Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (28 page)

The conversion of the National Liberal Club’s billiard room into a gymnasium has been stunningly successful. Opening shot is ready by ten, but the generator goes on the blink and we don’t complete my entrance to the club until eleven.

As the slow pattern of waiting established itself, I nodded off twice. My cold continues to tumble out, but didn’t seem to affect my mood or performance. Now that filming has begun I know I shall survive, but now it’s a question of keeping standards high – and producing something better than anything I’ve done before (apart from the Fish Slapping Dance, of course).

Lunch is a meeting with Geoffrey S, Richard, the stills photographer and myself, to discuss the book [of
The Missionary
]. Eat up in one of the vast, dusty galleries at the top of the building.

RL clearly feels GS is too cautious and GS does not react well to RL’s expensive ideas for the book. I find having to conciliate the most tiring
work of the day. It means no relaxation at lunch either and I have to rush down to do close-ups in the first real dialogue scene with Denholm.

Feel a surge of nerves as I wait to go on. I look round at this huge room, filled, just for me, with 30 period gymnasts. I look round at the 40 or so faces of the crew, all watching, waiting to see what I do. As if this isn’t enough, I catch sight of Angela, Jeremy and Veryan up in the balcony, looking down.

I start to wobble. I have to go into this scene clutching briefcase, hat and full cup of tea. I’m convinced the tea-cup will rattle so much that I’ll be asked to do it again – and that’ll make it worse – and what am I doing here anyway? We do the shot, and I control the cup and the moment of blind panic passes, and I feel settled and refreshed and the rest of the day seems light and easy.

Up to Lee Studios to look at the first rushes. They look marvellous. [Peter] Hannan’s lighting is of the very best – I’ve hardly ever seen my stuff looking so good. The various textures of the wood and tiles come across strongly and clearly. It looks interesting and gives everything in the frame a particular quality and to the whole an atmosphere you can almost smell and touch.

As to the performance – although Denholm does not do the Bishop as Graham Crowden would have done, he nevertheless comes over strongly on screen, and manages the mixture of comedy and seriousness very effectively.

I leave Lee’s in great euphoria and raring to get on with the film.

Picked up at the relatively civilised hour of 7.45. To Culross Buildings behind King’s Cross and St Pancras. Marvellous location for trainspotters. The sky is grey and it’s cold, but we start shooting without much ado amidst the flapping washing. First scenes with our prostitutes.

I have a small and rather tatty caravan, with a basin, but no running water, and a seat which shatters immediately I sit down. Denholm a little more together on his words today than yesterday at the club, but, like any actor, is bucked up tremendously by praise of any kind – and it helps him that I can enthuse so much over the rushes.

All goes ahead well until after lunch when the sun comes out, which makes the roof of the tenement buildings a much more agreeable place to be, but impossible to work on because of the light change. Go down
to my caravan and sleep for an hour. After a two- or three-hour wait, RL decides to abandon shooting for the rest of the day on account of the sunshine. Denholm and I run tomorrow’s scenes through.

Then off to rushes at Lee’s and home for an hour before taking a taxi down to the Main Squeeze Club in King’s Road, where M Parkinson’s ‘surprise’ end of series party is to take place. I’ve rehearsed a little speech as Eric Olthwaite.

Arrive to find small, rather empty basement club. No-one I know. Parky arrives and is cheered, moderately, and at about 11.15 I’m asked to make the presentation. I’m shown onto a small stage, on which I’m blocked to view for half the people there. Then the microphone feeds back – whines and whistles – and I find myself having to make ad-libs with the likes of Kenny Lynch, Jimmy Tarbuck, Spike and Billy Connolly only feet away.

I survive, just, and there are laughs at the right places. Present the shovel to Michael Parkinson as ‘The Second Most Boring Man in Yorkshire’.

Stay on at the club for about an hour. Talked to Michael Caine – about Maggie S mostly. ‘She’s brilliant,’ he said, ‘But watch her.’ Told me I’d have to work hard to keep in the scene with her.

