March 6, 1969
Malcolm and I arrive in New York for the opening of if....
next Sunday. The air fares alone cost £298 each, but we haven't a
cent in our pockets. A man from Paramount publicity meets us but he can't find
our driver. The driver is asked on the public address system to present himself
at the BOAC desk. After two appeals he appears. His feet slop forward over the
marble as if he was trudging through mud in heavy army boots. He is pissed.
In the hotel Malcolm picks up the phone to order
champagne and a pot of tea. A giant spark shoots out from the phone mouthpiece
to his chin. The 'Captain' - the porter - tells us it is the wall-to-wall nylon
carpeting- static electricity. Whenever we touch the door handles, or TV, or
phone, sparks shoot out. The 'Captain' advises us to lift one foot off the
ground before touching anything. Malcolm pours tea, hopping on one foot. We have
no money, se we order everything on room service. It costs three times as much,
the whisky (was) $15 instead of 5 in shops.
Over champagne and tea I tell Malcolm my idea for a
story called Manpower - the story of a young man, perhaps an out-of-work ballet
dancer. He works as a char doing different jobs on different days in different
peoples' homes. He practices leaps while dusting. Malcolm has also been working
on a story about a character starting life at the bottom of the pile; something
autobiographical and in some ways, he says, similar to mine...but before he can
tell me we are interrupted. The door bell rings. A weirdly dressed 'family'
enter. There are three sons who seem about 30, very pale faces, black plastic
macs or jackets and black rubber boots. The hold cheap plastic shopping bags
containing instamatic cameras. They take Malcolm's photo and ask for his
autograph. With them is a tall lady in a macintosh whom they address as
'Mother'. One of the sons tells Malcolm, "She's English. She's a dame,
she's a real dame from England. But with a small 'd' 'cos she's not a lady. A
dame, see?" They leave. Who are they? Journalists? Queers? How did they
know we were in the hotel? We'd only arrived an hour ago.
Malcolm pours another round of champagne and tells me
his story, an idea he has been working on since he finished if... It's called
Coffee Man and starts in a coffee-making factory in Liverpool. The story follows
the ambitions of a trainee salesman. There is no proper training and he has
nothing to do all day. He wanders aimlessly around the factory floor with a
clipboard for notes, chatting to the roasters, blenders, and coffee packing
girls. Then one day he is suddenly sent off to Yorkshire in a battered van to
replace a salesman who has vanished with notice. The hero ends up in London
giving his life savings to a music teacher, a con man who promises to make him
into a pop star. Coffee Man seems much more real than Manpower. Also Paramount,
to whom the Manpower idea has been put are only prepared to pay 1,000 pounds for
the first draft and it will be a couple of years work. Malcolm asks me to work
on Coffee Man...I drop Manpower.
A year passes...
January 19, 1970
I type out the first 20 pages of Coffee Man up to
the end of factory section- coffee sampling. Talk on the phone with Malcolm as
to whether scene when Mick goes into packing room should include the line,
"Christ, the girls in that room-they reek". Include it.
Show the 20 pages to Lindsay. He thinks it is too mini and naturalistic.
"Keep working on it," he says, "get it away from just being
about selling coffee.- Have you read Heaven's My Destination? It's about a
Bible salesman. Quite epic. Tails off at the end though. Why is it that writers
can never write real ending? It's very odd-why is it?"
Friday, August 21, 1970
At Malcolm's flat in the morning. Sunny outside. We
talk to and fro, trying to find the essence of Coffee Man, trying to make it
'epic' for Lindsay...
Malcolm says-"I always remember Gloria Rowe,
the Sales Director, who I used to talk to when I was training on the shop floor-I wasn't training-I was just walking around with a clipboard looking for
something to do-she used to say to me 'Malcolm, you'll either be a Duke or a
dustman.' And I'd always been told I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I
always believed I would be lucky."
I jump up-
"That's it!"
"What?"
"Luck-luck's the essence. You've always believed you'll be lucky."
