Mr Turner at Cannes . . and a bit of eye trouble!

Mike Leigh's Mr Turner.

Do you know I used to love to go to Cannes; I can hear people say 'lucky for some' but it was one of those recreations that I jumped at; okay it was supposed to be work but I relished it; and I went four times for at least a week.

I was there to try and sell my short film as a TV pilot but it wasn't to be – or not to be!!

This week the Cannes Film Festival is taking place and it is a part of our business that some actors hate; well more fool them when they are sitting around in their dotage saying 'I could have . . .' or more likely 'I should have . . ' - personally I have no time for actors like that; actors are story tellers and meeting people – and the press and paparazzi – is all part of the job.

This year I would love to be there to see, what I think, will be an amazing film; I am talking about Mike Leigh's Mr Turner starring Timothy Spall. It's about the painter, of course, (JMW) and will probably win all the awards – from now on right up to the Oscars.

Mike Leigh is one of the great directors and his muse, Timothy Spall (who looks a lot like him; well the same type) fits in well with Leigh's filming technique.

I know this will fill some screen and TV writers with horror, but Leigh gets his actors to improvise as he devises his piece. That's what he does; even his classic stage play, Abigail's Party, was devised as an improvisation.

I am not talking about the improvisation you see on TV sometimes or the things they do at The Groundlings in Los Angeles but the kind you see Robert de Niro doing or Al Pacino. The building of a character through that technique.

I have worked on a short film for the BBC where we devised the film over a period of some days and improvised the dialogue. After a week or two of doing the same thing the improvised dialogue gets honed and shaped till we more or less know it without losing spontaneity; that is the secret as actors we are not reciting.

I have seen some of Ken Loach's films, who I also like a lot (but not as much as Mike Leigh's) and who is also at Cannes this year but the actors in his movies are not always professionals. Sometimes this works but they wouldn't be able to go through the process of devising and doing it over and over again.

I met Timothy Spall a year or so ago in Soho; I was having coffee with a pal and he poked his head around the coffee shop door and said 'what's going on here?'

He had come to see the owner of the place, as they had a gallery in the building, and he wanted to exhibit some of his work; so he can paint and I wish him, and the movie, a lot of luck.

Now then: since last week I have had a few emails and phone calls to see how I am after my surgery. Well I'm fine and really grateful for people's concern. It was an eye operation which was carried out using a local anesthetic (they just froze my eye).

The reason I didn't want a general anesthetic or sedation is 1): I don't think people of my age should 'go under' too much no matter how much of a thrill it is and 2): I wanted to find out what went on.

The surgery lasted two hours, which was longer than I thought, so I felt a little bit of discomfort – some pinching and stitching – but there was an amazing sensation at the end of surgery.

Because there were some tears I needed stitches and they put gas in to my eye (don't ask me why); this caused a bubble which temporarily blinded that eye.

I always thought that blindness would be dark; it isn't! It's dead – no sensation not brightness or darkness just dead. It was about a day before some kind of light came back.

The surgery was to straighten out a membrane on my retina rather like the skin on rice pudding or a fold in some Sellotape (Scotch tape in America).

That's all I want to say about it apart from what I see at the moment which is fascinating; the gas is still in my eye and it's slowly going.

At the bottom of my eye is the gas and as I walk it moves as if it's water – through a gold- fish bowl – I had to lay on the right side in bed and bow my head forward whenever I could for five days.

Now what I see is this:

See the gas at the bottom like a magnifying glass and the top being clear – ish! And when I walk the bottom moves so it's like walking through water - and that curve goes vertical when I lie down.

I took the photo through our sitting room window putting a close up mirror in front which is a good representation of what I see – and that's why I have to wear a patch.

Let's hope that by the next time I write Nigel Farage has been forgotten about; I live in hope.

Locked in the Cannes!

La Petit Carlton, Cannes (not there now I hear).

A little story for you:

The other day I was talking about being locked in various places and today I noticed the blog post I wrote in 2013 was being viewed. So here it is again:

I have been to Cannes a few times; Cannes, in the south of France, that is; well four times, actually, and each time I stayed in a flat near La Croisette which I really liked; I think I was in there by myself twice and definitely shared twice.

