Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (51 page)

We progress, slowly. None of TG’s camera moves are easy. A lot of high angles or low angles and complex little movements. The chill gets through to the bones, slowly but surely. There is some light drizzle after lunch which makes the narrow platform suddenly lethal and I skid twice towards the edge on one of the takes.

The day ends with my ‘death’ scene. A specially-prepared, remote-controlled bullet hole is fired out of my baby face mask, splashing so much blood on the camera that they can’t see anything else and it has to be re-shot.

Three times I spin round to a special mark, wrench my mask off as the camera closes in and finally spin round to Jonathan, alone in his torture chair, and, grasping helplessly at him as I fall, collapse via knees to the floor.

A glass of red wine in the make-up caravan in the middle of this awesome palace of pre-stressed concrete is one of the best things of the day. One of the others was the visit of Ray Cooper, bringing a touch of
style to the cooling tower. He is very excited about the Bennett film – but confirms that George H still hates the script.

Watch a 1973 film biog of Noël Coward on TV this afternoon. Never realised quite how prolific he was. At the age of 26 he had three or four shows running simultaneously in London – he had made a name as actor, writer and lyricist. He continued throughout his life to turn out new work with what sounds like extraordinary facility. He says in interview that he wrote
Private Lives
in four days – ‘And …’ long pause ‘ … not one word of it was changed.’

Blithe Spirit
wrote itself in a week and one of his most famous songs was written in 20 minutes in a taxi stuck in a jam.

Down to Devonshire Street for lunch at Langan’s Bistro with David Puttnam (his invitation).

He starts straight in by offering me a
First Love
.
⁹⁸
Either as writer or director, which is very nice as it’s a very prestigious, well-produced series, which has been sold to the US for theatrical release. Jonathan Benson, who has now given up assistant directing, has written one of them. Puttnam says that when he asked Jonathan why he was giving up, JB told him that it was because he wanted to be able to have a shit whenever he wanted, instead of having to go through day after day holding it in until there was a long enough break.

Low cloud, persistent drizzle. Glad to have a day at the desk. Become very enthusiastic about doing a
First Love
for Puttnam. The more I think of the tale of meeting Helen, Southwold, etc, the more comic possibilities I see, and also some clear ideas on locations, characters. Very liberating it is when an idea strikes and appeals so completely. Ring Puttnam immediately, but he’s in a meeting, of course.

Read through Dr Fegg’s work prior to meeting with Geoffrey Strachan this afternoon re re-publication.
⁹⁹
In the densely-packed American edition some very funny stuff lies well concealed. Definitely worth a re-publication, for much of the book would be new in the UK anyway.

TJ has had the same reaction to the ‘Fegg’ material as myself, only more so. He says, without any sign of a boast, that he was in tears of laughter reading it.

General agreement on progress and some useful suggestions for what is right and wrong for the book. I suggest that it should be
Dr Fegg’s Nasty Book
–
A Family Guide to All The World’s Knowledge
– and that we should put a ‘Keep Away From Children’ sticker on it. TJ suggests better wording: ‘Keep Out of Reach of Children’.

By taxi to Westminster and Dean Stanley Street, hard by the Victoria Tower in the mixture of very attractive Queen Anne terraces.

Into one of these I have to go to do a 45-minute chat about self and work for the British Forces Network. I feel a much closer identification with an audience than I usually do on these shows. Whatever I feel about our army being in the Falklands or Belize or Beirut, I have experienced home-sickness and I should think these radio shows are like manna from heaven to their audience.

Finish at one and wander amongst the attractive little streets like Lord North Street and the late classical flashiness of St John’s, Smith Square. Then across into the Victoria Gardens. How well the Houses of Parliament and the Abbey and St Margaret’s, Westminster go together. They are all inspiring, imaginative buildings in their way – built largely for the eye of the beholder. Turn 180 degrees and the heart sinks at the sight of the accountants’ buildings marching grimly along from Vauxhall.

