Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (24 page)

Basically they don’t want to lose out again as they did on
Brian
and
Time Bandits
. They want us badly and sugar this with rather unjustifiable statements of the ‘You’re better now than you ever were’ variety. Unfortunately I have to leave at 8.30 before the ‘nitty-gritty’ is discussed, but I can feel the incorrigibly plausible double act beginning to soften the Pythons’ notorious antipathy to Hollywood majors.

All quiet. Everywhere. Even at eight o’clock. Helen the first to notice the snow. Everywhere. Not a sprinkling fast turning to slush, but a 14-carat four-inch-thick blanket of snow, which is still being quietly augmented from a low, heavy, colourless sky. Lovely to see Rachel at the window of the sitting room in her long nightie, unable to take her eyes off the wonder of it all.

To a viewing theatre to see
Elephant Man
. A private showing, organised by Neville so we could see the most recent performance of Anne Bancroft.

A very fine film. Admirable in its unsensational, underplaying treatment of the man. Some weird and wonderful images of London mark David Lynch out as a most original director. Almost unbearably moving for an hour, then somehow the attitudes became so clean – liberals versus working-class louts and drunks – that I lost some of the intensity of involvement which I had when [John] Hurt was a piteous, grunting creature being treated kindly for the first time.

I think Anne Bancroft could be too old and maybe too strongly dramatic.

Lady A must have a skittishness … a light, naughty side, of which, I think, youth may be a not inconsiderable part.

A cold grey morning. Helen rings to warn us of more heavy snowfalls in London, at least double what came down on Tuesday and it’s still falling. Four people have been killed in a train accident in thick snow in Buckinghamshire and Ipswich Station has closed. So I decide to stay put.

Denis rings. He has given Loncraine the fee and percentage he asked for, but wants to defer L’s last £5,000 until he’s brought the picture in on budget. Loncraine refuses and won’t even meet Denis until the deferment is sorted out. DO’B wants to be tough – walk away and let RL come running back to him – but fears that this will have a deleterious effect on relationships. I agree with this. I also think the money being fought over is so paltry in view of Loncraine’s value to the project. So Denis reluctantly backs down.

All this over a crackly line from London, whilst next door, in my little writing room overlooking the snowswept fields, with the tiny two-bar electric fire, is my script and my scribbles, on which nearly £2 million-worth of expenditure depends.

As I write (7 p.m.), wind is flicking snow against my writing room windows, there are reports that blizzards have hit the South-West and the electricity has failed there too. A bomb has gone off in a car in Connaught Square, killing two, and there is a news blanket over the army take-over in Poland.

An almost apocalyptically gloomy day. The sort of day to make one question the point of writing comedy – or writing anything. Actually it
also makes me feel, so far, comfortable, cosy and rather anxious to get on with work. But then I have money to afford light and heat and food and drink in abundance, and I have four other bright, lively, busy people in the house with me. I
am
one of the fortunate ones, this bleak snowswept, wind-howling evening.

Disappointment on the faces of the children as the snow has been whittled down to brown slushy piles. I have a clear work day at home. Neville rings – says he has budgeted
Missionary
, and it comes out at £2.5 million overall – £1.3 million beyond Denis’s first figure and 0.5 million beyond the Loncraine estimate. But Neville very level-headed about it, says there are trims that can be made, but this is what he will present Denis with.

Below freezing again – making this Day Nine of the very cold wintry spell. But clear skies. Work well on script in the morning.

To bed at 12.30. George H rang earlier in the evening. He was anxious that I would have to give up some of my
Time Bandits
money as a result of possible renegotiations and he didn’t think I ought to. He was very flattering about my role in keeping the thing together. Very touched.

The forecasted thaw in nearly two weeks of freezing weather did not materialise and we wake to thick, swirling snow, two to three inches deep, which has once again caught everyone by surprise.

Go to see
Chariots of Fire
, as I’m dining with Puttnam tomorrow. A very fine and noble film – like a sophisticated advert for the British Way of Life. Some marvellous, memorable sequences and a riveting performance by Ben Cross as Harold Abrahams. I came out feeling as I used to when we saw films like
Dambusters
25 years ago.

