Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (26 page)

JC lies flat on his back on the grass at one point, worrying the hostess who thinks he’s passed out drunk. He is in a wicked mood and clearly hates these sorts of people.

In the afternoon we read what has been done so far. JC and GC’s ‘Death’ sequence is not in the same class as their marvellous ‘Birth’ opener of last week, so everyone becomes disconsolate again. It’s too late in the afternoon to whip up much enthusiasm, so a rather important day peters out.

The two Terries and I accept Winford’s invitation to go to a local birthday party celebration.

We walk about half a mile up to Bent’s Bar. It’s 8.30 and a four-piece Jamaican band – rhumba box (home-made and very effective), a thumping banjo, a guitar and a high-pitched, effective little singer. He looks well-stoned by 8.30 and, as the evening goes on, he becomes progressively more incoherent until he ends up clearing the tables whilst some imitator takes his place in front of the band.

The birthday is of Mr Bent, a large, paternal-looking black with greying frizzy hair, who introduces himself to Terry with a broad smile, a firm handshake, and the words ‘Hello, I’m Bent’. He, like most others we’ve met, either has been to England or has relations there. I note that not even the most courteous Jamaicans have said anything about their relatives enjoying England.

There isn’t a lot to do but type up. It’s decided to meet in London for three days in mid-February and then to take a final decision on whether to go ahead.

No-one, I think, feels we have a
Brian
on our hands, but there is a hope that we have something which we all feel we could film in the summer.

And so to bed, for the last time, in my ‘servant’s’ quarters.

Late afternoon settle to read
The Missionary
. It is indeed a hefty script – 149 pages, and closely written, too. Glad to find that my own notes for cuts correspond by and large with Neville’s and those suggestions of Penny Eyles
⁵⁶
who timed the script. Neville rings, anxious to know when I can produce the 30-minute shorter version.

There has been good news this morning – Maggie Smith likes the script and wants to meet. Apparently her comment was ‘The fellers get the best lines, so I want the best frocks.’

Opening of Eric’s
Pass the Butler
at the Globe. Crowd of celebrities and celebrity-spotters throng the cramped foyer as this is first night. Meet Lauren Hutton, model, actress and, as it turns out, world traveller. ‘Ask me about any island,’ she challenges. I catch her out with the Maldives. But she does seem to have been everywhere and is going to give us some information on Sierra Leone [which we’d chosen for a family winter break]. She advises us to have every possible injection there is.

Down to the Cavendish early for the rest of my inoculations. Young male doctor this time, with vaguely jokey patter. He arranged in a line all the various syringes, then went to work. Tetanus followed typhoid and cholera into my upper left arm, then he stuck gamma globulin in my left buttock and waggled it about (the buttock, not the gamma globulin).

Back home for another two hours’ work on the script, then down to the London Library. There is a two-day rail strike on as train drivers battle against BR Management’s latest ‘modernisation’ plans. Park in St James’s Square, and select some books on East African missionaries amongst the labyrinthine passageways and dark back rooms of this eccentric library. I get lost in the Topography section and can’t find Uganda.

Come away at half past five armed with such gems as
In the Heart of Savagedom
.

I’m outside the Berkeley Hotel, where we’re to meet Maggie Smith, a quarter of an hour early.

I realise that this meeting with Maggie Smith is one of the most crucial on
The Missionary
so far. She is the first ‘name’ we seem to have a chance of securing, and her part is the most crucial in the film apart from my own. She knows nothing about me, yet is expected to help create with me the complex relationship that is at the heart of the story.

She arrives about ten minutes late. Reminds me of Angela somehow – with her neat, almost elfin features. She is dressed expensively and with
a hint of flamboyance and her red hair looks as though it’s just been done. Which leads me to wonder, just for a moment, if she had taken all this trouble for the meeting.

I congratulate her on her
Evening Standard
Actress of the Year Award [for
Virginia
], which she won last night. She looks rather weary but she has an instantly likeable naturalness and there is no difficulty in feeling that one’s known her for ages.

