Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (85 page)

Kevin has now settled for a small, black cap, which tapers the top of his head, making him look a little ridiculous, sinister and fashionable at the same time. He wears a flowing black coat with blue stripes and the stagey flamboyance reminds me of Marlon Brando’s outlandish outfit in
Missouri Breaks
.
¹⁵³

Into rehearsal. Jamie, projecting energy at an almost reckless rate, stares, frowns, worries, opines, suggests. At one point she comes up to me a little awkwardly and kisses me juicily on the lips. She apologises, but says she did it because she’s going to have to do it in the scene coming up. Wonderful, but very American.

Lunch with Kevin and Donald Woods, whom Kevin plays in ‘Biko’. Woods is a very lively, instantly warm man with a twinkle in his eye. We talk about the ‘Biko’ film. He says how careful they had to be in the script and in the making of the film to give ‘equal air time’ to all the various African resistance groups.

He also tells of how our new neighbour Jonas and George did the final music section. Apparently Jonas came into the session completely arseholed and played every single instrument to great effect. For a newspaperman Woods is infectiously indiscreet.

JC is playing and re-playing what he calls the ‘renunciation’ scene with Jamie. Iain Johnstone is prowling around, recce-ing for a film about the
filming. Jamie is very cross that she cannot seem to play the scene the way JC wrote it.

Then we have a read-through. Problem seems to be that it’s still too long. Despite her glumness, Jamie still comes in with acute suggestions for cuts. Later in the afternoon we’re talking and she tells me that the only way her father [Tony Curtis] could get a date with her mother [Janet Leigh] was by pretending to be Cary Grant.

‘Biko’ has been completed today and I go for a couple of lagers with Donald Woods and his wife Wendy in the bar. They live now in Surbiton. They seem to detect no irony in ending up in Surbiton after such an exciting and dangerous life, wading across the Zambesi, etc.

Board the 8.55 to Birmingham International, where we begin the first day’s filming on the ‘Eco’ programme on Transport 2000.

A small crew and an efficient day’s filming. We start almost the moment I arrive, in the airport, then on the MAGLEV, and later at the main entrance to the National Exhibition Centre.

The end of the day’s filming is of my returning, as the ‘ideal’ business traveller, to be met by a loving wife at home. Hazel, the lady they have secured to play the loving wife, is quite a surprise. She sits sipping wine in the garden. She is the complete antithesis of a wife. Her whole appearance, from the bouffant, tinted hair to the ankle bracelet, via the voracious pink lipstick, is of one who threatens the whole institution of marriage.

On the third take, when the director has suggested that we hold ‘a beat longer’ on the kiss, her tongue is exploring my mouth (which is quite taken aback) in no time.

Being devoured by Hazel on a Solihull housing estate on a tropical June day is, I have to admit, the least expected perk of chairing an environmental organisation.

We arrive at Chilton at 11.15.

I walk Mother slowly along the path to Chilton Church, across the fields, where the ripening corn is half her height. We move slowly, meeting people on the way – their first reaction is to smile at the fineness of the day. It’s extrovert weather. At one point, looking behind me, I see my
own family following along behind, surrounded by cornstalks.

A wait at the church before everyone is in – and Peter Hollis starts the service at 12.15. Beside me is Granny, then Helen, Rachel, Will and Tom. In front of me is Veryan and then the children. An organ plays. Across the aisle and through the vestry I catch a glimpse of golden sunshine and green grass framed in a doorway.

The first hymn is ‘Breathe on Me, Breath of God’. Chris Bell
¹⁵⁴
gives a short address and, as he says later, ‘I only just got through it’. Very brief, unflowery and he sums the tragedy of my poor sister up so well when he says ‘If only she could have seen herself as we all saw her’. I read a lesson from One Corinthians – ‘Faith, Hope … Love’ (not charity). I would have preferred something more immediately relevant, but it’s beautiful language, though I still don’t understand quite what I was saying.

At the end of the service we walk to the tiny graveyard where a hole has been dug to receive Angela’s ashes, which stood on the altar during the service.

