"Surreal" is how the man calling himself Nicholas Searle describes the last five years of his life. He began working on his debut novel The Good Liar in 2014 at the age of 57, having recently retired from the Civil Service. The nature of his former employment remains undisclosed. But, the fact that Nicholas Searle is not his real name, gives a clue to the fact his work was in intelligence rather than land registry.
film interviews
Nick Hasted
Owen Richards
When Jason and Tracey were trying for a baby, the worst happened. Tracey was diagnosed with breast cancer, and although she eventually recovered, was unable to carry a child. For Jason, the answer was clear - as a trans man, he would become pregnant instead.
Demetrios Matheou
I met Agnès Varda, who died today aged 90, just once, for the interview that’s reproduced below. It was in Paris in January 2018, shortly before the Belgian-born filmmaker was to become the oldest Oscar nominee in history, for the wonderful documentary Faces, Places. The encounter felt like a lucky break – blessed exposure to an icon and one of the most grounded and delightful inspirations one could imagine.
Jasper Rees
Local Hero, released in 1983, has been adapted into a musical, with a book by playwright David Greig and more songs from the soundtrack's original composer Mark Knopfler. After its premiere at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh, it will arrive at the Old Vic in 2020. No British film from the Eighties can lay claim to quite such lasting and deep-seated affection as Bill Forsyth’s modest masterpiece – not even Chariots of Fire, which was David Puttnam’s previous triumph as a producer. Though not a great commercial success at first – it had a limited release in America – it went on to bloom on VHS and DVD. It also has an asteroid named after it (the 7345 Happer, for the record).
The film was brought back into the light all over again a few years ago when Donald Trump’s plan to plant a golfing resort on a pristine strip of Aberdonian coastline hit a glitch. In Forsyth’s film, a Texan oil company’s attempt to buy up a whole Scottish village is thwarted by a lone white-haired beachcomber (played by Fulton Mackay). Sadly Trump did not turn out to be as human as Burt Lancaster’s Felix Happer and the result is there for all to see in You’ve Been Trumped.
Half of the film was shot just up the road in the tiny port of Pennan - nowadays known, according to undiscoveredscotland.co.uk, as the home of “Scotland’s most famous phone box”. The other half was filmed on the west coast around Arisaig. The result of this bi-coastal shoot is that the village in Local Hero is a geological impossibility.
All I knew about Houston was how to pronounce it
I first saw Local Hero as a school-leaver in 1983, and it has been in residence in my cerebral cortex ever since, alongside Mark Knopfler’s bitter-sweet acoustic theme. On initial viewing it seemed merely a comic gem. The joke was that the village hicks, led by local fixer Gordon Urquhart (Denis Lawson), are far cannier than they appear to Macintyre (Peter Riegert), a cocksure emissary from Knox Oil in Houston sent to negotiate the purchase of the village and its coastline. The older you get, the more it looks like the bleakest Nordic tragedy: having fallen in love with this bucolic paradise, the incomer is brutally expelled from Eden back to the snazzy all-American inferno of skyscrapers and tailbacks, with only sea shells and snapshots as mementoes.
In recent years its environmental credentials have crystallised into what now looks like a timely sermon about our over-reliance on oil. Knox Oil mogul Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster) choppers in like a deus ex machina to close the deal, only to come up against old Ben, the wise man of the beach who persuades him to switch from oil to astronomy. (Pictured right, Lancaster standing on set with Fulton Mackay; in front from left, Peter Capaldi, Peter Riegert and Christopher Rozycki.)
It was in Gregory’s Girl, his no-budget comedy about teenage angst, that Forsyth first paraded a taste for off-beat whimsy. (Previously he had made his living in documentaries.) In Local Hero he quietly folded that quirky voice into a capacious narrative about sea and sky (hence the two main female characters named Marina and Stella) but also the tectonic plates of the Cold War. By night the northern lights twinkle benignly in the heavens which by day swarm with NATO test-jets, while the ancient waters yield lobsters, embargoed South African oranges and a hearty trawlerman from Murmansk, who boats in to sing at the ceilídh and check on his investment portfolio. This colourful character was no fanciful invention. Ditto the plot’s other fish out of water, the parish’s West African vicar.
