A Hard Day’s Night, by Samira Ahmed

I really enjoyed this engaging insightful study of the first Beatles movie, filmed and released in 1964. It’s the first book written by my friend Samira, with whom I’ve made various documentaries for the BBC, and it’s amazing what she packs into the 128 pages. I thought I knew the film pretty well, but now want to watch it again to pick up on the little details and big connections.

In her “Introduction”, Samira explains some of the cultural context from which the film came, and her own relationship with it. In “Watching A Hard Day’s Night”, she recounts what happens on screen. This is much more than a summary of the plot, chock full of insights about what we see, and things for us to go back and spot, like the cameo by Bob Godfrey (p. 56) — he of Roobarb (1974), Henry’s Cat (1983-93) and the Academy award-winning musical animated biography of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Great (1975).

“Making A Hard Day’s Night” is, as you’d expect, a history of the production, again full of great detail, like the fact that John and Paul so enjoyed the TV play No Trams to Lime Street (1959) by Alun Owen, who wrote the screenplay for this Beatles film, that they wrote four pages of a script in the same style, called Pilchard (pp. 72-73). I was particularly struck by what inspired Owen in setting out to write a film about the Beatles: seeing them in Dublin, he had a sense of them trapped by their commitments, their public, the whole machine (p. 73). 

“A Hard Day’s Night and TV” is about what the film shows us of (fictional) live TV broadcasting, and a kind of light entertainment line-up that was once a staple of telly and is now historical artefact. “Women in A Hard Day’s Night” is a compelling chapter on representation, with particular focus on Millie (Anna Quayle) and the unnamed Secretary (Alison Seebohm). I’m really taken with Samira’s idea of a movie telling the Beatles’ story from the perspective of their wives and girlfriends.

“Reception and What They Did Next” explores the critical response to the film and then what followed: another Beatles movie, Help!, also directed by Lester, and then more disparate projects. The sense is that A Hard Day’s Night was made and released quickly to cash-in on the popularity of the Beatles, assuming that the bubble wouldn’t last, but the film helped to establish them as something more than a flash-in-pan pop sensation. Then there’s a concluding chapter on “Legacy”, which ends on a poignant note.

Samira thinks a key moment in the history of all-things Beatles is the “Beatles at Christmas” season on BBC Two over Christmas 1979, not only because it’s when she discovered them but because it presented a body of work by artists. I looked up the details on Genome and Magical Mystery Tour (1967) was shown at 6.10pm on 21 December; Help! (1965) at 6.35 on 22 December; The Beatles at Shea Stadium (1965) at 5.30 on 23 December, Yellow Submarine (1968) at 5.40 on Christmas Eve and A Hard Day’s Night at 3pm Christmas Day. That they weren’t shown in chronological order suggests a value judgment; they’re in order of ascending quality, A Hard Day’s Night the best.

More of me on Beatles books:

• Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald
• Love and Let Die by John Higgs 

Star Trek 2, by James Blish

This second volume of prose adaptations of TV episodes was first published a year after the first, in February 1968. So says the indicia of my 3rd printing of the US edition, which is marked 50 cents on the spine but bears a sticker giving the UK price of 3/6. According to trade paper the Bookseller, it was issued in this form in the UK in August 1969, a month after Star Trek starting airing on the BBC — and three years before Corgi printed the first UK-specific editions of these Star Trek anthologies.

It looks quite different from the first Star Trek anthology, which boasted artwork by James Bama which had been commissioned to promote the TV show. Rather than commission — and have to pay for — new artwork, this volume features a photograph of what were surely considered the two leads of the series: Mr Spock and Captain Kirk (in that order). The photo is small, contained within a vertical strip of black down the centre of the otherwise white frame. The black strip includes the title “ALL NEW STAR TREK 2 adapted by James Blish”, the photo, and then the boast, 

“THE ULTIMATE TRIP! WORLDS BEYOND TIME! WORLDS BEYOND KEN! BASED ON THE EXCITING NBC-TV SERIES CREATED BY GENE RODDENBERRY”.

The back-cover blurb of the first book focused on three leading characters (Kirk, Spock and Rand), but the back cover here doesn’t name anyone:

“A GALACTIC TICKET TO INFINITE ADVENTURE! Eight journeys into the unexpected with the crew of the starship Enterprise. Travel to the unexplored reaches of outer space, to worlds where Humans are an alien race and the unusual is routine. Astonishing new worlds of strange beings, bizarre customs, unknown dangers and awesome excitement. * A world where war is fought by computers! * A world inhabited by great lizard-like creatures of conquest! * A world ravaged by a relentless plague of madness and death! * A world where life has developed beyond the need for physical bodies! * TRAVEL NOW TO THE BOLD NEW WORLDS OF TOMORROW.”

There’s a second blurb, inside the front page, largely cribbed from the first volume, but now the three leads are Kirk, Spock and Lt Uhura. The latter has usurped Yeoman Janice Rand in her shipmates’ affections but is described in almost all the same words:

“Easily the most popular member of the crew, the truly ‘out-of-this-world’ female has drawn the important assignment of scan engineer on her first mission in deep space.”

There’s no mention that she’s black, or Bantu (the word used repeatedly about her in the first book). Did the publishers fear that mentioning this, or showing the third-lead on the cover, might affect their sales?

The book is dedicated,

“To my new-found relative BARBARA BESADNY and all the other Star Trek fans who wrote to me about the first book”

In later books, Blish referred to extensive correspondence he received about Star Trek, not least once the TV series was cancelled. The first book had been dedicated to Harlan Ellison, a writer on the series, but from now on when Blish dedicated a book it was to female fans. Spock Must Die! (1970) is dedicated “to Kay Anderson”, Star Trek 4 (first published in the US in July 1971) is dedicated.

“To DONNA WOODMAN and the the other new English Star Trek fans”,

Star Trek 9 (1973) is dedicated “To Maire Steele” and Star Trek 10 (1974) “to KARIN who also wanted to set Spock to music”. It gives the impression, at least, of an active, engaged and female-led fandom.

Star Trek 2 boasts the same page count as the first volume (128pp including unnumbered pages), but comprises eight stories rather than seven. They are: Arena (12pp); A Taste of Armageddon (13pp); Tomorrow is Yesterday (15pp); Errand of Mercy (15pp); Court Martial (16pp); Operation — Annihilate! (18pp); The City on the Edge of Forever (17pp); and Space Seed (17pp). 

The original plan had been to pack eighth stories into the first volume, too, and I wonder if Blish and the publishers felt it represented better value to feature more stories. The result, of course, is that the adaptations here are even breezier than before.

