Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (8 page)

Ken’s idea is to fill the special coach with travellers whom I casually chat to, plus one or two specially researched guests. One of whom is a Mrs Mackenzie, a 99-year-old who I’m told remembers the railway on the day it opened in 1896. She’s a wonderful, bright old lady, but not soft of hearing, and my first question – a tortuously-phrased effort to elicit information as to how old she was – is received with a stony silence. A pleasant smile, but a stony silence. I try it again, then again even louder. The crew and the rest of the compartment must be either splitting their sides or squirming in embarrassment.

For a full ten minutes I persevere, trying everything, but, like a man with an enormous fishing net and six harpoons trying to catch two small fish, I end up with very little for a lot of work. It leaves me exhausted, though still in admiration of old Mrs Mackenzie.

At 10.30 I’m filmed boarding the Skye ferry to Kyleakin. The cameras are staying on the mainland to film exteriors from the Kyle train. I’m free until after lunch and, as I have no option but to go on to Skye, I decide on a morning’s walking to compensate for much eating and drinking over the last few days.

I stride on out of town, having left my case at the Caledonian MacBrayne [ferry] office. I stop at a hotel which is a country house – red-grey stone and tall pitched roofs – set in very lush gardens with brilliantly
deep pink rhododendrons and a settled air of detachment and solid comfort.

But as soon as I step inside my stomach tightens with the identification of a very early feeling of my childhood of a claustrophobia, a fear of being stifled in dark rooms with well-polished doors, in which old ladies move in the shadows.

Mallaig, which we reach in the evening, is even bleaker than Kyle of Lochalsh, a fairly wretched spot to be faced with the prospect of a night in – after a day like today. But I have a room overlooking the Atlantic and the sharp points of Rum and the volcanic spur of Eigg and there is a sunset after all and it looks quite idyllic with a score of fishing boats heading for the harbour.

After the ritual of an evening meal together (‘Are the “Melon Cubes” out of a tin?’ one of our number enquires ingenuously. ‘Oh,
yes
… ’ the waitress assures him quickly), Ken and I go to visit the engine driver whom we will be filming tomorrow, as his wife has called and asked us over.

They’re rather a special family – with three children roughly the age of my own, and yet Ronnie McClellan must be over 20 years older then me. He married late to a very bright and articulate district nurse. Their children come down in dressing gowns to meet us (it’s 9.45) and shake hands solemnly and politely. They don’t have television, but they have dogs, cats and, I think, some animals in the croft. The children kiss their father obediently but warmly. I should imagine he’s quite a strict and traditional father.

Back at the empty vastness of the West Highland, the two men who were drinking half and halfs (Scotch and Heavy) at six o’clock are still drinking half and halfs at twelve. Ken beats me three times at pool. Go to bed feeling inadequate.

Nylon sheets and a colour scheme which looks as though an animal’s been slaughtered in the room. Read Michael Arlen’s
The Green Hat
and enjoy the utter incongruity. It gives me great comfort to know that Cannes and Mallaig exist on the same planet.

Fresh Mallaig kippers for breakfast. Later I’m told that there’s no such thing as a Mallaig kipper as there’s a ban on herring fishing. So it was probably a Canadian herring – which may have been kippered in Mallaig. Anyway, I ate two of them.

An especially beautiful journey down along the coast – made more civilised by the presence of a buffet bar and a couple of glasses of wine. I have to be filmed in the said buffet bar with two Danish students and a flavour chemist from Chicago who is over here on a cycling tour of Scotland. He’s a great Python fan and he’s honestly called Constantine Apostle.

Our hotel here – the Glenfinnan House – is situated in an almost unbeatable Highland surrounding. Pictures of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s heroic failures (it was here at Glenfinnan he gathered his forces in the summer of 1745), a set of bagpipes, pieces of igneous rocks on a dark-stained mantelpiece in a passable imitation of a baronial hall.

The house is set beside a lawn surrounded by broadleaved trees and running down to Loch Shiel. Beside a wooden jetty, a couple of rowing boats bob on the water. Walk down to the jetty and look down the length of Loch Shiel, at the sheer magnificence of the spurs of epic mountainside tumbling down to the lakeside.

