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!”

An episode from the past!!

I was thinking the other day of the times I've been up the creak without a paddle; you know stranded with no hope of getting home. I remember trying to hitch hike from London to Northampton at midnight and waiting forever for someone to stop.

Somebody did stop eventually and gave me a lift, of course, but I should have refused it as they were only going as far as Newport Pagnell – one junction before the Northampton turn off – which was impossible to get a lift from.

Hardly anyone came passed me at that time so I waited for an hour and a half and then decided to walk. Took me three hours and a lot of it was through countryside and was pitch black.

One hour, two hours, three hours – pitch black in front of me walking passed ditches, hedgerows and overhanging trees, which kind of touched my hair making wonder if it was some kind of ghost.

Pitch black and silent; no cars on the roads, no people walking and once in a while a bunch of houses and the sound of an owl or a bat or . . . what was that? Never did find out!

Two miles from home I passed a big house and then heard a horn blowing and the further I got from the house the louder the horn became. Eventually I found that a car had crashed into a ditch and the horn was jammed; when I got right to it I could see a man slumped over the steering wheel.

I jumped down into the ditch, not knowing what to expect – a decapitated body? Blood and Guts?? - and found him to be conscious but totally trapped. As his car had crashed into the ditch the sides of the ditch jammed the doors closed and popped the windscreen out which was also laying in the ditch.

“Help me!” he said.

“Are you okay?”

“I think so but I can't get out.”

“I'll get the cops."

“Okay.”

I climbed out of the ditch and ran towards the big house; this after walking ten miles or so.

When I got to the house I knocked the door and after a few minutes a light came on and a man came to the door. He was wearing a dressing gown and slippers but the light was behind him on the landing so I couldn't see him clearly.

I told him what had happened and he invited me in to use the phone which I did calling 999 and ordering an ambulance and police.

The guy from the house came back with me to the car wearing his dressing gown and slippers and as we ran his slippers made a slap slap slapping sound on the Tarmac and he ran with his head forward and hands still by his sides; I ran like an old man as I'd just been walking for two hours.

“Get me out of here” said the guy in the car when we got back.

“He's alive” said the man from the house.

“Yes” I said “I'll hang on here if you want to go back.”

“Okay” he said, rubbed his eyes, yawned and walked back to his house.

All this time the horn was blowing constantly; miles away from anywhere so nobody could hear it.

“Are you hurt?” I said to the guy in the car.

“I don't think so” he said.

It was then I realised that he was probably drunk.

After a few more minutes a police car came flashing his lights followed by an ambulance.

When the cops got out of the car they assessed the situation and one of them lifted the bonnet of the car and grabbed the battery; then the very intelligent policeman tried to pull the battery out of the car to try and stop the horn blowing. He couldn't do it so he pulled and pulled some more and the cables stretched the more he pulled. Then he dropped the battery hoping the weight of it would break the cables but it didn't.

Then he kicked the battery thinking it would snap the cables that way; then he kicked and kicked with the bottom of his foot - kicking the battery away; kicking it kicking it kicking it away!

What an arsehole, I thought.

“Do you have a screw driver?” I asked.

“No” he said “but I have a knife.”

He pulled a small pen knife from his pocket and gave it to me so I unscrewed one of the screws on the battery and the horn stopped blowing.

The cops wanted to know who I was and what I was doing there and I told them.

A breakdown truck came and started to get the car out of the ditch and the paramedics saw that the guy was okay.

“Do you want to sit in the car?” said the other cop.

“Yes” I said and got into the back of the police car.

I sat and watched the man being pulled out and the paramedics really struggled to get him out of the car. They pulled him through the space where the windscreen used to be and took him away before the cops had time to breathalyze him.

When the car was well and truly up on the breakdown truck they tossed the unbroken windscreen into the car and when it was up and away the cops got into their car.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Brafield.” I said which was just a mile or so away.

When we got to the road junction where I wanted to get out I tried to get out but the door, obviously, had child locks to keep the crooks in, so the cop had to get out to open the door for me.