"Yes-luck-Lucky Man."
Sunday, August 23, 1970
Malcolm rings to say that he has arranged a meeting for
ten o' clock to see Lindsay to discuss Lucky Man. But he can't go. He has to go
to rehearse his film with S. Kubrick. I Must go alone.
I groan- "It'll be a disaster without you. You can recount the good
episodes. You're the actor. You've got to be there...well then, let's put it off
till you can go and we can all three meet."
"No, I've just rung him. He's in a very good mood. He's expecting you. You
can talk to him better than I can."
Malcolm's psychological warfare. He has realized that
two against one would make Lindsay antagonistic.
So I drink some whisky and write out a plot- the first
thing Lindsay will say is- "What have you written? Why haven't you written
anything? You're supposed to be a writer aren't you? What do you do all
day?"
Lindsay opens the door. Gives a groan, a wry smile.
L: Malcolm's just been. He's quite batty. Left me a script to read. (The script
of another project.) God I hate reading. Do I really have to?
D: Well, it's very easy. It's better than the book.
L: I thought it looked bad- what have you written?
I screw up the plot in my pocket.
D: Nothing.
L: What? What's there to talk about if you haven't written anything? What have
you been doing with Malcolm all this time?
D: Well we've been discussing it.
L: Discussing it!
D: Well, we've discovered the essence, what it really should be about, and also
a style which makes it more than just a story about a salesman in coffee. Coffee
would just be a part of it. He'd do other things.
L: What other things? What essence.
D: Well it should be like Heaven's My Destination or Amerika. A series of
things. And his character-like Candide. He believes he's lucky. Some of the
time he is successful and then suddenly it all vanishes. But he thinks it
doesn't matter. He's always been lucky. Something will turn up. And there's a
girl-first she works for a den of thieves, the next adventure she's a chimney
sweep-and...
L: You see, I think a series of adventures, this girl popping up- other
characters popping up- it runs the risk of running away into the sands of-how
can I say it? into little sandhills-of something small scale. What is the
character really after? What can anyone be after in a world where nothing
spiritual matters anymore? What's he after?
D: I don't know. He just believes he's lucky. He's not like the hero of Heaven's
My Destination. He hasn't got a mission.
L: Have you read Pilgrim's Progress? Perhaps it should be like that. What was
Candide after? He wasn't after anything was he?
D: Yes he was. He was after the Princess. That's why he was kicked out in the
first place. When he gets her she's hideous and covered with V.D. But he is still
in love with her. But you couldn't stage that to make it believable. It's just a
literary device.
L: You could stage it. You'd just have to turn the whole thing over, and stand
back from it, and make the endings a comment on the action- an alienation.
D: I suppose so.
Lindsay grins. Does he really believe what he's said?
D: Mind you, in Amerika the hero isn't after anything. He just gets shoved to
and fro suffering injustice.
L: That's true. I mean our character- perhaps he should just want to be
successful? I mean to make it epic, to give it an epic quality, a view of
society, it ought to be quite separate things he tries, thinking each time that
it is going to be marvelous, this is the answer, then when it collapses he tries
something new- so each time we see a completely different section of life. That
would be epic...I suppose you want whisky?
D: Please.
L: Help yourself. By the way: what about that book The Handreared Boy, what did
you think of it? I mean you didn't react to it really did you? You don't really
enthuse about anything do you?
D: Yes I do. I loved the book. I told you. But I thought it would be impossible
to make.
L: But if it were made it would make a fortune.
D: Yes it would.
L: Then why, when you read it, didn't you say it was very exciting and would
make a film? You didn't react at all.
D: When I read it I didn't look on it as a film. I just read it as an ordinary
reader and I enjoyed it- as a normal reader.
L: A normal reader! You don't think I keep sending you these books for you to
read as an ordinary reader? You're supposed to be one of the most sought-after
script-writers in the country- you don't think I sent you stuff to enjoy as a
normal person. You're not a normal person.
D: Yes, but when I read it I realized that it would be impossible to make into a
film. I just enjoyed...