The running order seems determined by ascending page count rather than broadcast order or the continuity of the TV series, such as in the use of star dates. Even so, Blish includes a few references in later stories to earlier ones (and to events in the first volume), so there’s a sense of a continuing saga. 

We gain some new information, and some corrections to statements in the first volume. We’re in the 23rd century (p. 114) not the 27th and we’re told more than once that the Enterprise can’t land on planets (not the implication in the first book). Blish also moves events of Tomorrow is Yesterday from the 1960s, as on screen, to 1970 — which he gives as the year of the first Moon landing (p. 28). The same story, but the setting bumped along so it is / was still in the near future.

The Enterprise has a crew of 430 (p. 1), where before the figure was a vague 400+. A quarter of the crew are female, and there are 12 ships like Enterprise in the fleet (both facts from p. 30). Warp Four is 64 times the speeds of light, or “64c” (p. 26), while,

“Warp Eight [is] two factors above maximum safe speed” and “over a hundred times the speed of light” (p. 2).

However, Warp Eight is used only in emergencies and not for long, as it would damage the ship (p. 38).

In one story, Scotty refers to the Enterprise’s protective “screens” (p. 22), but in the next story it’s the more familiar “deflector shields” (p. 31). A single star date is given in the whole book: Lt Col Ben Finney “died” in 2947.3 (p. 59).

Not everything is taken from the TV episodes, or from draft scripts containing extra or contrary details. It’s been fun to spot things that are surely all from Blish. Tomorrow is Yesterday features a character called John Christopher; here, Spock refers to the “popular author” or the same name (p. 33), whom Blish surely knew in person.

Later, in Space Seed, Kirk is annoyed at being asphyxiated twice in the same hour (p. 120), Blish rather hanging a lantern on the repetition in the TV story. He also gives Kirk’s perspective a wry humour, such as his response — in the narration but from his point of view, when Spock tries to use telepathy on a guard holding them both prisoner:

“Nothing seemed to happen for at least five centuries, or maybe six” (p. 16).

I’m sure that scholars before me have dissected these anthologies by what’s in the TV episode, what in a draft script and what Blish threw in for his own amusement. He opens City on the Edge of Forever with a seven-line footnote explaining that it draws from both TV version and draft script (p. 89), apparently the only example where he consciously mashed up the sources. 

My suspicion is that the TV episodes are riddled with continuity errors, where a fact given in one episode doesn’t quite match a fact given in another. We might not notice on first viewing, not least with a week between each episodes. But the brevity of the adaptations here, the speed we can hare through several episodes at once, means we’re more likely to pick up on this stuff. 

The most striking bits of continuity, for me, are those that overlap with the later Star Trek movies of the 1980s — the bits of Trek with which I’m most familiar. In Tomorrow is Yesterday, the suggestion that a pilot from 1970 could travel with the the Enterprise into the future is quickly dismissed as he would be,

“archaic, useless, a curiosity” (p. 35).

But that’s in no way the fate of cetologist Dr Gillian Taylor in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), who finds a useful role in the future. That’s all the more striking because that film clearly drew directly from this episode in its method of time travel by flying the Enterprise close to the Sun (p. 36).

Likewise, in Operation — Annihilate!, the Enterprise fires “two fully armed planet-wreckers” that explode with “atomic fire” and destroy a whole plant, leaving behind a nebula (p. 87). This seems to be standard if rarely used artillery on board but in another episode, The Doomsday Machine (adapted in Star Trek 3) and the movie Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the very idea of a planet-destroying weapon is a new, horrific kind of menace.

The final story here is Space Seed, which ends with Kirk sending a gang of villains to settle a new world. He worries that this crop from this seed (his words) might one day come looking for him again, which is exactly what happens in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But in that, the villains are found dwelling on the planet’s surface in their old ship Botany Bay. Here, Kirk sends them down to the planet without their ship, and keeps Botany Bay in tow, thinking it might be of interest to historians. 

Space Seed, of course, involves villainous eugenicist megalomaniac who hails from the 1990s, here called Sibyl Khan Noonien— Blish working from draft scripts — and “dictator of his own breed” (p. 116). Our first sight of him presents an exotic mix of different racial characteristics:

“bathed in a gentle violet glow was a motionless, naked man. He was extremely handsome, and magnificently built. His face reflected the sun-ripened Aryan blood of the Northern Indian Sikhs, with just an additional suggestion on the oriental. Even in repose, his features suggested strength, intelligence, even arrogance.” (p. 108)

Here and elsewhere, what a person looks like is an indicator of their character and inner thoughts, which is all a bit racist for a story about eugenicists being bad. Blish also uses “oriental” as a synonym for “alien”:

“The Klingons were hard-faced, hard-muscled men, originally of Oriental stock” (p. 44). 

That surely implies they originated on Earth. In the next book Spock’s quarters are “simple, sparse and vaguely Oriental” (Star Trek 3, p. 106) and here, at the end of Tomorrow is Yesterday, in a sequence not in the TV version, he quotes from “Omar” (Star Trek 2, p. 39); Spock is not only familiar with the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, but on first-name terms with its author.

Dr McCoy refers to “basic humanoid stock” and to the “genetic drift” of a population of colonists who left Earth centuries previously (p. 95). He’s not exactly tactful in his choice of words: elsewhere, he refers to people afflicted by alien parasites as “vegetables” (p. 74). 

The same page features oddly vernacular phrasing from Spock, when he refers to the alien parasites:

"they wanted to brain us” (p. 74).

I also thought Kirk saying “Blooey” and referring to “Miss Uhura” (both p. 27) oddly out of character. It’s from Kirk’s perspective that we first see Edith Keeler in The City at the Edge of Forever. 

“The girl … was simply dressed and not very pretty” (p. 96)

That’s extraordinary for a character played by Joan Collins and with whom Kirk is about to fall in love. Indeed, “No woman was ever loved as much”, we’re told at the end of the story. There’s a tender moment between Spock and Kirk, when the former offers to take his grieving friend to Vulcan, where the nights are long and restful. Kirk responds that they have “all the time in the world” (p. 105).

This isn’t in the broadcast version so must come from Harlan Ellison’s original draft. (I thought, initially, that “all the time in the world” might be Blish linking these tragic events to another grieving hero, but the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was released in 1969, a year after this book. ETA Steven Flanagan points out that it is the last line of the novel, published in 1963, so perhaps Blish did have that in mind...)