Then a hatchet-faced ‘adviser’ signalled discreetly to Caine that he should be moving on. I left soon too.

To bed about a quarter to one. Duty done. Slept like a log.

This morning it’s raining. So for a couple of hours I sit in my caravan in Battle Bridge Road and catch up on work – e.g. reading page-proofs of
Small Harry and the Toothache Pills
.

At eleven it clears and we work steadily through the scene, finishing by six. Denholm takes a long while on his close-ups; his daughter’s come to watch him. ‘Amazing how difficult it is to act with one’s family around,’ Denholm confides, and, for a man who has made 73 films, he certainly doesn’t seem to have the secret of instant relaxation.

After filming, which ends at 7.30 with a beautiful street shot with a background of the St Pancras gasholders silhouetted against a rosy dusk sky, and Peter H personally wetting the cobblestones to catch the evening light, I go with Irene in the Winnebago to talk over casting as we drive to rushes. The Winnebago has been dreadfully ill-fated this week, breaking down everywhere.

And tonight is no exception. Richard curses modern
technology roundly as we lumber up the Marylebone Road with the handbrake stuck on.

To rushes at Rank’s executive viewing theatre in Hill Street, Mayfair. First glimpse of my relationship with the girls. It looks relaxed and unforced. Fingers crossed we’ve seen nothing bad so far.

Denis claims to have finalised a deal with Columbia for
The Missionary
and the latest news is that they are preparing a 1,000 print release in the US for late October. This is exhilarating, rather terrifying news.

Leave home at 7.30. We are filming at the Royal Mint in Tower Hill. Abandoned ten years ago, it has a fine classical main building (used in
Elephant Man
) and workshop outbuildings. A very satisfactory set up for my scene with McEvoy (Peter Vaughan) as we can use three levels and drive a Chapman Hoist into the interior courtyard and follow the actors down. It is our Healed Leper shot, really, one long developing shot.
⁶²
Only here it is more satisfying and better used, as the various elements of the bottling factory are introduced as we walk. It ends with us passing a fully practical steam engine – driving three belt-drive machines, and a loading bay with period vehicle, as well as a horse and cart glimpsed out in the yard.

Peter and I walk through the scene at 8.15, but the first take is not until 3.50 in the afternoon.

It is very hard work for an actor to come in for one day and shine as expected, under great pressure of time. But Peter’s performance is always word perfect and, though a little tighter and tenser than I’d hoped, he’s still excellent and solid. After seven takes all sides are satisfied and we finish work at seven.

To the West End for dinner with Maggie Smith. Maggie is funny, much less made-up and more attractive than when I last saw her, and quite obviously looking forward to the thing immensely. She brushes aside any apologetic concerns RL and I have for the shooting schedule – which involves her first of all appearing at 5.45 a.m. on Monday up to her knees in mud on Wapping Flats.

We go off, arms linked, past crowds clustering round a police-raided night club, the best of chums.

I’m losing a sense of time already. I wake to my alarm and obediently swing my legs off the bed and make for the bathroom, like a battery hen. Shave, clean teeth, go downstairs to do exercises, dress up in the bedroom.

Brian arrives today at 7.50, and carts me away. Must, however awful I may feel, arrive in a jolly mood at the location – co-producer, actor and writer can’t be seen to weaken. Actually, once up and about I feel fine and the only frustration of today is the length of time filming takes.

I’m at Ada’s brothel, situated in the old Fish Office on the Railway Lands. From the brothel window, as I stand ready to be Charles Fortescue, I can see the trains slipping in and out of St Pancras.

A long wait whilst Peter H lights Ada’s room. It has no outside light source, so he has to create this impression from scratch. Listen to the Grand National, in which a horse called Monty Python keeps up courageously before refusing at Becher’s the second time around. Much more sensible than falling, I think.

At tea Angela, Veryan and Jeremy arrive. Tea in RL’s Winnebago. Richard is one of the few directors who, after six consecutive, very full days of filming, can still bother to make tea for his star’s family.

