like to produce it. I agree to look through and make immediate changes and meet them at the beginning of October.

Go for a run, and reflect on work. One thing does clearly stand out in my mind, and that is that the
80 Days
documentary would be a chance of a lifetime. It will give me a combination of acting and writing and could be fitted in with
American Friends
if they were prepared to shoot late in ’88. By the time I pad sweatily (for there’s high humidity) through the traffic on Mansfield Road, I have 90% made up my mind to say yes to the project.

Terry G calls from Highgate. He starts filming tomorrow on
Munchausen
. A first week of night shoots! Bill Paterson is in the cast. Terry is delighted
with him. Sean Connery is to play the King of the Moon, and I, as Prime Minister, shall therefore be working with him in December. Max Wall has turned down the part of the Sea Captain.

The film is already suffering bizarre strokes of fate. The Italian stunt-co-ordinator died, of old age. The horses they had specially trained cannot be used on the Spanish locations owing to some African Horse Disease, and the two performing dogs have a rare liver condition.

At last! Word from Anne Bancroft. A spirited note, but judiciously worded to give no assumption of commitment to ‘
AF
’. She says my accompanying note was ‘ spot on’ and diagnosed ‘the weakness of the screenplay’. She urges me to start re-writing straight away, ‘don’t wait for October or November’, ‘then send it to me’. ‘It would be wonderful to work together.’

By 7.30, when I get up, the skies are clear and it’s a strikingly good day for positively the last of
Wanda
.

My first scene is a shortened version of the bathroom scene in which Jamie seduces me. Jamie has an idea for it, JC has an idea and I have an idea. Jamie’s is the best. She envelops my mouth in mid-catatonic stammer with such a generous kiss that afterwards, almost in a trance, I give her the information as if healed of my stammer.

So Jamie kisses me about eleven times (including rehearsal and close-ups). Then she is applauded, for it’s her last shot. She cries as a huge bouquet of flowers is presented.

Jamie and Kevin both write me fulsome and emotional notes which just underline how undemonstrative we Brits are. Jamie gives something to
every
member of the crew.

Amidst all the present-giving there is still work to do and, as JC and I prepare for a shortener for the ‘stammering scene’ – or at least the slapstick part of it – Charlie makes an announcement. ‘I’m very happy to be able to tell you that this is the
last
acting shot.’ Fun to be doing it with JC.

More applause at the end. My last shot of all, ten weeks and a day after my first, is a close-up of me writing ‘Cathcart Towers’.

Linda in make-up and Claire the nurse tell me I’ve been voted by the women on the crew as the man on the crew that they’d most like to spend a weekend in Paris with. Jonathan Benson is second, and very put out. He mutters about ‘the euphemism – a weekend in Paris’!

Out to the Meridiana in Fulham Road.

Jamie very emotional again. Her high spirits are so fierce, in a way, that the sheer effort of keeping up with her own enthusiasms must tire her out. JC is presented, by Shamberg, with the Emmy he’s just won in the US for his appearance on
Cheers
.

Some bond has been forged between us all, but I’m not yet sure how strong it really is, after the hype. Maybe much stronger than I think.