Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (27 page)

Through exceptionally slow-moving traffic to Holland Park, to talk with Ken Lintott, who made my
Brian
beard and who is head of make-up on
The Missionary
. I’ve lost a lot of weight, he says. He wants me to try growing a moustache again.

Neville says we’ve no more money left. Everything is accounted for. There’s no spare. But the cast we’re assembling is most encouraging. Even Celia Johnson may be on again. She likes the script, but wants the name of her character changed, as one of her greatest friends is Lady Fermoy! Denholm Elliott, Graham Crowden and Peter Vaughan look certain. Fulton Mackay less so, as he has been offered five weeks by Puttnam on a new Bill Forsyth picture.

Richard rings. Denis will not agree to the test viewing clauses RL wants in his director’s contract. In America it is standard in Screen Directors’ Guild contracts that, should the producer want to alter the director’s delivered cut, the director has the right to insist on there being two test screenings before audiences of not less than 500 people. Anyway Denis now says that this is out of the question. It’s not really my problem, but I assure RL that I’ll support him. He talks of leaving the picture, which I don’t think is all that likely.

Work and run in the morning, then to Bermans to meet Trevor Howard. Find the great man in a first-floor dressing room, standing in stockinged feet half in and half out of a hound’s-tooth tweed hunting outfit, surrounded by dressers and costume designers. To my surprise Howard strikes me as a diminutive figure. His full head of fine, carroty red hair stands out.

He gives me a rich, warm smile and shakes my hand as if he’s really been wanting to meet me for ages. He talks sleepily and when after the fitting we suggest taking him out for a drink he brightens visibly. Though his breath already smells of alcohol, he says emphatically, ‘Yes, why not! I’ve been on the wagon for three weeks and I feel
so
tired.’ We take him down to Odin’s. He has a gin and tonic, RL and I a bottle of Muscadet.

He keeps repeating how much he’s looking forward to doing the part, though curiously, in the midst of all this enthusiasm, he expresses great concern over the brief little bedroom scene between Ames and the butler. He’s very unhappy about any hint of homosexuality. We agree to talk about this later, and he leaves to collect his passport for a trip to China he’s making for a British film week there.

Back to Bermans at 4.30 to meet Michael Hordern. He looks older and
his face redder and veinier than I’d expected. He has a straggly beard – better advanced than my moustache – which he’s growing for the BBC’s
King Lear
. Quite eccentric in his delivery, and sentences tend to end abruptly and be completed with a sort of distinctive hand gesture. He says he can understand about Trevor Howard – worried about a ‘machismo image’ as Hordern puts it. The two of them worked together on
Heart of the Matter
, but Hordern is characteristically vague about the details.

Whilst at Bermans, Neville rings and asks to meet me as urgently as possible, as a problem has arisen over the credits. It transpires that Denholm Elliott wants star billing alongside Maggie S and Trevor H. I have no objection – I always tend to think that the problems start when people read the script and
don’t
want a credit. But Denis won’t have it.

Neville, who is in charge of negotiations with the artists, wants me to intercede with DO’B, who is skiing in Colorado at the moment.

Home for delayed supper at eleven o’clock, followed by three-quarters of an hour on the phone to DO’B in Colorado. The process of trying to change Denis’s mind is like opening doors with a battering ram. Eventually they’ll give, but one has to be prepared to patiently, insistently, repeatedly run at them from exactly the same direction each time.

It’s a very bright, clear, sunny morning. Work in the garden, then take the children down to the London Dungeon. All three love it there – the frisson of fear is very cleverly maintained throughout, yet the place is not insidious or unpleasant. The victims of the rack and the murdered Thomas à Becket and the plague rats (live) all co-exist in a rather friendly, reassuring way.

Certainly all these dreadful horrors put all the children in a very good humour and we drive back across London Bridge to see the Barbican Centre, opened last week. It’s a ‘culture complex’ within the Barbican estate. Approach, across a piazza, as they describe cold, windswept open spaces these days, to buildings that house the theatre, cinema, library and conference hall. In front of them is another ‘piazza’, with fountains and lots of captive water, which looks very green and stagnant and has napkins which have blown from the outdoor restaurant soggily drifting in it.