Local Hero’s success brought Forsyth the chance to make three movies in America. He returned disillusioned and, aside from a short in 2009 titled Bill Forsyth's Lifetime Achievement Film, hasn't shot a frame since Gregory’s Two Girls in 1999. But along with Peter Riegert and Denis Lawson, the film’s two male leads, he reminisced with theartsdesk.
Watch the US trailer to Local Hero
BILL FORSYTH
Could you shed some light on the plot’s genesis? In the DVD extras you talk about how Orkney had done a deal with an oil company similar to the one you portray in the film.
It was quite key to the inspiration. It was the chief executive of the Orkney council who negotiated a really really great deal for the whole community when they were developing the oil terminal. It wasn’t just one company. They were negotiating for this oil terminal which they were all going to use and so he realised that he had quite a strong position and he just did incredible things which hadn’t been done before. Got the community a cut of the revenue and social things like take care of libraries and community centres. It was the scenario where a small community made the best use of the power that it had.
There were examples of small communities which had become en masse wealthy. Pig farmers would be driving about in Jensens
The film skirts over the negotiating situation because that was one thing I didn’t know anything about and didn’t care to research too much. I remember thinking, what they hell can they say to each other? But I had spent the previous 10 years making documentaries all over Scotland so had a fairly good feel for the Highlands and Scottish communities and the economic mechanisms that were at work. I was actually pooling a lot of information. One thing we were always trying to counter in these films was that if you weren’t city-based then you were slightly inferior. That wasn’t the reality. Most of the people you encounter from the Highlands – there were a lot of people who worked at sea and you would find people from the outer islands who were broadly travelled and very sophisticated. It was to counter all of that. That’s what Gordon’s character was all about.
How much did you know about Houston before you started writing?
All I knew about Houston was how to pronounce it. I didn’t know anything about the city and how it functioned. I suppose it was in the news in those days. Because of the oil boom and oil companies were coming to Scotland and were in the headlines, I vaguely knew that was one of the bases of the American oil industry. I didn’t research it. I’m not very good at research. I remember somebody once said if you’re making a fictional film about any particular aspect like a business or a way of life all you need is two real facts. You can make up the rest. As much as anyone else I had a vague idea of what an oil executive would be and how he would function. Macintyre is an everyman executive. It’s the idea of people losing their personalities in the glass tower of work. At that time they were in the air - all these questions about how are we conducting our lives: are we losing a sense of ourselves?
So how did you embark on solidifying that idea into a commissioned film?
The deal came before the plot. David Puttnam came to me and said, “I don’t know what you’re doing next but if you can find an idea in Scotland that would involve one or two American characters so we could have a couple of Yanks in it then I could finance it.” Warner had a pick-up deal for anything he was making. I went away and because of the fact that I knew Scotland well and about the oil business I came back with that idea fairly quickly. It was a no-brainer having American oil men in Scotland. I had to write a two- or three-page treatment. I invoked the Beverly Hillbillies. This is boomtown Scotland. At that time there were examples of small communities which had become en masse wealthy. Pig farmers would be driving about in Jensens. I remember a joke at the time. This farmer has got a brand new Rolls Royce and phones up and says, “I can’t get any more than 40 mph out of this.” “What gear are you in?” “I’m just in my dungarees and Wellingtons.”
How about casting? It was quite a coup to get Burt Lancaster.
Lancaster was there from the very beginning in my head. I began to write the script for him. There was no one else on the horizon as far as I was concerned. I don’t think I even thought we would get Lancaster. It’s always nice to have someone in mind so you can find a voice for him. It was round about the time of Atlantic City. In those days Hollywood stars really were stars. They were beyond human. I remember in Atlantic City he seemed to be playing a human being. I had read something in an interview he had done around that time. Someone said, “You’ve been acting for 30 or 40 years. Have you any ambitions left?” “I’d like to do some real comedy.”
What are your memories of working with him?
He was quite a lot of fun. He was no trouble at all. There was no ego. He didn’t need an ego because everyone respected him. That was just normal. He was hard-working. Like me he didn’t have a lot of small talk, which suited me fine.
Were any of those Ealing comedies in the back of your mind as you wrote?