Blish also says that these closing moments are the first time Spock calls Kirk “Jim” (p. 105), a key moment. It’s all a much more emotional scene between the two men than the TV version. I wonder: was Blish responding to those active female fans and what they saw — and wanted to see — in the relationship?

The adventure will continue in Star Trek 3...

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

After delivering a manuscript a couple of weeks ago, I celebrated by taking the Lord of Chaos to see Project Hail Mary at the cinema, having heard good things. We loved it to pieces, and I was inspired to try the book on some recent long drives.

While following much the same plot, the book is markedly different from the film. There are some additional scenes in the book, and a scene in the film that lets us know the fate of one principal character that we don't get in the novel. 

The plot, for those that don't know - and without giving too much in the way of spoilers - involves an astronaut waking up with amnesia to find himself the sole survivor of a mission to deep space. As he figures out who and where he is, fragments of memory come back to him and we piece together his role in an ambitious global effort to save Earth's Sun. Then it turns out that it's not Earth involved...

I found the book version of Ryland Grace a lot more annoying than the one on screen. He's a bit of a jerk, for example publishing an academic paper in which he names all the academics with whom he has  quarrelled, or telling us that he wants to slap the parents of kids who don't know bits of physics he takes for granted. He refers to "manned" rather than "crewed" missions into space, and is pedantic about the continuity of Predator movies when there are other, more pressing matters (eg the extinction of all life on Earth). He's maverick, lone-wolf free-thinker or, in layman's language, a dick.

Effectively, the book and film are a series of puzzles to solve: who is this guy, why's he out in space, how does he (and humanity and someone else) answer an existential threat. Like The Martian (also by Weir and also a very good film), the effort to overcome disaster using science, courage and wit is really compelling. There's also a relationship at the heart of this story, two characters learning to understand one another, that makes the whole thing really sing.

But the wonders and emotion here are slightly constrained in the book version because Grace has such a limited vocabulary. Things are often simply either "awesome" or "bad", or in extremis really awesome or really bad. Like, really really bad. Have I told you how bad? I mean, really.

The result is that his - and our - encounters with extraordinary phenomena and the most profound experience can sometimes feel as though they're narrated by Steve from The Lego Movie. (The Lord of Chaos, overhearing some of Ray Porter narrating the audiobook, thought it might have been Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski. Yes, there's an element of that, too.)

The point of the book, paid off in the closing chapters, is that this maverick selfish loner is ultimately faced with a dilemma that would require him to be selfless, entirely out of character. So yes, he's meant to be kind of a jerk. But I think that makes it harder to believe that, early on when he's teaching kids at primary school, they all seem to love him and eagerly play along in the physics quiz. Kids have an unerring eye for weakness or any kind of character flaw. Surely one of them would pick on Mr Grace having no friends...

Still, this jitter about the main character aside, it's a thrilling, smart book - and even more compelling film. And I'm haunted by the mention, in the book not in the film, that someone waits alone for 46 years before a auspicious meeting. Amaze amaze amaze.

See also: me on Artemis by Andy Weir

Screenplay — The Foundations of Screenwriting, by Syd Field

This relatively short, breezy guide to writing better screenplays is full of good, practical advice. I was keen to see what it had to say about structure, having seen it discussed elsewhere. 

Field favours a three-act structure, where Acts I and III are of the same length — roughly 30 minutes of screen time or 30 script pages each — but Act II is twice that, roughly 60 minutes / pages. By working out how each of these three Acts ends, you construct a basic structure on to which everything else can be added (inevitably, via little cards for individual scenes). Everything, says Field, must either drive the plot forward or reveal character (or do both at the same time), all motoring towards those endings.

He provides plenty of examples from movies old and new, some of which — hello, American Beauty — may not have dated well. The implication is that these are inviolable, unchanging rules that apply to all successful movies. There are quotations from various writers and film-makers, as if they concur with the thesis. Some points are made more than once, I assume to drum them in.

But I’m not sure that all the films fit his structure as neatly as he suggests. Field talks a lot about the Lord of the Rings movies but, for example, I think the prologue that opens the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, and sets out the history of Middle Earth sits outside the three-act structure about Frodo and his pals: that’s why it is a prologue. The details aren’t quite right, either:

“In Lord of the Rings, we open with the history of the ring, then watch as Bilbo Baggins finds it at the bottom of the river. This is the inciting incident that sets the entire trilogy in motion.” (p. 131)

Bilbo isn’t in the river scene at all. It’s a brief moment in the first film but returned to, and dwelt on, at the start of the third one. The implication is that Field has misunderstood that whole sequence of the trilogy.

Having identified Bilbo finding the ring — wherever he might find it — as the inciting incident of the trilogy, Field says Bilbo handing it on to Frodo who learns that it is dangerous and must be destroyed is the ‘key incident’ of the screenplay (p. 134). But Frodo receiving the ring and learning of its nature are two separate moments, separated by months (and, in the book, years). 

And what, then, is Plot Point 1 of The Fellowship of the Ring, which ends its first Act? It should be about a quarter of the way through the film. It is the Nazgûl on the heels of the hobbits, or Frodo disappearing in the pub, or the hobbits meeting Strider, or Frodo getting stabbed? I just worry it’s a bit reductive to apply this model too rigidly.

Also, while there’s a fair bit here on the way changes in technology are changing the business of film-making, there’s nothing on say, how an extended version of a film affects the structure. The Lord of the Rings films were written and made with extended versions in mind, for release on DVD, which is at odds with the emphasis here on lean, efficient screenplays.

So, there’s plenty here that is useful and practical, but — perhaps just because I am awkward cove — I found myself worrying at its edges.

Most annoying at all is the lack of references or bibliography, so that we might follow up on claims. For example, I was really taken by this:

“Hegel, the great eighteenth-century German philosopher, maintained that the essence of tragedy derives not from one character being right and the other being wrong, or from the conflict of good versus evil, but from a conflict in which both characters are right, and thus the tragedy is one of ‘right against right’, being carried to its logical conclusion.” (p. 132)

Oh, for a footnote to indicate where to learn more. 

I’ve looked elsewhere, and this seems to come from chapter 5 of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind, in which he apparently “discusses character, ethical action and guilt partly by way of an analysis of Sophocles’s tragedy Antigone”, as per Mark W Roche, “The Greatness and Limits of Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy”, p. 52.  We shall see…

ETA: It seems to be the bit under the subheading “The Concrete Development of Dramatic Poetry and its Genres” under “The Genres of Dramatic Poetry and the Chief Features it has had in History” in Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics, Part 3, Section 3.

