Read Online A World of My Own by Graham Greene - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Graham Greene
Ads: Link
for me, but I don’t care for riding and I let him practise alone, riding in circles.
We arrived at the point in the script where an innocent hero, Drew, in company of a man called Houghton, is being pursued by sheriffs after a bank robbery. They rest their horses for a moment by one of those branching cacti known in Mexico as a ‘candelabra’. Peter thought this presented an unnecessary difficulty, but I assured him that making a film about Mexico without showing a cactus was like filming Paris without the Eiffel Tower. He would only have to go a few miles south of Mexico City before finding such cacti.
The character Drew would see the candelabra and quote a nursery rhyme to Houghton, ‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed, and here comes a chopper to chop off your head,’ and at that moment the sheriffs’ posse would appear on the horizon.
I was asked to act the part of a priest who committed suicide at Mass, in a play to be performed in a small theatre in North Africa, but I was given no dialogue and the script gave no explanation of my actions.
I decided to extemporize.
A priest was preaching when I came on the scene. He told the audience that not only were the consecrated water and wine holy, but also ‘the implements’ of the Mass, the chalice and paten. I called out that I didn’t care a damn about these objects. ‘I am a priest and I am killing myself, God, because you have ceased to love me.’
Next day I went into the town and asked two Africans if I had succeeded in shocking the audience. They assured me that the people were very shocked indeed, and were still talking about it. Incidentally, they told me that Saint Augustine had lived in this town.
I was taking a walk in the West End with Randolph Churchill when he suggested that I help him to writea film script about his father. The danger, I told him, was banality. I had an idea for an original treatment of the subject, with the title
A Great Man
. The story would be about minor fictitious characters, showing how their lives were changed by certain emotional points in Churchill’s life—VE Day, for example, and his last sickness. He liked the idea and told me he would try to get the Queen’s co-operation.
I was commissioned to direct a film of one of Ibsen’s plays, and I had done no homework. I had thought of no camera angles, cuts, etc. Ralph Richardson was to star in it, and someone had warned me that he intended to get me sacked and humiliated on the first day.
It was Richardson who introduced me to the
équipe
—about twenty men sitting at long tables, having refreshments. I made the mistake of apologizing for my inexperience and they shouted back their mocking agreement. If only I could get through the first day’s shooting, I thought, I’d be able to study the play at night.
A remark of Ralph’s gave me a clue. ‘I want to begin,’ I said, ‘with an exterior shot of your monocle lying on a doorstep. We pan up and see you cursingfrom a window above—whatever curses you are in the habit of using.’
But after that promising beginning we began to quarrel. He talked of appealing to his agent. ‘Are you threatening me?’ I said.
‘Yes. I am.’
‘I shan’t appeal to anyone,’ I told him. ‘I shall cut your face open with a riding whip.’
I had been reading a play about Everyman for stage production. At a certain moment he makes his great decision to destroy the world with the help of a nuclear bomb. I felt the scene should be produced more or less on these lines: The moment of his decision must not be melodramatic; it should take the form of quiet and banal dialogue—something the audience would hardly notice—but for the sake of theatrical effect there must be a long pause after the simple lines, and then a great lighting effect, perhaps taking the form of the shadow of an enormous bird.
Carol Reed told me that Peter Ustinov wanted him to direct
King Lear
on the stage. Ustinov would play King Lear. I felt
We arrived at the point in the script where an innocent hero, Drew, in company of a man called Houghton, is being pursued by sheriffs after a bank robbery. They rest their horses for a moment by one of those branching cacti known in Mexico as a ‘candelabra’. Peter thought this presented an unnecessary difficulty, but I assured him that making a film about Mexico without showing a cactus was like filming Paris without the Eiffel Tower. He would only have to go a few miles south of Mexico City before finding such cacti.
The character Drew would see the candelabra and quote a nursery rhyme to Houghton, ‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed, and here comes a chopper to chop off your head,’ and at that moment the sheriffs’ posse would appear on the horizon.
I was asked to act the part of a priest who committed suicide at Mass, in a play to be performed in a small theatre in North Africa, but I was given no dialogue and the script gave no explanation of my actions.
I decided to extemporize.
A priest was preaching when I came on the scene. He told the audience that not only were the consecrated water and wine holy, but also ‘the implements’ of the Mass, the chalice and paten. I called out that I didn’t care a damn about these objects. ‘I am a priest and I am killing myself, God, because you have ceased to love me.’
Next day I went into the town and asked two Africans if I had succeeded in shocking the audience. They assured me that the people were very shocked indeed, and were still talking about it. Incidentally, they told me that Saint Augustine had lived in this town.
I was taking a walk in the West End with Randolph Churchill when he suggested that I help him to writea film script about his father. The danger, I told him, was banality. I had an idea for an original treatment of the subject, with the title
A Great Man
. The story would be about minor fictitious characters, showing how their lives were changed by certain emotional points in Churchill’s life—VE Day, for example, and his last sickness. He liked the idea and told me he would try to get the Queen’s co-operation.
I was commissioned to direct a film of one of Ibsen’s plays, and I had done no homework. I had thought of no camera angles, cuts, etc. Ralph Richardson was to star in it, and someone had warned me that he intended to get me sacked and humiliated on the first day.
It was Richardson who introduced me to the
équipe
—about twenty men sitting at long tables, having refreshments. I made the mistake of apologizing for my inexperience and they shouted back their mocking agreement. If only I could get through the first day’s shooting, I thought, I’d be able to study the play at night.
A remark of Ralph’s gave me a clue. ‘I want to begin,’ I said, ‘with an exterior shot of your monocle lying on a doorstep. We pan up and see you cursingfrom a window above—whatever curses you are in the habit of using.’
But after that promising beginning we began to quarrel. He talked of appealing to his agent. ‘Are you threatening me?’ I said.
‘Yes. I am.’
‘I shan’t appeal to anyone,’ I told him. ‘I shall cut your face open with a riding whip.’
I had been reading a play about Everyman for stage production. At a certain moment he makes his great decision to destroy the world with the help of a nuclear bomb. I felt the scene should be produced more or less on these lines: The moment of his decision must not be melodramatic; it should take the form of quiet and banal dialogue—something the audience would hardly notice—but for the sake of theatrical effect there must be a long pause after the simple lines, and then a great lighting effect, perhaps taking the form of the shadow of an enormous bird.
Carol Reed told me that Peter Ustinov wanted him to direct
King Lear
on the stage. Ustinov would play King Lear. I felt
Similar Books
