The Light's on at Signpost (29 page)

Taking it all in all, I don’t seem to approve much in British television, do I? Well, if this has been a diatribe against it, I cannot apologise; it deserves all I have said, and worse, for its degrading of standards and corrupting of values, its often slipshod approach to such diverse things as reporting, grammar, research,
*
acting, and production, the bland tunnel vision of many interviewers, the growing respect for political correctness, but most of all for its emphasis on the common, the sleazy, the nasty, and the third-rate.

Is it all bad, then? Of course not; there is much that is good and worthy on television, and immensely talented, dedicated, and painstaking people are responsible for it. They do splendid work, far too much to be mentioned here, so I single out only the great State occasions and displays; politics, if you can bear the sorry spectacle of the Commons, the (not invariably) grovelling interviews and evasive responses, and the dreadful boredom of discussions; sport, for those who are interested, and can take the mind-numbing saturation coverage; arts and history, when the presenter knows his stuff (as they sometimes do); the travel programmes which take us to places we can never hope (or want) to visit; the occasional, very occasional,-soap or comedy series (but where are you,
Yes, Minister,
The Good Life
, and
Fawlty Towers
?) It’s all subjective, of course; I’ve no doubt there are viewers entranced by apparently endless gardening and cookery and those ghastly teams which vandalise people’s houses in the name of interior decoration. Personally, I reserve my greatest admiration for the technical wizardry which is little short of magical, and is seen to best advantage in the ads.

But whatever its virtues, the overall effect of television has been disastrous, and if we cannot hold John Logie Baird and Alexander Zworykin directly responsible for the mischief their creations have caused, they still have much to answer for. Whether television is the most evil invention of the twentieth century may be debatable, but what is not is that those who viewed it with misgivings in its early days, Aldous Huxley, C. P. Scott, and T. S. Eliot among them, have had their doubts and fears realised beyond their worst nightmares.

H
AVING ALREADY
chosen my worst prime ministers, I ought to nominate my best. Obviously it is impossible for anyone of my time to go past Churchill, who was the man for the hour, but I have to confess a liking for the style of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, not because he was on the Right, but because he spent a year in office without, on his own admission, doing a damned thing. This would not commend him to New Labour, who count all time lost when they’re not wrecking the country, or to the Tories, who lack Sir Alec’s philosophic vision, so similar to that of the wise old eighteenth-century gentleman who looked back on the early 1750s as the happiest time because, he maintained, there were no politics at all.

D
INO
D
E
L
AURENTIIS
is a brisk, bright-eyed human dynamo, and no great admirer of Jane Austen—at least, not when there’s better stuff available. I was in his suite at Claridge’s, waiting to discuss a remake of
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
, and since his phone calls, in machine-gun-like Italian, were occupying him at length, I was beguiling the time with a pocket edition of
Emma
. He surfaced between calls and barked:

“Eh, George, what you reading?”

I held it up, he frowned, rummaged on his desk, and threw across a script. “Forget it! Read that!” he cried, and started shouting into the phone again.

Red Sonja
, said the title on the front, and since the lady promised more excitement than Miss Woodhouse, I was quickly engrossed, and had got to the bit where the Priestesses of the Talisman are being entombed alive under the altar by wicked Queen Gedren, when Dino finally hung up and demanded: “Okay, what you think?”

I said it wasn’t bad, in its way, and he nodded decisively and said: “Schwarzenegger, okay. You take it with you, see what you think, work on it maybe.” Since we had no deal on
Red Sonja
, I made no sounds of agreement, but I was intrigued, not only because I have a weakness for sword and sorcery but because his mention of Schwarzenegger reminded me that Dino had made a couple of
Conan the Barbarian films
, the second of them with Dick Fleischer
and Jack Cardiff, with both of whom I’d be delighted to work again.

In the meantime, he was all enthusiasm for
20,000 Leagues
. Since Fleischer had directed the definitive version for Disney, I supposed he might be called in for the remake, but I was wrong, for Dino had him docketed for
Red Sonja
. Dick Lester, who joined us at Claridge’s, declined politely when
20,000 Leagues was
proposed, and when he’d gone Dino cried: “Forget Lester!” and took me flat aback by asking if I could go to Rome to confer with his second choice—Federico Fellini.

I said by all means, but was he sure Fellini was the man for underwater science fiction, which would be rather a change from
La Dolce Vita
and 8½? Dino waved this aside (“Forget
Dolce Vita
!”) He had bumped into Fellini recently, and discovered he was crazy about
20,000 Leagues
; he’d give his right arm to direct it.