L: Why is it impossible?
D: How do you as a director use small children in direct sexual actions without
perverting them and exploiting them?
L: And being sent to jail.
D: And rightly.
L: Yes, that's what I thought. That's why I thought it was impossible...Well
what are you going to call the film?
D: Lucky Man.
L: No. O lucky Man, like O Dreamland or Oh Calcutta! O Lucky Man-much better
than Lucky Man-it's got a ring to it-and it ought to have an exclamation mark-where should the exclamation mark go?
D: At the beginning. After the 'O'.
L: At the end. O Lucky Man!
September 2, 1970
Malcolm and I meet Lindsay who is working at the
Royal Court Theatre. We go to a coffee bar round the corner. We sit on high
stools over weak coffee to finalize plans to produce O Lucky Man! We have to
form a Company to make and own the film, Lindsay wants to call it Manic
Productions, but settles for SAM, based on our initials. The three of us will be
paid an equal amount for the whole film, £10,000 and each will have an
equal vote in any SAM decision. Democracy. We have all brought prototype
contracts from our prospective lawyers. We pull them out. One is bound in black
tape, one green, one red. They are each biased in favor of their client and
against the others. After having read the others' contracts we decide to
amalgamate them into one master contract so as to be fair to all. This we do with
Lindsay's red Tempo pen. We cross everything out that we don't like in each
other's contract- initialing every crossing out: 3 sets of initials for
every crossing out or insertion. It takes 45 minutes. So SAM was born to produce
its one and only film. We drink a toast to SAM in coffee.
September 20, 1970
Lindsay, Malcolm and I walk through the Inns of
Court, looking for Lindsay's lawyer's office. We get lost in the
Oxford-College-like quadrangles. It starts to rain heavily. We arrive ten
minutes late, and drenched, to find a room full of expectant lawyers, and
Lindsay's and Malcolm's agents...
It is apparent at this meeting that these people have
different objectives from ours-of setting up the film simply without a big,
unnecessary, financial hassle. They are driven to complicate things as much as
possible. This creates work for themselves...
Lindsay tells them we aren't interested and we must keep it simple...The meeting
lasts an hour and a half. "It was like directing a film", Lindsay says
afterwards, "The amount of energy you need to cut your way through the
financial and legal snares - if we go on this way we'll be too exhausted to make
the picture."
But, coming out of the Inns of Court, we feel like
millionaires, after all the talk about the percentages and profits.
Unfortunately nothing concrete has been decided; we don't have a producer; we
don't have a frame of film to our name, only 3 pages of script (the car crash
scene; the only scene in the story to remain unaltered through the 2 1/2 years
of making the film); no one has yet put up any money, and we don't have a deal
with any major distributor.
We decide to go ahead with our development of our script without the backing-
and the consequent sense of obligation - of a distributor. This was how I had
developed if...with Lindsay; and we felt freer that way. We also decide to wait
until we have a reasonable first draft before approaching a producer. Malcolm
and Lindsay each put up a modest stake and I put up my services as a writer.
(The only stake I had). Se we got going.
February 26, 1971
Lindsay and I drive to Liverpool to inspect the
actual coffee factory, where Malcolm trained as a coffee salesman. We find it
very different from the factory Malcolm had described. It has shrunk. It is much
too small. The are only four women on the packing lines.
A foreman, in a white linen pork-pie hat, shows us around. He explains the
intricacies of roasting, blending, gas-flushing, and why although tea-bags have
revolutionized the tea industry, coffee in similar bags would be flat as a
flute. I take down pages of notes which compress into a 3 page scene in which
the foreman lectures the trainees...
We drive on north towards Bolton to visit Alan Price,
where he is doing a gig with Georgie Fame. He is staying at Dimple Hall, an
isolated stone farmhouse...It is Alan's regular lodging place when he is on a
Northern tour. Everything in uncannily quiet. Late that evening we go with Alan,
Georgie Fame and their group to Bolton where they are to give a concert. We
drive to the gig, huddled in a freezing van.