I travelled three times with round trip flights from London to Nice and the other time I drove there, with two posh chaps who were old Etonians, and on that particular trip I caught a train back from Marseilles which arrived at its destination in the north of France smack on time.

You may ask why I came back by train? Well the old Etonians left me there and I had to find the money to get back – moral of the story? Never trust an old Etonian! They're not even trusted amongst their own posh fraternity; the 'public schools' of England.

The upper classes tend to think, and they may be right, that Eton and Harrow are populated by the Neauvo Riche as they're the only public schools the plebs have ever heard of – who cares, aye?

I was there trying to sell the idea of my film being a TV series; since it's been on YouTube, by the way, a few people have contacted me and said it would have made a good series – too late, I'm afraid – those days are gone, Joxer 'dem dayz is gone!! Have a look if you wish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpWmesv5nVA&t=746s&ab_channel=JustMaximumPublicity

That's a new cut by the way in 2014 where I dubbed a scene between two of my friends who are both now dead – Ron as the rabbi in New York and Jeff as the New York dealer at Portobello Road.

So why am I writing about this now?

I was listening to one of my favourite programmes on the radio, on Saturday, and they started talking about people's experiences of being locked in places and being rescued by the fire brigade or whatever.

On one particular trip I was locked in somewhere three times in three different places; this was one of the times when I was staying in the flat alone.

I loved Cannes and considered moving there on a permanent basis; in those days I smoked and I would inhale those delicious Gauloises and blow the smoke out over anybody within passive distance; but then we all smoked so they didn't care – well most of us did.

We could even smoke on the plane and each time I flew back to London we nearly drank the plane dry – pissy, hazy journeys with the Gauloises/Gitanes air making it even hazier than I can remember!!

I had a favourite super market, in Cannes, which sold wonderful Olive Oil, I knew some street markets too, that I would frequent and my local drinking hole was Le Petit Carlton; which was a wonderful deli/restaurant/bar with a very rude waiter called Pierre – well he wasn't that rude he just gave as good as he got and we were very fond of him.

I remember the French Onion soup, the millions of French Fries that were served up with each meal – I was so French it was unbelievable; but I could hardly speak a word of the language. I can speak a little bit of Spanish, enough to get by but French?? Sounded all Greek to me.

One time I was in the apartment and someone knocked on the door; I answered and a desperate looking man, with five and a half days of beard growth, got through a whole sentence before I could get the word in that I didn't understand him - mon chaton il disparu, he said.

Sorry, I said, no French no French!

Then he started making susshhhh, noises and waving his arms about saying shooo sheee shaaa!!

Sorry, I said.

Mon chaton, he said, looking passed me, Mon chaton!! – then went.

What the . . . who the?????

Not long after that I saw a cat on the balcony; I might have felt French but I knew they had rabies in France, every cat, every dog – all animals there, all had rabies. Well I would think this, wouldn't I, as we were propagandised to all the time by the British Media about Rabies!

I saw the man later and he told me he had brought his cat along from Paris and it had escaped from his apartment – but he got it back; maybe that man was some kind of omen as strange things seemed to happen later.

One evening I was on my way out but when I tried to open the door the key wouldn't work; I was locked in. It was the only way out; there was a balcony but I was five floors up, I didn't fancy doing a spider man down the side of the building then I realised some friends of mine were staying on the floor above; I prayed that they were sober or even in. In those days we didn't have cel/mobile phones and I hadn't taken the phone number of their apartment yet.

Their balcony was almost directly above mine, just one over, so I went out and called out to them but I couldn't make them hear.

But I could make the man directly above me hear who didn't speak English; I found this out earlier, of course, as he was the man with the cat.

Non Engleeesh, he said, mon chaton bon!

Mon chaton bon – mon key, kay que not bon not work kaput!!

Then I heard them stir in my friends' apartment – hello matey, said my pal, what's going on?

I explained and suggested I throw the key up – No matey, he said, I'll never catch it.

He came down to my door and I slipped the key under the door to him hoping it would work from outside; it did!

Apparently if I'd broken the lock, the management would have sent for a locksmith and I would have had to pay the bill.

In the day time I would wander around the Le Palais du Festival bumping shoulders with the famous and not so famous then I would go back to the apartment at around 5:00, take a nap, and then go out in the evening trying to sell my idea of a TV series, usually ending up singing either The Wild Rover, in La Petit Carlton or Beatles songs in the Carlton Hotel with a load of Germans who sang exceedingly high which ruined my throat; it was a hard life in those days, I can tell you.

