Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (86 page)

More of the fish-torture scene. Good word on the rushes of yesterday. I am subdued during the morning – the part is so uncomfortable – but in the
afternoon we begin the slapstick, stammering scene with myself and JC.

John, who has found even his generous policy of praise and encouragement is not always a match for Kevin’s mood of gloomy reappraisal, beams with real happiness as we start to play the scene together. By the end of the afternoon he is corpsing regularly and suggesting we write a film together.

Finish at six. A physically very hard day for me – perhaps the most demanding so far – but on the rushes I can see that my one-eyed reactions are funny and, as Dave drives me home about seven, I feel, despite a 12-hour day, that I am really enjoying this return to uninhibited comedy. A chance to expand and experiment – a world away from the ‘heroes’ of ‘
Mish
’ and
Private Function
.

Shamberg feels that there should be closer footage of the fish being eaten by Kevin. Charlie stoutly resists, saying that any more specific shots would spoil the ‘beauty’ of the piece and make it ‘vulgar and coarse’.

I carry on after lunch and it’s not until half past four that I’m released from eight successive days of heavy filming. Say my farewells until late Friday.

JC rings about 8.30 to tell me he thinks that the shot of me with the chips up my nose and the pear in my mouth – still desperately berating Kevin – is the funniest thing he’s ever seen me do.

The office phones. Someone who has seen me in
The Dress
wants me to play in Pinter’s
Betrayal
at the New End Theatre – a ‘major’ actress is lined up to play opposite me. More tempting is increased interest from Steve Woolley and Nik Powell at Palace in my availability for a new Neil Jordan film. They will send the script to me.

Looking with half interest at what the Everyman may offer for a night out, I see that Charlie’s
Lavender Hill Mob
is on at six. This must be a sign. I drive up there. Unfortunately the accumulated fatigue of the last two weeks decides to hit me as the film begins. Almost as soon as a succession of nostalgic images – the old censor’s certificate, the Rank gong and the leaves of Ealing Studios’ logo have come and gone – I’m fighting against a fierce desire for unconsciousness.

The film is a delight – played with great humour by basically rather nice characters. Its strengths are amiability and a good pace. I hope that Charlie will be able to inject the same into JC’s film.

Read Neil Jordan’s
High Spirits
halfway through and am considerably intrigued. It’s Irish-American hokum, but my part is quite interestingly manic and as I run over the Heath I feel a great surge of enthusiasm for the project.

My head clears, too, on
American Friends
. Decide to confirm Tristram as director, with the possibility of the now freelance Nat Crosby as photographer, and to try and make it as cheaply as possible. So the
Missionary
gloss would go and we should concentrate on the characters rather than the crowds of costumed extras. Ingenuity will be the key.

The second half of
High Spirits
is a bit of a come-down. The comedy becomes more desperate and the laughs cruder and the last page is dreadful. In fact the script bears all the hallmarks of Hollywood’s corrosive influence. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Heavy rain as we start the day’s filming. I am bent double in the back of a van with wet, sticky, grubby floor, trying to control a Doberman with a pair of pink knickers in its collar.

Back in my caravan I try to cat-nap. Overhead a gigantic flash of lightning and almost simultaneous clap of thunder.

Dog shots in the early afternoon and I end up back in the van with the Doberman, which is a very amiable, if somewhat confused, dog clearly not given to the level of ferocity required. ‘Give his bollocks a squeeze,’ someone suggests. Then he becomes realistically angry. His eyes stare and strain, his teeth are bared and I’m damn glad there’s a muzzle. I’m dismissed at a quarter to six.

Back home, Neil Jordan calls from LA and before he can do any extra persuasion, I tell him I’ve decided, for time reasons, not to do
High Spirits
… well, it’s almost true. Unlike producers, he doesn’t put up much of a fight and seems resigned.

After lunch I experience the odd sensation of nervousness and uncertainty as I approach a fairly simple shot. Despite rave notices from all sides for my work in the film so far, I still have only myself and my own gut feelings to trust and to deal with.

