Very Naughty Boys [EBK]

by Robert Sellers

  Contractually, HandMade had final cut, so technically O’Brien had every right to see his demands carried through. He had, after all, fully financed the picture. Palace only had the UK distribution rights, which they had insisted on during their first meeting with O’Brien, in return for which Woolley and his partner Nick Powell took very low producing fees. But on this point, Woolley was fighting on principle and confronted O’Brien. ‘Look, if you cut the end of the film, it’s just about this whore who’s, like, evil.’ O’Brien turned to Woolley and, with utmost seriousness, said, ‘Well, what else is it about? It’s about a whore who deserves her comeuppance.’

  That take on the movie was about a million miles from Woolley and Jordan’s; their preferred ending had Tyson returning to see Bob one last time to explain her motives. ‘So it’s not about all that anger that happened in Brighton,’ Woolley explains, ‘and you realise that George has come on a journey. At the beginning of the film, you see him as a racist, a person who hates women. At the end of the film, he’s someone who understands a person who’s both black and a woman. So this was about someone who was able to change through the events that he saw, that his view of the world was probably not the best view to have. That was a really important thing to me and I would have done anything to stop Denis destroying the film.’

  By this time, O’Brien had acquired a reputation for ‘meddling’ in post-production. Certainly he enjoyed and, to some, exploited his position as executive producer. Perhaps such behaviour was merely an extension of his personality, in that he was a very impulsive and decisive man. Wendy Palmer believes, ‘Denis was a man who never doubted himself for a second. He was autocratic and didn’t brook any arguments. And what he used to do when he got into the cutting room was terrible. He’d get a video and he’d cut the films himself. He’d go into the video-editing suite with a video of the rough cut and play around for a weekend and come up with his own version. He did that a few times. He might even have done that to Mona Lisa. It was horrifying. Then he’d hand them the video cassette and say, “Here it is.” That used to get people cross. And people wouldn’t watch it. There’d be all sorts of rumpuses over that. That was one of his favourite things to do.’

  Though, to be truthful, it’s difficult when you hold the purse strings not to want to impose your own views on a production if you have a vision yourself of what it should be like. But in the opinion of many, O’Brien took this privilege to extremes. Gilliam’s viewpoint is, ‘Post-production, that’s the time as a filmmaker when you’re most vulnerable. You’ve just spent a year working on this thing, you’re actually shagged out, and now this guy is telling you stuff and you say, “Look at the films that have come before and they’ve been big successes, maybe he knows what he’s talking about.” And you’re very vulnerable then and I think Denis abused that position.’

  But with Palace, O’Brien had more than met his match. Unbeknown to him, Woolley had a major ace up his sleeve. He was close friends with both Chris Blackwell, head honcho of Island, and Carey Brocal, who ran Island’s film distribution arm Island Alive which planned to release Mona Lisa in the States. Woolley knew how important the American distribution for Mona Lisa was to HandMade’s financing and personally showed the film to Brocal and informed him of the problems it was facing. Brocal reached for the phone and made a personal call to O’Brien, stating that if the ending of the film was altered in any way, Island would refuse to distribute it in America.

  ‘And, of course, Denis went bonkers,’ Woolley grins, ‘and I don’t think we’ve ever spoken since then. I was in LA and I got Carey to make the call and Denis was dining at Balmoral. We’re not sure who he was dining with but it’s rumoured to have been the Queen Mother. And he said, “Don’t call me on this number unless it’s an emergency.” And I said to Carey Brocal, “Call him, it’s an emergency. Call him now.” And we got him out of dinner with the Queen Mother. And we won. He never changed the ending. When it came down to it, Island Alive’s advance was more important to HandMade than their opinion of what should or shouldn’t be in the film.’

  As the film geared up for release, word of mouth within the industry was of nothing else but Bob Hoskins. Like The Long Good Friday’s Harold Shand, Hoskins made George his own, vulnerable and poignant, yet in a flash capable of headbutting a thug or smashing a pimp’s face in. It was a sensational performance, one of the best given by a British actor during the 1980s. And Hoskins was suitably rewarded for it. He was voted Best Actor by the Los Angeles Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics in New York. He also received a coveted Golden Globe. Hoskins was his usual self-effacing and joking self about such triumphs. ‘Usually, all an award means is that it puts you out of work for 18 months because no one thinks they can afford you.’