She was very cross that the ‘fellers get the lines, I want the frocks’ line had been quoted to us, and claims she never said that. She was a mite worried about Olivier as Lord Ames – and in a polite but unambiguous way made it clear she regards him as having a ‘very odd’ sense of humour (i.e. none).

Richard arrived, bubbling like an excited schoolboy. His keenness seemed like over-enthusiasm at times, especially contrasted with Maggie Smith’s languor. She drank vodka and tonic and we drank Löwenbräus. I settled into the sofa, also affected by her calm. She had no problems, she said, about the script, and when we left, after an hour together, she kissed me warmly and her face lit up again and she congratulated me once more on the script and was gone.

Take an hour and a half for a run. The Heath chilly, muddy and grey. Then down to Broadcasting House, to which I have been invited to celebrate forty years of
Desert Island Discs
.

I arrive in the Council Chamber, a semi-circular room above the main entrance, just as a group photo is being taken. About 20 cameramen, and television video cameras photographing little dapper Roy Plomley, who sold the series to the BBC the year before I was born.

Clustering around him I can see the Beverley Sisters – all dressed alike – Michael Parkinson, not a hair out of place, Frankie Howerd, Lord Hill.
⁵⁷
It’s like being at Madame Tussaud’s. I’m hustled into the far corner of the crowd, next to the tall, slightly shambling figure of Roald Dahl. ‘Let’s just hope they’ve got wide-angle lenses,’ he observes unenthusiastically.

I have to go and sign a book to be presented to Mr Plomley. I see Roald Dahl sitting quite happily on his own, so I go and introduce myself and
bother him with praise. He confides that a good ‘standard’ popular kids’ book is the way to make money. A successful children’s author will do a lot better in the long run than Graham Greene. We talk about children being over-protected by authors, and he tells me that he has received many letters of complaint about his books from teachers, and
Danny
[
Champion of the World
] is banned in Denmark because it ‘teaches children to cheat’.

We’re having a jolly conversation and have only been photographed once, when Dr Jonathan Miller looms up, being frightfully energetic and effervescent and solicitously enquiring after my future plans because he does want to get Pythons back on stage – not doing Python, but Shakespeare or whatever. (Interesting that J Cleese had come up with the idea in Jamaica of the Pythons doing a Shakespeare play together.)

Drive up to Bishop’s Stortford to talk to the school sixth form.

Questions routine and orderly until one boy rose and asked ‘How difficult is it to get into the BBC if you’re not gay?’ I couldn’t quite meet this with cool equanimity, but I got my best laugh of the afternoon by telling the boy that I was sure he’d have no problem getting in. ‘That naughty boy Robertson,’ as I heard him referred to quite endearingly in the staff room afterwards.

Neville rang to tell me Olivier has asked for a million dollars to play Lord Ames. Which makes a decision very easy. Not Olivier.

Down to the London Library to procure books on prostitutes. They are all filed under ‘S’ for ‘Sex’ and I can’t for the life of me find the ‘Sex’ section. End up abjectly having to ask a girl attendant. ‘I’m looking for Sex,’ is all I can say.

In the evening Helen plays badminton. I go out to see
Arthur
. Dudley very funny – manages to make all his jokes and gags have that attractive quality of spontaneous asides. That rare thing – a comedy with laughs all the way through
and
a happy ending. Sets me to thinking about the
Missionary
ending.

Drive down to Methuen to look over Caroline Holden’s artwork for
Small Harry
. It’s bright and full of life and though on occasion her attention to detail lapses and she loses a face or an expression, I’m really very pleased. Take her for a drink at the Printer’s Devil in Fetter Lane. She finished the book up at her parents’ house – Mum and Dad helping out. Caroline still poor and having to work in a pub to make ends meet. I do hope the book does well for her sake.

Drive over to Clarendon Cross, arriving there at ten. Spend the day with Richard and Irene seeing 24 young ladies at 15-minute intervals to select from amongst them our Fallen Women. By 6.00 we’ve talked, laughed and explained ourselves almost to a standstill.