The pianist at the Carlton Hotel got to know me and would play Danny Boy whenever I entered the bar. He was quite famous, American, and he played on a regular basis at Carnegie Hall.

One evening I came back to the apartment building and entered the building with a woman; we both walked to the lift which was an old style lift/elevator with see through iron gates; like this:

I didn't speak French, she didn't speak English so we pressed the buttons of the desired floors ourselves and when the lift went up passed the third floor it came to an abrupt stop!

We pressed the buttons, rattled the doors and she screamed!

She screamed and screamed and screamed and screeched!

Then she started moving around the lift screaming; I didn't know what to do – I couldn't touch her to stop her as she might have accused me of something.

She screamed so loud that it was as if I was attacking her.

Everybody heard her and everybody came out of their doors and a load of French was spoken and shouted and I tried to get a word in and the manager said things to her and she screamed back unintelligibly and I . . .. what could I do?

They managed to get us out and I went and had my nap – by the time I woke up my friends had gone out so I decided I would take a shower and go and eat by myself.

I found a small restaurant near the harbour and took a seat on the patio but . . . I needed to go to the loo; it was a single loo so I locked the door and when I had finished it wouldn't open; I was locked in again.

I banged on the door and shouted; nothing! I was in the cellar and the staff were on street level.

Eventually someone came down and asked me something. I don't know what I was asked and they didn't know what I answered but eventually, after a lot of scraping and tapping and bumping they got me out; they couldn't stop laughing and neither could I – till they presented me with the bill for my food; I would have thought it might have been on the house.

I remember saying to the waitress that I was sorry that I could only speak English but that I was learning French; Moi aussi, she said, Moi aussi.

Obviously she meant she was learning English.

In a chopper from Cannes to Nice and all the rest.

The Cafe de Paris in Monte Carlo left and a view of the Principality on the right.

As I'm still up to my eyes I thought I would do another repeat and then next time back to normal.
The film was well liked by people and we tried to make it in to a series so I went to Cannes with the distributors and loved the life.

The film - the pilot - is on You Tube now so if you want to look at it here it is: my pal, Jim. saw it and said my hair was always grey - well it wasn't but maybe the ups and downs, in and outs and generally all the meetings with the banks, financiers sent me white - but it was great fun as you will see from the following post which was from 2009.

Here's the movie, by the way, and as they say in America 'enjoy.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUZXIPAd9Z8

So this is from December 2011:
Well yes it was very nice going from Cannes to Nice in a helicopter but at the time it didn't really feel like a pleasant experience; I went four time to Cannes to try and sell the series: three times I had to catch a chopper from Nice to Cannes and the other time I travelled by train catching it at Cannes and going west to Marseilles before heading north to Calais going through Lyons and Paris.

When I say I had to catch a chopper it was because we were partying so much there that I would have missed my flight from Nice to London if I'd have travelled by coach and the three times I choppered to Nice I travelled with a terrible hangover.

The train journey was good and I travelled on the high speed train at a million miles an hour all that way of about nine hundred miles or so and arrived in Calais smack on time – then after the ferry to Dover the London train was delayed – figures!!

But let's go back to the cutting room in London; one of the partners in the distribution company was an ex editor, and a good one too, and he helped me put the finishing touches to the movie; we tightened up the continuity and made some sense out of it but looking back now it needed a lot more work and when I have the time I'll do it just for the sake of it; we also found that a piece of the cutting copy was missing.

In the film I run up to a door leaving my car door open, only to find that the door I ran up to was locked. I walk back to my car and give the door a kick. This put a dent in the door and as I stood there I suddenly realise that there is a dent and do a kind of subtle double take; the original editor had cut that out – just a little bit of sense needed there as it was very funny! So the first thing me new editor said was 'you've got to find that clip.'

We looked and looked but couldn't find it – it ended up on the floor of some cutting room at one of the film schools; this is why I believe there are comedy editors and drama editors.

On stage an actor times his laugh; he knows exactly when to come in with the next line after a laugh and to be quite frank some editors don't; they just stop the laugh dead in its tracks as the audiences strain to hear the next line.