  When Mona Lisa was entered into competition at Cannes, Hoskins became the first English actor for two decades to receive the Best Actor Award. He’d arrived at the French resort with his wife and Neil Jordan, but left again for London after the film’s gala showing. Woolley recalls, ‘I didn’t leave Cannes. Denis and everybody else had pissed off and I said, “No, we’re going to win this award.” And then they all flooded back on the Monday when he won it. I said to Neil, “I’m not going back. I’m not getting on the flight. I’m staying because I think Bob’s going to win it. How can he not win?” I loved the film so much, how could these people not give him the award? So we stayed and Bob did win it and they had to bring Bob back on a private plane.

  ‘Cannes was also hilarious because we’d walk down the Croissette and Denis would come towards me and then he would cross the road just so he wouldn’t have to acknowledge my existence. We just really, really upset him.’

  Mona Lisa opened in the States in June 1986 to good business for a British movie. The critical reaction was extraordinary, and fully justified. ‘Neil Jordan has chiselled a dark, sleazily glamorous gem,’ oozed Newsweek; USA Today acclaimed ‘The most affecting love story in recent memory’; LA Weekly thought Hoskins had given ‘the performance of the year’; and Village Voice declared that ‘if Mona Lisa doesn’t grant Hoskins semi-stardom, nothing will’.

  The film’s modest but significant success in America did much to raise the profile of Neil Jordan, essentially putting his name on the international movie map. ‘It did well all over the world. I never saw any money out of it, but it did very well. It was at a time when independent movies like that never got released in the States, really. Looking back on it today, I think it’s quite lovely. Every time I see a movie that I’ve made, I can’t disconnect it from the person I was at the time. So, to me, it’s a perfect expression of all those emotions I was going through at the time.’

  The success of Mona Lisa also did much for the profile of Palace Pictures who, certainly in media circles, seemed to be the ones getting all of the plaudits. Another case of HandMade not banging its drum loud enough. Brian Shingles recalls, ‘The Palace boys had problems with Denis. It was HandMade’s money that made Mona Lisa and they took the acclaim and glory for it and that really infuriated Denis and everybody else.’

  Opening in London in September, where it broke the alltime house record at the Odeon Haymarket, Mona Lisa played successfully across Britain and garnered near universal press acclaim. ‘A film of the first rank which sets a benchmark for British cinema,’ said the Daily Telegraph. The Mail on Sunday regarded the film as ‘the most extraordinary movie to come from Britain this year’. Not surprisingly, Hoskins received the lion’s share of the plaudits. ‘It is a performance of remarkable subtlety, observation and compassion and it puts him in the forefront of contemporary British actors,’ said the Sunday Express.

  Mona Lisa was indeed the making of Bob Hoskins. His new status was confirmed when that year’s Oscar nominations were revealed and he found himself in the exalted company of Paul Newman, William Hurt and James Woods for the Best Actor Award. No one, least of all Hoskins himself, was really surprised when Newman won for The Color of Money. Six times nominated, surel
y the Academy weren’t going to shaft him a seventh time. Consolation arrived at the British Academy Awards. The ceremony was held at some grand West End hotel and Bob won. He’d been the favourite. But, even in victory, the chasm between the two sets of film-makers responsible for Mona Lisa was plain to see. Woolley remembers, ‘There was me, Nick and Neil on one table, and Denis O’Brien and all the HandMade people and Bob Hoskins on the other table. It was a real “us” and “them”. And I think we even had to buy our own table for the BAFTAs.’