I had been sitting for over an hour and was as stiff as a board when I got out and could hardly walk; as they drove off to Northampton General Hospital, to try and breathalyze the driver, the cops waved and I struggled to walk the remaining few hundred yards to where I lived.

By the way I started this post to tell you about the time I was at a disco with a load of strangers with no money in my pocket on the edge of the Sahara Desert when they all started to go off in a taxi without me; but I got involved in this - anyway I saw the taxi going, opened the door and dived across the back seats; it made them all laugh and I stayed there till we reached civilisation!!

The Day I Met Peter O'Toole.

I hadn’t played cricket for years when I suddenly got a call from a friend; he was coming up to Northamptonshire to play and there might be a game for me if I turned up: “Oh by the way” he said - Peter O'Toole is playing.

The call came on a Sunday morning and the game was to be that afternoon; I searched around for some kit and found my old cricket boots, a white shirt and my cricket sweater; no white trousers, I’m afraid, but I didn’t want to look too keen in any case; that wouldn’t be cricket.

The things people like about playing cricket are batting and bowling and when you get a game with a new team those are the two things they never let you do; you have to field and go in at about number nine or ten; and as for bowling? Forget it!

Looking back on that now it amazes me the way we stood for it; when people ask if you will help them out and make up a team you should say “yes! If I can bat or bowl.” But again – that wouldn’t be cricket would it?

I had promised my son that when the famous England international cricketer, Ian Botham, came to Northampton to play the local team I would take him; I asked him if he wanted to come and see Peter O’Toole but it was met with a negative response – who is Peter O’Toole? he said.

The field, where the match was due to be played, was in another village but was was easy enough for me to find as I was very familiar with most of the sleepy picturesque villages of Northamptonshire.

A few of the players were already there when I arrived and it was good to see my friend Nick; we first met when we appeared together in a national tour of a Mike Harding play “Fur Coat and No Knickers” but I hadn’t seen him for about a year.

My cricket boots and sweater were in the car when we greeted each other and I asked him how he got involved with Peter O’Toole: - It's his nephew’s team; he said he plays quite often.

About ten minutes or so later Peter O’Toole arrived; he didn’t just turn up in a car with others or sneak in, he arrived in the truest sense of the word; he arrived; he was with his nephew in an open top sports car; even before he got out of the car he dripped with charisma, eccentricity and just basic star quality; there was no mistaking that this was Lawrence of Arabia.

He didn’t look too healthy; a bit thinner than I had imagined and very pale; but it was Peter O’Toole all right; he smiled as he emerged from the car and headed towards the dressing rooms.

As he greeted everybody it became obvious that this was no mere mortal; this was the bon vivant on his day out, smoking a cigarette through a long holder and not sparing anyone in his wake that charming and attractive smile.

I was glad I had left my cricket gear in the car as both teams were in full attendance and all members were fully dressed in their whites; I would have stood out like a sore thumb in my jeans in any case.

I managed to get a bit of a “field” in the warm up though; the part where everybody throws the ball as hard as they can at each other to see how brave or foolish they can be. Peter O’Toole seemed to be catching the ball okay which surprised me as I didn’t even know he played cricket.

While we were having the warm up a few cars arrived and out of the cars came a few strange looking people of all shapes and sizes; yes the press and local radio reporters.

When they spotted Peter O’Toole the cameras and the shutters started buzzing and snapping; this was in the nineteen eighties when the paparazzi didn’t quite have the reputation they have today so nobody was that alarmed.

The time came for the toss: Peter O’Toole’s team would bat first and Peter and his nephew would open the batting. The opposing team took the field and went into the ritual of trying to knock each other’s heads off with the cricket ball; the umpires, who in that class of cricket came from the lower order batsman of the batting side, took to the field and we were ready to go.

When Peter O’Toole and his nephew emerged from the dressing room there were two other batsmen with them each carrying a bat and each walking towards the middle with the nephew and his Uncle Peter; it seemed that both Peter and his nephew had leg injuries and needed runners.

It was a strange sight seeing the four of them heading towards the middle followed by about three or four press photographers; they surrounded him snap snapping and flash flashing as he took his guard and when he was ready he looked at them; he didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to; they got the message and sloped off to the sidelines.