The next job after the fine cut was the sound edit and I had to find a sound editor – nobody wanted to do it.

I had worked on a film with Giles Llewellyn-Thomas called 'Terence Walker on the Moon' – I saw a bit of a movie on a flight once called 'The Astronaut Farmer' with Billy Bob Thornton which looked very similar; anyway I got in touch with Giles who promised to do the sound editing for me; it's a very shitty job and I was forever grateful.

I don't know how much he knew the new way to serve Guinness but at that time Guinness had introduced draft Guinness in a can; it was almost the same as the draft you bought in the pub and they achieved this – and won the Queen's Award for Industry for it – by putting a widget in the can.

Our afternoons were spent very happily drinking the various cans of Guinness I bought and this seemed to be enough of a payment for Giles – he wasn't a boozer but I might have been on a temporary basis.

We had two deadlines to meet: number one was the dub when we would go into the dubbing theatre and put all the sound affects and music onto the film and the second appointment was with Universal Studios to put the whole film directly onto broadcast-able video tape directly from the negative. This cut out a lot of the printing and colour balances which usually takes a long time. I figured if was supposed to be for TV what would be the point in making any other format than tape.

I had to take the cutting copy and the negative into the neg cutters and I left a bit of space on the cutting copy for the missing piece of film and when we first saw the shot it fitted exactly – and it was funny!

So we met our two deadlines, drank many a pint of Guinness and I rented a theatre in Soho for the first showing.

As none of the actors had been paid I figured I owed them, at least, to try and get casting directors in to see it. Most of the casting directors in London were within a hundred yards or so of the theatre I had booked and as I'd booked it for 1.00 pm I thought I'd stand a chance of getting a few of them in. I bought a load of wine and some finger food – but only one casting director turned up; but why wasn't I surprised?

Most of the actors in the film were new faces and I think I decided there and then to go to Los Angeles at the first opportunity – which I did; but not before I went to Cannes.

There seems to be a festival every month in Cannes; the film festival is world famous but they also have commercial festivals, a music festival but the two I went to were MIP and Mipcom; the former the month before the film festival in the Spring and Mipcom in October sometime.

The first time I went it was to MIP and the distributors paid for my apartment and from then on I paid my own way; they paid a lot of money to have me registered with MIP and Mipcom too.

I thought it was wonderful but most of the people who went there moaned and groaned. I had never worked very hard in factories or down the mines but going to Cannes wasn't like work to me; work to me is hard work that hurts your back.

My hosts – and I don't mention any names on here much – were drunk from morning to night; the lady had a brandy for breakfast the day she took me out to the local market and drank pastise (a kind of Pernod) for the rest of the day; I don't know what the guy drank but he was the same.

I wasn't exactly a teetotaller there but I didn't drink before the evenings.

One time I went to Monte Carlo (above right) and we ate at the famous Café de Paris (which is the picture to the left above); we were suddenly with the jet set eating wonderful food and seeing all those rich people with their amazing French clothes accents and hair styles waiting for the next Formula One Grand Prix to come along and fill their Principality with gasoline fumes.

We couldn't get into the Grand Casino, I'm sorry to say; we were in the building, which seemed to be totally made out of marble, but to get into the casino we needed some kind of ID; two of us had our passports which were acceptable but one of us didn't – there were three of us. He was asked if he had any other form of ID and when he said only his press card we were shown the door so fast it was unbelievable!!

We had to go into a casino next door or so and I won a load of money playing black jack.

There were plenty of parties in Cannes and I went to a party on a boat one night and we were watching a film on a TV monitor with Jools Holland – he was the piano player with the band Squeeze.

Jools was talking in the film and then I heard his voice too – so I turned around and he was standing behind me. I introduced myself and we had a chat and a drink and then it was time for me to go to a bar in one of the hotels; so I said my goodbyes and went.

I heard later that when I went out a few people went to the port hole to look at me walk along the plank back to the quay to see if I was going to fall into the drink; didn't realise I was that drunk.

At the bar in the hotel – I think it was the Carlton – there was a black piano player who knew me and when I walked in he started playing Danny Boy.

I had more drinks in there and the piano player went leaving me sitting on the piano stool.

