Dick Francis: Wild Horses

Few authors could, or even wanted to, write screenplays of their own novels: Howard Tyler had been nominated for an Oscar at his first attempt and subsequently refused to sell his film rights unless the package included himself. Moncrieff and I were stuck with Howard, to put it briefly, as fast as it seemed he was stuck with me.

Our producer, bald, sixty, a heavily-framed American, had put a canny deal together for the company. Big-name author (Howard), proven camera wizard (Moncrieff), vastly successful producer (himself) and young but experienced director (T. Lyon), all allied to one mega-star (male) and one deliciously pretty new actress; money spent on the big names and saved on the actress and me. He, producer O’Hara, had told me once that in the matter of acting talent it was a waste of resources employing five big stars in any one picture. One great star would bring in the customers and maybe two could be afforded. Get more and the costs would run away with the gross.

O’Hara had taught me a lot about finance and Moncrieff a lot about illusion. I’d begun to feel recently that I finally understood my trade — but was realistic enough to know that at any minute I could judge everything wrong and come an artistic cropper. If public reaction could be reliably foretold, there would be no flops. No one could ever be sure about public taste: it was as fickle as horseracing luck.

O’Hara, that Tuesday, was already in the Bedford Lodge Hotel dining-room when I joined him for dinner. The studio bosses liked him to keep an eye on what I was doing, and report back. He marched into operations accordingly week by week, sometimes from London, sometimes from California, spending a couple of days watching the shooting and an evening with me going over the state of the budget and the time schedule. Owing to his sensible planning in the first place, I hoped we would come in under budget and with a couple of days to spare, which would encourage any future employers to believe I had organisational talents.

‘Yesterday’s rushes were good, and this morning went well,’ O’Hara said objectively. ‘Where did you get to this afternoon? Ed couldn’t find you.’

I paused with a glass of studio-impressing Perrier halfway to my mouth, remembering vividly the rasping of Valentine’s breath.

‘I was here in Newmarket,’ I said, putting down the water. ‘I’ve a friend who’s dying. I called to see him.’

‘Oh.’ O’Hara showed no censure, registering the explanation as a reason, not an excuse. He knew anyway — and took it for granted — that I’d started work at six that morning and would put in eighteen hours most days until we’d completed the shooting.

‘Is he a film man?’ O’Hara asked.

‘No. Racing... a racing writer.’

‘Oh. Nothing to do with us, then.’

‘No,’ I said.

Ah, well. One can get things wrong.

Fortunately, Wednesday morning dawned bright and clear, and Moncrieff, his camera crew and I attended sunrise beside the Jockey Club’s railings, filming atmospheric barred shadows without interruption.

Rehearsals with Cibber and George went fine later on the forecourt, with Moncrieff opening his floods easily to supplement the sun, and with me peering through the camera eyepiece to be sure the angles brought out the spite developing in the erstwhile ‘best friends’. By eleven we were ready for the cars-inward, cars-outward sequences, the police cooperating efficiently in the spirit of things.

Our male mega-star, laconic as always, patiently made three arrivals behind the wheel of a car, and four times uncomplainingly repeated a marching-to-execution type entrance through the hallowed front door, switching his fictional persona on and off with the confidence and expertise of a consummate pro. As if absentmindedly, he finally gave me an encouraging pat on the shoulder and left in his personal Rolls-Royce for the rest of the day.

At midday we broke for a well-earned hour for lunch.

O’Hara came in the afternoon to watch George’s Iago touch (which basically needed only an inoffensive ‘cool it just a bit’ comment from myself) and sat smiling in a director’s chair for most of the afternoon. O’Hara’s hovering smile, though I was never sure he knew it, acted like oil on the actors and technical crews, getting things smoothly done: under his occasional slit-eyed disapproval, problems geometrically increased.

After wrapping things up on the forecourt O’Hara and I went together to Bedford Lodge for an early beverage (light on alcohol, following the film company’s overall puritanical ethos), discussing progress and plans before he left fantasy land en route for marketing and advertisement in offices in London. Making the film was never enough; one had to sell the product as well.

‘I see you’ve booked our chief stuntman for Monday,’ he said casually, standing to leave. ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Untamed horses on a beach.’

I answered him lightly, giving him the option of believing me or not.

‘Do you mean it?’ he asked. ‘It’s not in the script.’

I said, ‘I can fit in the beach reconnaissance with the stuntman very early on Monday morning. Dawn, in fact. I’ll be back in good time for rehearsals. But... ’ I paused indecisively.

‘But what?’

‘In the past you’ve given me an extra day here or there,’ I said. ‘What if I could use one this time? What if I get an idea?’

Twice in the past, granted latitude, I’d slanted his productions into a dimension the public had liked. Without demanding to know details in advance of a process I found came only from spur-of-the-moment inspiration in myself, he gave me merely a five-second considering stare, then a brief nod, and then a virtual carte blanche.

‘Three days,’ he said. ‘OK.’

Time was very expensive. Three days equalled trust. I said, ‘ Great.’

‘If you hadn’t asked,’ he said reflectively, ‘we’d be in trouble.’

‘Don’t you think it’s going well?’ I had anxieties always.

‘It’s going professionally,’ he said. ‘But I hired you for something more.’

I didn’t feel flattered so much as increasingly pressured. The days when not much had been expected had been relatively restful: success had brought an upward spiral of awaited miracles, and one of these days, I thought, I would fly off the top of the unsteady tower and crash down in Pisa, and no sane finance department would consider my name again.

On the doorstep of the hotel, with his chauffeured car waiting, O’Hara said, ‘You very well know that in the matter of film making there’s power and there’s money. On big budget productions the money men dictate what the directors may do. On medium budget productions, like this one, the power lies in the director. So use your power. Use it.’

I gazed at him dumbly. I saw him as the mover behind this film, saw him as the power. He, after all, had made the whole project possible. I saw that chiefly I had been trying to please him , more than myself; and he was telling me that that wasn’t what he wanted.

‘Stand or fall,’ he said, ‘it’s your picture.’

I thought that if I were shooting this scene, it would be clear, whatever he said, that the real power lay in the older, craggily self-assured, lived-in face atop a wide-shouldered gone-to-overweight but comfortable body, and not in the unremarkable thirty-year-old easily mistaken for an extra.

‘The power is yours,’ he said again. ‘Believe it.’

He gave me an uncompromising nod, allowing me no excuses, and went onwards to his car, being driven away without a farewell glance.

I walked thoughtfully across the drive to my own car and set off along the road to Valentine’s house, aware of being at the same time powerful and obscure, an odd mixture. I couldn’t deny to myself that I did quite often feel a spurting ability to produce the goods, a soaring satisfaction that could nosedive the next minute into doubt. I needed confidence if I were to give life to anything worthwhile, yet I dreaded arrogance, which could at once mislead into sterile folie de grandeur . Why, I often wondered, hadn’t I settled for a useful occupation that didn’t regularly lay itself open to public evaluation, like, say, delivering the mail?