Prepare the house for likely visitors this afternoon. Wrap presents and write cards for Mother, who is 80 today and somewhere between Chilton Hall and Gospel Oak.

She arrives with Angela at eleven, looking quite spry and dressed in a neat claret purple two-piece with a touch of flamboyance in a ruff-like frill at the neck. She really looks excellent, as well as I’ve seen her at any time in the last few years. Angela too, with her hair done nicely and well cut, looks fine.

L’Escargot, which has especially opened for us, has set a buffet in the upper room, which is a perfect size for the 26 of us and full of light and airiness.

I give a short speech and mention that air travel was only three weeks old when Granny was born – the longest flight had been for 120 yards. Tomorrow she will be taken from London to New York in the time it would take my father to park the car – this is well greeted, but allows me to wish that father were here today to laugh at it himself.

Sleep well. Up with the alarm at 7.45. Leave with Ma and Angela in a taxi at 8.45, just as a light snow is falling.

At the Concorde check-in I spy Steven Spielberg, Sir Lew Grade, with his white, pasty, sepulchrally-blanched head, and Tom Conti. The whole flight passes so smoothly that I don’t think Mother or Angela really sense that we have crossed the Atlantic, or exchanged continents at all. Ma takes to it as easily as she might the train to Ipswich.

After unpacking and resting, we walk, along dangerously icy sidewalks, up to Avenue of the Americas, then taxi to the Tavern on the Green. Nancy has managed to book us a table in the richly-kitsch Crystal Room, only by mentioning that it was part of my mother’s 80th birthday present. We are right by the window and the sun is dazzling. Outside is Central Park in the snow with a mixture of skaters, skiers, joggers, walkers and sledders passing by as a sort of continuous background entertainment.

Around the Plaza is a great throng of police – the Chinese Premier is staying there. One of the policemen on duty hails me, ‘Hey! Michael’, takes off his glove and shakes my hand – something no policeman in England would do with such unaffected directness. This impresses the relatives.

Then round to Nancy and Simon’s for their American wedding party – or rather the party to offer a chance for their rich NYC friends to give them presents, as Simon puts it to me. I’m getting increasingly tired and find a party of all my NYC friends rather hard work on the smile button – on the first day here.

Find Granny and Angela chatting to Jeremy Irons – whose performance in Stoppard’s
The Real Thing
has just been hailed as a major Broadway success. Introduce myself and we talk about all sorts of mundane things. Irons claims not to be interested in the razzmatazz and public image of a Broadway star, though he doesn’t altogether convince me.

It’s ten o’clock, nearly ten-thirty, when I finally get Mother away and taxi back to the hotel. To round the day off – a Python repeat (‘Trim Jeans’, etc) on PBS. They’re still awake and laughing and enjoying it at eleven – four, UK time. Amazing.

Meet with [
Saturday Night Live
team] Dick Ebersol, Bob Tischler and a lady called Pam, whose function isn’t clear. This is a sort of introductory meeting before I go to meet the rest of the writers. Ebersol, who is a big man, was mugged after the show on Saturday night at 4.30. Two black eyes and two broken ribs – and on Central Park South …

After an hour’s chat we go over to the Rock and I meet, or in some cases renew acquaintance with, the writers.

Then I’m given my office – which is in fact Eddie Murphy’s office and contains stacks of unopened fan mail as well as one or two opened letters – one from a fan (white), who wants to ‘ride on your star’. The various writers in their various combinations come along and talk and try out tentative ideas on me. Without Lorne there the whole process is rather businesslike – less pleasant, lazy chat, more of an organised schedule, but this suits me well, as I have Angela and Granny waiting at the hotel.

And they’re raring to go again.

I spend the morning in my room writing up a couple of ideas for the show. The monologue fits together neatly and is written within an hour. It involves Ma – it’s too good to miss the opportunity of using her when she’s in New York.