Found disturbingly similar sequences in
Chariots
and
The Missionary
, and also began to get colly-wobbles about
Missionary
casting. Ian Holm and John Gielgud merely will emphasise how similar we are to other British films. But then we haven’t got Ian Holm or Gielgud yet.

Very cold and gloomy with swirls of snow. Ice in Julia Street for a fortnight now.

Have lunch appointment with David Puttnam. Just about to brave the elements when Neville rings with the news that Gielgud has turned down the Lord Ames part. What stings me more is that there was no particular reason given – he just didn’t want to do it.

I gave up the attempt to drive to Odin’s and slithered down traffic-packed side streets. Puttnam about 20 minutes late. He’s immediately friendly, open, and he does seem to know everybody, especially amongst the ‘establishment’ of TV and films – Alasdair Milne, Huw Wheldon. He meets them on all his committees. Nice story that Huw Wheldon was to have been in
Chariots of Fire
, but couldn’t do it and was deputised at the last minute by Lindsay Anderson.

Puttnam talks at a clipped, brisk pace, as if there’s so much to say and so little time to say it. I think he’s proud of his success and his work rate – a revealing cliché about being ‘just a boy from a grammar school …’ He’s complimentary about
Ripping Yarns
– thinks the toast scene in ‘Roger of the Raj’ one of the funniest things he’s ever seen.

He’s keen, almost over-keen, to talk business, and writes down the names of a couple of books I mention to him as filmable (
Good Man in Africa
and
Silver City
). He says Goldcrest Productions have a lot of money and promises to get one of the bosses to ring me re the financing of the next Python movie. He also sounds quite positive about
Greystoke
, with its £1 million forest set, coming to Shepperton.

And it is a White Christmas. The snow is not fresh, deep, crisp and even, but it’s only a couple of days old and soon the clouds clear and give it a sparkling brightness – of the sort that is always depicted but never happens.

Tom opens his stocking at 2.30 and goes to sleep again, but we don’t get jumped on until eight o’clock. A bedful of all the Palins (except Granny) as Helen and I undo our stockings.

At one I have to drive into town for lunch with Ray Cooper to discuss his doing the part of the Bishop. Ray has laid on a lunch at Duke’s Hotel, in a Dickensian side street off St James’s and opposite ‘The house from which Frédéric Chopin left to make his last public appearance at the Guildhall’.

Small, expensive, immaculately tasteful little dining room – rather in the Denis class of spending, though. A bottle of Corton Charlemagne, oeuf en gelée (rather tasteless) and some very delicious fegato alla Veneziana. We talk about casting of
The Missionary
. Ray’s choices for Lady A would be Helen Mirren or Faye Dunaway – both strong on projecting sexuality. And he knows Dunaway.

Wonderful table-talk from the only other occupied table – ‘I have a little Bulgarian.’ ‘There’s quite a lot of jewellery Brenda doesn’t wear all the time.’ And things like this.

Up into Soho to meet Eric for a drink at the French Pub. The French is full of weird people, who seem already drunk when they come in. One man is kneeling on the bar trying to pull up the barmaid’s skirt. It’s all rather like being in a Chris Orr print.

Eric and I, in quite playful mood after the champagne, drive over to Claridge’s where we are to meet Sherry Lansing, the studio head of Twentieth Century Fox, and the most powerful woman in American movies.

What Sherry Lansing offers us in Claridge’s is much more straightforward and uncluttered by looks, whispers and double-talk than what Paramount offered us at the Inn on the Park. Twentieth Century Fox want the next Python movie and they are prepared to finance it and distribute it however and wherever we want. The board would give us complete control over its production unless they thought the script totally worthless. Tim Hampton would be Fox’s representative and could be used as little or as much as we wanted. It was as clear and as positive as that. We told her she was making a big mistake and she laughed. I liked her very much. We said we didn’t like
History of the World Part One
and she didn’t seem to mind.