Bergcast #39 - The Blu-ray Xperiment

The latest episode of the Bergcast podcast, devoted to all things Nigel Kneale, features an interview with Steve Rogers at Hammer Films, responsible for the current run of deluxe Blu-ray releases including The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2.

I'm also interviewed about the two-part documentary about Kneale I worked on for these releases, with Jon Clarke and Robin Andrews at Eklectics, brother Tom and expert pundits Toby Hadoke, Andy Murray, Brontë Schiltz, Dr Tom Attah, Joel Morris, Jane Asher and Ted Childs.

Excitingly, Hammer are showing Quatermass 2 and the second-half of the documentary TONIGHT, 9pm on 31 October 2025, on YouTube. Quatermass! The rocket guy! Pew!

Both Quatermass films are also being shown at Derby QUAD on 6 December, with talks by Toby Hadoke, Andy Murray, Brontë Schiltz and Jon Dear.

The Legend of Nigel Kneale 2. Enemy From Space

The super deluxe collectors' edition of Quatermass 2 is now available to pre-order from Hammer Films. It's released next month.

Among the many goodies included in the set is the second part of the documentary me and Brother Tom have produced with Eklectics about Quatermass creator and writer, The Legend of Nigel Kneale.

As with the first part, included on the collectors' edition of The Quatermass Xperiment, the documentary is presented by Toby Hadoke and includes interviews with Kneale's biographer Andy Murray, Dr Tom Attah, Joel Morris, Brontë Schiltz and Jane Asher. This second part also includes two other on-screen contributors... but wait and see.

The Legend of Nigel Kneale: 1. The Creeping Unknown

An absolutely packed deluxe 4KUHD and Blu-ray edition of The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) is now available to preorder direct from Hammer. It will be released on 9 June. Order now to avoid disappointment.

Among the many, many treats listed on the Hammer site is this:

The Legend of Nigel Kneale: The Creeping Unknown. Who was Nigel Kneale? Toby Hadoke investigates the man and his influence in part one of a brand-new two-part documentary.

Produced by me and my brother Tom for Eklectics, and directed by Jon Clarke and edited by Robin Andrews, this authoritative new documentary includes expert analysis from Dr Tom Attah, Joel Morris, Andy Murray, Brontë Schiltz and some other people I won't mention just yet to add a bit of suspense.

Toby Hadoke, is of course, an authority on all things Nigel Kneale and Quatermass and I'm looking forward to his imminent book.

Cinema Limbo: Observe and Report

I'm the guest on the latest Cinema Limbo podcast, this time - for my many sins - to discuss the 2009 black comedy Observe and Report, starring Seth Rogen and Ray Liotta. 

Spoiler: this is not exactly my cup of tea.

• Cinema Limbo: Observe and Report (2009)

You can also listen to the previous episodes I've been on:

• Cinema Limbo: The Last Wave (1977)
• Cinema Limbo: Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984)
• Cinema Limbo: The Wicker Man (2006)
• Cinema Limbo: Smoke (1995)
• Cinema Limbo: King Kong (1976)
• Cinema Limbo: Ryan's Daughter (1970)
• Cinema Limbo: Highlander II - The Quickening (1991)

Terror of the Suburbs, with Matthew Sweet

The Blu-ray set Doctor Who: The Collection Season 7 has been out for a few weeks. It includes the documentary I co-produced, Terror of the Suburbs, a clip from which has just been posted on the official Doctor Who YouTube channel:

Now that people have had a chance to see Terror of the Suburbs in full, I have permission to share some photos from the shoot.

Terror of the Suburbs was directed by Jon Clarke and edited by Robin Andrews at Eklectics. Presenter Matthew Sweet spoke to Alex Moore (assistant location manager on Doctor Who 2022-24), Dr Adam Scovell (writer and historian), Subhadra Das (also a writer and historian) and Dr Rupa Huq, MP. It's produced by me and Thomas Guerrier for executive producer Russell Minton at BBC Studios.

Director Jon Clarke and camera op Lewis Hobson on Ealing High Street
where Autons once invaded

,

Presenter Matthew Sweet on the corner of Ealing Broadway and Ealing High Street,
outside the Autons' favourite branch of M&S

Jon and Lewis line up a shot with Matthew

Lewis, Jon, expert guest Alex Moore, Matthew Sweet and me
(Photo by Kitty Dunning)

Me looming in the foreground while the team interview Dr Adam Scovell
outside Ealing Film Studios

Dr Adam Scovell and Matthew Sweet at Ealing Film Studios

Nice Vibez, Lime Grove

Jon records Subhadra Das and Matthew Sweet in Chiswick

Subhadra and Matthew in Chiswick

Jon records Matthew's reaction shot in front of a brick wall

Matthew and Jon in front of the Palace of Westminster,
the south side of the river popular with alien invasions 

Matthew and Dr Rupa Huq, MP at Portcullis House

Jon and Matthew in front of Elizabeth Tower

A Masterpiece in Disarray - David Lynch's Dune an Oral History, by Max Evry

On Thursday, 16 January, I received from a kind friend this enormous 500+ page book on the David Lynch version of Dune — a film we both find extraordinary. It’s a beautiful hardback edition, the pages edge-painted in sparkly red (which impressed both my children). I went on to Bluesky to enthuse about this gift and discovered Lynch had died. “He’d appreciated the timing,” responded one of my other pals. 

I started the book that afternoon but, like the film (and the novel it’s based on), it’s a vast sprawling epic and has taken a while to get through, not least because I’ve had a whole bunch of work stuff going on, too. Evry tells us at the start that he ordered the wealth of information so that we can skip to the bits of interest, whether that’s his detailed histories of pre-production, filming and what happened afterwards, the huge oral history of interviews with cast and crew, or the extra stuff like the merchandise and legacy of this peculiar, beguiling movie. I am hardcore and did the whole lot.

At first, I thought the book might have been better edited, even judiciously pruned, as there’s quite a lot of repetition. But as I read, on the repetition became important to our understanding: these are things on which people agree, in contrast to the many points on which there is less consensus. 

Some witnesses, such as costume designer Bob Ringwood, are engagingly gossipy and forthright in their views. Others are more cautious in what they share. That is especially telling when their accounts are combined. For example, there’s the account of one male actor getting into character on set by shouting at and upsetting co-star Francesca Annis. Annis, cited in a contemporary interview (she did not contribute to this new book) declines to name the male actor. But here, publicity executive Paul M Sammon does (p. 223). 

