Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (49 page)

Ring TJ when I get back. He’s enthusiastic. I feel wonderfully encouraged by this breakthrough and the more I think about it, the more levels it can work on. But no time to pursue it now, as I have to do domestic business such as buying fireworks for Saturday’s party.

Then in the evening meet Michael Barnes for a chat. We meet at the Turf, but aren’t able to eat there as there is some stag night. Hoyle, the night porter, is very nice to us as we are ejected … ‘We
do
have an arrangement with the Institute of Directors, sir, I’m sure they’d be pleased to see you.’ I wish I had his confidence.

Nick Lander of L’Escargot confirms that he will do my Ma’s 80th birthday party lunch – even though it means opening the restaurant specially.

Have cleared a number of calls, etc, by eleven and start to elaborate on the ‘Hell’ idea. Become very bogged down. It could go in so many directions – can’t decide which, so write very little.

Ma rings, because she’s just seen the news and wanted cheering up after seeing the bucket in which Dennis Nilsen boiled boys’ heads.

To Crimpers in Hampstead for my
Brazil
hair cut – a strange-looking affair which makes me look like Alexander Walker.

Out into milky afternoon sunshine and near 60’s temperatures, feeling conspicuous in my new head, to Alan Bennett’s for a chat with him and Mowbray over ‘The Pig Film’. They haven’t a final [Pork Royale was still in the running] title yet. Make some suggestions about seeing Gilbert and Joyce arrive at the town at the beginning and one or two other comments which Alan writes down. My strongest crit with a much-improved script is the way Gilbert fades away at the end.

As we leave I notice that there is someone living in the Dormobile parked tight in his front garden. ‘She’s watching television,’ whispers Alan … ‘She?’ ‘Oh … I’ll tell you all about it next time,’ he promises … And I leave Malcolm, Alan and the old lady watching TV in his garden.

Lie in bed casting anxious thoughts about
Brazil
out of my mind. Like seeing James Fox on TV last night and realising what a finely-controlled actor he is. Why wasn’t he Jack Lint? Like worrying that I should be worrying so much about something I know I can do.

At nine o’clock Jonathan [Pryce], and Terry G arrive for our read-through. Jonathan is low-key, halting and rather unconfident about the lines. Old actors’ ploy – on the day he will be firing on all cylinders and I shall have to work hard to stay on the screen. Terry G would like me to smoke a pipe. I ask him to get me one, so I can practise in Ireland.

At twelve we go our separate ways – Jonathan to Hampstead to have yet more hair off, and me to lunch with John C at Duke’s Hotel.

JC is delighted with Duke’s and views with amused admiration this ‘new side’ of my life – as he calls my recently-developed St James’s/Turf Club axis. We have an effortlessly pleasant wander around various subjects near and dear to our hearts.

JC shows off with a few names of the more esoteric Spanish painters. Professes an enjoyment of art galleries and a desire to go on a journey with me somewhere.

We both enjoy our lunch so much we decide to make it a regular feature. Or this is the last shouted intention as we part company in the still warm, but declining November sunshine in St James’s.

Help Helen prepare a meal for Elias and Elizabeth – the Brazilian psychiatrists from next door. Helen makes a wonderful meal – tomato and tarragon soup, followed by gravadlax and chicken in a creamy sauce, apple pie, cheeses – Beaume de Venise.

Elias gives me a short, revealing history lesson about Brazil. A totally exploited country (by Britain and Portugal) until the late nineteenth century. Books forbidden there until 1832. No university until 1932. Didn’t realise that Brazil’s independent history was so short.

Elizabeth is great fun, but both are hopeless Francophiles – France is beyond criticism as far as they’re concerned. To go to France or Italy, they say, after England is to go into the outside world! They think the English press are the worst in the world when it comes to analysis of foreign news.

 

 

 

I returned to Belfast for a second stint at the Festival. This time my one-man show was more ambitious and played for four nights at the Arts Theatre. With my debut in
Brazil
imminent, it probably wasn’t the wisest thing to have done.