Our night drives in this van later gave us the idea
that the musicians' van should rescue our hero, Mick, when he is fleeing from
the experimental medical laboratory.
The concert takes place in a nightclub unlike anything
to be found in the south. It is huge, modern, densely packed standing room only.
The crowds of smartly dressed workers are in darkness. Only the stage is
spotlighted. Alan and George sing their hit songs-Simon Smith, Bonnie and
Clyde, and the rest as well as rock and rhythm and blues classics. Lindsay and I
take photographs. After the concert the musicians unwind at Dimple Hall by
playing Scrabble until four in the morning. Lindsay and I lose every game.
Lindsay had been planning a film with and about Alan
Price after Alan had written the music for Home. It was to be a documentary,
featuring gigs, travels, digs and one-night stands. Like the old actor-managers
with their traveling setups. But when Alan teamed up with Georgie Fame the
project ran into difficulties, chiefly on copyright for the material they were
using. (£1,000 a minute for a Ray Charles number). But quite a lot of the
idea became part of O Lucky Man!
"Alan's songs- they're the one thing that will
save this film," Lindsay says, after Alan has written My Hometown, Poor
People, Everyone's Going Through Changes, O Lucky Man! and Sell, Sell, Sell.
February 28, 1971
We spend two nights watching Alan Price and Georgie
Fame, then drive back south to London. On the drive we discuss the scene when
Mick meets the big-business man. Something else is needed in this scene, says
Lindsay, something that will tell us the business man's power, the way he
operates. I suggest a mad inventor who is given the boot. Kicked out after 40
years' service on which the company's fortune is based. Lindsay likes the idea.
He thinks the inventor should commit suicide in front of Mick and the business
man's eyes - hurl himself through the window at the top of Centrepoint.
This business-man became Sir James -father of a girl-
Patricia - whom Mick meets in the musician's van...
...To help me make a start in the research of 'Sir James', Malcolm rang the
Chairman of E.M.I., Sir Joseph Lockwood, whom he had met while making the film,
The Raging Moon, for EMI. Sir Joseph Lockwood agreed to explain to us some of
the mysteries of big business...
July 5, 1971
Malcolm and I drive in his car to the E.M.I.
Headquarters in Manchester Square. Sir Joseph Lockwood sees us in his huge
boardroom. He tells us some of the truths of business: "The pioneer always
pays," he says. "The first invention- no one wants to know. Look at
tape cassettes."
We ask him how he chooses an employee?
"What he has done so far? Once he's past 30, degrees don't mean a thing. So
long as he can read and write. If you've had failure you'll go on being a
failure. If you've had success - you'll go on having success. Unless you go
gaga. First thing a successful main in business has got to do is get rid of
non-essentials. Never make wrong decisions...Good health. Sleep well. You should
like to make money, but not to spend it, unless it's going to make more money.
Don't go off at the weekend. No round the world trips with the wife. It's not a
question of morals - not morals - it's waste. Once you allow waste it goes right
down the company. You end up ruined, be you the United States or a fish and chip
shop at the Battersea Fun Fair."
I use this speech in the script - spoken by Sir James to Mick in the back of
his Rolls Royce. It was shot, but all cut in the editing.
...In the last quarter of the story Mick meets the poor. I visited Release,
Shelter, and the Simon Community several times and labored long at the scenes
involving Mick, social workers, and the destitute...
...All this research proved to be in the wrong direction. The naturalism of
the social-worker scenes was too low-key, too straight. The style of the film
needed continual heightening- the note of satire. Lindsay only fully realized
this day before he was due to shoot these scenes. It was mid-May, 1972. He rang
me at 2 a.m.: "The Community Centre scenes are absolutely wrong. They won't
work. I'll have to stop the film- unless you're on the set at 9 a.m. with a
solution".
