Very Naughty Boys [EBK]

by Robert Sellers

  O’Brien tried hard to disguise his obvious disappointment over the Prudential deal falling at the last hurdle. So serious had he been about it that he’d even shaved off his beard, much to the surprise of friends and colleagues, to assume a more businesslike persona. At the same time, he was gearing up his staff for the possible merger. Cooper says, ‘Suddenly for the first time ever in my life, I had to do a CV, which was farcical for me. There were all sorts of things going on at that time, we were becoming very “Americanised”, which was freaking me out. O’Brien also wanted each of the directors, myself included, to do a handwriting test which would then be submitted to this handwriting expert to see if we were all compatible. And I said, “Denis, I can tell you right now I’m barking mad and I’m not compatible to anybody. I’m unique. I’m alien to all of this. So hands up now, I’m out of the building, there’s no fucking way I’m gonna do a handwriting test, sorry.” He laughed. “Ray, you’re so funny.” But he was deadly serious, and so was I. And I never did it. The whole thing about creativity is you’re not compatible but you find ways of becoming compatible for that project. That’s the whole thing of creativity.’

  Despite the City flop, HandMade announced their busiest filming schedule yet with three films slated for 1984 and plans to tackle as much as five films per year in the future. It was a very loud return to production duties for a company whose sole release in the previous 12 months had been Bullshot. The industry pondered whether O’Brien and co had taken a break to reassess and reorganise after a string of box-office duds. It was time enough for their detractors to label them as just a bunch of rock stars (Harrison and Cooper) and nothing more than one-hit wonders and cinematic flash-in-the-pans. Too often in the past, HandMade attracted publicity relating to their Python/ Beatle connection. With this new production slate, it hoped to be judged in its own right as a substantial player in British films. For a joke back at Cadogan Square, the staff had begun referring to themselves as a ‘mini-major’.

  The three new projects couldn’t have been more different, and yet all were quintessentially English. A Private Function hailed from the pen of Alan Bennett and starred Michael Palin. Water was another comedy from the long-standing writing duo Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais and boasted the heavyweight participation of Michael Caine. Finally, there was Travelling Men, a comedy thriller helmed by The Long Good Friday’s John MacKenzie which aimed to reunite Caine with Sean Connery for the first time since 1975’s classic The Man Who Would Be King. It was a mouth-watering package, reflecting both O’Brien and Harrison’s fondness for off-beat comedy and original British scripts. It also bolstered HandMade’s commitment to providing first-time opportunities to writers and directors and imaginative support and careful handling for projects that did not immediately present themselves as smash hits. ‘HandMade did have a philosophy,’ Cooper explains. ‘Fairly broadly, it was the best that we could endeavour to do of every part of drama and comedy. Comedy was the leading player, it started with comedy with Python and moved into drama because I love drama. I loved dealing much more with the Mona Lisas. But it never mattered as long as it was of the best quality work, its morals were in the right place and it had a good quality of entertainment about it. That was our broad philosophy.’

  The aim was also to strike a balance between art and commercialism. Yes, to take risks with unfamiliar and controversial material, to make films that would stimulate as well as entertain, but at the same time to make sure they made enough money for the company to stay in production. It was also being seen by the industry to be brave in what it chose to make. Cooper adds, ‘It was a signal, like beacons being sent out or jungle drums saying, “That’s a good home.” And you got these wonderfully eccentric and strange people coming in and wanting to make films for us.’

  Although A Private Function and Water began shooting within days of each other in May 1984, both films enjoyed very different fortunes. A Private Function was the brainchild of BBC director Malcolm Mowbray, who’d long been fascinated by the black-market boom of the late 1940s, a by-product of severe post-war rationing. Pork was particularly scarce and the illegal keeping of pigs was rife. Mowbray was convinced here was fertile ground for a comedy drama. ‘The black market in England just seemed a really interesting area, the way it showed up the social strata via food. You were deemed what class you were by what food you could get hold of. It exposed English society in a rather interesting way.’