A very cultured shuttle flight back, with musicians, singers and actors all anxious to be on the first plane to Heathrow. I sit next to Lizzie Spender, a publicist and part-time actress who’s well connected. She is to play my wife in
Brazil
and we meet quite by coincidence.

Home by a quarter to one. Feel a desperate need for air and space before
Brazil
envelops me, so I take a Sunday run (usually something
I avoid as the Heath gets busy). Feel well-stretched, but cannot run easily as have pulled a muscle in my side in last night’s record-breaking round the auditorium bid. (10.07 seconds!)

Set off, with Terry G, to Wembley for a run-through on the set of our Big Scene tomorrow. The studio is bitterly cold inside, but the set’s very exciting. Jonathan arrives. I always feel he is rather taut – as though something inside is finely tuned, wound up with precision to be released at just the right moments – when he’s acting.

We work through the scene and I try the various props such as electronic temple-massagers – American barbershops, 1950’s. We’re there for about three hours, then gratefully home again for a Sunday dinner – only the second meal I’ve had at home in ten days.

On the set there is the well-behaved unfamiliarity of the first day on a new picture – and a big new picture, scheduled for 25 weeks. But there are many
Missionary
faces, and my progress to the set is constantly interrupted with handshakes and reintroductions. I feel it must be making Jonathan rather fed up. It helps me, though, and the early part of the day is as agreeable and jolly filming as I can remember. TG on good form, and the camera and sound crew are excellent company.

But the character of Jack Lint is still vague in my mind and after lunch, when I’m into the three or four fast speeches of jargon, I fluff more than once.

I realise that I should have spent much more care and thought in preparing for the part – thinking more about the character, spending more time with Jonathan and more time learning difficult lines, and not going to bed so late in Belfast. But we get through it, and I’m not sure how the effect of my uneasiness will show. At the end of the day TG says he has never seen me as nervous before.

Collected at 7.15. A very cold, crisp morning. Ice on the car windows.

We start shooting in Jack’s office a couple of hours later. Take the scene through to the end on my close-ups. Then we work back through it on Jonathan. We have completed the scene – eight pages of close-packed dialogue – by four o’clock.

By then the race is on to complete two other short scenes, scheduled for the day before. One involves me packing a case, fitting my bullet-proof vest, taking my jacket and leaving the office whilst talking rapidly to Jonathan. Two or three times I come completely unstuck on the lines – ‘sabotaged adjacent central service systems, as a matter of fact in your block’. We complete the scene, but it’s a jolt to my pride and confidence that I was not more in control.

Home to prepare supper for the children, as Helen is in UCH Private Patients’ Wing, having the growth on the end of her finger removed under general anaesthetic. I have a day off tomorrow and can look forward, at last, to a night’s sleep without anxiety about filming.

I suppose I should have smelt a rat when my call was set for ten. Far too generous a call for anyone who is going to be used during the day. But I take some work in.

In between whiles walk up to the set, which is dominated by a massive 30-foot-high piece of totalitarian architecture. The lobby of the Ministry of Information. Very impressive and rich in bits of comic detail. Nuns looking with approval at little displays of military weapons.

TG has hit upon a very striking style by mixing the gadgetry of
Star Wars
with a 1940’s world. He’s avoided the space suit, high-tech look which everyone has done to death and replaced it with the infinitely more sinister effect of modern TV surveillance techniques being used amongst McCarthyite, G-Man figures and costumes.

Highly apologetic second and third assistants inform me that I shall not be needed for the second day running – which is a pity as I’ve two or three times felt just like doing it.

Helen, Oak Village police snoop, rang her ‘Crime Prevention Officer’ today to report a shady man at old Miss Clutton’s house and was told, after a long delay, ‘I’m sorry, your Crime Prevention Officer doesn’t work weekends.’

Denis O’B calls. He’s trying again with
Water
. But having re-read the script I know it’s going to be only a slightly more exciting version of
Yellowbeard
and
Bullshot
.