As we unload, a cool-looking kid of ten or eleven skids up on his bike. ‘Do you live here?’ I ask … The boy, in a particularly businesslike way, nods and adds, quite naturally, ‘D’you think I’m lucky?’

To bed around midnight. It seems almost a crime to close the curtains against such a view.

A Bank Holiday again. Surfaced mid-morning. Regular phone calls and door bells ringing – mostly for the children, who have the next week off school. There was lots I wanted to do and a big pile of mail. Most of all I wanted to do nothing – to be at no-one’s beck and call for a bit.

Terry Gilliam comes round soon after six. The first week of
Time Bandits
is now complete, but the shoot in Morocco was gruelling even by TG’s standards. Moroccans less good at organisation than Tunisians, which didn’t help, but they managed 97 slates – some in locations only accessible by mule.

After one week in Morocco he’d come back feeling like he did after ten weeks of
Brian
. Rushes on Wednesday will show whether this almighty opening effort will spur everyone on, or be the start of the collapse.

A heavy day ahead. The sky is grey and lowering, but still no rain. Prepare for the arrival of the BBC unit to film outside and inside the house. Also today we’re expecting Al and Claudie
¹⁵
to stay, so No. 2 has to be prepared.

As it turns out we have a most successful shoot. We block off Julia Street with a 60-foot hoist to shoot an epic ‘leaving home’ scene. Helen and the three children all have to do their acting bit and acquit themselves very well on all four takes. Really it’s an elaborate reconstruction for the viewing public of what happens every time I leave home for filming away. Rachel, last out, hands me my toothbrush with an easy self-confidence which I hadn’t expected at all.

Helen goes out to badminton and Al, Claudie and I make a rambling feast out of quite a simple selection of soup and cold meats, ending with a liqueur tasting – Al determined to try all the bottles he brought over from Brittany. Their Jacques Brel tape played loudly – Al enthusing, as only he can, over each track. ‘One of the greatest people of this century’ is Al’s verdict on Brel.

Claudie comes to life more when the subject turns to France, but her English is now much more confident. But I wish she would eat more and smoke less. Al wants to have a baby – they want a girl and they have a name, ‘Chantelle’.

A warm and woozy evening. Much laughter.

Listen to the Python
Contractual Obligation Album
. I’m afraid it does sound rather ordinary. One or two of the songs stand out and there are some conventional sketches of Cleese and Chapman’s (man enters shop, etc) which are saved by good performances. Twenty-five percent padding, fifty percent quite acceptable, twenty-five percent good new Python.

Drive up to T Gilliam’s for a meeting. Terry is very deflated. He looks and sounds quite pummelled by the pressures of this creature he’s brought into life. Filming all week, meetings with actors in the evening, all weekend looking at locations.

Now Amy wants his attention and he wants to give me his attention. So we work on rewrites and additions for next week whilst Amy piles me up with teddy bears and races round the room with a manic energy, shouting, tumbling, grimacing. The only way we can work is by me reading the script corrections as a story to one of Amy’s teddies. A bizarre session.

Work and run in the morning. Talk to a fan from Indiana on the telephone at lunchtime – she was visiting England, had seen
Grail
17 times and
Brian
nine times and loved everything we did.

To Denis’s office at two. Meet Peter Cook there. He has a very silly hat, but we have a few laughs, mainly about a pop group Peter had seen in Los Angeles called Bees Attack Victor Mature. Peter rambles on a while, then wanders off – a little concerned as to how he’ll find his way out of the EuroAtlantic fortress. Denis has just done a deal for GC’s
Yellowbeard
screenplay, provided that the screenplay is rewritten. So Peter Cook, whom Denis was much impressed by at Amnesty, is to rewrite the script with GC – and they have a six-million-dollar production budget. Denis does want to see us all happy.

What Denis doesn’t know is that E. Idle has probably slipped the O’Brien net. A very positive letter from him in France – the ‘Pirates of Penzance’ now looks more likely to happen. Gary Weiss [Eric’s director] is a very ‘hot’ property and he wants to do it. Eric now has a direct phone line in Cotignac, but asks me to promise not to give it to Denis, under threat of setting fire to my stereo.

