Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (19 page)

Wake to streaming, unequivocal sunshine, which looks set in for the day. Make all sorts of resolutions for the month as I sit down at my desk at a quarter to ten. I am determined to finish the first draft of
The Missionary
.

At half past six the results of my latest foray into consumerism are brought round to the house. A Sony Walkman II – an amazing miniaturised stereo set, with thin, light headphones and a cassette-sized playing machine. If they can make such sound reproduction quality so small now, what of the next ten years? A button perhaps? A pill you swallow which recreates the 8-track wonders of Beethoven’s Ninth from
inside
your body?

Also I’m now the proud owner of a small colour telly with a six-inch screen which fits on the kitchen shelf and will also undoubtedly revolutionise my life, until, in due course, the wonder of these marvellous technological advances wears down into acceptance.

Moral of the tale – do not rest hopes and enjoyments on Sony products. Man cannot live by machinery alone. All technological advances bring built-in dissatisfaction.

A late, light lunch, a few minutes in the sunshine, then back up to the workroom again. But the combination of heaviness from a persistent head cold and some rumbling guts ache knocks me out and, drained of energy, I skip supper and take to my bed about the same time as Rachel.

Just stay awake long enough to catch Terry J’s first programme as presenter of
Paperbacks
. Helped on by a sympathetic and very well-mixed selection of guests, Terry came across as Terry at his best – serious, but
good fun, mainly sensible, but occasionally enthusiastically carried away, positive but gentle. All in all, I thought, an excellent debut and such a change from the smooth old hands of TV presentation.

And I did take in an awful lot of what was said about the books – it reminded me of how much more I took in of Shakespeare when I watched John Cleese in
Taming of the Shrew
.

And his guest, J L Carr – an ex-schoolmaster who publishes little 35p books from his home in Kettering – was a wonderful find. He is the compiler of such indispensable volumes as
Carr’s Dictionary of Extraordinary English Cricketers
and
Carr’s Dictionary of English Queens, King’s Wives, Celebrated Paramours, Handfast Spouses and Royal Changelings
.

A week after first being alerted to Stickley and Kent’s board at 1 Julia Street, I ring Stickley’s with my £25,000 cash offer. An Irish female most curtly receives the offer and, with hardly any elaboration, tells me crisply that it will not be enough, but she’ll take my name. Twenty-five thousand pounds in cash for that dump and she almost puts the phone down on me. Irrational – or perhaps this time rational – anger wells up. Write a letter confirming my offer and refuse to increase it at this stage.

To lunch at Mon Plaisir with TG.

TG and I have a very good, convivial natter and excellent meal. It’s as if the major pressures on the
Time Bandits
are now lessening. Our collaboration has perhaps been one of the more successful aspects of the film. There are rumours that Denis is having some success with his ‘
TB
’ viewings in America.

Then I go off to a viewing of the film again.

There is a constant, steady level of appreciation from quite a small audience and at the end I feel so elated, so completely risen from the gloom of the showing nine days ago, that I can hardly run fast enough through sunlit Soho streets back to Neal’s Yard.

Terry is upstairs, alone in the big room looking over the yard with an editola in one hand and film in the other, still trimming. ‘Sensational’ is the only word I can use. At last I feel that
Time Bandits
has lived up to all the work that’s gone into it.

Drive up to 2 Park Square West for a Python meeting.

There is a long agenda and yet we spend the first half-hour talking about possible changes to the Hollywood Bowl film. John is quite
despairing. He buries his head in his hands and summons up what appear to be his very last resources of patience. ‘I crave order,’ he groans, looking at the remnants of the agenda, whilst Terry J suggests we put Neil in the film and possibly a bit more animation, and JC moans inwardly that he only wants to do this ‘bloody thing’ to make some money (I rather agree) and Eric it is who puts the frustrating but incontrovertible arguments for protecting our reputation by putting out only what we think is the best.

