Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (29 page)

Strongish north wind throwing showery rain against the house. Take Ma to Southwold Church for the Easter service.

Before the service, conducted by the same vicar with the same
permanent grin of redemption that he wore when Dad was put in the ground almost five years ago, we go to see the grave. It’s in a small plot with several other crematees. As Mum happens upon it, she raises her voice in horror, ‘They’re all
dead
!’

She means the flowers.

I don’t feel I can take communion with her – I just don’t believe securely enough. So after the main service of rousing Easter hymns, I walk along to the front, in the teeth of a wrinkling north wind, past some of the old haunts, counting the years Southwold has been part of my life – about 25.

Home, for Granny’s stew, then venture out in a still-inhospitable afternoon, though there is no rain. We walk along the beach, throw stones, push each other about, chase and generally have a very happy time.

The news which dampens all our spirits is that Denis O’B, back from the States, has seen the assembly thus far and word, via Neville and Ray, is that he found the sound very difficult to hear and the pictures too dark. I suppose, because we were all so euphoric about the results, we took this news much more heavily than perhaps it was intended. But his reaction undoubtedly casts a pall over the proceedings.

Our first day at the Ezra Street location, where controversial amounts of the construction budget have been spent to improve the look of this East End neighbourhood. Something like £100,000, I think. Ezra Street itself has been resurrected, with a 50-yard frontage of mock houses, so well made that an old lady pointed one out as the house where she was born and another asked the council if she could be moved into it.

There are practical steam engines, piles of cobble-stones, and huge letters have transformed the local school into a Missions to Seamen Home. There are four complete streets we can use – over a quarter of a mile in all. It’s the most impressive build I’ve seen on a film since the ‘Ribat’ [at Monastir for the
Life of Brian
] – and I think tops even that.

Our day is plagued by the presence of a
Nationwide
film crew, who trap me in my caravan and suggest that I play all the locals when they interview them. I quickly abort that idea and send them off to talk to the
real
locals … ‘Oh, yes, that’s quite an idea.’

A
Daily Express
lady, quite unphased, sticks stolidly to her questions as I change in my caravan. I’m in and out of costume and make-up changes all morning, which leaves me with few reserves of patience and, when at last lunch comes and my poached trout is being borne to my caravan, the very last thing I need is an interview with
Nationwide
. But that’s the moment they’ve chosen.

The result is a very bad interview and considerable irritation. ‘Oh, you were in the
Life of Brian
, were you?’ asks the interviewer at one point.

In the afternoon Maggie S hides in her caravan to avoid having to talk to
Nationwide
, the
Daily Express
lady quietly and doggedly continues with her questions and I concentrate on trying to preserve sanity and remember what the hell I’m doing in Whitechapel, dressed as a clergyman.

Lunch with Denis to discuss my personal stuff – contracts and the like. I still do not have a signed contract, nor have I accepted any payment for
Missionary
. We walk from Cadogan Square to a pleasant, almost empty Chinese restaurant in a basement off Knightsbridge.

Denis tells me more about the Columbia deal, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the most unbelievable part of the
Missionary
saga. That we should have completed three weeks of shooting, only 13 months after the first word was written, is fantastical enough, but that we should be going out with the finished product in a thousand theatres across the US after 19 months is almost terrifying. But our little film is, give or take settlement of details, Columbia’s big film for October/November.

Denis was in conciliatory mood – anxious to talk about the good things in the film. He’s pleased with Richard, he was very impressed by Ezra Street and he thinks my performance has ‘captured all the nuances’.

Back home I was just nodding off after lunchtime wine when TJ dropped in, having walked across the Heath. We sat in the sun and drank coffee. He had seen the assembly yesterday – chiefly to look at Peter
Hannan’s work with a view to using him on
Meaning of Life
. It was enormously encouraging to hear that he had liked it so much he’d kept forgetting to look at the camerawork. Not only looks was he complimentary about, but also the humour.

