Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (58 page)

Lunch in the pub nearby, as the rain and the turbulence continues.

Phyllis (two dark rum and peppermints) and I (one and a half pints of Young’s Bitter) splash back through the rain to 33 Alwyne Road.

Another wait for make-up, then from four o’clock until about nine a period of intense and concentrated work. All the energetic après-party scene to be done, as well as the delicate and vital transition from anger to love in the bedroom.

Eva seems especially happy with one of my takes, on which I feel I bring out something a bit different, something unusual for me – without eyes and teeth – just interior feelings. Phyllis is very impressive. There seems to be nothing she can’t do. She has an instinctive feel for the exactly right level at which to pitch a performance, which makes even Maggie S seem laggardly. Feel I’m seeing a very good actress indeed – all she needs now are the great parts.

Our love scene together – our lyrical, camera-twirling moment of intimacy – turns out, of course, to be as workmanlike a process as putting handles on car doors. A hot and sweaty Robin Vigeon bending around us with a hand-held Arriflex, Phyllis worried about when to get out of her shoes and how to get her dress to fall at the right moment. Me tripping over her shoes at the end [of] one lyrical, sensitive, romantic take.

To bed at midnight again. Cold still flowing copiously.

Rachel is to play my daughter. Asked to bring toys, she refuses to bring any Sindy dolls or other paraphernalia at first, then relents and brings one doll.

Camera, on a crane, is setting up for the final sequence of the dress falling to the ground after floating away from the window. The famous dress, which neither Phyllis nor I like very much, is flapping down from an invisible wire over Alwyne Road. All this takes a long time and then there are more than two hours to kill in the cold house.

Once acting, Rachel is fine; her shyness disappears as she takes on the character. Stephen, the chatty confident boy, on the other hand, clams up when asked to act.

But about half past five, in a blacked-out taxi, we finish the shooting. Champagne is produced. Eva says thank you – she’s quite drained and obviously can hardly believe that it’s done – and Clare says ‘It’s been an easy week’. ‘Easy
fucking
week!’ shouts Phyllis and everyone roars with laughter in relief and sympathy.

For me it’s been everything I’d hoped – an exercise in acting and in becoming involved with new and talented and pleasant people. I’m not sure about my part, the script, and how it will all eventually look, but it’s been a tough and concentrated and satisfying piece of work. A kick up the arse. Rachel much complimented so we end the day a lot happier than we started. And she’s £25.00 better off.

 

 

 

After completing
The Dress
and before Fegg publicity began I visited friends in America, particularly Al and Claudie in Sag Harbor. Al had had cancer treatment quite recently.

Amongst the rest of the news in my
Times
at breakfast today – besides the Bush/Ferraro debate and the subway fires – is a small paragraph reporting a bomb in a hotel in Brighton, where Margaret Thatcher was staying for the Conservative Party Conference.

For the next two days I devote myself to Al L. At eleven a.m. am at the
New York Times
office, to see one Ed McDowell, a writer on the world of books and publishing, whom Norman Rosten
¹¹⁰
has put me in touch with.

In a small room which could have been an interrogation room in a police station, I’m granted an audience with McDowell, who turns out to be much less daunting than I’d been prepared for by Norman. In fact he becomes quite intrigued by the story of my involvement with Al. Thinks my loyalty is almost unbelievable – the very fact that I’ve come over to see this unknown writer strikes him as very ripe.

Encouraged by this I take a cab back uptown to collect a car for the journey to Sag. A silver Buick Regal from Avis on 34th.

Al and Gwenola are at the house. Claudie is working as a lunchtime waitress. Al looks stronger and fitter and less changed for the worse than I expected. In fact the loss of 15 lbs of weight improves him. He smokes his pipe, drinks his drink and is very mobile, though obviously not able to bend, stretch, lift and carry as before. Gwenola full of energy in his stead. And interest too. ‘Have you got balls?’ she queries as I change my trousers upstairs.