I arrived at 9 a.m. to find a large room at Colet Court redressed a Community
Centre and filled with old-age pensioners waiting to do their scene. Went up to
the chilly production office. "Well?" asked Lindsay. "Cut it. Cut
the whole thing," I said. To my surprise Lindsay agreed with relief:
"Now you'll just have to find a brand new invention to put in its place.
Got your typewriter?"
July 31, 1971
Go down on the train with Lindsay to Hythe - to spend the weekend working. On
the train he reads the first draft for the first time, groaning and closing his
eyes.
"It's terrible," he says.
Then he comes to three blank pages.
"What's this?"
"It's the scene on the roof. Mick and the girl. It's a complete blank- I
can't think of anything. It's totally unreal. I can't write it."
"You'll just have to this weekend or we'll have to pack in the film."
Lindsay has booked into a three star hotel on the sea front where his mother is
staying. I'm booked into a no-star hotel behind it. It is occupied mainly by
permanent guests: old age pensioners who have made the cold little rooms into
their final nests. As I walk down the long lined floor I can see into one of
their rooms- it's crammed with potted plants, the dressing table crowded with
framed photos of the owner's family. In the hall a gong with a floor brush
hanging beside it which serves as a hammer.
There's no table in my room so I set the typewriter on the chair by the bed. But
feel so depressed about the script, and the unwritable scene on the roof, that I
go to the nearest pub. Drink and read the Daily Mirror over and over.
That evening Lindsay phones Malcolm.
"The author's lying drunk on the floor and the script is in ruins. You'd
better meet me at the flat on Monday- I think we'll have to seriously consider
forgetting the whole idea."
Malcolm mumbles "Oh God, I'll never work again."
Lindsay says to me - "Write that roof top scene tomorrow morning."
"It's completely blank. Nothing there."
"Just write something. Anything you like."
I go back to my hotel. It is 10:30 p.m. Not a light in the place. Everyone is in
their own room, trying to sleep.
August 2, 1971
I wake up to the sound of the gong being beaten with the brush. I run down to
breakfast. About ten very aged guests gathered at the same table shouting into
each other's hearing aids; I'm put at a table by myself, away from them; in the
far corner also set on her own, is a beautiful Arab girl. Why should she choose
this hotel? Anyway, feel cheered up. Buy newspaper and go upstairs to read about
the Oz trial. Lock the door in case Lindsay should make one of his unannounced
inspections and find me reading the newspaper and the typewriter silent. Put
down paper and write first line- he said write anything: very well...
Later Lindsay phones Malcolm again and says- "Author woke up in the morning
and produced some very good work in the afternoon."
Malcolm says-"I know it will be good. Just keep him off the Barley
Wine."
Alan Price had once told Lindsay about staying in a big hotel when he was
playing a gig in Lancashire, and the hotel manager had invited him to an orgy in
a shed behind the hotel. It seemed a good idea for Mick, after his first
successful day on the road trying to sell coffee, to end up in a similar
situation.
August 18, 1971
Writing in the office in Lindsay's flat. Another blank in the script- the
orgy scene in the Yorkshire Hotel. At 9:30 a.m. I tell Lindsay it's impossible
to write and we'll have to think of a completely different invention.
"I've got a shock for you, Malcolm's coming in at 11 a.m. and I've promised
him he can read the orgy."
"But I've never been to an orgy."
"Perhaps it should be like the other orgy Alan told me about. He was in the
North of England and he looked through the window of this respectable suburban
house and he saw the head of the police, and the mayor, and all their wives-just sitting-watching blue films."
"All right. Hmm...why is it I never get asked to orgies?"
"Because you don't look sporty enough."
I decide that the key to the orgy must be respectability and
good-neighborliness. Mick being introduced to everyone as though it were a
vicarage jumble-sale. Finish it just in time. The absolute necessity of having a
deadline, however artificial.
September, 1971
Lindsay went to Czechoslovakia. He had to get permission for Mirek Ondricek,
the cameraman who has shot if.... to visit England to shoot O Lucky Man! He
spent a very frustrating week in Prague, everybody very friendly, but difficult
to get a definite 'yes'. When he came back he rang me:
"How much have you written?"