The place is full of lost people, and men with walkie-talkies looking anxious. The children love running up and down the stairs with mirrored
ceilings or sitting in the comfortable new cinema. But at the moment it feels like a giant Ideal Home Exhibit, new and half-unwrapped and not at all integrated with the rest of the Barbican estate – on which one sees nobody. But then those who can afford flats in the Barbican can probably also afford second homes for the weekend.

To the BBC by 6.30 [for an appearance on
Parkinson
]. In a hospitality suite I talk to Parky and he runs through the questions. Researcher Alex accompanies me everywhere – even to the toilets. At 7.30 the recording begins. Jimmy Savile is on first, then there’s a brief chat from Andrew Lloyd Webber and a song from Marti Webb, then I stand listening to my introduction on the filthy piece of backstage carpet which leads – cue applause – to the spotless piece of carpet the viewers see and a seat next to Parky.

Parky is much easier to talk to than Russell Harty – he’s more relaxed and seems content to find out rather than turn fine phrases. I feel comfortable and am able to be natural – hence probably my best performance on a chat show yet.

Donald Sinden comes on third and when, in his rich, plummy RADA voice, he refers, with some pride, to meeting Lord Alfred Douglas, Jimmy Savile says ‘’oo?’. Sinden doesn’t seem to mind being interrupted that much, but Parkinson affects mock-headmasterly gravity and banishes Savile and me to ‘sit with the girls’ [the backing singers for the band]. Probably to his surprise, and certainly to the surprise of most of the cameras and the floor manager, we do just that. We so upstage Sinden’s interview that he is asked back on again next Wednesday.

Afterwards I chat to Andrew Lloyd Webber, who gives me his phone number as he lives right beside Highclere House, where we’re filming the Fermoy scenes. He also asks if I write lyrics! Savile drops the information that he is paid more to do his ads for the railways than Sir Peter Parker is for running them.

Up to Abbotsley for Granny G’s 69th birthday. I take Granny a life-size cardboard replica of Margaret Thatcher (whom she hates), some flowers and a bottle of Vosne Romanee ’64.

Grand football match on the back lawn by the barn. Rachel, Auntie Catherine and me v the two boys. We lose on penalties. Rachel quite fearless in the tackle. Leave for home at 6.00.

To BUPA house to have a pile injected. A not very painful, but strangely uncomfortable sensation. As I lay curled up, proffering my bum, I remembered that this was the first day of the
Romans in Britain
High Court trial.
⁵⁹
How suitable.

Donald Sinden appears for the second time on the
Parkinson
show, armed with blunderbuss and whip. Parky seeks to make light of Saturday’s ‘incidents’ and Sinden says that his children thought Saturday’s programme very funny – and a ‘classic Parkinson’. The whole episode has achieved some notoriety, as if Jimmy Savile and I had broken some unwritten rule, that no-one should enjoy themselves on
Parkinson
when someone else is plugging their latest product.

To Dorney Reach near Maidenhead, to look at the rectory.

Much readjusting of thoughts, but, again, after a prolonged, concentrated and wearing debate, we settle on the exact shots. Neville dictates rather tersely into his pocket recorder as RL orders lighting towers and mock walls, etc. I admire RL for his endless enthusiasm for filling frames and his refusal to scale down
his
vision of the film. Neville hints darkly that Monday, when the heads of departments put their bills in, could be a day of reckoning.

Back from Dorney to buildings around St Pancras and King’s Cross. A rooftop on some condemned flats will be the Mission roof.
⁶⁰
Wonderful period panoramas of Industrial Revolution Britain, but not too easy to enjoy them as steady drizzle comes down, putting a fine twist of unpleasantness on an already cold and prematurely dark evening. After recceing brothels and walking shots, we pack up about a quarter to seven.

A long Python film meeting.