We drive out to Mecox Beach. The sea is big. I’d forgotten how impressive and monumental is the size of the Atlantic. After several hols in the Med one gets used to a tame sea. This is ocean. The wide, straight beach is deserted, left to the big, spray-clouded waves that steam in. Gwenola and I paddle and run up and down. I feel light and airy and happy to be out of New York for a while.

Wake occasionally in the night to the gratifying sound of a rising wind in the powerful Norwegian maple tree outside. Go for a walk around the neat and pretty streets by the house. It’s a blustery, overcast morning, despite the forecast of sun. Generally low, timber-framed, weather-boarded houses, most detached with garden space generously distributed and many of them well over 100 years old. No-one else is walking at nine o’clock, though. Everyone slides by in their quiet, powerful cars.

Al talks quite openly and often about his new artificial defecatory system. Shows me all the bags and the tubes and seems quite happy now about having no working asshole any more. He also talks about the hospital – the horrors and the humours of which will doubtless come out in a new book.

Wake to rain and blustery wind. A few calls, then down to Fox viewing theatre in the West End for my second look at
Brazil
. Some cuts, especially towards the end, make it easier to follow and maintain the tension well. The bombing sequences with people being pulled from the wreckage, indeed the whole terrorist/paramilitary security force there suddenly very relevant after the Brighton bombing and growing controversy over police methods in the miners’ strike.

At the end Terry is surrounded by besuited distribution and marketing
men. Clearly they are excited. Pass on one or two of my thoughts, then TG is swept upstairs to a distributors’ ‘working lunch’. Leave him to it and grab a couple of pork pies and a cup of tea and eat them as I walk back through the rain to the car park.

To a launch for ‘The Young Ones’, book
Bachelor Boys
. It’s at Ronnie Scott’s and the place is already packed.

Ben Elton signs a book for me (to Rachel) and Rik Mayall (the only one of the cast there) hangs around like me at the stairs that lead into the main part of the club, largely because there’s hardly an inch of open space through which to move further.

A Sphere Books rep rather anxiously asks Rik if he’s going to mingle. ‘Well I’m sort of mingling here,’ he indicates vaguely. He’s going to the National to play in
The Government Inspector
, but first is doing a tour with Ben Elton. I ask where I can see it, and he says Slough would probably be the nearest.

They’re not doing any more
Young Ones
, apparently. The bus over the cliff at the end of the last episode was meant to be a final statement. There’s something serious about the way he refers to this that restrains me from saying that it was only in the last series that I’d really got to know and want to see more of the dreadful characters, and that surely they shouldn’t quit now.

Out into the rain and back home for Rachel’s open day. Neat, very thorough work. Lots of ticks and ‘excellents’, but still a tendency to invert letter order in the more difficult words. But her teacher Miss Kendall is lovely and full of humour. Rachel can’t wait to leave for school these mornings and can’t wait to come back and play schools in the evening. But she definitely wants to be an actress.

Romaine Hart rang.
¹¹¹
She raved about
Private Function
. Was only concerned that from her meetings with HandMade she caught the feeling that they were not prepared to push it as hard as she thinks it deserves.

She also said that it was the first film at the London Film Festival to sell out and has been six times over-subscribed!

I wake with a slowly developing near-panic at the thought of an unplanned Saturday ahead. Why should this be? Outside the sun shines from a clear sky, which unsettles me. Makes me feel I should be in the country, or somewhere with a garden into which the sun reaches for more than six months of the year.

Read in the newspaper of screenwriters meeting at the NFT for a weekend to discuss their problems. Problems I share and with which I sympathise. But I’m not there – I’m here at home, feeling aimless. I read of the CND march in Barrow to protest against the building of four submarines, each of which will carry warheads capable of delivering 7,200 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb. And I’m here at home, sitting upstairs basking in the sunshine.

I feel inadequate because I can’t teach my children any practical crafts and skills, because I know so few. I feel inadequate that I have no plans to take them to see this and that in London – concerts or walks or museums. But, having enjoyed a life of not having to go out at weekends amongst the crowds, I’ve become spoilt.

There’s work to do, of course – limericks to write, film scripts to be looked at and ahead a massive programme of signings and interviews – but where to start, where to begin, what to do?