  Mona Lisa remains the archetypal Bob Hoskins movie. It’s a piece of work of which he is as proud as anything else he has accomplished in cinema. ‘If I popped off tomorrow,’ he once said, ‘I would feel that I’d left something behind that was worth it.’ It’s a sentiment shared by others. Coltrane says, ‘I loved doing Mona Lisa. It was the first time I had done a proper movie with people I really identified with. It established me in a cache of players, like Jim Broadbent, who ended up in a raft of interesting British films of the Eighties. I am eternally grateful. The only hard part for me was when they cut a Jaguar in two to make filming easier! We used to play ‘Mona Lisa’ on the radio, the only thing that still worked, to help our concentration. It’s tough on those low-loaders, there is a lot of noise and the crew are very close, plus people shout and peep their horns, and then the background doesn’t match, so there are always lots of takes, so you go round the route again. So we’d rewind the tape, have a quick blast of old Nat and we’d be ready for take ten. Whenever I hear that song, I’m right there in the Jag. Happy memories.’

  9

  SHANGHAI COCKUP

  In 1985, Sean Penn and Madonna were the biggest celebrity couple on Earth, the Burton and Taylor of the MTV generation (minus the charm). You didn’t have to be Einstein to comprehend the potential box-office bonanza that awaited anyone lucky enough or with sufficient balls to grab them both to star in a movie together. Prior to them tying the knot that August, Penn and Madonna had already rejected a number of film roles, notably Blind Date, later a massive hit for Bruce Willis and Kim Basinger. It wasn’t until they were personally approached by George Harrison to star in Shanghai Surprise that the couple found a project to their mutual liking.

  Based on the novel Faraday’s Flowers by Tony Kenrick, the plot of Shanghai Surprise is a mixture of a 1930s screwball comedy and The African Queen as a missionary nurse gets tangled up with a fortune-hunter out to steal opium and jewels from Chinese warlord gangsters. Hollywood producer John Kohn owned the property and wanted a Briton to helm it, sending the script to Jim Goddard, a highly respected TV director whose work on Reilley, Ace of Spies had so impressed Kohn. Goddard had never directed a feature film before. As it happened, Denis O’Brien had recently offered Goddard a project with HandMade, but it hadn’t been something he’d wanted to do. Instead, Goddard sent O’Brien the Shanghai script. The next thing Kohn knew, O’Brien was on the telephone offering to back the entire project to the tune of $17 million. It was the biggest gamble HandMade had ever undertaken, their first venture into the realm of big-budget features. Certainly, it showed their commitment to UK film production. But there were many insiders, Harrison included, who were dubious about the project from the start. So, too, were the money men. With no stars signed up by this stage, the project almost floundered. Shingles recalls, ‘Shanghai was within days of closing down, of the project being dumped. It was only when Penn and Madonna signed up at the last minute the film really swung into action.’

  Kohn had worked with Sean Penn twice before, in an executive capacity on Bad Boys and then as producer on Racing with the Moon: ‘So I knew Sean very well and so I used Sean to get his wife, to get Madonna. Finally, I think she said, “Well, if I do it, you’ve got to do it.” I don’t know whether Sean was ever really in love with that role but, once she wanted to do it, I guess she talked him into doing it. Madonna reminded me a lot of Judy Holliday, whom I knew very well. Unfortunately, she didn’t turn out to be Judy Holliday, who was an angel. One thing I’ll never forget after we’d signed Sean Penn and Madonna, I took them out to dinner to celebrate and suddenly into the restaurant comes George Harrison and sits in the booth with us. And Madonna was so astounded and open-mouthed. George was his usual charming self, welcoming them on the picture and saying how he was looking forward to working with them, and then he left. And I remember Madonna said, “There goes a legend.”’

  The casting of Penn and Madonna was a massive coup for HandMade. No other British film company then operating managed to pull off anything quite like it. Interestingly, neither were Kohn’s first choices for the film. ‘I wanted to go for Tom Hanks. He’d just made his first hit picture Splash. But Denis thought, and he was right, that it would be a bigger talking point having Sean and Madonna together.’

  O’Brien’s keen commercial mind realised the huge publicity benefits of a film package that combined Penn and Madonna. But there was a downside — being the most famous couple in the world meant that everywhere they went hordes of press and photographers followed. It was the plague of the paparazzi and the consequences for the film were to be disastrous.