It seemed unlikely, but you don’t pass up the chance (however slender you suspect it may be) of working with Fellini, so I flew to Rome and was picked up next morning at my hotel by one of Dino’s minions, an immaculate hatchet-faced gentleman who was to be my minder and interpreter, and who’d have been perfect casting for a Martin Scorsese movie. We drove to a street near the old city wall, that astonishing red-brick structure which always strikes me as incongruous alongside Rome’s marvellous marble, both ancient and modern, but is a reminder that this is indeed the Eternal City, which has everything from the breathtaking ruins of the old Forum to the wonders of the Vatican and that remarkable glittering white extravagance of Mussolini’s, whatever it’s called.

We arrived at Fellini’s office simultaneously with the man himself, burly, balding, cheerful, and I would say quite as disorganised as anyone I’ve ever met. Fellini defusing a burglar alarm had to be seen to be believed; he produced a massive bunch of keys, shouted instructions to the secretary who accompanied him, and flung himself at his office door at a given signal, undoing locks and muttering in Italian while she pressed buttons and squeaked with alarm when
he dropped his keys. A low buzzing noise came from behind the door, Fellini gave a frantic cry, the secretary snatched up his fallen keys, used two of them in lightning succession, shrieked an order at him, thrust him aside when he lunged at what I gathered was the wrong button, and got the door open just as the buzzing was reaching the kind of level that only dogs can hear. The buzzing stopped, Fellini made apologetic ushering gestures, the secretary patiently returned his keys, he dropped them again, and we all had coffee.

He and I sat on a couch in an angle of his office, and I carry a memory of an easy, rather untidy man, amiable but thoughtful, soft-spoken and less demonstrative in manner than Italians usually are. One thing soon emerged: my interpreter was not necessary, for while my Italian begins with “
buon giorno
” and ends with “
ciao
”, Fellini’s English was far better than I’d been led to expect, not fluent but entirely understandable. I watched him on television years later, feigning incomprehension when interviewed by American journalists, no doubt out of reluctance to answer off the top of his head in a foreign tongue.

What also emerged quickly was that he had no wish to direct
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
. Dino, he explained, had misunderstood him. “We meet at the airport, he ask what I am doing, I tell him, I ask what he is doing, he say Jules Verne
20,000 Leagues
, and you know how it is…” He spread his hands. “I want to say something of nice, so I say, great, Dino, one of my favourite books since I’m a boy.” He smiled apologetically. “That is all.”

“He hasn’t spoken to you about it?”

He shook his head. “He ask that I meet you, I know you write
Three Musketeers
, so I say fine, but we don’t talk.”

Well, that’s show business. It wasn’t my hotel bill or first-class air fares, only my time, and Fellini’s, and a phone call could have saved much expense and bother. Mind you, I had no regrets; you don’t meet one of the great directors every day, especially one as
pleasant and courteous and apparently reluctant to end our meeting abruptly. He and my interpreter conversed at some length in Italian, and whether anything he said gave Fellini second thoughts, I don’t know, but presently he turned back to me and asked what my ideas were for the screenplay of
20,000 Leagues
.

I said Dino had asked for a straight adaptation of the book, and that was as far as we’d gone. Fellini nodded and then asked with a smile: “What do you
see?
” I said, not much so far, my deal wasn’t settled with Dino, but I had a picture in my mind of the
Nautilus
, at some point or other, lying on the sea bed among the ruins of Atlantis, while an enemy on the surface dropped mines which floated slowly down in trails of silvery bubbles and then exploded in dead silence.

“Is not in the book,” he said, and I admitted it wasn’t, but was just an idea. He nodded and said: “Silent explosions. No noise. Just…light.” I got the impression that he liked the idea as a visual effect, but I don’t recall what else he said at that point, for the talk turned to other things, and it was only after about twenty minutes that he broke off to talk to my interpreter again, and then asked me if I could stay in Rome for a few weeks. I said I couldn’t, but why did he ask?

I don’t pretend to understand what he meant by his reply, which was that we could talk about the
20,000 Leagues
project, and then he added, searching for words: “Maybe it is like a…you know, like a musical. But, no, no, I don’t mean a musical, only…” He fluttered a hand, but that was all he said, and then the interpreter, who had been busy on the phone, thrust the receiver at him and said: “Dino.”

Italian exchanges followed, friendly enough so far as I could judge, and then Fellini handed me the phone, and I heard those remarkable words, uttered in the dismissive bark of a Roman Emperor washing his hands of Gaul.

“Eh, George…forget Fellini!” He didn’t add, “Who needs
him?” but I suspect he was thinking it. “You come home, we get someone else, okay?”

So that was as close as I got to working with one of the twentieth century’s great cinema artists. We talked a little longer and went out to a cafe for more coffee, and I took the opportunity to congratulate him on
Roma
, whose opening sequence matches anything I’ve ever seen in the cinema for sheer beauty and brilliance of observation. Then we parted (he had a powerful handshake), and I have been wondering ever since what might have happened if I’d stayed in Rome and we had talked about
20,000 Leagues
as a-musical-not-a-musical. What did he have in mind—or was he just saying “something of nice”?