The opposing bowler had marked out his run and was making adjustments to the field as everybody waited for the first ball; Peter O’Toole looked valiant as he waited for it, his runner was standing out at square leg and his nephew’s runner was standing next to the umpire at the far end with the nephew, himself, standing as far out as his uncle’s runner. At one point it looked like more batsmen were out there than fielders; everything was ready to go.

The press kept quiet and we all looked to the field as the bowler came bounding in; when he reached his maximum speed, which coincided with his arrival at the wicket, he let the ball go at the top of his arch and the ball seemed to bounce at lightening speed half way down the pitch; Peter saw it coming and played it defensively on the back foot and it travelled towards a close fielder: “stay” “no” “stay” “wait” could be heard and then everybody laughed.

If they kept that up through the game it would be like the Reginald Perrin yuppies “super” “great.”

The batsmen and runners got together; they had to make up their minds as to who was going to do the calling when a run was possible; they huddled conspiratorially together then they laughed again and went back towards their places; suddenly they stopped and got together again with a kind of “don”t forget the…..’ then they were in a huddle again till they laughed and parted to take their positions.

Peter O’Toole played a straight bat throughout; he was exceedingly accomplished and hit a few cracking shots against bowlers who were trying really hard to get him out; I particularly remember a few off drives and a couple of boundaries.

Each time he did this the bowlers tried even harder to get him out and the few onlookers cheered and jeered.

Eventually it had to happen; he was out. I’m not sure how many runs he scored but it was a good knock and he got a tremendous amount of applause as he walked off with his runner trailing behind.

The press pathetically took his photograph as he reached the edge of the field and he very obligingly smiled and acknowledged the applause by raising his bat as he headed for the dressing room.

A girl radio reporter, with tape recorder on her shoulder followed him into the dressing room.

I was sitting just outside and I’m not sure what Peter O’Toole said to her – it sounded like geee yaa ferr yah here! Whatever it was the girl radio reporter came out of the dressing room like a greyhound from the trap.

After a while the great man emerged; carrying the cigarette and holder, and wearing a small towel around his neck; he came and sat next to me and as his limbs hit the bench I could feel the heat from his body permeating the air.

The girl radio reporter came and stood in front of us blocking our view of the game “Darling! Do you mind?” he said.

He was very nice and she moved away. I was very envious that I wasn’t playing and sorry that I hadn’t played for years as the smell of the willow and surgical spirit mixed with the cool Northamptonshire air, the general camaraderie of the players around me and the general atmosphere of the day, made me want to seek out a team that was looking for a has been.

The conversation for the next hour consisted of “well played” “that was never out” “how many do we have now” to “oh well; it”s our turn now.’

And there they were; going on to the field to try and bowl the other team out.

Peter O’Toole was the wicket keeper and played a good game in the field too. There didn’t seem to be any sign of a leg injury; but why would there be? This was the man that took Aqaba by land and the opposing cricket team would be easy meat for such a legend and the team did indeed collapse giving the Peter O’Toole XI the game.

He came back to the dressing room and when it was time to go, he warmly shook my hand; as he did this he seemed to look me up and down as if he was the major and I was the trooper under inspection.

Then off he went to China to work in The Last Emperor; he didn’t see his photographs on the front page of the Northampton Chronicle & Echo the next day; the photos made him look about twenty years younger and twenty pounds heavier.

The day coincided with Ian Botham’s visit to play Northamptonshire County Cricket team in their annual game at Wellingborough School; in this game Botham hit a record number of sixes which was on the television news that night but there wasn’t one photograph in the Northampton newspapers to record this great feat; the photographers were all taking shots of Peter O’Toole..

Totectors in Rushden not forgetting Chicken Tikka Masala.

Here we are back in Los Angeles where the weather is great; one thing I noticed about being in Britain is that I didn't get indigestion at all and I'm always getting it in LA; I'm used to eating spicy Indian food as the best place for a curry, outside of India, is in Britain. In fact the national British dish of Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding has now been replaced by Chicken Tikka Masala; two equally tasty dishes, I might add, but only one coming from Britain.