This is immediately followed by a contribution from another cast member, Sean Young, who doesn’t name the male actor or refer to the incident specifically. Yet by placing her words directly after Sammon, the implication is that she’s telling us what happened in response on set.

“As an actor, when I’m working with other actors, we all know who’s the deadwood. We all know who it is. We may not say it, but we’ll avoid them.” (p. 224)

There’s loads I found fascinating here. Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise screen-tested for the lead role of Paul. MacLachlan walked off set several weeks into filming because he’d still not received a contract. The rubberised stillsuits created for Dune were a big influence on Michael Keaton’s costume as Batman — also realised by Bob Ringwood — and superhero costumes ever since. Production on Dune overlapped a bit with Conan the Destroyer, using some of the same locations and sets, and at one point you could see both out in the desert on facing dunes. There’s stuff on the music and marketing and merchandise… There is a lot of detail.

These details could have been summarised or more concisely related but that would be missing a big part of the appeal of this book. A bit like the documentary Get Back where we sit day after day with the Beatles, the joy here is all the mundane, ordinary stuff as well. It’s the granular detail that really opens up the creative process. We gain a strong sense of what Lynch was doing, what he tried to achieve and what exactly went wrong.

A few days after receiving the book, I watched the movie with my teenage son, who had seen the Villeneuve Dune and Dune: Part II but came to this old film wholly new. He enjoyed it, I think, and found it interesting to see a different take on the same material, but his main issue was that the last hour or so is too rushed, too much happening too quickly for it to have an emotional impact. That, I now learn from reading this book, is because the production shot largely in script order; when money began to run out, they ripped our whole pages of what they still had to shoot…

Insights into the production and thus what we see on screen only take up the first half of this enormous volume. Evry has just as much interest in what followed, picking over the way the film was released, seen and received. More than that, there’s the sense of how it has haunted (or not) the people who made it.

Now, this is an oral history — it says as such on the cover — and memory can be a bit fallible. Evry does a good job in outlining the history as he understands it and then letting the people involved have their say, whether or not that contradicts the “facts” or other contributors. I think sometimes what people say could do with a little more interrogation. For example, we learn how one particular design was inspired by a trip Lynch made as the guest of producer Raffaella De Laurentiis and her movie mogul father Dino. But we’re told that,

“Dino took him [Lynch] and Raffaella on an impromptu (and speedy) car trip to Venice, arriving directly in St Mark’s Square.” (p. 61). 

That’s not technically possible given how Venice doesn’t have roads. Besides, Bob Ringwood then tells us that they all arrived by plane (p. 111).

Since I’m quibbling over small stuff (minuscule!), we’re frequently told of scenes being “lensed” or hear of “lensing” as a synonym for shooting. I don’t think that’s ever in a quotation from cast or crew; it’s a term used by movie journalists rather than those who make movies, not least because you fix or modify a “lens” before you start the action. Referring to Lynch as “the helmer” rather than director is another journalistic cliché, and not quite appropriate in this case since a key element of the story is how Lynch wasn’t in overall charge of what made it to the screen.

At times, the prose is oddly colloquial, too. When discussing the possibility of a director’s cut of the movie, we’re told that Lynch was “initially enthusiastic about taking a mulligan”, which I had to look up (it means when a golfer is allowed to replay a stroke), and then that “the studio refused to pony up the right amount of dough” (both quotations, p. 293). That is quite the mixed metaphor.

I raise this because the book is otherwise so often very good at explaining simply and clearly what were very technical procedures, such as the way the film was financed or the then-pioneering special effects. It makes us understand exactly how ingenious and revolutionary a lot of this stuff was for it’s time, as well as how influential. But also I am a jaded old hack who finds such grammatical stuff distracting and what I really want — in this book, in the film — is to lose myself in the weird, rich world of Dune.

Pedantic quibbling aside, this is an extraordinary, rich and insightful book. I’m tantalised by the details that remain elusive: how much footage actually survives; how possible it would be, with some new effects work, to produce a director’s cut, and how much of a screenplay for Dune II Lynch may have written. 

The book ends with a short, sweet interview with Lynch himself, who just wants to say how much he enjoyed working with cast and crew for all he doesn’t much rate the film. My sense is of Evry trying valiantly to keep the call going, to draw more from Lynch and to somehow articulate something of what Dune means to him, the author of this exhaustive book. “Fantastic, man,” says Lynch, cheerily, and ends the conversation.

We’re left hanging. Now we always will be. 

See also:

• Me on Dune: Part II (2024)
• Me on The Making of Dune (1984), by Ed Naha
• Me on the novel Dune, by Frank Herbert
• "The sleeper must awaken: inside the mind of Dune", my essay for the Lancet Psychiatry

The DNA of Doctor Who - The Philip Hinchcliffe Years

I've just received my copy of this handsome new book, to which I contributed an essay on the 1975 Doctor Who story Planet of Evil and what it draws from classic works of science-fiction.

The obvious influence, of course, is the 1956 movie Forbidden Planet, which the BBC broadcast at 6.35 pm on Wednesday 6 November 1974 - just right to inspire the development of the Doctor Who stories that became Planet of Evil and The Brain of Morbius. I dig into that and also how the same film influenced early Doctor Who as well as other sci-fi such as Star Trek (citing the excellent ‘Gene Roddenberry’s Cinematic Influences’ by Michael Kmet from 2013) and Star Wars (see the 2012 Wired interview, ‘Ben Burtt on Star Wars, Forbidden Planet and the Sound of Sci-Fi’ y Geeta Dayal).

Hinchcliffe says on the documentary made for the DVD release of Planet of Evil (by my friend Ed Stradling) that he suggested the ‘flying eye’ drone seen in the story, having read of something similar in a science-fiction story at the time. The Dictionary of Surveillance Terms in Science Fiction at the Technovelgy site helped me suggest some candidates for that story.

I also mention Isaac Asimov’s own timeline-of-the-future for his various short stories and novels, which I drew from ‘A page from Isaac Asimov’s notebook’, Thrilling Wonder Stories, vol. 44 #3 (Winter 1955), p. 63.

Edited by Gary Russell and published by Gareth Kavanagh at Roundel Books, you can buy The DNA of Doctor Who - The Philip Hinchcliffe Years from the Cutaway Comics site.

Dune Part Two

A week ago I took the Lord of Chaos to see Dune Part Two at the cinema, him having caught up on the first part just the night before. It's been churning away in my head all this time.

The thing that really strikes me is what a sensory film this is, the bass continually rumbling our seats and muscles, and then lots of tingling ASMR. That's all in tune with the wonders seen on screen, everything ever more epic. Combined, this is a feast for the senses, a film you less see as feel. The plot is also continually intriguing, and the result, a bit to my surprise, captivated his lordship for pretty much the almost three-hour run.