  Mowbray had just written and directed a television film, Days at the Beach, that so impressed Alan Bennett, the acclaimed playwright wrote personally to Mowbray congratulating him. The two subsequently met and Bennett was invited to collaborate on the black-market film. Apart from an abortive project for John Schlesinger, Bennett had never written a screenplay for the cinema before. Mowbray recalls, ‘It took about from 1982 to 1984 to get the script together. I think Alan rarely writes stuff that doesn’t come from himself, so it took quite a time.’

  The story that emerged was set in Yorkshire (not surprising, given Bennett’s heritage) and concerned a genteel chiropodist caught up in the shenanigans of local town big-wigs rearing an illicit pig to be the centrepiece of a banquet celebrating the wedding of Princess Elizabeth. Bennett explains, ‘Malcolm wanted to do a film about a pig and I wanted to do a film about a chiropodist, so that’s how the two elements came to be combined. And, of course, the period he was talking about, the Forties, was, as it were, a historical period for him, but it wasn’t for me, that was part of my childhood. I wrote a first draft and we both went through it. I rewrote it, and then we did it in a way like doing homework, doing section by section and cutting it down and throwing stuff out and so on. But I didn’t think of it as anything other than a long television script, really. Television plays in those days were an hour-and-a-half... well, they still are, I suppose, but they don’t get made, so that wasn’t any different from what I was used to doing.’

  Water had also been a joint collaboration. Clement and La Frenais had made a television pilot in America with a man called Bill Persky who came up with this idea of a mythical island, a sort of Caribbean Ruritania, seeking independence from Britain, and together the three of them hammered out an initial screenplay. ‘We finished it and nothing much happened to it for a while,’ says Clement, ‘well, nothing much happened at all, actually. Bill wanted to direct it originally; he’d directed one movie called Serial which didn’t do a lot, so his bankability was a little low on the totem pole. And then we took it out of the bottom drawer after Bullshot when Denis was saying, “What else have you got?” And again it was Denis who absolutely loved the script and really responded to it, and said, “Let’s do it.” So we then wrote another draft and, as a result of that, Michael Caine came on board. He read the script and fell in love with it overnight and called me up and said, “It’s the funniest thing I’ve read in ages. I’d love to do it.” And we were thrilled because we knew that meant we would get the film made, and suddenly it was a go project.’

  Caine, in fact, hadn’t been first choice for the role of the island’s colonial governor. Alan Shearman admits, ‘Right after we finished Bullshot, Dick and Ian started writing Water and I had always hoped that I would play Baxter. But when you have a chance to get Caine, well, obviously, they went with him.’ Shearman was instead rewarded with a small role in the film.

  Consistent with O’Brien’s desire to hire a Python wherever possible, John Cleese was also offered a part. ‘I liked Clement and La Frenais a lot, but I wasn’t crazy about that particular script,’ Cleese remembers. ‘The part was for some English colonial-type who I think had a couple of bed scenes with a dusky maiden.’ Despite such an inducement, Cleese turned it down flat.

  Obtaining a suitable backer for A Private Function was a more convoluted affair. For Mowbray, two obvious candidates stood out — Goldcrest and HandMade. Because Function was a comedy and HandMade had made its reputation with comedies, Mowbray was naturally drawn to them. Gilliam’s wonderfully innovative and charmin
g logo also heavily appealed to the director. With producer Mark Shivas, whom Mowbray knew from his BBC days, now attached to the project, everyone agreed the best strategy would be to approach HandMade with a star name already signed up. Shivas had previously worked with Michael Palin on a long-forgotten TV comedy and personally approached the actor, aware that out of all the Pythons it was Palin who’d retained the closest links with HandMade, and particularly O’Brien. Bennett concurs. ‘I think that Michael Palin once said that he was the only one of the Python people who would still work with Denis O’Brien. None of the others would.’