With the courage and bravado of a drink I played, maybe, eight chords of a boogie which is the extent of my piano playing, and then I stopped; 'Messieur!! Messieur!!' they shouted for me to play but I had to let them down; when I sat back down at the piano Jools Holland sat on the stool next to me “hello Mate” he said and launched into a boogie.

It was absolutely wonderful; the people around the piano went wild, I clapped my hands to the music, like the drunken idiot I must have been, and that was one of the times I had to get a helicopter to Nice.

From that hotel I went to the Casino in Cannes and won enough money to pay for the whole trip – again playing Black Jack; “Why don't I move here?” I thought to myself as I made my way back to my apartment; but I didn't I went to Los Angeles where it is very hard to get a bet on.

I never did sell the idea of the series; it was a well tried formula, a buddy series, but there were others on offer too.

The film itself sold to Finland, some airlines and other places in Scandinavia. It also sold to a cable company in England called British Satellite Broadcasting but before they showed it the company was taken over by Rupert Murdoch's BskyB and they didn't honour the deal.

Making a film on the cheap.

I made a film once in which I was involved from writing the script, acting and directing in it to putting the china graph marks onto the cutting copy to denote where I wanted cuts, fades, wipes or whatever on the negative.

Then I had to sit and grade it in the studio to make sure the colours were consistent and then take it to Cannes to try and sell it as a pilot for a TV series.

The story was about two antique dealers from the bottom end of the market who find a valuable item at Portobello Antiques market in London, sell it after a lot of negotiations and then lose it before getting paid.

Just a bit of fun, really, but people liked the two lead characters and thought they would look good if the short film was made into a TV series; so I was asked, by a film distribution company, to write some outlines for future scripts before setting off to Cannes - in between helping the sound editor by plying him and accompanying him with many a glass of Guinness; it's a wonder our livers survived.

This might sound a bit like a one man show but there were a lot of others involved and I sorted out a way to pay for it - eventually.

When I was working at the theatre in Northampton, I bumped into a business man on the train coming up from London, who was a big fan of the theatre. He took his wife to every play and invited us to his big house in Northampton one of the nights after the show for dinner.

I stayed on living in Northampton after finishing the season there and lots of times, when I travelled on the train to and from London, I would meet the same businessman.

We would talk of plans for the future and one time I told him of my wish to make a film of my own. He said he would fund it and he said he could easily do it as a tax write off.

So I set about writing the script based on a true incident from the antiques trade which we dabbled in – and still do.

I had directed before when someone asked me to take over on a film so I contacted the director of photography from that film, the DP, and showed him the script.

He wanted to do drama, as he had been specialising in documentaries up to then so away we went; I would get the actors and he would get the crew.

To get everybody to work for nothing we gave the crew a rise in rank; somebody new would be the clapper/loader, a clapper/loader would go to camera assistant (focus puller) a camera assistant took the job of a camera operator and the DP became the DP on a drama as opposed to a DP on a documentary.

The sound was a different story; I had to use about three of four sound people on the film.

When a documentary is planned they hire their DP and he or she would choose where they would hire the camera, lenses and camera equipment from; so we went to a camera house in London and on the promise that he would use them for his next paying project they let us have camera and equipment for nothing.

I told him about the businessman and the fact that he had a very photogenic house which he might let us use for the film.

I had to buy the stock; this is film for the camera, tape for the sound and mag-stock which is what you transfer the sound to edit in an editing machine which is the same size as the film and we planned to shoot on sixteen millimetre.

Shooting on film was and is very expensive as opposed to shooting today on Digital which is relatively cheap.

The two music videos I shot over the past few years were shot on Digital and cost virtually nothing.

The other thing about digital is that you can play it back as soon as you shoot it but the only time you can do that with film is with a video assist – invented by Jerry Lewis – and we didn't have that kind of money; in fact we had no money at all.

I opened an account with the Rank Organisation – J. Arthur Rank of the famous rhyming slang activity – to process the film we shot and the rest of the stuff was begged or borrowed as with the camera and the actors worked for food; even though the crew ate it all – I'm joking I'm sorry.

I remember one of the days I took everybody out for a meal in Northampton and, when they ordered everything, I went to the lavatory to count the money in my pocket to see if I could pay for it.

I hadn't counted in going to a restaurant as I had laid food on for them back at my house – where we shot some of the film – but off to the restaurant they all trotted.

