The Light’s On At Signpost. George Fraser MacDonald
to his hotel. No way to treat an eminent film director, and I wondered if he might be offended to the extent of getting another writer – I didn’t know him in those days, or realise that to a man who’d made two movies with the Beatles, a mile walk along a surf-lashed coast in the middle of the night in late December was a mere bagatelle.
All I could suggest was that we push the rotten vehicle to the top of a nearby slope, and then leap in, free-wheeling downhill to a point reasonably close to his destination; he sportingly agreed, we heaved and strained and sprang aboard at the psychological moment, coasting down and fetching up, with Richard sitting patiently and me crying: “Roll, you bastard!” not far from home.
That was when I asked him (eager to know if he was still talking to me): “How d’you want the Musketeers – straight, or sent up?” I knew his reputation for offbeat comedy, and was by no means sure that I could give him what he wanted. He responded with perhaps the nicest reply a screenwriter ever received: “I want it written by the man who wrote Flashman.”
I didn’t know, then, just how astonishingly lucky I was. It was the week between Christmas and New Year, 1972, I had three novels, a history, and a short-story collection to my name, but my only experience of film writing was a script which I’d done from my short stories at the request of a rather eccentric Scots-American entrepreneur; like so many projects, it had died some distance short of pre-production.
Then Lester’s offer came out of the blue. I knew him not only by reputation but because he had been engaged to direct a movie of my first novel, Flashman, but that, too, had been stillborn. I hadn’t been involved in the script, so Lester’s fastening on me, on the strength of my fiction alone, to write what promised to be a mammoth star-studded blockbuster, was a considerable leap of faith. I thought he was crazy; when I think of the chance he was taking, I still do, but I thank God he took it.
He flew across to the Isle of Man, we talked for about four hours, and while I can’t remember anything of our discussion, I know that one thing, the vital thing, became clear: we were on the same wavelength, and that, from a writer’s point of view, is something beyond price.
My first thought on meeting him was “Pied Piper”, for he was tall and slim and restless and mercurial and
his sharp eyes twinkled
like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled.
I was to discover in the ensuing weeks that he thought like lightning, always questing for the joke, jumping from idea to idea at speed, imagining, improvising, full of enthusiasm, listening eagerly; eventually it would become like a game of ping-pong in which we batted notions to and fro, many of them well over the top – but it’s a great truth of the film business that if you never go over the top you never get anywhere.
There are limits, of course. The original notion of a remake of the Musketeers had come, I believe, from Ilya Salkind, son of the great Alex, and one of the shrewdest ideas men in the business; he later came up with Superman, and frankly, if Ilya suggested a movie based on the Book of Job I’d think hard about it. Whether it was he who floated the notion of the Beatles as Dumas’s band of adventurers, I can’t say, but I imagine that was how Lester, as the Beatles’ director, had come to be involved in the project. Fortunately (at least from my point of view) the casting of John, George, Paul, and Ringo went no further, and Lester was commissioned to come up with a more orthodox version.
At all events, he left me on the Isle of Man with a remit like a pipe-dream: one of the great classic adventures to adapt into four hours of film, the assurance that it was going to be a big-budget spectacular, a free hand to write as I wanted, and one hint about the quality of cast he was looking for: he wanted Richard Chamberlain for Aramis. That told me a lot; in most Musketeer movies the trio tend to blend into each other, three jolly swordsmen all for one and one for all, but Richard had hit on a man who was ideal for Dumas’s priestly killer, cold, urbane, supercilious, and cruel. In doing the script I wrote little separate character studies for the actors, and I remember describing Aramis as quite the least likeable of the Musketeers.
The first half of the script, up to the Intermission, took me three weeks; Richard was enthusiastic, and then we went into heavy sessions in his office at Twickenham Studios, changing, editing, discarding, re-casting, and going through that long, painful and ultimately rewarding process which eventually transforms the first draft into the finished article. (But always, said Billy Wilder, keep that original draft by you, because you’re sure as hell going to go back to it.)
There were occasions when our drama became a crisis: at one stage another writer, a household name, was asked to rewrite an early scene, but to my delight Lester flung it into the bin. Again, when my suggestions seemed to be falling on stony ground, I lost patience and offered to quit, at which he sighed and said: “You’re being hysterical, George, in your own quiet way.” Looking back, I’d say he was the ideal director for a novice screenwriter to work with, always encouraging, always optimistic, convincing me that I, and only I, could do his script for him.
We gradually developed a close harmony, with a kind of shorthand in which one had to speak only a few words for the other to latch on and elaborate; some scenes we had to discuss in detail, others hardly needed more than a few words. It’s a strange process of cross-fertilisation, and I can only describe it by examples.
Dick wanted the Musketeers to be rather less stainless than they are usually portrayed; could they be seen stealing, say, in some novel way which would take the hard edge off the crime, perhaps diverting wine along a gutter by some ingenious device? I suggested a tavern fight in which their brawling would hide the fact that they were lifting all the food in sight – that was enough; we kicked around various ways of pinching comestibles, I sketched the scene out in script form, and Dick arranged and choreographed the whole thing as only he could.
The same thing happened when we were looking for a new way to stage a sword fight which would give opportunity for some knockabout action; I suggested staging it on a frozen pond, and Dick gave what I can only call a hungry grin and said: “Say no more!” And beyond writing a line or two for Porthos to bellow, and devising a piece of sadism for Aramis, I didn’t need to.
It was fascinating, in writing a scene, to see what he would do with it. I had a perfectly tranquil meeting between the Queen of France and Buckingham which, for sheer novelty’s sake, I set in the palace laundry – Lester doesn’t miss chances like that, and concluded the lovers’ meeting with the most colossal turn-up among the soap suds between the Musketeers and the palace guards. I had what I thought was another cute idea, with the King and Cardinal Richelieu eating canapés from a line of gold plates; pull back, and lo! each plate is on the head of a dwarf. A nice little visual effect, which Dick embellished by having the little buggers talking.
My technique then, and I followed it in later films, was to describe every shot in detail, the idea being to let the director and actors know exactly how I saw the thing. If they liked it, fine; if they didn’t, it could be done another way. Some directors regard this as an intrusion on their territory; the best ones, the Lesters and the Fleischers and the Hamiltons, are all for it, because as experienced professionals they are always open to suggestions – which is not to say that they will always follow them. They have forgotten more about composition and camera angles and various kinds of shot than I will ever know, but there’s no harm in giving them your ideas.
It could be very rewarding with Lester, because when the movie was shot and I saw the rough-cut, I realised a strange thing – he and I had very much the same visual sense, in that we saw things the same way. Time after time I would have envisaged a scene in my head – and there it was on the screen, “realised”, as the French say, by Lester. One instance sticks in my mind: when D’Artagnan arrives at the Hotel Treville and becomes embroiled with one Musketeer after another, the overall scene is one of tremendous bustle and activity, with people jostling and hurrying and a fine confusion reigning. Dick approved my final draft (probably my fifth or sixth) and then suddenly asked: “What does it look like?” Off the top of my head I said: “Like a Breughel painted by Rembrandt.” He smiled, nodded, said nothing – and shot it gloriously.
I can’t be sure