DIARY
DAVID HARE Miss Jane Seymour blew into Heath- row last week and complained that it was typical of the English that they failed to treat her like a star. What name shall we give to what is now the governing doctrine of the Western world that the more you prosper, the more hard done by you are entitled to feel? It seems that it is impossi- ble to climb towards the top these days without acquiring a measure of self- righteousness. There is no easier way for a presidential candidate to garner a few votes for the next caucus than by declaring that he doesn't see why America should be kicked around any more. A student of the United States' recent international record might well feel that on the kickometer they are doing pretty well. They have managed to hand out rather more kicks than they have had to take. But a smart politician does not tell an electorate that they belong to the most privileged society on earth. No, he tells them that it is the most maligned. Mrs Thatcher's gift, in so far as a, non- communicant may understand it, is for playing whole symphonies on one string, namely the English middle class's obscure sense of injustice. Somehow she makes them feel it is very brave of them, in such difficult times and adverse circumstances, to insist on going on being middle-class. As for the rich, well, I keep reading that their lot is the worst of all. There are two published reasons why they enjoy no peace of mind. First, rates of tax are scandalously high, so they are robbed of the opportunity to work even harder, and contribute even more to the social good. (When a rich man wants more, it is a good thing and called 'being given an incentive'. When a poor man wants more, it is bad and called 'fuelling inflation'.) But second, they suffer from the fact that other people envy them. I. read that when they draw up at traffic lights in their Rolls-Royces, people make obscene gestures at them. This gives them a powerful sense of grievance. Thank God we have a free press in this country, dedicated to the fearless airing of their grievances and to reminding us, day after day, what a lot of Jane Seymours they are.
Fame now holds a special terror for a Playwright. There is the possibility that John Lahr will choose to write about you. It is his mission to explain fame's destruc- tive effects. He's like the preacher who goes on at such length about adultery that you sense he wouldn't mind a little bit himself. Whatever you do, don't die, be- cause this literary ambulance-chaser has his study right round the corner from the funeral parlour. Readers of the Guardian recently took him to task for what he wrote about Tennessee Williams, under a head- line which referred to Williams's 'tragically failed life'. Lahr is a man who copied the dirty bits out of a dead writer's diary and gummed them together with some com- mentary. Williams is the author of A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie. Which of these men, then, may be said to be the failure? Lahr has only one theory: that celebrity destroys the Amer- ican artist. He fits it like an off-the-peg suit to whomever happens to walk into the shop. So now it is to be poor Tennessee's turn. There was no shortage of volunteers to point Williams's shortcomings out to him even at the time, but given the state of his closest relatives and his own ungovern- able sadness, he regarded his own daily survival as something of a triumph. So should we. He could, it is true, be quite a low-key companion, especially in the later reaches of the night, when all he wanted was someone to sit with him. 'How you doing, Tennessee?' Ah'm doin' as well as ah possibly can,' he would say, then throw his head back and roar with laughter at his own remark, like a great broken Southern belle, wobbling a little, his pinky crooked round a glass of alcohol. Unfailingly polite, he was always interested in other writers, and generous towards those who enjoyed a voguishness which he had long since lost. In his later years, his plays did not come up to the high standards of his youth. Greg Mosher, then director of the Goodman Theater in Chicago, went on presenting them, unaffected by critical reaction. As far as he was concerned, while this great author was alive, the greatest honour we could do him was to go on doing his work. Such simple gratitude might seem unexcep- tional to outsiders, but it is rare. Mosher has gone on to splashier things — he runs the unrunnable Lincoln Center — but his attitude to Tennessee does him everlasting credit.
What is it about animals in films? In White Mischief you can tell Joss Ackland is in trouble when he shoots the dog. The audience was loudly shocked. A couple of minutes later he shot himself. This was received with total indifference. A screen- writer friend who recently adapted Robin- son Crusoe so that there was only one way for Crusoe to avoid starving to death was told by the American leading man, in ringingly puritanical tones, that 'there is no way you are going to get me to eat that dog'. The advice these days is by all means act with animals and' children, but don't consume them. The night I went, a recent thriller scarcely engaged the audience at all until Glenn Close — horror of horrors — boiled the little girl's rabbit. My companion at the film was, as it happened, the manager of an excellent restaurant in Kensington Church Street. I suggested she offer on the menu a dish of Lapin Fatal Attraction, plus a little description: 'We boil the rabbit whole while still in its skin, with a stock of white wine and herbs. . .
Ever since I was a boy, I have turned first, especially in summer, to the sports pages to see how England are getting on. The radio goes on at six-thirty. And yet I find, for the first time, England have finished a series in which I could not summon up any interest at all. It was all a bit like The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. Without Botham, Lamb, Gower or Gooch, the team are all pods. Their replacements — more like the Midwich Cuckoos, this — are strange, void men with fair hair who all want to bat at Number Five, where they always fail. In the same way, the press box is full of writers who are not Matthew Engel or John Arlott, prompting the thought that perhaps it was cricket writing I always liked, not cricket. My enthusiasm for the team has not faded on account of their morals, or indeed because they lose all the time. Anyone who supports Sussex in the County Championship and St Mirren in the Football League knows that victory will be all the sweeter for being rare. No, my problem is that because the team does not look as if they are enjoying the game, nor can I.
This is my last diary. I shall not see daylight for two weeks as I shall be in a dubbing suite putting George Delerue's wonderful music on a new film. Paris By Night is a thriller, centred on the new women who have risen to prominence in European politics. Six months ago I went with my leading lady to Blackpool for a little research. Kenneth Baker made a speech to the Party Conference saying how deeply and passionately he cared about education. At the end, we were the only people on this carefully managed occasion not to rise to our feet. The man next to us looked down at Charlotte Rampling and me. 'You two must be teachers,' he said. Underneath the rhetoric, even Tories know what people really feel.
Previous page
