Evan was the darling of those critics who believed that actors couldn’t act unless the director told them inch by inch what to do. Evan never gave directions by halves: he liked to see his films called ‘Evan Pentelow’s latest’, and he achieved that by making the gullible believe that step by tiny step the whole thing stemmed from his talent, and his alone. Never mind how old a hand an actor was, Evan remorselessly taught him his business. Evan never discussed how a scene should be played, how a word should be inflected. He dictated.
He had cut some great names down to size, down to notices like ‘Pentelow has drawn a sympathetic performance from Miss Five-Star Blank...’ He resented everyone, like me, who wouldn’t give him the chance.
There was no doubt that he was an outstanding director in that he had a visual imagination of a very high quality. Most actors positively liked to work with him, as their salaries were generous and his films never went unsung. Only uncompromising bloody asses like myself believed that at least nine-tenths of a performance should be the actor’s own work.
I sighed, finished the beer, visited the loo, and went out to the Moke. Apollo still raged away in the brazen sky, as one might say if one had a taste for that sort of thing.
The original director of the glossy action thriller on which we were engaged had been a quiet-spoken sophisticate who usually lifted the first elbow before breakfast and had died on his feet at 10 a.m., from a surfeit of Scotch. It happened during a free week-end which I had spent alone in Yorkshire, walking on the hills, and I had returned to the set on Tuesday to find Evan already ensconced and making his stranglehold felt.
There was about an eighth of the film still to do. The sly smile that he had put on when he saw me arrive had been pure clotted malice.
Protestations to the management had brought soothing noises but no joy.
‘No one else of that calibre was free... can’t take risks with the backers’ money, can we, not as things are these days... got to look at it realistically... sure, Link, I know you won’t work with him ordinarily, but this is a crisis, dammit... it isn’t actually in your contract in black and white this time, you know, because I checked... well, actually, we were relying on your good nature, I suppose...’
I interrupted dryly, ‘And on the fact that I’ll be collecting four per cent of the gross?’
The management cleared its throat. ‘Er, we wouldn’t ourselves have made the mistake of reminding you... but since you mention it... yes.’
Amused, I had finally given in, but with foreboding, as the location scenes of the car all lay ahead. I had known Evan would be difficult: hadn’t reckoned, though, that he would be the next best thing to sadistic.
I stopped the Moke with a jerk behind the shelter and pulled the canvas cover over it to stop it sizzling. I had been away exactly twelve minutes, but when I walked round into the shelter Evan was apologising to the camera crews for my keeping them hanging around in this heat. Terry made a disclaiming gesture, as I could see perfectly well that he had barely finished loading the Arriflex with a fresh magazine out of the ice box. No one bothered to argue. At a hundred degrees in the shade, no one but Evan had any energy.
‘Right,’ he said briskly. ‘Get into the car, Link. Scene 623, Take 10. And let’s for hell’s sake get this one right.’
I said nothing. Of the nine previous takes, three had been fogged: that left today’s six; and I knew, as everyone else knew, that Evan could have used any one of them.
I got into the car. We retook the scene twice more.
Evan managed to shake his head dubiously even after that, but the head cameraman told him the light was getting too yellow, and even if they took any more it would be no good, as they wouldn’t be able to match it to the scene which went before. Evan gave in only because he could come up with no possible reason for going on, for which Apollo had my thanks.
The unit packed up. The girl came limply across and undid the handcuffs. Two general duty men began to wrap up the Special in dust-sheets and pegged-down tarpaulins, and Terry and Lucky began to dismantle their cameras and pack them in cases, to take them away for the night.
In twos and threes everyone straggled across to the caravans, with me driving Evan in the Moke and saying not a word to him on the way. The coach had arrived from the small nearby town of Madroledo, bringing the two night-watchmen. Coach was a flattering word for it; an old airport runabout bus with a lot of room for equipment and minimum comfort for passengers. The company said they had stipulated a luxury touring coach with air-conditioning, but the bone-shaker was what had actually turned up.
The hotel in Madroledo where the whole unit was staying was in much the same category. The small inland town, far from the tourist beat, offered amenities that package holiday operators would have blanched at; but the management had had to install us there, they said, because the best hotels on the coast at Almeria were booked solid by hundreds of Americans engaged on making an epic western in the next bit of desert to ours.
In fact I much preferred even the rough bits of this film to the last little caper I had been engaged on, a misty rock-climbing affair in which I had spent days and days clinging to ledges while the effects men showered buckets of artificial rainstorm over my head. It was never much good my complaining about the occasional wringers I got put through: I’d started out as a sort of stunt man, they said, so what was a little cold, a little heat? Get out there on the ledges, they said. Get out there in the car. And just concentrate on how much lolly you’re stacking away to comfort you later through arthritis. Never fear, they said, we won’t let you come to any real harm, not so long as the insurance premiums are so high, and not so long as almost every film you make covers its production costs in the first month of showing. Such charming people, those managements, with dollar signs for eyes, cash registers for hearts.
Cooler and cleaner, the entire unit met for before-dinner drinks in Madroledo’s idea of an American Bar. Away out on the plain in the warm night the Special sat under its guarding floodlights, a shrouded hump, done with for the day. By tomorrow night, I thought, or at least the day after, we would have completed all the scenes which needed me stuck in the driving seat. Provided Evan could think of no reason for reshooting Scene 623 yet again, we only had 624 and 625 to do, the cavalry-to-the-rescue bits. We had done Scenes 622 and 621, which showed the man waking from a drugged sleep, and assessing his predicament, and the helicopter shots were also in the can; the wide-circling and then narrowing aerial views which established the Special in its bare lonely terrain, and gave glimpses of the man slumped inside. Those were to be the opening shots of the film and the background to the credits, the bulk of the story being told afterwards in one long flashback to explain why the car and the man were where they were.
In the bar Terry and the Director of Photography were holding a desultory discussion about focal lengths, punctuating every wise thought with draughts of sangria. The Director, otherwise known professionally as the lighting cameraman, and personally as Conrad, patted me gently on the shoulder and pressed an almost cold glass into my hand. We had all grown to like this indigenous thirst quencher, a rough red local wine diluted by ice and a touch of the fruit salads.
‘There you are, dear boy, it does wonders for the dehydration,’ he said, and then in the same breath finished his broken off sentence to Terry. ‘So he used an eighteen millimetre wide angle and of course every scrap of tension evaporated from the scene.’
Conrad spoke from the strength of an Oscar on the sideboard, and called everyone ‘dear boy’ from chairmen downwards. Aided by a naturally resonant bass voice and a droopy cultivated moustache, he had achieved the notable status of ‘a character’ in a business which specialised in them, but behind the flamboyance there was a sharp technician’s mind which saw life analytically at twenty-four frames per second and thought in Eastman-colour.