A short prayer by the admirable Peter Hollis at the graveside and then, for a moment, all the grief flows out. Every one of her children lets the tears come, and I embrace each one of them.

From this moment on Angela’s life and the memory of her will recede slowly but gently into the past and into memory. The tears will flow less easily (though they are pouring down my face as I write) and the lives of those she knew so well will readjust to being without her. But in the middle of this hot summer day, amongst the fields beneath which lie old Chilton Village, the precise moment of loss is marked amongst us all.

Then, as happens, real life resumes. There’s Terry J and Al to be welcomed. Everyone to be talked to. I walk back with Derek Taylor.

There is Pimm’s and orange juice at a table beneath the copper beech, as we walk over the bridge. A wonderful party develops – full of memories of the last one here.

Everyone who had seen her recently seems almost to have expected what happened to happen. Everyone thinks it an awful, tragic waste. As Sepha points out, Angela looked ten years younger than most of her contemporaries here today.
¹⁵⁵
She was so good at bringing the family together, says Joan Herbert, Veryan’s cousin.

This last thought leaves me with the only real sadness at the end of an
afternoon far, far happier than I’d expected, and that is whether such an occasion will ever happen again. Angela was the common friend of all these people. Now, as her memory fades, will we all see each other again?

Drive over to Hackney. At the Assembly Room I find a crowd of maybe 100- 130 people listening to Dinah Morley – a local politician. Dave Wetzel, transport head of the GLC and in my book a Good Man, speaks before me. Very disappointing – list of all the good things the GLC did, then, rather than apply the lessons to the current subject – which is transport in Hackney – he ends with a long Labour rant. Purely political and quite unconstructive, especially as the Tories have just been voted in by a resounding majority for the third time.

Before I speak, the Mayor of Hackney, who is chairing, has to announce some business, but at the same time a large, black lady is announcing something at the back of the audience. The Mayor plods doggedly on, the lady’s voice rises, people’s tolerance for their brothers and sisters begins to wear thin and she’s asked to shut up. ‘
You
shut up!’ she returns lustily, and continues barracking.

The Mayor seems unable to control her and she’s still ranting on when I’m introduced. I stop and sit down until she subsides, but when I do go on it isn’t very comfortable.

At the end a distracted middle-aged lady with wild hair comes up to me, ‘You don’t mind me asking, do you, but are you left-wing?’ ‘Moderately so, yes,’ I reply judiciously. ‘Oh, thank you. In that case could you sign my book?’

Taken down to Daniel Galvin in George Street to have my hair permed. This is the most drastic change to my appearance I ever let myself in for. As it was my suggestion to play Ken curly, I’ve only myself to blame. The process of perming is all quite soothing. It’s a nice place and I’m fussed over. Some foul lotion, smelling of ammonia (it is in fact sulphur) is poured over my curlers.

My first real test of the new head is, incongruously enough, at a small party given by Sir Robert Reid of BR to his ‘good friends’. So the first
time I actually get to meet the most powerful man in the railways is six hours after I’ve had my hair permed.

Picked up at nine and to the studio for rehearsal.

My dressing room is quite spacious. It’s separated from Kevin’s by a sliding wall. Kevin has an extraordinary quality of making himself look big and impressive, when he isn’t a lot taller than me, in fact. His room is full of costumes, back-exercising equipment, books, etc. Mine is almost empty.

The day’s rehearsal ends at six. In the course of which dogs are auditioned. One of the terriers has to resist. ‘The Resisting Dog’, it becomes known as, and will as such go down in my list of possible public house names.

To Harrow Driving Centre at half past ten for a second session of motorbike tuition. It doesn’t all come back to me at first and I become dispirited. But I persevere and, with the patient help of Phil, improve and by the end am able to drive with a passenger on the back and manoeuvre through a slalom of cones without knocking any over. Like learning any skill one has to pass through the barrier of complete clumsiness.