At 8.00, with a kiss on both cheeks, she left us and I took Eric back in my grubby little Mini and we decided that we should get drunk together more often.

Rather a miserable day on which to end the year. I feel quite a few degrees below good health. Nothing very dramatic, just aches and lethargy. This deterioration could not have come at a worse time, as I have Neville chasing me and Richard Loncraine returning from Wales, doubtless vital and restored by Christmas, to read with great anticipation the new script that I have put together. The final, very important twists and turns must be written today and tomorrow.

I set to, but lose quite a bit of time talking with Denis (from Switzerland) and Neville (about casting – he’s suddenly strong on Ann-Margret).

I think I’m probably cleaning my teeth when 1982 begins. Helen and I see the New Year in without fuss – on fruit juice and Disprins, not champagne, for me. I hope the way I feel is not an augury for 1982, when, if all goes to plan, I shall need every scrap of energy.

Up at ten feeling fully restored and unbearably bouncy for a while. I take Rachel up to the playground on Parliament Hill. The sun’s shining and it’s very warm for early January. Lots of the attractions in the playground are empty or broken. It’s a sadly declined place. This gentle, unambitious meandering walk up to the swings is something I haven’t done much in the last three or four years, and it used to be de rigueur every weekend we spent in London, when the children were small. I forget that Rachel still is small.

We have a lovely time together, pottering, nattering, playing at trains in the Adventure Playground. It makes me sad and nostalgic – and this makes me cross, because I know I’m regretting being older – or getting older, anyway.

To see Phoebe Nicholls, who was Cordelia in
Brideshead
, and who I’m recommended as a Deborah. Meet her in Langan’s Brasserie. She’s much slighter than I’d expected, with ringlets of curly dark hair, and big dark eyes, in a narrow little oval face.

I embark on a laborious explanation of the story and she watches in politely rapt attention. ‘Oh, but it’s lovely,’ she says, as though it’s a living thing. A baby or a new puppy. I instinctively feel that she will be interesting. She has a certain delicateness about her which I think will help convince the audience that she really
can
think Fallen Women are women who’ve hurt their knees.

To EuroAtlantic Towers at 10.00 for a casting meeting re
Missionary
. Gielgud’s rejection has left us with two less adequate possibilities of replacement – Donald Pleasance and Trevor Howard.

Perhaps our strongest advance in this morning’s session was to eliminate
any spectacular, but possibly dumb, beauties in favour of Maggie Smith – attractive, striking, skilful actress. Parts too, we hope, for Ronnie Barker and Ian Holm.

Ominously quiet outside as we wake. Another heavy snowfall – the third already this winter and the papers are full of articles about The New Ice Age and the Frozen Eighties. It’s thin powdery stuff blown all over the place by a bitter north-east wind. It’s coming through the cracks in my study window and has covered Tom’s homework books with a thin layer of snow.

We struggle up to William Ellis School at midday with William, for his interview with the headmaster. Have to sit in the corridor for 15 to 20 minutes with boys thundering by between lessons. Quite liked the atmosphere there. Am in my worst old jeans, sneakers and a windcheater – my father would never have entered the headmaster’s study in less than a suit and spit-and-polished shoes.

Drive car out through snowdrifts and slither down into an agreeably empty London for a viewing of the
Hollywood Bowl
film – the first since Julian [Doyle] spent weeks trying to lick it into shape in LA. And it is greatly improved – linked far more smoothly and the sense of live occasion much stronger now there are better-chosen cut-backs to audience, etc. In short, a film which we now feel we will not be ashamed of. Performances very strong, particularly Eric.

Home by two o’clock. It really is so cold that all my systems seem to seize up. An hour in a catatonic trance before the sitting room fire improves things and I then set to with all the last-minute
Missionary
calls – to Richard and Denis (who has rung John Calley
⁵³
in the US to ask whether he thinks Maggie Smith or Anne Bancroft would be the bigger box-office name. Calley told him neither meant a thing!) He says, as he puts it, I can have my head over Maggie Smith and he won’t stand in my way.