Home. Talk to Denis, who rings to find out how we got on with the prostitutes. (George H terribly keen to be there during auditions.) Terry G rings spluttering with uncontrollable laughter. He had just finished reading ‘Mr Creosote’ and had to tell someone how near to jelly it had reduced him.

We see about 20 more actresses. A half-dozen are good enough for speaking parts – and the results of Monday’s work and today’s are very encouraging. But other clouds on the horizon – mainly financial. Richard thinks that the Art Department budget is impracticably small and both Richard and Neville told me yesterday that there is no way the present script can be shot in nine weeks. It’ll need ten at the minimum.

All those things to think of as I drive to Anne’s for an afternoon Python session. A strange feeling to sit at the table listening to other people’s offerings without having had time to provide anything myself. JC/GC have put together a quite funny Grim Reaper piece. Eric has written a new opening song and a very short but effective visual before the ‘Penis Apology’. Terry J has also been prolific.

At the very end of the meeting, just as I’m off to see Denis O’B, Anne tells us that Graham would like us to meet Oscar Beuselinck, the lawyer, tomorrow. Why Graham couldn’t tell us I don’t know. It’s another
bombshell from Chapman – who evidently is still going to sue Denis and wants us all to meet Oscar tomorrow and hear the whys and wherefores. All more than a little irritating.

Decide I shouldn’t go to Graham’s meeting with Oscar Beuselinck. Lawyers on the warpath are a dangerous breed and I am concerned that attending a meeting called specifically to point out all the bad points of Denis O’B may not be the best thing to do when I’m currently trying to get an extra £500,000 out of him. And Oscar would be only too keen to say he’d ‘met with the Pythons’.

I have an hour or so of the afternoon left for writing before TJ arrives. We compare notes, then he goes off to the GC meeting, whilst I carry on extending the ‘Hotel Sketch’.

A meeting with Denis. DO’B clearly won’t accept Neville’s latest budget figure of £2.5 million, but on the other hand he is not asking us to reduce, nor even stick at £2 million. He’s now talking of £2.2 million. Our whole discussion is helped by the fact that Trevor Howard has accepted the part of Lord Ames. (Neville said he was especially keen to do it when he heard
I
was in it!)

Round to Clarendon Cross and then on to Julie’s [Restaurant] for supper. We go through the script – take out the dockside sequence, which has some jokes but is very expensive, and also one or two short exteriors, and we find that we can still make cuts without irreparably damaging the film. Indeed, we have one very positive new idea, which is to open on a school honours board with the name being painted out.

Best news of last week is that Michael Hordern, who was reported to have turned down the part of Slatterthwaite, has now had second thoughts, likes the script, finds it ‘immensely funny’ and has been signed up. So Moretonhampstead, with Maggie Smith, Trevor Howard and Michael Hordern, is looking like a quality household.

Assailed with information (Irene), opinions (Richard) and warnings (Neville) on all sides as we attempt to cast the medium and small parts. Any featured (i.e. speaking) actor has, under a new Equity agreement, to be ‘bought out’ – i.e. given enough pay to make up for the actor relinquishing rights on future TV, video and other sales. It boils down to a minimum of about £157.00 per day for a ‘cast’ actor. So the morning is one of continuous small compromises to cut down the use of such actors – a process which surely wouldn’t please Equity if they saw it.

There are still some major roles unfilled. Graham Crowden has had a hip operation and may not be well enough to play the Bishop.
⁵⁸
Richard suggests Denholm Elliott, other front-runners are Nigel Hawthorne and Ian Richardson. Elliott will be twice as expensive.

Ray Cooper comes over at lunch and meets Richard for the first time. They got on well, as I knew they would. Both are artists, and indeed Ray C endears himself to Richard by remembering him as a sculptor. Ray is to be Music Co-ordinator for
The Missionary
, which fills me with great confidence.

Bombshell of lunchtime, as far as Richard is concerned, anyway, is that Freddie Jones, for whom Richard was prepared to move heaven and earth to accommodate in the picture, now says he doesn’t want to do it anyway. This has plunged Richard into a bad mood performance and he rails on about faithless actors and how shitty the entire thespian profession is. I blame his diet.