I caught up with the films after I made it and people started to invoke Ealing comedies vis à vis my work. It was only then that I went to them to see what they were talking about. I wasn’t trying to emulate them. I was fairly dismissive of them before I had seen them, as you do with any British films. Puttnam had this trick and would phone me up and say go to the [he names a Scottish cinema].” I’m sure he organised the screening of Whisky Galore and It’s a Wonderful Life. I think that was his way of trying to cut off my bleakness at the pass. I’d written a draft and so maybe he was feeling it then. It’s not bleakness. It’s just a sense of realness. How else can you apprehend the world without a sense of realism about it? It’s not an emotional response to the way the world is. It’s an intellectual one and a clear-eyed one.
To me and I’m sure to all fans of the film, the casting seems utterly perfect. Did you get your first choice in every case? (Pictured, Jenny Seagrove and Peter Capaldi)
I’m pretty sure I did get my way. I had very good casting help from Suzy Figgis. She was at the spearhead. She was into a lot of fringe theatre in London and knew everyone who was there. Denis was the first choice. For David’s sake he had to show audition reels to the financiers and the studio also I had to go through this process of setting up scenes with actors and filming them more or less to prove that some casting process had taken place. It was a tough tough thing to find Peter. I spent weeks in New York and LA meeting every single actor between 20 and 35 that you could think of. Who did I not meet? One of the people after the part was Michael Douglas. As soon as a film is getting close to production the script just goes all over town. Suddenly we got a call that Michael has read the script and wanted to talk about it. Maybe it’s vanity on my part in those days but I didn’t want any more names in the film. I think at this point I had already committed to Peter. Once again because the finance was involved I had to go through the motions of meeting him and talking to him. That was quite funny too. I was staying at the Holiday Inn in Beverly Hills. I heard the secretary at the office say, “Michael doesn’t eat at the Holiday Inn.” We ended up at the bar at the Beverly Wilshire. I was travelling to New York the day after and checked into my hotel and Michel Douglas walked in. I thought, he’s really after this part. We spent another couple of hours together. It was more just a matter of sitting it out. There wasn’t a huge amount of pressure. It was only a two or three million dollar picture and David carried a lot of authority with the financiers. I do remember a particular point when they were taking a little while to commit to Peter and I said to Peter, “If you don’t do the picture I won’t.” It was genuinely how I felt. I didn’t really know what I was saying. I wasn’t saying it in a political sense.
How was the shoot for you once you assembled this cast? (Pictured, Forsyth on set with Burt Lancaster)
It’s true of any film that when you’re writing a script the script becomes limitless in its possibilities but when you’re filming it you’re killing it. We had a good spring. But I wasn’t joining in the fun. It was my first serious film beyond the two that I had made with friends locally. The thing that was catching up with me was that as a writer-director you are the focal point of all the work that goes on. At the end of every single day I would have to go back - I wouldn’t go to the pub - and think about what we’d got, rewrite the scene for tomorrow. It was just continual work. Iain [Smith, associated producer] said, “It’s looking really good but there’s no conflict in it.” I said, “I’m not going to put any conflict in it.” But I remember thinking, he’s right. All these people are just saying things and walking in and out of situations. It was almost for the audience’s sake that something physical had to happen so it was after that that I wrote the scenes where some of the villagers came onto the beach and introduced an element of threat.
The film’s environmental message may be what people take out of it more than they used to be, but back in 1983 it was more overtly a film set during the last days of the Cold War. Your Russian capitalist with marital issues is a wonderful creation. I’d love to hear how that idea came to you. Were you very determined that a comedy about a Scottish fishing village would confront the great political issue of the day and ask for a little peace and understanding?
Because I was writing for Scotland and it was one of these countries that felt slightly inferior, I wanted to up the ante for it. I suppose a very very basic motivation was to let people feel that Scotland had a cosmopolitan aspect to it. That was based in reality. It did happen. There were Russian trawler fleets that operated in the North Sea and the North Atlantic. The Russians used to have factory ships which anchored just off Ullapool. There were times where you would see almost a whole fleet anchored off Ullapool and these guys would come ashore and go to a pub. Apparently they were always quite dour and didn’t talk. At that time in the thick of the Cold War - it was something quite interesting.