When I counted what was in my pocket I found I didn't have enough so I went back to the table and watched everybody eating and asking for more and maybe more wine and what about a pudding? – ha ha ha ha, they were laughing and having a lovely time and there we were; me and the crew, the actors had gone back go London, and I kind of sat there and looked at them having a good time wondering how I was going to pay for it.

“Excuse me” I said and I went out; I stood there in the street and wondered if I should just go home – but I'm not like that.

I tried my ATM card at the bank over the street but it was declined so I found a phone box and called a friend who didn't live very far away; luckily he was in and met me in the street with a hundred pounds which was enough to pay the bill.

Yes you're right; what happened to that businessman. That's what we were thinking!

The last time I met him on the train I told him I was going ahead and he was very excited but when we were about to start I found him hard to get hold of; his secretary took a few messages but he didn't return any of my calls so I went around to his house and knocked the door.

He had a huge glass door and when I rang the bell I could hear his children playing in the hall; then I could see them as they were looking at us through the curtains; but nobody answered; I got the message.

I had shot the whole film, I owed the Rank Organisation and when I took some lights back I was told that money was outstanding on them so I paid.

My daughter's boy friend's father had let me use his big van for the shoot for nothing, so I didn't owe any money there but I did owe everybody in the movie to get it finished.

A few years earlier I did an award winning student film so I contacted the editor to see if he would be interested in editing in editing my film and he said he would do it at the cutting rooms at the film school in Bournemouth but I would have to pay him; so I did; six weeks wages as he could only do it part time.

It was then finished at the cutting rooms at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington – they didn't know; sorry. We would climb over the gate and creep in to the editing suites after the pub closed at night and do it then and it was eventually finished up to a rough cut. The editing and paying the editor cost more than the rest of the film, apart from the stock, even though I didn't have to pay for the use of the equipment.

My solution to funding the film was the same as any, and probably every other, businessman in the UK; an overdraft! So I booked an appointment with the bank manager.

This I did and he gave me an overdraft; with this I paid Rank and anybody else who needed paying and went to see the distributors; they let me use their cutting room for free for the sound editing and that's when I called my pal Giles and we gave our livers the Guinness test.

So I was bound for Cannes to try and sell the thing as a series. The distributors were involved in trying to get funding and set up loads of meetings in Cannes – and what a time that was.

I was asked if I would change the casting of the other character in it for an actor called Iain Cutherberson who was well known; the distributors had a connection with a Scottish TV company and as he was Scottish they wanted him in it.

But it wouldn't have worked; I promised my friend that he would be in it if we actually made the series but in any case I am about 5'9” and Iain Cutherberson was 6'4” - the dynamic would have changed. It wouldn't be about two fellas trying to make money out of antiques – it would have been about the long and the short of it.

At the end of the day we didn't get the series made; a series called Perfect Scoundrels was taken up by Southern TV, one of the people we were talking to, which was about two other guys on the make and which was very good I have to say.

My film sold to Finland and other Scandinavian countries but I didn't see a penny – that's show business.

The bank wrote off the overdraft and I came to Hollywood.

One night I went to the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) on Sunset Boulevard for a short stack of pancakes and coffee. As I sat there I noticed someone looking over at me; he was sitting with his friend and eventually came over.

“Are you Chris Sullivan?” he said.

“Yes” I said “and I know who you are.”

It was the rich businessman from Northampton.

I didn't hold a grudge so I joined them at their table.

“I'm sorry to let you down” he said “I was going through a bad patch.”

“That's okay” I said “but you could have answered your door!”

a very short French story.

Happy New Year to you on this the date when the rest of the world write it the way America does – 1/1/11.

There have been many many hits and people are looking at this blog all over the world – there is a map of recent hits above.

I say looking at it and I hope most of them have read it but thanks in any case.

After the Christmas break and holiday with all the turkey, mince pies, sausage rolls and Christmas pud we ventured out to one of our check point Charlies – The Farmer's Market of course – and went to the French Restaurant Marcel's for lunch.

We couldn't quite make up our minds about the special or anything else on the menu so we both settled for Coq au van; we've had it a few times before and, I have to say, it's usually very good and a good stand by.