I leave, having told Denis that the next thing I want to do is a film on my own – probably to shoot next summer.

Watch last hour of the Test Match v West Indies on the box, then Helen and I, suitably tarted up in DJs and long dresses, drive down to Kensington for the reception at the Royal Geographical Society to commemorate their founding 150 years ago.

The Queen and Prince Philip and the Duke of Kent are to be there. We’ve joked about going and not going, but tell Helen it’s my duty as a diarist if nothing else.

Sir John and Lady Hunt are receiving the guests. He’s quite frail now and totally white-haired. Lady Hunt seems very bright and on the ball.

I meet the daughter of Lord Curzon, on whose land the RGS HQ was built, and the sparkling wine with strawberries in it is going to my head quite pleasantly when we are asked to move away from the gravel terrace. Quite amiably, but firmly. Around us some people are being lined up as if for some military manoeuvre – not in a long line, but in a number of short ranks, like football teams.

Helen and I are enmeshed with a world authority on gibbons, who also happens to be an enormous
Ripping Yarn
fan and slightly more pissed than we are.

The Duke was, at one point, just beside my right shoulder and sounded to be having quite a jolly time, but entourages always deter chance encounters, so I didn’t spring forward. About 10.30 he and Queenie disappeared inside.

Helen and I, quite mellow, but hungry, left about 15 minutes later, but, as we prepared to cross Kensington Gore, there was a shout from a policeman who was standing only 100 yards away from the SAS siege building – ‘Stay in the middle!’
¹⁶
We froze on the traffic island in the middle of Kensington Gore and realised that the Queen had not yet left.

In fact at this moment her Daimler, with the swollen rear windows for better visibility, was sweeping away from the RGS. The light was on inside so the Queen and the Duke could be seen, and for a moment in time we on our little traffic island and the Head of the British Empire came into eyeball to eyeball contact. Helen waved. The Queen automatically waved back, the Duke grinned and the black limousine curved left and right into Hyde Park and was gone.

To Paddington to catch the 1.15 to Newport. There is a long wait, blamed first on signal failure, then, with what sounded like a stroke of inspiration
from a tired guard, on a bomb scare. But it enables me to complete the ‘Robin Hood’ rewrites, losing the ‘Future’ sequence.

Finally arrive at the Gateway Hotel, Llanwern, at about four o’clock. Various members of
Time Bandits
crew are surfacing after the second of their week of night shoots at nearby Raglan Castle. Last night a lady on stilts ‘lost her bottle’, as Ian Holm put it, but the crew seem to be in good spirits.

TG and I discuss the rewrites. Then I go to my room and watch some of the England v Belgium match – some promising football and one of the great international goals by Wilkins, then fighting on the terraces and the Italian police react fiercely with riot police and tear gas.

TG’s fictional recreation of the sack of Castiglione is not unlike the actual scenes I’ve just witnessed on the terraces in Turin. Both take place in North Italy and in each smoke is drifting everywhere and bodies are falling. But TG’s pictures are much more impressive and I’m tantalised by the brief amount I’ve seen of this strange film that is slowly and painstakingly taking shape in the rain at a nearby castle.

Midsummer’s Day. And, as it turns out, the first day in the last three weeks when it hasn’t rained on the
Time Bandits
.

Out in the mosquito-ridden beauty of the Epping Forest, with the pollarded trees striking wonderfully Gilliamesque poses, with lumps and gnarls and strange growths, Shelley [Duvall who’s playing Pansy, one of the star-crossed lovers] and I and the mammoth unit enjoy a dry day. Not 20 miles away, there were fierce storms with hailstones scattering the players at Wimbledon and Lord’s.

After more shots with the dwarves passing us, Shelley and I get on to the rain sequences. I can’t complain. I wrote the dreaded word ‘rain’, and here it is in all its dispiriting glory, courtesy of the Essex Fire Brigade, Not a terribly good take and the next 40 minutes are spent under a hair-dryer, preparing my wig for a re-take. But then it’s lunch and I have to go to the pub with a plastic bag over my head.