  Among his Python colleagues there was consternation and bewilderment that Palin was still in contact — indeed, on friendly terms — with O’Brien after all the management bust-ups and financial irregularities. Palin confesses, ‘I felt so long as you say to Denis where your limits are and what you will do and what you won’t do, he was quite useful. He was consistently interested in the sort of films that I was interested in, not big Hollywood epics but smaller films with interesting characters. All right, there were times when he could be persistent, manipulative and just downright wrong in the way he dealt with us all, but then this tends to happen in lots of relationships. I felt that one just had to play him along a bit and he probably played us along, too, whereas with Eric and John, Eric particularly, there was a great resentment of Denis after a certain point. But I’m very loath just to sever relationships just because you have a disagreement over money or whatever. Perhaps I didn’t know enough, being naive about these things, but I always felt that Denis put more work our way rather than take it away. And the deals seemed to me to be reasonable enough, although we’re still not being paid any of the money back for The Missionary or A Private Function. But I still don’t see any need to end a friendship, and it was a friendship for quite a considerable time. We spent a lot of time together and that gives you time to detect how much someone really cares for the work that you do, what they value, what you value.’

  When Palin heard about A Private Function and Alan Bennett’s involvement, he was almost already won over. A meeting was set up at Bennett’s north London home, with Shivas and Mowbray also in attendance, clutching a copy of the script which at that time was quaintly entitled Pork Royale (another scrapped title was Saturday Night Swine Fever). Palin remembers, ‘The three of them were sat on the sofa against the wall, like a Spanish inquisition, but in a very gentle way. I couldn’t quite see them very well, I just remember a row of knees and lower legs and they were very quiet, they’re all very quiet people, none of them are at all extrovert or ebullient in any way. I like them all tremendously, but they were just terribly quiet and I wondered what was going on here. And out of the darkness came, “Well, we’ve got this script.” And I thought they were going to say, “You’re the only man to do it,” and they said, “Do you think that HandMade would be interested in making it?”

  ‘So what I was there for, really, was as the HandMade Films man, to be a messenger, because they’d obviously got nowhere with it. So I said, “Well, I’ll go and talk to them.”’

  Shivas meanwhile had met with O’Brien, an encounter the producer today recalls with incredulity. ‘The first reaction we got from Denis O’Brien was that he didn’t believe we had Michael interested, because Palin generally said that he would never appear in anything that he hadn’t written himself. So being told that you’re a liar, this is not a very good start to a relationship. Denis then said, basically, this is the kind of film that would never work in America, to which you could only say, “Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” It was quite off-putting, first telling me I was a liar because he thought I hadn’t got Michael and then when they found out that we had got him, then the film would never work in America!’

  For the duration of the project, a strange kind of mistrust built up between O’Brien and the film-makers. ‘We were always very genuine in our dealings,’ says Mowbray, ‘but I always got the sense that Denis thought we were trying to rip him off in some way. The HandMade people were wonderfully supportive, Ray Cooper and the company secretary who was in a small office the size of a broom cupboard that wouldn’t hold a broom. We’d go to Cadogan Square for innumerable meetings. I remember reading on some wall, just noticing a letter from Denis to the staff saying he’d been round checking the litter bins on a Friday night and discovered that people weren’t using both sides of the paper.’

  Indeed, O’Brien could be pretty mean around the office. Kelleher observes, ‘He didn’t like money being spent on things if it could be avoided. There is a particular kind of person who likes to spend money on himself but doesn’t like to see other people spending money. I mean, he had this yacht which must have cost a fortune.’

  Palin had since read the Function script, fallen in love with it and agreed to play the lead role of Gilbert Chilvers, a meek and mild-mannered chiropodist driven to extreme acts by an overbearing and socially ambitious wife. Palin, it seems, is naturally drawn to such characters and, during filming, Mowbray was keen for Chilvers to exude an atmosphere of dullness. Palin qualifies this by saying, ‘But it was very important to keep the centre realistic and not to fall into being a caricature, to be dull but interestingly dull. If you played it dull, then it wouldn’t work, there has to be a certain sort of spirit and involvement there, but it is basically someone who is fairly quiet and unostentatious. I kept thinking of Alan Bennett when I was doing it, that’s the way it was written, it wasn’t for overacting at all. Malcolm and Alan were very keen on keeping it down, not giving an over-the-top comic performance. But there was a danger that, at certain times, I’d become rather too animated and lively and probably Malcolm had noticed this, but after about 10 days he hadn’t said very much about my performance and so I said, “Are you sure it’s all right?” And he said, “Yeah, just keep it dull.” So I was doing it all right.’