The serious tone of it all makes it easy to mock - some have pointed out that the plot if basically, "He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy", set on a planet of cocaine. The Lord of Chaos was also tickled by Kieran Hodgson's bad movie impressions.

True, the villains are all a bit straightforwardly wicked - black-and-white characters from a black-and-white world. Where the film really works, I think, is in the nuance elsewhere: different factions within the Fremen, the Bene Gesserit endeavouring to play all sides at once, and a sense of complexity and richness in the peoples depicted that meant, even though I know the novel, I wasn't quite sure how it would all turn out.

Some notable things in the book (and 1984 version of the film) are not included here, and I wonder if those will feature in Part Three - and so won't spoil them here. I'll also be interested to see if a further instalment still feels like Dune if set more extensively on other worlds. 

• Me on the novel Dune by Frank Herbert
• Me on The Making of Dune (1984) by Ed Naha
• "The sleeper must awaken: inside the mind of Dune", my essay for the Lancet Psychiatry

Star Wars Memories, by Craig Miller

I've met Craig Miller briefly a couple of times at the GallifreyOne convention in Los Angeles but this is the first year I got to speak to him at any length. Craig worked in fan relations at Lucasfilm promoting Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, and then had roles promoting a whole load more of my favourite films, including Excalibur and The Dark Crystal, before writing on various animated TV shows. Last month, he told me about happy days working with Jim Henson and we compared notes about Craig's former colleague Alan Arnold, whose book Once Upon a Galaxy: The Making of The Empire Strikes Back I found so extraordinary.

When I spoke to him, Craig had sold out of his memoir, Star Wars Memories, so I bought a copy when I got home. It's a loosely chronological series of anecdotes about his time working to promote those two movies, from slide-show presentations at sci-fi conventions months before the first movie came out to people queuing round the block days in advance to see the first screenings of Empire.

There's loads of great stuff here, including a very revealing, lengthy interview with the often reclusive Harrison Ford  conducted on 2 October 1979 (pp. 254-264), in which Ford talks openly about what makes the part of Han Solo so good for him as an actor, and why it appeals to an audience. There are also lengthy interviews with Anthony Daniels, the actor who played C3P0 (pp 340-357) and writer/director/producer George Lucas (pp. 369-75). Each is good in conveying a sense of the person interviewed - Ford agitated by the "Hollywood publicity machine" churning out "a total crock of shit", Daniels self-effacing about the disconnect between being feted in Hollywood one day and being back in the UK scrubbing his kitchen floor the next, and Lucas guarded about future plans.

As well as covering the making of the films and the personalities involved, there's a lot on publicity and the merchandise deals which Craig was directly involved in. As a fan who works in spin-off stuff myself, a lot of this really resonated. I was especially fascinated by the deal done over Star Wars figures, which were so much a part of my childhood.

"Another thing about the Kenner deal was that it included in the agreement that as long as Kenner paid a minimum royalty of $100,000 a year, they would be able to keep the licence for Star Wars toys for as long as they wanted. [But in the late 80s/early 90s] there hadn't been any Star Wars movies for a while and it didn't look like there would ever be. So [some executive] stopped paying the royalty. And the licence reverted to Lucasfilm." (p. 54)

A few years later, Lucas announced the Star Wars prequels and the same toy company - now owned by Hasbro - didn't want anyone else doing the toys.

"The new deal for the master toy licence for Star Wars ended up costing Hasbro close to a billion dollars in cash and stock." (p. 55)

It's interesting, too, to see the efforts made to ensure Star Wars characters remained in character even when appearing on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, such as vetoing the request to have R2D2 sing a version of the ABC because the droid doesn't speak English. 

There's lots on fan culture, conventions and activities of the period, and the differences between the US and UK. Craig has to explain to his US readers what he means by Blu Tack (p. 292), while staff in UK hotels in 1979 were repeatedly foxed by requests for ice coffee (p. 299), providing hot coffee served with either ice or ice cream. Towards the end, Craig lists contemporary reviews and criticisms of The Empire Strikes Back - that stuff isn't explained, that it's too jokey, or otherwise not true enough to what's gone before - that have continued to be made of new Star Wars films ever since. 

On p. 392 he points out an amazing detail in The Empire Strikes Back which, despite having seen the film a thousand times, I'd never noticed before. But he also raises a question which I think I might be able to answer. On pp. 401-403, he puzzles over the appeal of characters such as Boba Fett, Darth Maul and Captain Phasma when we learn so little about them in the films. As he says, they look pretty cool but I think it's also important that they're blank slates. As well as how little we learn about their stories, two of them are masked and one is heavily made up, which adds to their mystery. They are characters on whom we as viewers can project. That absence of explanation invites us to imagine their stories, their lives - so they offer us a way in to this universe.

In fact, that kind of participation is what this book covers so well. I've read lots of other things about the making of Star Wars, focused on cast and crew. Craig's book is about how the production team actively engaged with and encouraged fans to take Star Wars to their hearts and into their lives. There's lots to learn from here. And lots to be grateful for.

Cinema Limbo: The Last Wave

I'm on the latest episode of the Cinema Limbo podcast all about neglected movies. This time, host Jeremy Philips and I analyse the 1977 Australian film The Last Wave directed by Peter Weir and starring Richard Chamberlain. As I said at the start, two things amazed me about this.

First, I thought I knew Peter Weir's work pretty well but have never heard of this odd, early film.

Secondly, watching it really helped bring together lots of my thinking about the context in which it was made and efforts to combat the 'cultural cringe' in Australia, which I detail in my book on David Whitaker.

• Cinema Limbo: The Last Wave (1977)

You can also listen to the previous episodes I've been on:

• Cinema Limbo: Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984)
• Cinema Limbo: The Wicker Man (2006)
• Cinema Limbo: Smoke (1995)
• Cinema Limbo: King Kong (1976)
• Cinema Limbo: Ryan's Daughter (1970)
• Cinema Limbo: Highlander II - The Quickening (1991)

Love and Let Die, by John Higgs

I really enjoyed this wide-ranging ramble through Bond, the Beatles and the British psyche. It charts the interweaving histories of the Fabs and 007, not just in their 1960s heydays but up to the present and beyond, exploring disparities and connections, and how our interpretations have changed. In detailing shifts in what Bond and the Beatles mean, it's a history of our changing mores and anxieties. It's a fun and provactive read - a book about connections that really connects.