"Just a bit."
"Just a bit?! That's absolutely useless."
He slammed the phone down. Half an hour later, he rang back. We both laugh.
Conversation continues as if uninterrupted. He thinks they will let Mirek come.
Late September, 1971
Getting the script together:
I am going mad trying to finish the scene in the musicians' van when Mick meets
Patricia; 7 people in a small van- each movement has to be clearly worked out in
relation to the size of the van, the dramatic states of the characters, and the
actual distance traveled during the journey. Lindsay lends me some tapes he made
with Alan Price in his van, but I can't hear a word because of the engine noise
and the broadness of Alan's Newcastle accent. I phone Malcolm for ideas but he
was off to record his commentary for Clockwork Orange. Lindsay was also going
mad trying to cast The Changing Room. He had to find 15 Northern actors who
looked as though they could all be members of the same Rugby League team. He was
absolutely exhausted.
There was now a plethora of drafts for some scenes, which had to be synthesized
into one. In the evenings and at weekend, when Lindsay was not working at The
Royal Court, we would take it in turns dictating from the almost illegible
scrawled-over, earlier drafts, while the other typed out the finalized version.
We drink a lot of barley wine.
October 15, 1971
First draft completed.
After finishing the first draft we showed it to Michael Medwin, as we had done
with if.... He understood it immediately, liked it immediately, and agreed to
join us as producer. Old collaborators were contacted. Many of them knew about
the project already: Miroslav Ondricek, our Cameraman; Jocelyn Herbert,
Production Designer; Miriam Brickman, Casting; David Gladwell, Editor. Michael
started contacting distributors for finance. From the start Warner Brothers were
the keenest. British Finance, as before, was not forthcoming.
December 24, 1971
A postcard from New York; a painting of two hamburgers. On the other side is
written in red Tempo:
'Dec 21st- Concluded deal with Warner Bros. at 9 p.m. Budget 1.5 million
dollars. All we have to do now is make the film. Happy Xmas. Love Lindsay.'
Sunday March 19, 1972
The day before shooting starts. At Lindsay's flat, still trying to rewrite
the roof top scene for the eighth time. Malcolm rings Lindsay-"I've got to
see you immediately. I don't understand a word of this script."
Malcolm arrives. He thinks the character is sheepy, too passive. I tell him all
the best actors are passive. They react. Look at Robert Mitchum. This is a
reacting part.
"But he needs a bit more go-don't you think?"
"Well you re-write it then. By tomorrow," says Lindsay.
"Listen you've got to pretend you're naive," he says "it's how
you were ten years ago. Go on now- you've just got to do it."
So Malcolm went away content.
March 23, 1972
Third day of shooting. I go to the set-the location is a coffee factory in
South London. It is a sunny, suddenly hot day. Outside the factory stand
generating lorries for our lights. Inside the factory the skylights have been
covered with tarpaulins to keep out the unexpected sun. Blocks of lamps hanging
in the ceiling behind the translucent paper seem to provide exactly the same
effect as the sunlight. The camera dominates everything. It is mounted high on a
wooden scaffold at the far end of the factory floor.
I make myself inconspicuous next to a coffee packing machine and read though,
for the nth time, the rewrite of the rewrite of the roof-top scene. The detached
ruthless attitude of the girl, Patricia, is still not there. I look at the
coffee packing lines away from the shooting area. They are working normally, but
all the packers wear red badges on their uniforms, reading 'Imperial Coffee'
instead of their own brand.
Lindsay, Malcolm and Arthur Lowe stand under the blaze of light, surrounded
by boxes of coffee. Mirek, the director of photography lines up a shot on the
scaffold. Lindsay suddenly puts his hand on Arthur Lowe's shoulder to draw his
attention. Lindsay points an accusing finger straight at me.
"Him-the author...he's to blame."
Copyright ©1973 David Sherwin from the O Lucky Man!
Scriptbook by Grove Press
Archived with permission 2001-10 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net