In the scene I have to discover that not only has a dog been killed, but that Mrs Coady has died of a heart attack. Gloom and remorse must turn to smiles and laughter. I do it, but formularistically, with tight representation of laughter, instead of laughing because I want to. Charlie is very happy, though, and moves quickly on to the next shot.

For the first time I feel rushed and confused. I felt critical of my performance, even if he didn’t. I talk to Charlie. ‘If ever you want to do it again, you just have to say,’ he replies magnanimously, before adding ‘and I’ll say “
Bloody
actors”!’

A frenetic day. A new location by Clerkenwell Green.

Two filming crews filming us being filmed, or, worse still, filming us off-camera, ‘relaxing’. Feel like a caged animal being prodded through the bars to be animated, amusing – to do tricks – when really all I want to do is sit as quietly as possible and harness my energies to complete the day.

Charles Althorp
¹⁵⁶
interviews me for NBC’s
Today
programme. I manage to be lively, but unimaginative. He is quite sensible, softly-spoken and easy to talk to. Then the prying eyes of Iain Johnstone’s crew pick me up and I improvise with John and everyone laughs, till we run dry.

Jamie is back with us. She’s edgy and, as I’m beginning to realise, covers her edginess with a manic display of extrovert energy. As John is in the middle of being interviewed by NBC, interminably, Jamie grabs a policeman and leads him to arrest John. It works very well and the policeman goes all pink.

But when Jamie does the same thing on Kevin, who is giving an equally interminable interview to Iain Johnstone, it backfires; Kevin is not much amused, and poor Jamie sits down again, deflated. She is like a bright
child, very up or very down. Open, eager, energetic, but always demanding a response; thriving on attention, but frequently finding it’s the wrong sort.

The afternoon is even more like a circus. We are crowded into narrow streets, hemmed in by dour old council housing, filming a car exchange on a getaway (the police obligingly tell us that this location has been used for just this purpose by real crooks, twice in the last six months).

Jamie is practising the line ‘Shut up!’ when a group of Scots winos stagger past. One turns on her – ‘You fuckin’ shut up!’

David Byrne, whose
True Stories
was one of the most interesting films this year, and whose ‘People Like Us’ tape has brightened many journeys to Southwold, appears with Michael Shamberg (who carries his mobile phone like a sinister black detonator). A thin man, with big, soft, dark eyes, hair in a pony-tail and a rather nervous, apologetic manner, which is belied by sudden bursts of lusty laughter.

The motorbike has to be ridden for the first time. I have to ride it whilst holding the black bag of clothes, which is something I never practised. Charlie decides on no rehearsal. ‘Either he’ll do it, or he won’t.’

As it happens I do it, and they’re happy with the take, and the Lowryesque crowd begins to disperse as the unit moves off for the last shot. For me it’s the end of week three, the end of my 13th full filming day out of the first 15.

We’re up early – seven o’clock – to see William off on his cycling trip to Holland; he’s going with friend Nathan for two weeks. Everything squashed into two pannier bags on his new Muddy Fox mountain bike. Brightly-coloured Bermuda shorts and his recently-acquired Pizza Express baseball cap give him quite a jaunty look as he heads off up Elaine Grove, on a soft, quite cool, autumnal morning.

To the Curzon Mayfair to catch the first performance of the highly-praised
Jean de Florette
.
¹⁵⁷

Enjoy the film – my attention constantly engaged by absorbing wide-screen photography and a small group of characters giving riveting performances.

Turn it over in my mind as I drive north, to see if I can winkle out any lessons for
American Friends
. Keep it simple, is as far as I get.

Today we are filming at one of the maintenance areas at Heathrow.

British Airways have, extraordinarily, given us a 747 to play with for the week and it’s tugged into position at the back of our shot. Only the tyres are of human scale – the rest towers above us, comparable only to some huge cathedral or fortress.

Special effects are responsible for the false concrete with which the area is being surfaced, and into which Kevin must fall and die. It’s made from a base of porridge and Camp coffee, and smells a bit like pig swill.