At the same time I reassert my inclination to do Bennett’s film. He sounds as though he has not yet decided on this. Was he waiting to see if I bit on
Water
? They have John Cleese already, he says. Why has John said yes? It’s another ordinary, mediocre part which he will be able to do with his eyes shut

… But he’s old enough to decide for himself. Or has he said ‘I’ll do it if Mike will do it’? I have always said no to
Water
and have said ‘no’ again today. It’s not my thing.

Collected by [my unit driver] Roy on a cold, dark morning at 7.10.

No waiting around today. A concentrated morning’s work on the first encounter between Sam and Jack. I start tense – projecting and acting. But, gaining confidence from repeated successful takes, I’m able to deliver a genuine, easy-going Jack – not the college boy pin-up that TG perhaps had in mind, but an unforced, easy naturalness that I never had last week.

TG looks battered. Unshaven, dark-rimmed eyes, one of which is bloodshot. But he’s clearly in seventh heaven – doing exactly what he enjoys best.

Back to the TJ/MP script today after a three-week lay-off.

TJ sounds unusually relaxed about it … he admits he no longer feels the desperate pressure to make a film as soon as possible. Our reputation is such that we must maintain a very high standard – and if this takes a while, then we are lucky to have the time to spend getting it right.

Back home, see Julian Hough
⁹⁵
wandering about in Oak Village. A strange, slightly disconcerting presence. He himself admits he’s spent four sessions ‘inside’ (a mental hospital) in the last few years, and is now putting together a one-man show, having left Patrick Barlow and the National Theatre of Brent. He has a cup of tea and, having talked of his plans, he leaves, ambling off in an amused, unrushed gangle down Oak Village.

Nancy [Lewis] rings to ask if I will speak at the wedding, as her father can’t be there. I’m honoured.

Car picks me up at eight. To the studio where, to my amazement, I am finished and done with by eleven o’clock. The scene in which I leave the office, take the lift and leave Info Retrieval, talking to Jonathan the while, is at last complete and the bulk of my work on
Brazil
is over.

To St Paul’s, Covent Garden, for Nancy and Simon’s wedding.

A heavily-bearded Eric Idle slips into the row next to me. What an extraordinary place for a Python reunion. A year after making our second ‘blasphemous’ comedy, we’re in a church singing ‘Love Divine All Loves Excelling’.

Cleese, alone, is two rows in front. He keeps making Dick Vosburgh laugh by singing with great emphasis words like ‘next’, long after everyone else has stopped. Gilliam, with family, is in the front. Terry has his duvet-like coat and, with his new, short haircut, Eric says he looks like an ‘inflated monk’. Jones, also with family, has a Mac that makes him look like Jones of the Yard and, entirely suitably, Graham is late!

Someone has alerted the press and there is a barrage of photographers, who try to get all the Pythons to link arms with the bride and groom. John and Graham totally ignore them. But eventually, after persuasive lines like ‘Two minutes and we’ll leave you alone’, we are snapped and can go back to reacquainting ourselves with those we haven’t seen for far too long.

Then Helen and I take a taxi down to Glaziers Hall, beneath London Bridge. A man in a red coat is announcing. We give our names as ‘Mr and Mrs Figgis’. The sight of Nancy in white looking like an 18-year-old in her first dress already brought tears to the eyes at St Paul’s. Simon looks ineffable and timeless, but Nancy does seem to have leapt back 20 years.

Simon’s best man, Philip, small, with a short beard, has asked if he can break the rules and speak before me, as he is the only non-professional to speak. Turns out he’s a barrister and in fact the
only
professional to speak. A very clever, witty, slightly long speech, with hardly a glance at his notes.

I have my usual copious sheaves of longhand, but, despite sherry and champagne, I manage to read them quite spiritedly and everyone seems
pleased afterwards. Jones (Terry) says they were the two best wedding speeches he’d heard.

The morning starts at Julia Street, with an influx of kitchen-fitters, electricity meter-readers. Sam Jarvis has arrived to start decorating and is extremely worried about the whereabouts of his tea-bags.