How much did you know about the sky before you wrote it?
I was a very keen amateur astronomer when I was young and to some extent still am. It wasn’t something I had to think about. I knew what it was all about. When I was writing the script I was also working on a George Mackay Brown ghost story and when filming that was the first time I’d seen the northern lights and that’s why it ended up in the film. The northern lights were created and not too well because special effects in those days weren’t too hot. It used to worry me. There’s a tiny bit of northern lights on the telephone box. They had to mask all the bits where it wasn’t supposed to be.
It’s interesting that Gordon and Stella are at it like rabbits (and Gordon also cooks a tasty rabbit stew) but have no children. Was that strategic?
That hadn’t crossed my mind. We mostly concentrate on Gordon and Stella and they’re pre-children. If kids had been in my horizon at the time they might have ended up in the script.
Overleaf: 'You really want to send them out with a song in their heart - Mark Knopfler's soundtrack
Owen Richards
A British boys boarding school in the 1980s. Not the most obvious setting for a romantic comedy, especially one based on the most famous romcom of all, Cyrano de Bergerac.
Jasper Rees
There is nothing quite like the Iffland-Ring in this country. The property of the Austrian state, for two centuries it has been awarded to the most important German-speaking actor of the age, who after a suitable period nominates his successor and hands the ring on. There were only four handovers in the entire 20th century. The most recent of them was in 1996, when the Swiss actor Bruno Ganz became the new lord of the ring.
Adam Sweeting
The release of Matthew Heineman’s film A Private War, about the tumultuous life and 2012 death of renowned Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, has gained an added edge of newsworthiness from this week’s verdict by Washington DC’s US District Court for the District of Columbia.
Jasper Rees
“I want to be a man without any past,” said Michel Legrand, who has died at the age of 86. He had perhaps the longest past in showbiz. Orchestrator, pianist, conductor, composer of countless soundtracks, who else has collaborated as widely - with Miles Davis and Kiri Te Kanawa, Barbra Streisand and Jean-Luc Godard, Gene Kelly, Joseph Losey and Edith Piaf? When I visited him at his house at his splendid classical manoir 100km south of Paris, on the mantelpiece in the large white sitting room four familiar gilt statuettes stood sentry. The oldest was for “Windmills of My Mind”, the best original song of 1965.
A child prodigy at the piano, he converted from classical to jazz under the nose of his disapproving teacher, the composer Nadia Boulanger. Initially he worked as an orchestrator; his earliest triumph was I Love Paris, a set of jazz standards which sold seven million copies in two years. At 26 he recorded with Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans. Then for 10 years he composed for the Nouvelle Vague directors, while his soundtracks from English-language films stretched from The Go-Between to Never Say Never Again via Portnoy's Complaint. Among his enduring works are musicals made for the screen. Les Parapluies de Cherbourg was an unexpected success in 1964, followed by Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967). He returned to the form in Yentl. Legrand’s Oscar for the score (the film’s only nomination) tells its own story.
Deep into his 70s he composed his first stage musical with Marguerite (2008), updating to occupied Paris the story familiar from La Traviata, Marguerite and Armand and sundry films. Then the Cornish theatre company Kneehigh retrieved The Umbrellas of Cherbourg from the archives. As Legrand’s classic score came alive again for a new audience, he looked back in a long biographical interview.
John Williams conducts Michel Legrand at the Boston Pops
JASPER REES: Do you approach music-making without any regard to genre? You’ve worked in so many different fields.
MICHEL LEGRAND: That makes me more than happy. I’ll tell you why. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (pictured below: Joanna Riding in Kneehigh's stage version) and Yentl, two musicals, it seems to me that it’s impossible to say this is the same composer who made those two things. And people say, “Ja but we hear eight bars of your music and we recognise.” Bullshit. It’s friendly but it’s not true. I cannot eat the same meal every day. I cannot do the same thing every day all the year long. For instance in the Fifties I was an orchestrator and I was pretty famous. I worked with Barbra Streisand, I worked with people in America, in Paris. And then after 10 years of that work or nine years I started to be less interested because I have written so much so I started to be less good. And I said to myself, “OK, now I know I have to stop.”