20,000 Leagues
never happened. I wrote a script, following Verne pretty closely, for one thing I have learned is that trying to improve on a classic is seldom a good idea; yes, you must adapt and shape and perhaps put a different spin on it, but it is well to bear in mind that it isn’t a classic for nothing, and the closer you can follow the author, the better. It never ceases to amaze me, the number of writers who think that they know better than the original, and whose attitude is “What a good idea—now stand back and let me do it my way!” The result is usually a godawful mess. Oh, for David O. Selznick, who never permitted unnecessary liberties with masterpieces like
David
Copperfield, Tale of Two Cities, Gone with the Wind
, and
Prisoner of
Zenda
, and made sure above all that their spirit was respected.

That by the way. My script was shelved (I think I have a letter from Dino somewhere suggesting that we should modernise it) because he wanted me to rewrite Red Sonja with Fleischer directing.

So Kathy and I flew to Rome, and stayed at one of the most august and restful hotels I’ve ever been in, the Grand. It isn’t the most modern hostelry in the world, it doesn’t have the same nostalgic charm as the Raffles, or the convenience of the Hilton and others, but it has an atmosphere that is all its own. It’s terribly Roman, and gives you a strange impression that you can’t get any
higher in the scale of civilisation. The essence of the Grand was encapsulated for me in a brief incident. Kathy and I were descending the broad stairway to the lobby, and a very old, beautifully dressed gentleman with the profile of a Caesar, was coming up. He was a total stranger to us, but as Kathy neared him he stopped, turned, and bowed to her with an old-world elegance that had plainly taken several centuries to perfect. Regarding him, I thought then, and still do, you’ve either got, or you haven’t got, style.

I don’t remember why the script of
Red Sonja
needed attention, for it had been done by a very capable pro, but I know I worked hard on it for two weeks at Dino’s studio outside the city (and must have been fairly preoccupied, for when Kathy came back one afternoon from visiting the Sistine Chapel, I asked what must have been the dumbest question of 1984: “What was it like?”)

The film was to be a fairly normal Schwarzenegger fantasy, about this gorgeous red-haired Amazon (Brigitte Nielsen), who, with the help of big Arnie and a small princeling skilled in unarmed combat, rescues the dreaded Talisman before the evil queen (who has lesbian designs on Sonja) can use it to blow up the world. There was lashings of blood and swordplay, and fine acrobatic work from Miss Nielsen (whom I met only once, while she was having her hair washed in the make-up department) and little Ernie Reyes, a delightful child whose beaming charm belied his lethal ability at kick-boxing and karate.

Schwarzenegger himself was impressive, not only by reason of his extraordinary physique, but because he was a great deal cleverer than a Mr Universe has any right to be, with a degree in economics and a shrewd interest in the part he was to play—it wasn’t Hamlet, exactly, but he wanted it to be more than a mere comic-book cut-out, and had clear ideas of how the hero, Prince Calidor (a name I dredged out of the index to Bullfinch’s
Mythology
) should come across. He also had an unexpected sense of humour which emerged when we had dinner with Fleischer and Dino.

The dining room of the Grand was undoubtedly hot, and presently Schwarzenegger slipped off his jacket. An anxious conference of waiters took place, and the maıˆtre d. approached and, with perfect courtesy, murmured to Arnold that the wearing of jackets was obligatory. Arnold said, reasonably enough, that it was rather warm, and the maıˆtre d. acknowledged this but suggested with winning deference that it wasn’t really all
that
warm, and with due respect he must insist on the jacket.

Arnold looked at him, and when you have been looked at by Schwarzenegger you cannot help feeling that it is only a matter of time before you are seen to; it is rather like being regarded by a dissatisfied Easter Island head with muscles to match. My admiration for the maıˆtre d. increased; his gulp may have been audible in Ostia, but he stood his ground.

“I’ll put on my jacket,” said Arnold at length, “if you will put on the air conditioning.” He turned slowly in his chair to face the maıˆtre d. fully, and you could almost hear his biceps being flexed. The maıˆtre d. gave a whimpering noise and a ghastly smile.

“The air conditioning is on,” he said.

Arnold frowned. “But you are sweating. Look, I can see you are sweating.” Which the maıˆtre d. was, and small wonder, but he was still game.

“That,” he said, “is because I have been hurrying among the tables.” And he added: “Please…?”

What he would have done if Arnold had refused, I can’t think but it didn’t come to that. Arnold smiled, made a little applauding gesture, and slipped on his jacket, and harmony returned to the dining room of the Grand Hotel.