I have a steamroller to drive, which looks formidable and belches out black diesel smoke. Quite easy to operate, though not for racing, and I enjoy bearing down on Kevin very, very slowly.

A stunt man is squashed into the porridge first thing, as Brian (special effects) drives the front wheel of the roller over him. All executed with skill and admirable lack of fuss and bother; everyone applauds.

More steamroller-driving in the afternoon takes us almost to the end of the sequence, a day early. My last lines are screamed out above the noise of steel on porridge.

A pleasant, but humid evening. Tom enthuses to me about climbing, in which he clearly finds success and confidence.

At the airport soon after eight. A low, damp morning with drifting drizzle. Melvin [the second assistant director] greets me with the news that they have reversed the day’s shooting and will first be doing the final sequence inside the Jumbo.

So, a morning in the caravan. Dip into a 1920’s travel book about ‘Undiscovered France’, which Jonathan Benson has brought in for me. Jonathan loves France and all things French, and is very interested in my imminent departure for our summer visit to the Lot. He remembers reading a card stuck up amongst others offering ‘Cane-chair saleslady’
and ‘French lessons’, which read simply ‘Phone 487 3294 for the Lot’.

A mild and benevolent morning, and there is a cautious air of celebration about the unit. Can’t be just the sunshine, or because it’s Friday, I think that a general air of confidence is seeping into us all. This is the end of five weeks’ filming, in which there has not been one day which hasn’t produced something remarkable, and Michael Shamberg’s only worry is that it may be too long.

Jamie, to whom I have given a copy of
American Friends
earlier this morning, retired to her trailer and read it all at a sitting. She is tremendously enthusiastic. ‘I get so many scripts, I have to tell you, if something like that came along I would ring my agent and say “Get me the job” …’

David [Dodd] and Andaye and sons Alex and Jehan are round at Simon Albury’s. We talk about the ’60’s, about the change that has happened since then, and the Conservative ’80’s. Nothing in the US has really changed deep down, Andaye feels. Reagan has managed to divert attention away from the problems of hunger, poverty and prejudice by concentrating his time and his efforts on those who are successful, tough, patriotic.

We are deep in a conservative cycle, I wonder if when there is a return to restlessness, and questioning, radical attitudes, the conditions for their dissemination will be the same. In ’68 quite a lot of people, journalists, editors, media folk, went along with the celebration of change; now, as the Murdochs tighten a stranglehold on the press and international money markets are so sophisticated that a crisis of confidence in a radical government could be quite quickly implemented, one wonders how open or democratic any display of dissatisfaction will be.

Back home at four to see Patrick Cassavetti
¹⁵⁸
as the next stage in pulling
‘
AF
’ together. We talk for an hour. Patrick impresses with his seriousness, his knowledge of what’s going on in films, attitude to the crew and the team and lack of interest in big money film-making. Leave him with the script. If he says he wants to produce, then I shall be flattered and encouraged.

Work through letters in the morning. Jo Lustig,
¹⁵⁹
an amiable and even historic figure of our times, calls to tell me that Anne Bancroft would love to hear from me on ‘
AF
’. Al L sits in No. 2 and reads ‘No. 27’. A lovely day, warm and sunny and breezy. Lunch together in the garden.

Later I run and afterwards ring Anne B. Response is heartening. She begins by gushing her praises for my work and the Pythons – though what she’s seen of my solo efforts I cannot establish. She is admirably direct and funny and sounds quite irresistible.

She says she’s touched that I’ve written a part for her and yet doesn’t waffle or flood the phone with insincerity. Our brief contact is very exciting and hopeful. But will the script justify the approach?

The location is a church school hall in Roehampton, which is doubling as a prison visiting room.

Kevin, Jamie and Tom Georgeson are playing a scene. Phoebe, Kevin’s trim, dark-haired lady, looks on. She chuckles … ‘Kevin will always try to steal the scene some way or other.’ I am able to grin agreement. ‘Did he do his zipper up in that last take?’ she asks.