The apportionment of parts, which took us a couple of very good-humoured hours after lunch, is such an important moment in the creation of the film; we’ve been writing for three and a half years, and yet the impact of the movie for audiences is probably far more affected by what happened in the 75 minutes at Park Square West this afternoon.

I don’t think there are any rank sores or festering injustices, though TJ thinks Eric may have wanted to do the end song, which has gone to Graham – doing a Tony Bennett impersonation!

Universal have few qualms about giving us the money – three million dollars up front, assuring us each of over £150,000 by the end of the year, well before the movie goes out. Python has never had better terms.

Parkinson
programme calls up to ask if I will present an engraved shovel to Parky at a special surprise party to mark the end of his last BBC series next Wednesday. [He’s a great fan of the shovel-owning Eric Olthwaite from
Ripping Yarns
.] I must have been rehabilitated!

To Upper Wimpole Street to see a specialist about the ache in my ear. He rather throws me by asking if I’ve come about my nose. I feel myself falling into a Python sketch …

‘My nose … No.’

‘It’s just bent to the right, that’s all …’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes, but nothing serious. Let’s talk about the ear … ’

(Pause)

‘You don’t have any trouble with the nose … ?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I should leave it then.’

Only the continuing gorgeous weather keeps me going. After yet another all too brief night’s sleep, I’m up to grab some breakfast and leave for a recce to Longleat
⁶¹
at eight o’clock. Somewhere on the way to look in the car I collect a large evil lump of sticky, smelly dogshit on my shoes, and I’ve transferred it all over the house. I resign myself with ill grace to missing breakfast and set to to clean it up, but can find no disinfectant.

At this point I crack and fly into a helpless state of rage, banging the dressing table in the bedroom so hard that Helen wakes up thinking World War III’s started, tearing my shoe off and generally behaving quite hysterically. It’s a combination of the pressure of work – burning the candle at both ends – the lack of time I’ve had to talk to Helen about everything that’s happening. But it passes, I’m collected by Brian, H forgives me before I go and I feel a storm centre has passed.

Richard drives me on to Longleat and we work and talk on the way. Arrive at midday. Take the guided tour, then meet with Christopher Thynne, the second son, who runs the house. Knows me from one of Eric Idle’s parties, he says.

He came with Georgie Fame who broke a table.

He shows us wonderful passages. Bedrooms that are workable but a little small (all country house bedrooms it seems are a lot smaller than one would think). He shows us into Lord Weymouth’s part of the house where garish paintings of all sorts of sexual endeavour cover the walls. He shows us the first printed book in England, a collection of Adolf Hitler’s signed watercolours, plus a paper which has Adolf’s signed approval of one of three designs for the Swastika symbol.

Leave for Abbotsley around 11.00. Sun shining in London, but mist is still thick as we drive up into Hertfordshire. Arrive at Church Farm at 12.30 – and I go for a last run for many weeks.

As I pound up the hill beside silent ploughed fields with the mist clinging around me like a cool refreshing blanket, I feel ready for
The Missionary
and ready for Python. I know in a sense that I’m entering a
tunnel from which I shall not emerge until October, at least.

I hit out at the air with my fists like a boxer, feeling ready.

Back to Abbotsley for lunch. The sun comes out. The boys play football. I teach Rachel to ride her bike, on the same stretch of road up to Pitsdean Hill on which I taught Willy, in the teeth of a storm, a few years ago.

Today in the still sunshine, Rachel’s little triumph seemed to have greater significance. I sensed one of those special moments between us. We both felt so proud.

Brian [Brookner] drives me in his red Mercedes to the National Liberal Club off Whitehall. First glimpse of the reality of
The Missionary
is a string of Lee Electric trucks parked in this quiet street. On the other side of the road Richard’s Winnebago. Cables run across the pavement into the wide lobby of this once grand, marble-floored Victorian club.

The first time I appear as Charles Fortescue is in this lobby and, by almost eerie coincidence, the character is born beside a huge contemporary oil painting of Gladstone’s first Cabinet, in the centre of which sits one C. Fortescue – a youngish man, not at all unlike the missionary I’m playing.