"That's as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs," quips Sean Connery's Bond in Goldfinger (1964), a moment before someone hits him. Yet less than a decade later, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and ex-Beatles producer George Martin provided the soundtrack for Bond movie Live and Let Die (1973). I've long thought this was evidence of seismic shifts in contemporary culture over a very brief period, but not got much further that that. This is the territory Higgs dives into in his book, with lots of fresh insight and stuff I didn't know, for all that the subjects are so familiar.

How strange to realise that I've been part of these historical changes. I was at university in the mid-1990s when the Beatles enjoyed a resurgence in things like the Anthology TV series, and well remember debates had then about who was best: the Beatles or the Stones. How disquieting to realise, as Higgs says, that we don't make that comparison any more, without ever being aware of a moment when things changed.

Higgs is also of his (and our) time in rejecting ideas that I can remember used to hold considerable sway, such as that John Lennon was the 'best' Beatle, or the band's driving creative force. As the book says, there's growing recognition of what the four Beatles accomplished together rather than as competing individuals. There's something of this, too, in the way Higgs positions Bond to the Beatles. Initially, they're binary opposites, Bond an establishment figure Higgs equates with death, the Beatles working-class rebels all about life and love. By the end, it's as if they synchronise.

This might all sound a bit highfalutin but the insights here are smart and funny. As just one example, here's what Bond's favourite drink reveals about who he is.

"Bond's belief that he knows exactly what the best is appears early in the first novel Casino Royale, when he goes to the bar and orders a dry martini in a deep champagne goblet. Not trusting the barman to know how to make a martini, he gives him specific instructions. 'Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel.' When the drink arrives, he tells that barman that is is 'Excellent,' then adds, 'But if you can get a vodka made with grain instead of potatoes, you will find it still better.' Most people who have worked in the service industries will recognise a customer like this." (pp. 242-3)

Amazing - Bond as an umarell! 

I especially like how free-wheeling and broad this all is. There's stuff on shamanic ceremonies from the ancient past, stuff on Freud and the fine art world and Putin. At one point, Higgs talks about the damaging effects of fame in disconnecting a rock star (or anyone else famous) from everyone else.

"Drugs and alcohol appear to mask this disconnect, but in reality, they exaggerate it - cocaine in particular acts as fascism in powdered form. It erodes empathy and keeps the focus on the ever-hardening ego." (p. 294)

It probes the less palatable bits of popular history, grappling head on the complexities of our heroes' objectionable behaviour and views. Our heroes are not always good people, yet by framing this all as a study of how attitudes and culture have shifted, the book avoids making them all villains. 

I nodded along to lots of perceptive stuff, like the thoughts on why Spectre (2016) didn't work precisely because it used screenwriting structures that usually do well in other movies. But I'm not sure Higgs is always right. He argues that a derisive response to a particular CGI sequence in Die Another Day (2002) led to a serious rethink by the Bond producers, which included sacking Pierce Brosnan. I suspect a more pertinent reason was that - as I understand it - Brosnan injured his knee while filming the hovercraft chase and first unit production had to be postponed while he underwent surgery. That would have been expensive and an ongoing risk for an ongoing series of action movies. The fantasy of a Bond who is, over 60 years of movies, always in his prime, must square up against the practicalities of ageing. And that's in line with what Higgs argues elsewhere.

But I don't make this point to criticise. It's more that I found myself responding to the book as if it were a conversation, inviting the reader to engage - and argue. Most potent of all is the final chapter. Having delved so deeply into the past, the author maps out how Bond should develop from here. Yes, absolutely, a younger, millennial Bond who'll appeal to a new generation, and one big on fun and consent, and whose partners don't all die. But also -

[Thankfully, Simon is dragged off-stage.]

Beautiful Shadow - A Life of Patricia Highsmith, by Andrew Wilson

I said in reviewing Martin Edwards' The Life of Crime last month that Patricia Highsmith had been "smuggling her snails in her bra." Edwards was quoting Andrew Wilson's 2003 biography of Highsmith, which a kind friend then sent me.

It's a fascinating story of a fascinating life. Highsmith is a complex, contradictory subject - on several occasions we're given completely different accounts of her, by turns cruel or kind, quiet or outspoken, fearful or bold. There are lots of reasons not to like her - the racism, the snobbery, the meanness with money when she was so wealthy. Yet understanding her background, her relationship (or lack of it) with her mother and her various struggles and heartbreaks makes this a compelling read.

There are all kinds of odd, striking moments. As well as the snails, there's her short-lived relationship with Tabea Blumenschein,

"the 25 year-old star and producer of the lesbian avant-garde pirate adventure Madame X" (p. 366).

Highsmith and Blumenschein spent six days together in a flat in Pelham Crescent, South Kensington, in May 1978 and at one point browsed the record shops. Blumenschein told Wilson that,

"Pat bought me the Stiff Little Fingers record" (p. 367),

presumably the band's debut single "Suspect Device" (released 4 February that year), before they went to dine with Arthur Koestler. The incongruity of that is even more striking when compared to Highsmith's selection the following year for Desert Island Discs: Bach (twice), Mahler and Mozart, and George Shearing's "Lullaby of Birdland".

A number of things made me begin to suspect that Highsmith was neurodiverse, and late on in the book her friend and neighbour Vivien De Bernardi told Wilson,

"In hindsight, I think Pat could have had a form of high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome. She had a lot of typical traits. She had a terrible sense of direction ... She was hypersensitive to sound and had these communication difficulties. Most of us screen certain things, but she would spit out everything she thought. She was not aware of the nuances of conversation and she didn't realise when she had hurt other people," (p. 394).

De Bernardi said this explains why Highsmith's relationships did not last; I think that's a bit glib - and that Highsmith may also have had some kind of attachment disorder, not helped by her (lack of) relationship with her mother. But I'm struck by De Bernardi's perspective of how this neurodiversity impacted Highsmith the writer:

"Although she didn't really understand other people - she had such a strange interior world - she was a fantastic observer. She would see things that an average person would never experience," (ibid).

Wilson has much to say about the content of and responses to Highsmith's lesbian novel The Price of Salt (1952), later republished as Carol and adapted into the acclaimed film. Highsmith originally published the book under a pseudonym and even when it went out in her own name was guarded in interviews about her sexuality. Often, people who knew Highsmith speak of her attitude to women as if from an outside perspective - as if she were a man. Wilson quotes Highsmith's own cahiers (notebooks) at great length, including a passage from 1942 that is ostensibly about other women and yet surely about herself.