Work out at Dorney in the morning and then nearby to a beautiful avenue of trees down by the river for a shot to out-Tess
Tess
. This is the first longish dialogue scene between myself and Phoebe. Phoebe a little apprehensive. I’ve written her one of my ‘jargon’ parts – a lot of detail about filing systems which she has to learn parrot-fashion.

I keep correcting her when she says ‘Pacific sub-sections’ instead of ‘specific sub-sections’, but it turns out she’s virtually dyslexic on this particular word. A huge shire horse drawing a plough clatters past at the start of each take.

The waving green wheatfields shine in the late evening sun. Phoebe looks slim and delicate in her wasp-waisted long dress, and the jets from Heathrow bank steeply to left and right above us.

Up at seven. I take Rachel with me this morning, to be part of the crowd in a ‘busy London street’ shot, which we’re shooting in Finsbury Circus. Ninety extras and a dozen vehicles, including two horse-drawn buses. Signs of our own making cover up banks and travel agencies. A big scene.

Lunch in Richard’s Winnebago with a journalist lady and Maggie S. Maggie very solicitous of Rachel, who sits with unusually well-behaved taciturnity, nibbling a cheese sandwich. We chat to the journalist. Maggie S clearly not enamoured of the press and resists attempts to be photographed by the
Sunday Mirror
.

Home, collecting a McDonald’s for Rachel on the way, about a quarter to eight. Ring George H, who is just back from Los Angeles. He’s jet-lagged and watching the Eurovision Song Contest. I just want to communicate to him some of the end-of-the-week elation I’m feeling. He promises to come and see us next week.

Picked up by Brian at seven. Graham Crowden in car as well. Very genial and avuncular. As we drive into Oxfordshire, on a disappointingly grey, though still dry morning, he describes how he was shot by his own Sergeant-Major during arms drill in Scotland in 1943. He said that when the rifle went off there was none of the usual histrionics that actors and writers usually put into such tragedies, just a dawning realisation and a desire to be as polite as possible about it. ‘I think you’ve shot me, Sergeant,’ was all he could say – and the Sergeant’s reply was ‘What is it
now
, Crowden?’

This ridiculous confrontation with Argentina looks more and more like sliding from bluster and bluff into killing. But the government’s popularity has risen 10% overnight since the re-taking of South Georgia and Murdoch’s
Sun
is writing about ‘blasting the Argies out of the sky’. This episode shows the true face of the nasties. Crimson, angry, twisted, bitter faces.

Not used during the morning as a series of sharp and hostile showers passed over. Some hail. Whilst they filmed Deborah and the photography scene I remained in the caravan, completing various tasks like thank you letters to the actors, and writing a new introductory narration for
Jabberwocky
, which I heard from TG yesterday is to be re-released in the US during the summer. He’s very excited by the improvements made by Julian in re-editing.

Give lunch in my caravan to the ‘Repertory Company’ – Graham, Phoebe, Tim [Spall], Anne-Marie [Marriott]. Open champagne to celebrate good work done and, sadly, our last day all together. Quite a smutty lunch with RL’s description of Long Don Silver, a man with a huge dong and varicose veins, who used to be featured in a club on Sunset Strip – hung upside down.

In one of the afternoon’s sunny spells we grab a shot of myself in a horse and trap arriving home. As I wait for the clouds to clear the sun I see our two executive producers emerging from the orchard. George
looks like Denis’s son. His hair has reverted to Hamburg style, swept backwards off the forehead. He hands me a magnum of Dom Perignon with a pink ribbon tied round the neck. I embrace him warmly, then the cue comes through and I’m swept away round the corner.

They stay around for the next shot – a small, hot bedroom scene between Deborah and myself. George squashes himself into a corner of the room behind the lights, but only a yard or so from Phoebe. She’s quite clearly made nervous by his presence and her face and neck flush and we do three very unrelaxed takes. Then George gets uncomfortable and moves off and we finish the scene.