So I stopped. I said, “No records any more, no nothing, forget me.”So for six months or a year I had no job, no money, no work, nothing. And one year later I was really lucky. There comes in France the New Wave of film directors. They wanted new people, new technicians, new everything. So we were two or three new musicians and I spent 10 years in the Sixties with the film directors, and had a great time. We started to shoot a movie without having any money, without even a producer, not knowing if they were going to pay anyone. I loved it. After 10 years I stated to be less interested, less good, and I thought I have to quit. So I called every director and said, “Forget me, I’m finished.” I called Jean-Luc Godard and said, “Jean-Luc, I don’t want to work, it’s over.” He said, “No no no, I’ve finished a movie, I want you to score it.” I said, “No, Jean-Luc, no, it’s over.” “No no!” I said, “I’ll do it but it’s the last time.”
I flew to America. I had no work, so I rented a house and I waited and then one day I did The Thomas Crown Affair, first Oscar, a big success and after that it was easy for me to work there. And after a certain amount of years, same thing. I had enough. I don’t understand how even a composer for film, how can he devote his whole life. I don’t know how John Williams, whom I love very much... I said, “How can you do the whole of your life the same thing? I have to change, I have to move.” Something that I found a long time ago, when you’re not in danger, your work is not very interesting, because I can search for months if I have time, slowly, nicely, from 9am to 8pm and trying and writing. But when for instance like when I have to do Summer of 42 movie, it was Friday afternoon in Los Angeles. The producer and the director took me to the screening. I said, “I love it, When do you need it? He said, “Wednesday.” I said, “Fine.” Wednesday I recorded it and I was finished by Sunday night. Because when they have no time to do something, a very short time, you come up with something much more extraordinary than if you have searched for two years. That’s what I think.
When you discovered jazz as a student of classical music, what did your professors say?
Nadia Boulanger – she hated it. She fought with me and said, “No no no, this stupid ridiculous music with three chords, don’t talk to me about it, no no, you are a classical musician, Michel.” She was doing some dinner at her home and she liked me very much as her student. She invited for dinner with three people like Paul Valéry, Jean Cocteau – it was extraordinary - so I was in the dark listening. At the end of the dinner she’d say, “One of my students is going to play something for you.” So every time I played jazz, because in front of her guests she couldn’t throw me out.
Did she ever forgive you?
I hope she did. She was Minister of Culture at the government of Monte Carlo with the Prince and when I was very young I did a concert there at the Opera with Gene Kelly and Gene onstage with a girl dancer told the complete story of modern dancing. And I was in the pit with an orchestra and Nadia Boulanger was there that night so she called me up afterwards and said, “OK, I forbid you to play jazz but this time it wasn’t too bad.” She forgave me.
Although you listened to it as a child, was your upbringing in classical music?
Before the war when I was a very young boy my father was a nice instinctive musician, a very gifted guy, but he left my mother when I was three years old. My mother had to go out to work so I was alone at home. My older sister was in school and I was too young to go anywhere and all day long I was bored to death. I hated the world of grown-ups, I hated the world of children because it’s so cruel, so rude, so I stayed at home. Miraculously my father forgot an old piano at home so I spent all my days at the piano. All the time I was listening to the radio. I heard a rhythmic song, so I tried to find the melody on the piano, then I tried to find the harmonies underneath. My only reason for living was this piano.
So my mother was a very bright woman, so seeing that she gave me some teacher and I entered the Conservatory when I was very very young, I was nine years old, much too young. Officially I couldn’t come at nine years old so I had special intervention of my teachers. I did extraordinary work. I have great memories of working at the Conservatory because I hated the world, I refused to go to school, I never went to school, never, but when I entered the conservatory at nine years old that was my planet because the only thing they were doing was music everywhere in this big building. And I said, “That’s my life.”
Did you know it would be your professional life?
No, I knew that my life was music but I didn’t know what.
Did you know how good you were?
Good no but I knew how gifted I was because everything was easy. My colleagues worked one week on something and I could do it in two hours.
How early on did you have melodies pouring out of your fingers?
No. Melody didn’t pour naturally. In the Fifties when I started professionally to write orchestrations, arrangements, for Piaf, for Yves Montand, for everyone, I was not writing songs of melody at all. It started when the film came in 1959, ‘60, when I had to write scores for movies. I always wrote 30 or 40 different things and then I proceeded by elimination day after day until one or two or three resisted until the very end.