I have never been let down at Marcel's and have eaten loads of things on their menu. It usually has quite a pleasant ambiance with an accordion player wearing a striped shirt and beret (I kid you not) adding to the atmosphere; especially in the evenings as the tables, as with every other place there, are in the open with a canopy over the top.

So the French music, the hub bub of the market with the occasional chiming of The Farmer's Market Clock adds to a very pleasant experience.

As I sat there looking at the menu it reminded me of one of the times I was at Cannes trying to sell my film; I was with an old, dearly departed friend David Capey; he was a fine editor and general film maker.

During various festivals in Cannes the restaurants and bars increase their prices many fold but we knew of a place at the base of the Palais where the workers would go for their food. The menu there, as in Marcel's, was on a chalk board and on one of the days it said frits and something as the special so we settled for that. We hardly spoke any French but we knew that frits meant chips – French fries.

So we settled down at our table with a couple of glasses of red wine.

We would drink complimentary pink Champagne all day and red wine at meals.

The food in front of us looked very strange; I recognised the chips, of course, but what was that with them? It didn't look too good and from what I can remember didn't smell too good either.

It was piled up with onions and when I looked closer at it it reminded me of a body part; not a pretty body part in fact a naughty bit; not too naughty but a naughty bit shared by men and women and not the cheeks in fact the bit in between.

Was I going to eat this thing on my plate; this thing that looked like somebody's arse? I looked at David and he tried a fork full; “not bad” he said.

I tried some and it tasted awful; the worst taste I have ever experienced ever ever ever!!

“We're eating tripe, matey” he said.

Not long after that I took a course in French.

By Chopper from Cannes to Nice; very nice!

Well yes it was very nice going from Cannes to Nice in a helicopter but at the time it didn't really feel like a pleasant experience; I went four time to Cannes to try and sell the series: three times I had to catch a chopper from Nice to Cannes and the other time I travelled by train catching it at Cannes and going west to Marseilles before heading north to Calais going through Lyons and Paris..

When I say I had to catch a chopper it was because we were partying so much there that I would have missed my flight from Nice to London if I'd have travelled by coach and the three times I choppered to Nice I travelled with a terrible hangover.

The train journey was good and I travelled on the high speed train at a million miles an hour all that way of about nine hundred miles or so and arrived in Calais smack on time – then after the ferry to Dover the London train was delayed – figures!!

But let's go back to the cutting room in London; one of the partners in the distribution company was an ex editor, and a good one too, and he helped me put the finishing touches to the movie; we tightened up the continuity and made some sense out of it but looking back now it needed a lot more work and when I have the time I'll do it just for the sake of it; we also found that a piece of the cutting copy was missing.

In the film I run up to a door leaving my car door open, only to find that the door I ran up to was locked. I walk back to my car and give the door a kick. This put a dent in the door and as I stood there I suddenly realise that there is a dent and do a kind of subtle double take; the original editor had cut that out – just a little bit of sense needed there as it was very funny! So the first thing me new editor said was 'you've got to find that clip.'

We looked and looked but couldn't find it – it ended up on the floor of some cutting room at one of the film schools; this is why I believe there are comedy editors and drama editors.

On stage an actor times his laugh; he knows exactly when to come in with the next line after a laugh and to be quite frank some editors don't; they just stop the laugh dead in its tracks as the audiences strain to hear the next line.

The next job after the fine cut was the sound edit and I had to find a sound editor – nobody wanted to do it.

I had worked on a film with Giles Llewellyn-Thomas called 'Terence Walker on the Moon' – I saw a bit of a movie on a flight once called 'The Astronaut Farmer' with Billy Bob Thornton which looked very similar; anyway I got in touch with Giles who promised to do the sound editing for me; it's a very shitty job and I was forever grateful.

I don't know how much he knew the new way to serve Guinness but at that time Guinness had introduced draft Guinness in a can; it was almost the same as the draft you bought in the pub and they achieved this – and won the Queen's Award for Industry for it – by putting a widget in the can.

Our afternoons were spent very happily drinking the various cans of Guinness I bought and this seemed to be enough of a payment for Giles – he wasn't a boozer but I might have been on a temporary basis.