Breakfast in the garden and read, with a certain disbelief, the news that we are virtually at war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. It seems a situation better suited to the days of
The Missionary
than 1982. It may feel unreal, but papers like the
News of the World
are howling for vengeance and Ardiles was booed every time he touched the ball for Tottenham yesterday.

Took Rachel and Louise to the swimming pool at Swiss Cottage and was just sitting down to evening ‘Sunday lunch’ of roast lamb and a bottle of Château Bellac, when the door bell rang and TG appeared, breathless for information on the first week of
The Missionary
. He wanted to know what had gone wrong and how far we were behind! Children behaved abominably (with the exception of Tom) at the meal as TG rabbited on.
Later Willy explained that he had founded a Get Rid of Guests Club.

TG is waiting for Stoppard to finish his involvements with Solidarity before beginning work on
Brazil
, for which TG has now signed a deal with an Israeli super-financier.

Arrive at location in Wapping at 5.15.

God is very definitely with us this morning. The sun rises into an almost clear sky – with just a hint of cloud, to add contrast and perspective. There is a little wind and the Thames has a strip of still, reflecting water across it, ruffled into the softest ripples on either side. It is a perfect dawn and, as the sun and the river rise, we film hard for three hours and a half – from 6.15 until nearly ten, when our last reaction shot of the little boy – ‘Will it be a mission?’ – is shot with water lapping around the camera legs.

This was Maggie Smith’s first day. She uncomplainingly began work on
The Missionary
standing in a foot of muddy Thames water, pulling a ship’s wheel out of the slime, and managed to smile winningly and help us push the barrow over wet and slippery rocks in take after take.

Then on to the Mission – in Lant Street, Southwark, and another tremendous boost for morale. The set – of the girls’ dormitory – was quite superb. When I first walked into it, I was quite moved. Something about the pathos of the simple beds with their few possessions beside them, grafted on to a bleak industrial interior.

Lunch with Maggie S and Richard in the Winnebago. All amicable and quite easy, though I still find Maggie S and the long experience of acting she represents quite a daunting prospect.

Down to the Mission in pouring rain. If our dawn shot had been today it would have been disastrous. As it is we are inside all the time, completing the scene in which Maggie leaves the Mission. I find it hard work to start with. Maggie is smooth, efficient and professional – consummately skilled at timing and delivery. Keeping up to her standard, particularly when we don’t yet know each other that well, and when the fatigue of eight days’ hard filming in the last nine takes the edge off one’s energies, is not easy. But I survive.

I fluff a line on a take, which annoys me, as I’m usually pretty efficient
at lines myself. Then Maggie mistimes a move on a later take, which makes me feel much better. Eventually the complicated master shot is in the can and I feel much relief.

Terry G comes down to watch the shooting. He’s impressed by the Mission set and says of Maggie, in some surprise, ‘She’s really funny …’

A journalist called Chris Auty – jeans, leather jacket and matching tape recorder – is here from
City Limits
. I waffle between takes. Must try and work out in my own mind what this film is about – instead of relying on visiting journalists to make up my mind for me.

I have a more luxurious caravan today. Richard approves. Maggie S is still in one of the poky little ones. ‘You could hang meat in it,’ she drawls elegantly, referring to the spectacular lack of heating.

Maggie and I work on the scene where she finds me in bed with the girls – Maggie being released about five. RL thinks something was lacking in her performance today.

Then to look at rushes. Helen comes along – her first glimpse of anything to do with the film. She hasn’t even read the script!

Much relieved and pleased that the first major scene between Maggie and myself makes people laugh. It looks fine and beautiful –
every
thing looks fine and beautiful, but it’s good to hear naked, unadorned laughter and especially as these are the last rushes before Denis returns.

Feel good and virtuous and only a little cross at having to speak to a Danish journalist on the phone from Copenhagen about my ‘Railway Journey’, which goes out there next week. Had to explain trainspotting to him. He told me
Time Bandits
was a great success in his country, where it isn’t shown to under- 15s because of ‘the violence’. It’s also called, quite shamelessly, ‘Monty Python’s Time Bandits’.