  In January 1986, Penn and Madonna touched down in Shanghai. It was early in the morning and, unable to sleep, both ended up taking a walking tour of the city. Dawn had yet to break through but already the parks were filled with people doing their slow motion tai chi exercises. It was almost dreamlike. Such serenity was shattered when the couple flew on to Hong Kong where the bulk of location shooting was to be carried out. The Shanghai authorities had refused any filming in their city because of Madonna’s raunchy image. It was really only a matter of time before the press caught up with them.

  The Hong Kong Standard, an English language tabloid, offered a $500 reward for information on Madonna’s whereabouts. Frustrated that nothing was forthcoming, the paper’s proprietor, Leonel Barralho, took matters into his own hands and waited for the couple to return to their suite on the eighteenth floor of the luxurious Oriental Hotel in Macao. When the lift door opened, Barralho jumped out and started taking pictures. Penn went ballistic and, in the ensuing melee, a camera strap got entangled around Barralho’s neck.

  Penn then had to be forcibly held back by his own bodyguard. Barralho was not allowed to leave until he handed over the film, which he eventually did in exchange for the promise of an exclusive interview with the couple. When it dawned on him that no such interview was ever going to take place, Barralho filed assault charges against Penn and sued for damages of $1 million.

  Angry and bitter that they were once again in the spotlight, thinking the paparazzi wouldn’t pursue them to mainland China (‘We thought we’d be safe here,’ said Madonna), the film’s veteran publicist, Chris Nixon, came up with his solution to pacify the growing sense of ill-will the production was generating. Penn was already being pilloried in the local press as ‘the ugly American’. Nixon’s idea was to get the couple to pose briefly for photographers in the hope that once they’d got what they wanted they might leave them alone. Penn wasn’t playing ball. ‘This film doesn’t need publicity,’ he insisted. ‘People will go and see it because we are in it.’ Penn demanded that Nixon be fired. He was.

  The first real hint that everyone was in for a very bumpy ride occurred on the opening day of shooting in Hong Kong. The unit had employed a 19-year-old called Rupert, fresh from public school, to be the runner or general dogsbody. At six o’clock in the morning he knocked on the door of Penn and Madonna’s massive trailer where they were inside getting made up. ‘Come in,’ said a voice. Rupert entered and there was Sean Penn scowling at his appearance in the mirror. ‘Good morning,’ starts Rupert, ‘Mr Goddard has asked me to come and let you know that there’s absolutely no rush at all this morning. It’s very relaxed. As and when you feel that you’re happy with the makeup, he’s asked me to say would you let us know that you’re ready to start and I can show you down to the set where Mr Goddard would like to show you the first set-up. But, like I said, there’s absolutely n
o rush, all the time in the world, bags of time. I’ll just be outside the trailer should you need me. Oh, is there anything I can get for you now? No? Fine. Well, if you need me for anything, I’ll just be outside.’

  Although Penn’s and Madonna’s eyes never strayed from Rupert the whole time he was speaking, neither deigned to utter a single syllable as the eager-to-please runner backed out of the trailer... thrilled... first day on the job, he’d been in a trailer with Sean Penn and Madonna, what other 19-year-old gets to do that and get paid for it? After about eight seconds, a voice from within said, ‘Discuss.’

  A perplexed Rupert tapped on the door. ‘I beg your pardon, did you say something?’

  Still looking in the mirror, Penn locked eyes with Rupert and said again, ‘Discuss.’

  Rupert said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not quite up to speed. I’ve missed something. May I ask, discuss what?’

  Penn answered, ‘Go down to the set. Go to Mr Goddard and you tell him that, when we are good and ready, we are happy to move. And we will come down to the set and we will discuss the first set-up.’

  Day one. Shot one.

  Having succeeded in firing the unit publicist, Sean Penn next turned his sights on Bernard Hill, the actor who had been cast personally by Jim Goddard to play the villain of the piece. Hill’s first scenes were with Richard Griffiths and shot in Macao. It was an elaborate sequence, recreating the nightmarish exodus of Shanghai’s inhabitants as the Japanese army invades, and involved some 4,000 extras, 200 horses and cattle, and huge pyrotechnics. Hill and Griffiths were seated in rickshaws loaded with dope trying to get through the enormous crowd, looking like tiny little boats bobbing up and down in a sea of humanity. After six nights of strenuous shooting, the scene was in the can.