  Palin is essentially playing the straight man to the rest of the cast’s more colourful and eccentric characters. ‘So they got the laughs... I didn’t need to overdo it to try and get laughs, they would come from the way I reacted. I think a lot of comic acting is reacting, how somebody takes in what’s going on around them and how they work with the people they’re working with. Chilvers was a bit of a reacting role.’

  Still, O’Brien was desperately unsure about the project. Palin says, ‘I showed it to Denis and George. Denis said, “Michael, do you think this is funny?” And I said, “I think it’s very funny.” Denis asked, “But will it knock ’em dead in Dayton, Ohio?” And I had to say, “Well, I’m not sure about that, but if you get the right cast together it could be very good indeed.” And Denis was swayed. George was OK about it, very nice. I know it wasn’t his kind of thing, but they trusted me and that’s rather touching. I do remember Denis asking me why I wanted to play a chiropodist.’

  For Palin, one of the joys of the film was working with Alan Bennett. ‘I think it made it easier because I was also a writer. And because we’re both writers we realise that you’ve actually thought about the lines. I don’t particularly like actors who come along and change everything just because they can say it better. I mean, they’ve accepted the role, the writing’s been done, you say it how it’s written. Alan was on set a lot. He was quite interested in how we actually staged a scene, how we played something. Alan is so discreet in a way, you would see him behind the cameras trying to find some quiet little spot where he wouldn’t be noticed while we were doing a take.’

  It’s unusual for a writer to be so visible on a film set, although Bennett retorts, ‘It’s not unusual for me. I used to like doing it, I like it less now as I’ve got older. If it’s a Yorkshire piece, which A Private Function was, you often have to be there to say how the dialogue should be spoken, a kind of unofficial dialogue coach. And also it was shot in Ilkley and I live not far away.’

  Bennett’s unobtrusive presence on set was taken for granted by many of the cast and crew, including actor Richard Griffiths. ‘I remember Alan as always constantly
schlepping around the place with carrier bags. People would say, “What have you got in the carrier bags? You’re not going shopping for sausage rolls and porridge down at Marks and Sparks?” He’d say, “No. I’ve got awards in them. They keep giving me these awards and I don’t know what to do with them, so I’ll have to go to my Auntie Eileen’s. She likes polishing them.”’

  Bennett’s penchant for visiting the location gave rise to one memorable occasion, recalled affectionately by Michael Palin. ‘We were doing the scene where I get the pig into the car which is one of the most crazy and surreal moments I’ve done filming Python or otherwise, trying to get this bloody pig into the car, it was a huge thing. They’d smeared the car with fish oil and it just wasn’t having any of it so you had people out of sight pushing the backside of this pig into the car. Eventually, it got inside. Then it leapt for the door and got its trotter right into my crotch. I was having to let the brake off while holding this trotter away from my privates. And, of course, it got very excited and the car was covered in shit, an awful nightmare. The man who’d lent us his vintage car was a Yorkshireman and he said, “Who’s that up there?” pointing to someone chewing his tie. Alan used to chew his tie when he got nervous. And I said, “That’s Alan Bennett. He’s the writer.” The man sort of nodded his head a bit and then looked at the car and the pig being pushed in and said, “He’s no Ibsen, is he?”’

  After their wonderful partnership in The Missionary, it was decided to team Palin once again with Maggie Smith, playing his wife, a role Shivas guessed Bennett had written expressly with the actress in mind. ‘Maggie and Michael loved each other, and although she’s not the easiest person in the world — there’s that reputation — she was great, there were no problems at all. We were staying in, I think, Ilkley’s only fairly large hotel. I got there the day before shooting. Maggie was already there, she had arrived there first of all so that she could choose the room that she would have. We’d got her what we thought was one of the best rooms and she’d changed it before I got there. I asked, “Maggie, how’s the room?” She said, “Well, I may have done worse, but by God I’ve done better.”’