"The Lesbian, the classic Lesbian, never seeks her equal. She is ... the soi-disant [self-styled] male, who does not expect his match in his mate, who would rather use her as the base-on-the-earth which he can never be," (p. 48, quoting Highsmith's Cahier 8, 11/18/42, Swiss Literary Archives in Berne).

Repeatedly, Highsmith identified with her most famous fictional creation Tom Ripley, signing a copy of Ripley Under Ground for her friend Charles Latimer as "from Tom (Pat)," (p. 194, but see pp. 194-6, 199, 350 and 454 for further examples). I now want to reread The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) with all this stuff in mind - from a queer (in the sense of both "strange" and "homosexual"), autistic, trans perspective. It's a book about somebody wanting to be and transforming themselves into someone else; an act of disguise that I think, having read this biography, might be very revealing.

Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman

I first read Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983) and its sequel, Which Lie Did I Tell? (2000), around the time I went freelance in 2002, on the recommendation of  established writer friends. In those days, I was hungry for advice and hustled round asking questions. One writer recommended the accountant I'm still with, another suggested making a list of all the things I fancied writing so I could gradually tick them off, and someone else prodded me towards Goldman.

I've now been freelance for more than 20 years, bloodied but unbowed. And it's surprising how much that makes a difference to the text here. Goldman is a brilliant writer -- I only meant to check a detail and ended up being drawn in to read the whole thing. Plus I'm a big fan of his movies (here's a young, green me enthusing about The Ghost and the Darkness).

But what strikes me now is how fearsome Goldman is -- confident yes, his enthusiastic stage directions full of what he admits to as "hype" that no director could realise, but also strongly opinionated about other people and their work. It is waspish, gossipy and good fun, but I wouldn't relish working with Goldman. 

I've also got the confidence now to say he's dead wrong about the end of Excalibur (he says Percival not throwing the sword into the lake at the end, as instructed, is a waste of everyone's time rather than a vital part of the legend). He's wrong about the casting of Nanette Newman in The Stepford Wives (far more effective, I think, if the fantasy women are blousy, home-maker, mothering types than the Playboy bunnies Goldman favoured).

"NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING" he tells us, twice, in capital letters on page 39. But I think I've picked up a few scraps.

The book is full of practical advice that I still find very useful. In sharing his own short story then writing a screen adaptation of it, he asks a series of questions: "What's the story about?", "What's the story really about?", "What about time [ie setting and duration]?", "Who tells the story?", "Where does the story take place?", "What about the characters?" and "What must we cling to?" That all seems obvious, basic stuff -- until he talks through the process of applying them to the story. Following his path, I found myself picking over the paltry bones of an idea I had a while back -- and then filling pages of my notebook with how that might just work. 

That's what I got from Goldman, this time and before when I was starting out: a terrific spur.

Cinema Limbo: Give My Regards to Broad Street

I've once again been a guest on Cinema Limbo, the podcast that picks over odd, old films. In this case, it's Give My Regards to Broad Street, the peculiar musical from Paul McCartney.

Cinema Limbo: Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984)

Previous episodes with me on them:

Cinema Limbo: The Wicker Man (2006)

Cinema Limbo: Smoke (1995)

Cinema Limbo: King Kong (1976)

Cinema Limbo: Ryan's Daughter (1970)

Cinema Limbo: Highlander II - The Quickening (1991)

Charles Hawtrey 1914-1988 The Man Who Was Private Widdle, by Roger Lewis

Charles Hawtrey of the Carry On films had an alcoholic cat. It was,

“pampered with port-soaked sugar lumps, its bread and butter sprinkled with Cyprus sherry, [and] used to walk into doors and see double when chasing mice.” (pp. 70-71)

This is just one extraordinary, sad and savage anecdote in Roger Lewis's pithy biography. Lewis has been diligent in going through BBC and BFI paperwork and in talking to those who knew Hawtrey in person. As well as the cast and crew of various productions, Lewis spoke to cab drivers, publicans, neighbours, and is good on the gulf between the cheery, cheeky persona captured on film and the angry, lecherous drunk of real life. 

Hawtrey's meanness is quite something:

“Of necessity [Lewis claims] he was frugal, penny-pinching. He maintained his account at the Royal Bank of Scotland (Piccadilly branch), because he believed the Scots would keep a beadier eye on their customers’ shillings. He’d lug bags of carrots from Leeds to Kent, because vegetables were cheaper in Yorkshire. He pilfered toilet rolls from public lavatories — or at least his mother did. She was notorious for wiping out supplies at Pinewood and, when rumbled, tried to flush away the incriminating evidence, which blocked the drains, closing down production on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Hawtrey was told that in future his mother would have to be locked in his dressing room.” (p. 72)

That's a fantastic a story but I'm not sure it can be true as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang began filming in June 1967 and Wikipedia claims that Hawtrey's mum Alice died in 1965. Lewis doesn't provide a source.

There's lots on money here. Hawtrey and his costars did not get rich from the Carry On films but producer Peter Rogers did. Instead, Hawtrey converted his house in Kew into bedsits — though implied to Roy Castle while making Carry on Up the Khyber in 1968 that he owned a “block of flats”. But Lewis says this enterprise didn't work out, and Hawtrey ended up being “ripped off” (p. 89). He retired to Deal, got banned from all its pubs and finally collapsed in a hotel doorway.

It's a troubled end to a troubled career. Hawtrey “never mixed with the rich and famous” (p. 12), and yet and some notable early roles. As well as playing several women on stage, he understudied Robert Helpmann as Gremio in Tyrone Guthrie’s production of The Merchant of Venice at the Old Vic, the cast including Roger Livsey as Petruchio and, in a small part, the future novelist Robertson Davies. A couple of years later, Hawtrey was in the cast of New Faces, the show that debuted Eric Maschwitz's hit song, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”

But Lewis shares excerpts over three pages from polite, curt rejections from the 1940s and 50s. Then, on page 61, he gives a long list of names at the BBC that Hawtrey wrote to in radio and TV, but concludes that these were,

“all radio or television apparatchiks, and not a single one of these names rings any bells with me” (p. 61n).

In fact, the list includes television pioneer Rudolph Cartier, Cecil McGivern (Controller, then Deputy Director of Television) and Shaun Sutton (later Head of Drama). I recognised various jobbing staff directors from the drama department, and Graeme Muir from light entertainment. So Hawtrey wasn't just writing to “everybody at Broadcasting House, from the Director-General to the janitors”; this is evidence of his range and aspirations — a serious, dramatic actor as well as comic foil.