Force myself away from this slippery slope and decide to take Rachel on a mystery tour. She loves the idea and we set off after lunch. First to Tower Bridge, where, for the first time, we climb the towers and walk along the linking crossways, with views out over the city and the river down to Greenwich.

By lucky chance there is a raising of the bridge as we are there. We watch it from some abandoned jetty a little upstream from the Tower. We find ourselves beside the ‘William Curtis Ecological Park’, an old lorry park which two years ago was filled with soil and boulders and is now a sort of controlled wasteland.

Rachel and I talk with a girl who is working there. It will only last for two more years – that’s as long as developers can keep their hands off the site – but she shows us other places in London where similar conservation experiments are going on. It’s the accidental, surprise nature of this little patch with its view of the Tower of London across the river which makes both of us respond so eagerly to it.

I’m at Lime Grove Studios by 6.15.

Dr Fegg’s dummy has arrived and is sitting vacuously in the studio on one of the sofas. In a crowded make-up room, re-introduce myself to Frank Bough and learn for the first time that there is hot news about. Just over an hour ago word came from Delhi that Mrs Gandhi has been shot.

Apologise for being here to do something as frivolous as ‘Fegg’ publicity on such a day, but Bough grins reassuringly. ‘I’m damn glad you’re here … we’ll need some light relief.’

Frank, ear doubtless buzzing with unconfirmed rumours that the ruler of India is dead, manfully reads ‘Sawing a Lady in Half’ and ‘Daffodils go Ping and Oink’! Even he seems to run out of patience at the end and sums up with a broad smile ‘And we’re expected to buy this rubbish this Christmas?’

It’s not until 7.45 that the ‘unconfirmed’ becomes ‘confirmed’ and the BBC newsmen rub their hands in glee. All systems go. Interviews, race for the first obituary, phone links with Delhi.

Meanwhile in a small back room are gathered Terry, myself, Rick Wakeman, Johnny Cash, Stan Orme MP, Ray Buckton of the TUC, two asthmatics, a man with a pumpkin and the author of a book on haunted Britain.

Cash nods courteously and introduces himself to everybody. ‘Hi! John Cash.’ We bask in modest glow of pride as the Great Man tells of his visit to the Python show at City Center, New York. Says he loved it. Oh God … I can’t cope. Elvis Presley a fan, now Johnny Cash … Is nothing sacred?

Rick Wakeman is relentlessly cheery and invites us – ‘if you’re in the Camberley area on Thursday’ – to his stag night, at which a pornographic Punch and Judy show will be the highlight. ‘The crocodile does
amazing
things,’ Rick enthuses.

Unexpected reaction from Weidenfeld’s John Curtis – he likes the novel and wants to publish!

In the evening I drive Tom and friend to King’s Cross, from where he embarks for his sixteenth birthday present – a parachute drop, after two days’ training near Peterborough.

Catch the North London train from Gospel Oak at a quarter to eight. Still feeling rather grumpy and not happy at the prospect of three more days Fegging. Encounter TJ in the bookstall at Liverpool Street. His nose is red and slightly swollen, the end of it covered in scabs and scratches. I ask him what happened. ‘A woman bit it,’ he explains. For some reason, I’m not as surprised as I should be.

TJ lost his temper with a difficult boy at a firework display and sharply ticked him off. Some time later a man knocked on his door and asked ‘Are you the man who beat up my son?’ Terry, now quite reasonable, denied that he’d ‘beaten up’ anybody. The man repeated his question. TJ, again sweet reasonableness, was about to ask him in to discuss the whole question, when out of the darkness sprang a woman, teeth bared, who bit Terry on the end of the nose and wouldn’t let go. In her fury she tore at his hair and yelled and screamed and eventually TJ could only force her off by poking her in the eye (a form of attack much used by JC in Python sketches).

One British Rail breakfast later, he’s feeling much better and quite relieved to have an excuse to be out of London. Norwich is reached at a quarter to eleven, we’re met at the station. Terry is asked about his nose by the rep. We are taken straightaway to Radio Norfolk, where Terry is asked about his nose again.