J Cleese rings to hear how things are going – having read his
Sunday Times
and been reminded it’s my birthday on Wednesday. He starts
Privates on Parade
⁶³
a week Monday. Says he can’t remember what he’s been doing for the past few weeks, but his pet project at the moment is the book with his psychiatrist. We wish each other well and he offers his services as a critic at the first fine cut stage of
The Missionary
in June.

T Gilliam arrives before lunch and we actually find ourselves writing together again – on the intro to
Jabberwocky
. He points out that I could be ‘starring’ in three separate movies in the US this summer: ‘
Bowl
’ opens in late June,
Jabberwocky
in July and
Missionary
in October.

After he’s gone, Tom beats me at snooker, I drink a beer I didn’t really want and am suddenly faced with a lot of learning for the Fermoy scene and a ‘surprise’ party ahead of my pre-39th birthday tonight. I am at my worst – grumpy, resentful and unhelpful.

About half past eight Terry G and Maggie and the Joneses arrive and I cheer up with some champagne. Nancy [Lewis] and Ron [Devillier] are a surprise, as are Ian and Anthea [Davidson] – who I haven’t seen for ages. Also the Walmsleys,
⁶⁴
Ray Cooper – who brings me lead
soldiers and a bottle of Roederer Cristal champagne. Robert H and Jackie – six months pregnant. Chris Miller and Bill are there and the Alburys. Twenty people in all. The Inneses are the only ones who couldn’t make it.

It’s a lovely party and I don’t deserve it after being so surly in the p.m.

I drift – no, I plummet to sleep, thinking how nice it is to have a birthday party and wake up the next day, the same age.

To the Odeon Leicester Square for showing of rough assembly of
Missionary
– mainly for George H and Denis.

The projectionists are very slovenly with the focussing and as each cut comes up there is a long wait until it’s sharpened up – only to go again on the next cut. But the laughter comes – especially from Denis – and the gymnasium scene (which had worried RL and myself) goes extremely well. At the end George turns and shakes my hand. Denis has been oohing and ahing at the beauty of shots and is quite genuinely and spontaneously pleased by it all.

This is just the boost we needed before starting on the last lap of the film – in Longleat and Scotland. But it pleases me most that George likes it, for it’s his enthusiasm and love of the
Yarns
and the work I’ve done in Python that really made it all possible.

He tells me that there may soon be a settlement in the Apple business. ‘Twenty years and we’re just starting to get royalties for
Please, Please Me
.’ As we go down in the lift he assures me that there will be no problem financing this film … ‘Denis wants to keep everything tight … but … the money’s there, you know … if you want it.’

Leave home at 6.20 and drive, with Brian and Rosamund Greenwood, up the M4 to Highclere in Hampshire. The crisp, clean beauty of the countryside making the news that we have torpedoed an Argentinian battleship off the Falkland Islands seem even more unreal.

Arrive at Highclere just before eight o’clock. Already in the car I’ve been reassured and relieved to hear Rosamund Greenwood read the scene, with a gentle touch, but drawing every bit of comedy from it. When we ‘line-up’ at half past eight, I’m doubly happy to hear Roland Culver, who
at 82 has an excellent combination of good acting and sparkle in the eyes. His sole line,

‘Hello’, brings the library down.

It’s a very gruelling day, learning and retaining these long speeches, but we work on until eight o’clock, leaving three close-ups still to be done and a forbidding amount of work for tomorrow. Brian drives me to the salubrious Ladbroke Mercury Motor Inn at Aldermaston Roundabout.

A message from Terry J to ring him. As I do so, at 9.30, he’s watching the news, which has just come in, of the sinking of a British destroyer in the ‘non-war’. The first British casualties. How crazy. Talk about TJ’s rewrites on ‘Every Sperm is Sacred’. He’s elaborated on the sequence quite considerably.

In the papers, ‘HMS Sheffield Sunk’ on the front page. It’s been a cold night. Light frost on the cars outside the Mercury Motor Inn.

Drive up with Neville to the location, arrive at Highclere at eight. Quickly into close-ups of the death scene, which we complete by mid-morning. Everyone who came down on the coach this morning knows it’s my birthday – they announced it on the radio!