The usual, slightly over-hearty buzz of a first day’s filming. Whilst I am in make-up Cleese arrives and as a present gives me a poster from the LMS in 1954, which announces the re-opening of the refurbished Gospel Oak Station – complete with wonderfully idealised picture!

Kevin gives me a gay book by one Phil Andros, published by the Perineum Press, called
My Brother Myself
. In it he’s written ‘Dear Michael, Happy Wanda. I love working with you. Herewith a book I found which could be developed into a project for the two of us.’

I am alone with the goldfish in the first shot – ‘Hello Wanda’ – and it’s disposed of quickly and efficiently and we then embark on a roughly chronological sequence of scenes in George’s flat. The speed of Alan Hume’s crew and the understanding between us after two weeks of
rehearsal, combined with John’s unflagging enthusiasm and advice and delight in what he’s seeing, make for a very productive morning.

Experience the first real hints of how unsettling it can be acting a scene with Kevin. We’re playing the scene in which I discover him on the lavatory (or pretending to be on the lavatory). The first barrier to sharing the scene is that Kevin is retreating into himself to discover whatever he can bring out of the lines and the action. I feel, perhaps wrongly, that this is not a process to whose depths I can be admitted. I feel a little like the magician’s assistant.

Then, as we run it through, I’m aware of Kevin’s reaction against direction, against marks, against restriction of any kind. Like a pacing lion he has to work out his own parameters. Charles Crichton tells of how when he worked with Alec Guinness they could never be seen to use marks. One evening he and the camera had plotted out where the great man should stand and a mark had been, inadvertently, left there.

When Guinness saw it in the morning he deliberately ignored it and played with his move for an hour before eventually coming to rest on exactly the same position as the mark.

By the end of the day, even JC is getting a little impatient with Kevin’s habitual look at the end of every take, which is deep gloom.

Our last scene together for the day – his proposition to me on the stairs – feels very good. JC applauds generously at the end of a particular take and says that I won’t do anything much better than that ever again!

Up at 6.45. Pick-up at 7.15. Complete the scene on the stairs with Kevin, then a long hiatus as they shoot Tom Georgeson and the police arresting him.

There is no sunshine about either – just a melancholy-inducing low cloud. At last, in mid-afternoon, I’m required, and work on, concentratedly, until six. Then a look at the rushes.

After they’re over, Charlie, who is congenitally averse to showbiz hype, wobbles a bit and casts his soft, dog-like eyes up at me … ‘You’re bloody marvellous, you really are.’ I’m quite taken aback and hopelessly unable
to handle the thoroughness of his compliment, but it sends me home mentally beaming from ear to ear and I hardly remember the soggy, lethargic evening, and the long lines of blocked traffic almost every way we turn.

Start the day being kissed repeatedly by Jamie on the bathroom floor. Very pleasant form of acting. We move on very fast and I’m in nearly all the set-ups, and in a variety of different make-ups, combinations of bandages and cuts and bruises.

Am immensely relieved and rather proud of the fact that I have been the heaviest used of all the characters this week, and that I’ve not just survived, but flourished, despite fatigue. I think performance has always brought me to life, and I feel more confident, more quickly in Ken’s persona than I ever thought I would.

Life’s little ironies, No. 32: Christopher Morahan is at the studios, casting for ‘Troubles’!

Begin work on the fish-eating sequence, for which I have my head bandaged, one eye covered, a bruise and scratches, and am tied to a most uncomfortable chair. Later I have chips inserted into my nose by Kevin. Not difficult to show expression of distress, and Charlie’s decision for me to play the scene (and the rest of the film) with one eye covered doesn’t seem to affect the degree of laughter from the crew.

The day wears on, as filming days do; all the days, weeks, months, even years of preparation for a scene are finally whittled down into a few hours. It’s all businesslike. Charlie bangs his stick and laughs at himself … ‘I can’t remember what the hell’s going on.’

Kevin spends most of the day racked by doubt – even when he’s done the most brilliantly inventive take he stands, shrugs, and looks like a man who’s just been given a tin of contaminated beef.