Another eight-hour sleep – too rare these days. The swirling south-westerly winds have died down, but the sky is overcast.

As if to suit the mood of the weather, Angela rings. She says she is in a depression and has been for the last two weeks. She’s decided to drop her social worker job and is looking for something ‘exciting’. She keeps talking of her low self-esteem. She’s not easily consolable either, but puts on a brave and cheerful front. I can offer sympathy but nothing very practical.

I wonder if she finished this Whit Sunday watching, as I did, Cassavetes’
A Woman Under the Influence
. It was about madness and was rivetingly well-played, hard, depressing, uncompromising, but it aired a lot of problems and was ultimately optimistic.

I go to bed sober … sobered, anyway.

A day of deck-clearing before an all-out assault on
The Missionary
script’s last few scenes, which I hope to complete up in Southwold, with Suffolk countryside for inspiration and no telephones to distract.

Stickley and Kent call to tell me that my offer of £25,000 for No. 1 Julia hasn’t been accepted, so I have to work out the next step. I want to make a £30,000 offer to put them on the spot, but after talking to Steve I revise this downward to £28,500 to allow bargaining room up to 30.

Wake to rich sunshine and birds chattering everywhere. Excellent conditions for a solid morning’s writing at the desk presented to my grandfather
from ‘His grateful patients in Great and Little Ryburgh and Testerton’,
⁴⁰
fifty years ago this November.

Great strides made in the plot and this writing break has already justified itself completely. No phone calls, no doorbells, no carpet-layers, cleaners, carpenters, painters or television engineers, just my Silvine ‘Students’ Note Book – Ref 142 – Punched for filing’, Grandfather’s desk and the soothing, wholesome view – pheasants scurrying through a broad field of new-sown peas and a chaffinch strutting and posing on the telegraph wires outside.

Later, watch Terry J being hypnotised on
Paperbacks
. He says very little and eventually breaks into tears. Rather disturbing, I thought, for the tears don’t look like tears of joy but of fear and uncertainty and loss.

Prepare for our sideshow(s) at the Gospel Oak School Fayre. The Palin contingent (minus H who is at badminton) troop along to the school at 1.15, armed with ‘Escalado’, blackboard, notices and a bottle of sweets which the nearest number guess can win. Congratulate Ron Lendon, the head, on the MBE he acquired in the honours lists published today.

For three and a half hours solid I take money and start races. ‘Escalado’ proves to be a compulsive hit. The races are as often as I can physically take the money, pay the winnings and start again. A cluster of a dozen kids keep coming back – addicted. We make 10p per race and by a quarter to six, when I’m hoarse and staggering to start the last race, we’ve taken about £19.20, which means nearly 200 races.

The whole fete, in warm, dry, sunny, celebratory weather, seems to have done well. Even Willy, who looked very miserable earlier on as he tried to tout custom for his ‘guess the sweet’ attraction, had taken over £7 by the end and had brightened considerably.

Denis O’B rings from Los Angeles. He doesn’t seem to have any ulterior motive than to be reassured that I’m still there and writing a script for
him. He doesn’t attempt to put pressure on in any direction. He sounds very vulnerable suddenly, as if he genuinely cannot understand how it could possibly be that five majors have already passed on
Time Bandits
.

I feel very sorry for him and if he was deliberately trying to soften me up then he succeeded. Any doubts I may have had about giving him first option on
The Missionary
faded as I put the phone down and left him to Universal.

At seven o’clock, despite a last-minute volley of phone calls, I wrote the magic words ‘The End’ on my film – approximately two and a half working months from that run in mid-March when the title and subject suddenly clarified in my mind.

How good it is I really don’t know. A cluster of scenes please me – the rest could go either way. I now have ten days of typing during which I shall tighten it up.

To Neal’s Yard for more ‘
TB
’ publicity – this time an interview for Granada TV’s
Clapperboard
. For a simple interview on film there must be about ten people – production secretary, producer, publicity ladies, crew, etc, quite apart from Chris Kelly, who’s asking the questions, TG and myself.