We had two deadlines to meet: number one was the dub when we would go into the dubbing theatre and put all the sound affects and music onto the film and the second appointment was with Universal Studios to put the whole film directly onto broadcast-able video tape directly from the negative. This cut out a lot of the printing and colour balances which usually takes a long time. I figured if was supposed to be for TV what would be the point in making any other format than tape.

I had to take the cutting copy and the negative into the neg cutters and I left a bit of space on the cutting copy for the missing piece of film and when we first saw the shot it fitted exactly – and it was funny!

So we met our two deadlines, drank many a pint of Guinness and I rented a theatre in Soho for the first showing.

As none of the actors had been paid I figured I owed them, at least, to try and get casting directors in to see it. Most of the casting directors in London were within a hundred yards or so of the theatre I had booked and as I'd booked it for 1.00 pm I thought I'd stand a chance of getting a few of them in. I bought a load of wine and some finger food – but only one casting director turned up; but why wasn't I surprised?

Most of the actors in the film were new faces and I think I decided there and then to go to Los Angeles at the first opportunity – which I did; but not before I went to Cannes.

There seems to be a festival every month in Cannes; the film festival is world famous but they also have commercial festivals, a music festival but the two I went to were MIP and Mipcom; the former the month before the film festival in the Spring and Mipcom in October sometime.

The first time I went it was to MIP and the distributors paid for my apartment and from then on I paid my own way; they paid a lot of money to have me registered with MIP and Mipcom too.
I thought it was wonderful but most of the people who went there moaned and groaned. I had never worked very hard in factories or down the mines but going to Cannes wasn't like work to me; work to me is hard work that hurts your back.

My hosts – and I don't mention any names on here much – were drunk from morning to night; the lady had a brandy for breakfast the day she took me out to the local market and drank pastise (a kind of Pernod) for the rest of the day; I don't know what the guy drank but he was the same.

I wasn't exactly a teetotaller there but I didn't drink before the evenings.

One time I went to Monte Carlo (above right) and we ate at the famous Café de Paris (which is the picture to the left above); we were suddenly with the jet set eating wonderful food and seeing all those rich people with their amazing French clothes accents and hair styles waiting for the next Formula One Grand Prix to come along and fill their Principality with gasoline fumes.

We couldn't get into the Grand Casino, I'm sorry to say; we were in the building, which seemed to be totally made out of marble, but to get into the casino we needed some kind of ID; two of us had our passports which were acceptable but one of us didn't – there were three of us. He was asked if he had any other form of ID and when he said only his press card we were shown the door so fast it was unbelievable!!

We had to go into a casino next door or so and I won a load of money playing black jack.

There were plenty of parties in Cannes and I went to a party on a boat one night and we were watching a film on a TV monitor with Jools Holland – he was the piano player with the band Squeeze.

Jools was talking in the film and then I heard his voice too – so I turned around and he was standing behind me. I introduced myself and we had a chart and a drink and then it was time for me to go to a bar in one of the hotels; so I said my goodbyes and went.

I heard later that when I went out a few people went to the port hole to look at me walk along the plank back to the quay to see if I was going to fall into the drink; didn't realise I was that drunk.

At the bar in the hotel – I think it was the Carlton – there was a black piano player who knew me and when I walked in he started playing Danny Boy.

I had more drinks in there and the piano player went leaving me sitting on the piano stool.

With the courage and bravado of a drink I played, maybe, eight chords of a boogie which is the extent of my piano playing, and then I stopped; 'Messieur!! Messieur!!' they shouted for me to play but I had to let them down; when I sat back down at the piano Jools Holland sat on the stool next to me “hello Mate” he said and launched into a boogie.

It was absolutely wonderful; the people around the piano went wild, I clapped my hands to the music, like the drunken idiot I must have been, and that was one of the times I had to get a helicopter to Nice.

From that hotel I went to the Casino in Cannes and won enough money to pay for the whole trip – again playing Black Jack; “Why don't I move here?” I thought to myself as I made my way back to my apartment; but I didn't I went to Los Angeles where it is very hard to get a bet on.

I never did sell the idea of the series; it was a well tried formula, a buddy series, but there were others on offer too.

The film itself sold to Finland, some airlines and other places in Scandinavia. It also sold to a cable company in England called British Satellite Broadcasting but before they showed it the company was taken over by Rupert Murdoch's BskyB and they didn't honour the deal.