At midday she and Angela return – spirits indomitable after a hot morning at Macy’s – we eat a quick snack in my room – and Ma doesn’t seem too averse to appearing in the monologue. Indeed, at one o’clock when a limousine and a photographer arrive to collect us all at the hotel
for the
Saturday Night Live
photo-session, Mother is carefully dressed and coiffured and ready for anything.

Then I go to the ‘
SNL
’ office. Sell the monologue idea without much difficulty – in fact Dick Ebersol is so enthusiastic that he calls in the new publicity lady for the show and tells her to release the story that Michael is co-hosting ‘
SNL
’ with his mother. She will not only be the first mother to co-host, but, he thinks, the oldest host ever on the show.

To the Rockefeller Center – snow now driving and quite thick – it looks wonderful swirling past the windows of the 17th floor.

Dick Ebersol warns me ‘You’re in the first nine sketches’; it also turns out I’m in the next nine. No time for shyness, just get up and throw myself into them as best I can – most of them sight unseen. It’s rather enjoyable – like auditions for a college smoker.

I’m free at six and meet Angela and Granny at a recommended restaurant in the Theater District, called The Palatine. Have to crunch over a few snow-caked sidewalks to get to it, but once there I can tell I shall enjoy it. It’s calm and relaxed and this marks it out as something of an oasis in New York terms.

Towards the end of the meal Father Jake, the Catholic priest who runs the restaurant, visits us at table. He sprays cards around like a computer salesman and bemoans the problems with the Vatican, who don’t, he says, take kindly to a priest with a liquor licence. I am moved to write in a brand new visitors’ book they’ve been given by a guest from Texas, ‘Why shouldn’t God be a gourmet?’

We leave with much bowing and scraping from the priest, who has been told who I am by a waiter. One final curiosity is that the hat-check woman apparently used to run the restaurant.

At 12.30 I walk across Fifth Avenue and into Rockefeller Plaza for a rehearsal on the 17th floor. At 2.30 down to the studio to record some promotional spots – with Mum. Any worries I’ve had about her performance in front of camera disappear when I see with what confidence and aplomb she mounts the stage and delivers her little rejoinders to me.
She makes everyone in the gallery laugh when, after one take of the first promo, she asks, rather loudly, on camera, ‘Well, what’s next?’

Mum has been given Eddie Murphy’s dressing room for the day.

Dress rehearsal offers a foretaste of the sort of reception she is to get from the audience. Much greater than I had expected. She can do no wrong.

The music crescendos and at 11.35, a week after reaching 80, Mum leads me out in front of the cameras. Apart from forgetting to grab my arm at the first cue, everything she does is exactly right. She remains herself, natural and dignified, and yet displaying a winning sparkle of humour in the eyes which absolutely wins the audience over.

So Mother and I, in what must surely be one of our finest hours, are eventually taken, full of compliments, down through the lobby of 30 Rock – where Granny signs an autograph – into a waiting limousine and down to Joanna’s [Restaurant on Madison Avenue] for the party. There is no question of Granny not wanting to go – in fact she stays there until four a.m., when the main lights are switched on in an attempt to flush out the most persistent revellers!

Mercifully, I have a day clear before
Brazil
tomorrow. And just as well. I sleep for ten hours and don’t surface until 10.30.

Granny still looking well. It’s as if she has gone into a sort of physical and mental overdrive in the last year. When she should have been descending the age spiral – in terms of ability, mobility, health and general comprehension – she is in fact coasting along extremely confidently and competently, as if all the excitements of
Comic Roots
and
Saturday Night Live
have actually had a rejuvenating effect.

Angela, according to Helen, is as relaxed and easy as she has seen her for a long time. Of course, what I forget is that Angela and I have hardly spent as much as a week together since I was a small boy.

Angela goes off to lunch with Veryan and at 12.15 the car I’ve hired to take Granny back to Southwold arrives. Momentary panic when I ask him whether he knows the route and he nods confidently and says ‘It’s right after Gloucester, isn’t it? Sorry, sorry,
Ipswich
…’ With some misgivings I wave goodbye to my co-star.