Terry has only just embarked on the first serious answer when he dislodges a huge can of film, which crashes to the floor noisily and spectacularly. Granada are very pleased.

Took Rachel to the zoo. Much activity in the bright sunshine. Baboons copulating, polar bears flat out on their backs with legs immodestly spread, scratching their belly hair slowly – like something out of Tennessee Williams, tigers crapping and penguins looking very dry and unhappy.

This evening we have to decide on how George H’s song ‘That Which I Have Lost’ is accommodated in the opening titles. Neither Ray nor Terry feel satisfied with the song there at all. George, pushed by Denis, has done his best to make a version that works. But it was the wrong song in the first place and no-one has the courage to see that, so tonight we agree on
a compromise. Part of the song under the opening names, but keep it clear of the thudding, impressive impact of TG’s titles.

The only event of any great significance in an otherwise unworkmanlike day is a call from Gilliam halfway through
News at Ten
to tell me that Denis has finally given up hope of selling
Time Bandits
in Hollywood. Disney, who apparently were closest to a deal, finally gave him the thumbs down. Apparently it was a case of the old guard at the top overruling the newer, younger, less conventional execs below.

Perhaps, TG and I feel, it would have been a lot better if Denis had organised a preview – like the
Brian
preview in LA which so impressed Warners. He has only tried to sell it at the top. And failed.

To bed resignedly. I feel sorry for TG. So much now depends on a big success in England. If it does badly here, or even only quite well, there is a real chance of the movie sinking without trace.

Buy
Screen International
. The British film industry does not seem very healthy. Rank have just announced plans to cut 29 cinemas. The head of Fox (
not
an Englishman) in London gives a glib, gloomy, heartless prognosis that sounds like Dr Beeching – cinemas will only survive in about 20 major cities. The British don’t go out any more. Video recorder sales are booming. Unfortunately I think he’s right. It’s going to be hard, if not impossible, to reverse this trend away from theatrical visits.

To Gospel Oak Open Day to look at Willy and Rachel’s work. Place full of doting, involved Gospel Oak parents. Impressive exhibition in the hall. Willy’s dissatisfaction with his teacher this year doesn’t seem to be reciprocated – she has given him a very good end of term report. But I can’t imagine many circumstances in which Gospel Oak kids would receive bad reports – unless they were mass murderers, possibly. Rachel is as good as gold, I’m told by her nice teacher, Miss Evans.

Work until eleven, when I watch very good (possibly the best) edition of
Paperbacks
. TJ enthusing, as only he can, about Rupert Bear with Alfred
Bestall, 86-year-old chief artist of the stories, there in the studio, complete with loose false teeth.

Helen takes me down to King’s Cross to catch the ‘Flying Scotsman’ to Edinburgh to read the ‘Biggles’ stories [for BBC AudioBooks]. Full of Americans being roughly treated by a particularly cheeky set of waiters who execute all their tasks with a barely-controlled violence just this side of politeness. What a change from the Liverpool Street lot.

All confirms my feelings that it’s the differences between human beings themselves which account for all our economic, social and political injustices and not the other way round. In short, there are plenty of shits in the world and unless we can find some wonder drug to cure them or neutralise them, I think we have to live with the fact that they will always cause trouble.

At Edinburgh by a quarter to three. Meet the team and the adaptor, George Hearten – possibly the complete antithesis of his hero, Captain W E Johns. Ex-Fleet Air Arm, so he knows how to pronounce ‘altimeter’, he turns out to be a reggae expert and, when we do discuss who we would all like to have been, reckons he’s the Glaswegian Albert Camus.

The concentration required on the readings is quite exhausting. We do two stories and Marilyn [Ireland, the producer] sounds pleased.

Then back for story number three. This is harder and towards the end I find myself unable to say ‘thousands of splinters flew’ and, though we finish it, Marilyn rightly suggests that we stop for the day.