Why don’t the French like musicals?
I was very bad towards films. In the Sixties I made a hundred French movies. In the Seventies and Eighties I made a hundred American movies. So I was really concentrated on films. But in 1963 or 1964 I was one of the first persons to see West Side Story onstage, which I loved. French people are not musicians. Not because they are not by instinct, they are like everyone, but there is no musical education at all in France. Art, painting: nothing. Literature: enormous. France is a country of literary people. That’s all. Music: nothing. French audiences know nothing about music so when they see people singing onstage they don’t understand why. It’s exactly what happened. I was extremely surprised and I still don’t know why when we did with Jacques Demy The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in 1964 it was such a success. I swear to you. When we were writing it, everybody was saying, “Jesus Christ, how can you expect people in a dark theatre to stay 90 minutes listening to people singing? Do you feel better today and how is your stomach? It will never work, never.” We couldn’t find the producer to do the film. So everybody said, for weeks and weeks and for months. So we were sure that it was going to be a flop and the first day it was a success. We had no money even to promote it
Barbra Streisand is very temperamental and very demanding so people don’t like it very much
Have you ever wanted to have control of the lyrics, especially in a foreign language?
I don’t have this pretension but I’m very sensitive on lyrics, so very often I said to lyricists, “I’m not sure this is exactly right.” But I’ve never wanted to have control. Especially with the Bergmans, my American lyricists who are really extraordinary [Alan and Marilyn Bergman wrote the lyrics for “The Windmills of My Mind” and Yentl]. I was really ecstatic about their work. I chose to work with extraordinary lyricists of course.
Did you know what they mean by “Windmills of My Mind”?
Yeah, because I asked them. With [Norman] Jewison we decided to have a song. I said to Norman, “Why don’t we have a song when they’re on the glider? “So I called the Bergmans. I said, “I would love to have something which moves all around, like an airplane.” The windmills of my mind, I love that idea very much.
"Windmills of My Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair
How often do you write to words?
I did it. I prefer to write the music first of course. But it happened to me for instance in Yentl. We had nine songs in it, I think three of the songs come from the lyrics first.
Why is that film not loved?
It is very well done, I liked it very much. But it’s funny because Barbra Streisand, her colleagues, she’s not liked over there. So for instance when the film appeared to be nominated for the Oscars, not one nomination. Just one, for the score. And that’s not nice because she deserves more than that, better than that. But she is very temperamental and very demanding so people don’t like it very much.
Barbra Streisand sings "Papa Can You Hear Me?" from Yentl
Are you able to cope with that?
Very easily. She’s a 12-year-old little girl. I have to tell you, because we have done so many things together – records and piano and afternoons singing – she knows me so well, she knows that I can get her to do anything just like this, so she trusts me, she has confidence, so life is very simple. We are like two kids playing the same game. And she is so sweet and lovely. For instance, one little anecdote. During the recording of Yentl, one session we had 120 musicians, four pianos, eight guitars, symphony orchestra. And we recorded the first take, marvellous, and then Barbra came to me and said, “Michel, I would love to try it half a tone lower because today I feel a little tired.” So she said, “Have it re-copied and we’ll do it tomorrow.” I said, “No, we’re going to do it now.” She said, “It’s impossible.” I said, “Yes, we will right now.” So she goes back to the booth and I didn’t know how to tell the musicians how to transpose, because half a tone is the worst. So I said, “OK guys, it was beautiful, do exactly as well as you did before, with just one tiny little change, three, four!” They had no time to react. And they did it. Pretty well. She was amazed at what they did. For her it’s magic but for us it’s simple.
It’s quicker to list the people you have not worked with. Has there ever been a time when you have not liked working with someone?
Interview continued overleaf
Jasper Rees
Richard E Grant has captivated the internet. The actor greeted the news of his nomination for an Academy Award by returning to his first rental when no one had heard of him. There he whooped with childlike delight, and then shared the whole thing in an utterly disarming Instagram post. He also phoned up his co-star and co-nominee Melissa McCarthy, and together they cried.