I tend to eat a lot of Mexican food here and maybe that's what causes the indigestion or the fact that when I eat at lunch time I have to woof it down which is not good. I mention food as a friend of mine pointed out that my recent trip tended to be a food vacation!!

So after answering e-mails and my snail mails I am now at liberty to write here and one of the things I have noticed is that I have had lots of hits from all over the world.

That little blue logo to the right on this page is the company that do the tracking; it comes in fits and starts as sometimes it will give me a date from about ten days previously and put 'various' or 'numerous' hits from a particular computer but the others register on there almost immediately. I have to block my own computer from registering a 'hit' because there would be no point in that.

I get lots of American hits, of course, and many from the UK but also from Pakistan; Noord, Netherlands; Serbia; Tamil Nadu, India; Nordjylland, Denmark; Munchen Bayern, Germany and Japan.
One of hits from the UK was from a small town called Rushden which brought memories back to me; not great memories but maybe character building ones.

Rushden is a town in the East Midlands in the county of Northamptonshire; we used to live in a village in Northamptonshire called Brafield-on-the-green from the mid seventies to the mid eighties. It was not a place to run out of money but I did.

I wanted the best of both worlds so moved there with my wife and children to give them a rural upbringing and be within easy reach of London; it was just over an hour's journey on the train and about the same by car depending on traffic.

In 1979 I had a huge tax bill and my acting work seemed to dry up. As I needed to find a temporary job I went into a company called 'Manpower', which was a 'temp' agency in the town of Northampton itself, and I was offered a job in the warehouse of a boot factory (Northamptonshire is famous for the best footwear in the world) in Rushden called Totectors; the name comes from the fact that they manufactured safety boots – toe protectors – with metal toe caps; they produced all styles of footwear, with the magic steel toe cap, from training shoes through casual loafers to big boots.

My job at Totectors would be packing – but Rushden was around twenty miles from where we lived; no problem if the car was working okay but it wasn't.

I had a battery which wouldn't take a charge and no money to buy a new one.

Notwithstanding the risk I accepted the job; I would charge the battery over night, install it into the car each morning and then park on a hill at the factory so I could run start or jump start it to get home at night; then take it out when I reached home and do it all over again the next day.

I know this sounds risky but not to me especially at the time; I have been known to go on long journeys with a cracked radiator, stopping every so often to fill it with water, so I really didn't see much of a risk; it was winter, however, so I knew the car would have to start quickly in the mornings, or it would flatten the battery, and on the way home I would have to get it going as soon as I picked up speed on the hill I was hopefully parked on in Rushden.

I worked at Totectors for about three or four months and maybe a couple of times the car didn't start at the bottom of the hill. When this happened I had to push it back up the hill to run it again. Fortunately people passing by would invariably give me a push and I would eventually get it going; I also had to buy petrol at petrol stations on hills.

But the job opened my eyes to that strange part of the world which is very rarely visited by a television camera or written about. I get the image of darkness about the town as I would arrive in the dark and go home in the dark. We would go to the pub for lunch, some days, for a pint so I managed to see a bit of the town that way.

The Northamptonshire accent was a strange one and the Rushden one even stranger; for instance they would pronounce computer as compooter; I know the Americans don't use the 'U' sound in words like Tuesday (neither do the people from Northamptonshire) but compooter!!!!

So there we were coming up to the year 1980 and I was keeping myself from falling into queer street by actually struggling to get into work each day; the people at Totectors knew I was an actor, which was a novelty for them; a couple of times my wife phoned me and as I had to be called over a loudspeaker to come to the phone a buz went around the place as they thought it was for an acting job. I was offered a full time job with them on more than one occasion.

As it got nearer to Christmas the boss called me over and told me that the custom at Totectors just before Christmas was for everybody to go to the firm's Christmas party; I remember thinking what a decent fella he was to think of me at their party but I thought too soon. He was merely telling me that there was no work for me on the day of the party but if I wanted to I could come in and clean the vans – 'no thanks' I said and went to my own party – such is life!!