Alexander Stuart - The War Zone - 20th Anniversary Edition

Today is fine because Tim’s wife, Nikki, is here and we have a chance to chat, but mostly, unless I have something specific to do such as rewrites, I’d rather not be around.

Before I leave to be driven the four or five hours to Heathrow (I’m staying in an hotel overnight and flying home early tomorrow), I watch the first day’s rushes – the material we shot yesterday of Tom cycling up to the house, and of Ray, Tilda, Freddie and Lara inside.

It looks amazing, rich and darkly textured, with the impact of a European film – even a touch of Tarkovsky, whose Mirror is one of my all-time favorite works. Seamus has done an incredible job lighting our film, giving it the gentle, classical feel Tim always wanted.

The moment when Tilda washes Ray’s bare back in the kitchen, after he has come home from work, looks unlike anything I have seen on screen in recent years: a tender exchange between a loving, adult couple – literally a slice of kitchen-sink drama, but with a visual beauty that the trademark British films of the 1960s usually lacked.

Sunday March 22, 1998

Today I call the cottages in Devon from LA and have a long chat with Tim, Ray, Dixie and Michael Carlin, who were all having dinner/ getting drunk together.

They keep asking why I’m not there! They have now shot the scene between Ray and Lara in the shelter (which the locals are calling ‘the old shelter’, a tribute to the art department’s weathering process), and I think they are all very glad to have got through it.

Ray has rationalized it by saying that until that point, he had never really had to push himself as an actor. Lara found it utterly draining, but seems comfortable talking about it now. The film is about to enter its fourth week of shooting, of an eight-week schedule. Charong and I are planning to go to England for the final two weeks. As we finish our conversation, Tim says firmly, ‘ Get your arse over here! ’

Wednesday April 15, 1998

Charong and I arrived in London from LA on Monday, and the weather couldn’t be more different now than it was in late February.

Whereas then there was an Indian spring (if such a thing exists), now England is back to full-on winter. The War Zone is night-shooting outside London, near Borehamwood, and today, as we are driven to the location around 4:00 p.m., huge golfball-sized snowflakes are falling but thankfully not settling.

Tim is shooting the nighttime car crash that comes near the start of the film, and by the time the stunt driver is ready to go around midnight, the snow and the icy rain that followed it have stopped. Even though we have worn warm, waterproof clothes, the wardrobe department has provided us with extra layers, and we are glad that they have. It is icy cold in the dark, but the excitement and tension – flipping a Volvo over a fallen tree is expensive, and you can’t do it too often on our budget – creates a camaraderie among everyone present.

The first take of the car crash goes perfectly. The Volvo’s headlamps cut through what looks like a dark country lane (actually a private road, necessary for legal and safety reasons), then the car hits a ramp hidden by the fallen tree, shoots up into the air and turns over, landing with a dull thud and the sound of its dying engine and spinning wheels. The cameras covering the scene continue to turn as the dust settles, then our first assistant director, Nick Heckstall-Smith, checks that the driver is safe, and, although it is a perfect take, a second Volvo is flipped, as a backup.

By about 3:00 in the morning we are thoroughly cold and tired, and although I have vowed to try and make it through the entire night’s shooting along with the rest of the unit, Charong and I retreat to the warmth of our Soho flat. I later hear that even the ever-affable Ray slightly loses his cool, after having to lie in an icy puddle for several hours of filming.

Monday April 20, 1998

It may be a mix of the dire weather and the fact that Easter in England has very bad memories for me (Joe Buffalo was diagnosed with cancer just before Easter in 1987), but I feel quite seriously depressed this trip.

Even the prospect of the film approaching the end of production cannot lift my spirits, and today, when I start to watch the many hours of dailies which Tim has had transferred to video for me, my mood sinks further.

I have never doubted what he’s wanted to achieve with this film, but for the first time I start to worry that it is too dark, both literally and figuratively. Obviously the subject was always a bleak and harrowing one, but I tried with the novel to counter all preconceptions with a mixture of what I hoped would be unexpected elements: a hot, primal summer, an aggressive sense of nature, a middle-class family who seem on the surface to have no problems, a mix of anger, anguish and humor in Tom’s character and narration.

Watching the rushes, what worries me is that the children, Lara and Freddie, rarely if ever smile – and consequently that we as an audience will see sadness and trouble right from the start.

At my first meeting with Tim, when I said that translating Tom’s disruptive humor to the screen had always been a problem in earlier drafts, he told me not to worry, that the humor and warmth would be there in the looks the family share. Now I must trust in the fact that it’s hard to judge the subtlety with which a film will play from unedited rushes – and the faith I have in Tim, whose passion for this film has never lapsed.

Tuesday September 8, 1998

An extraordinary day. Tim is to screen The War Zone for me in Los Angeles at 3:00 p.m., but when we meet at Ilene’s (Tim’s agent’s) office to have a drink beforehand, the print of the film has gone missing! It was screened this morning in Santa Monica for Geoff Gilmore, the director of the Sundance Festival, but the courier who was supposed to pick it up took the wrong cans of film, and no one can track ours, which were picked up by another courier but not signed out.

Tim is decidedly pissed-off and anxious about the loss of our print – aside from anything else, the sensitive nature of key scenes, such as in the shelter, means that we don’t want pirate-video copies to be made and distributed before the film has even opened.

Leaving Ilene to try to chase down the print, Tim and I retreat to the calming and secluded garden of the Chateau Marmont to have a drink and wait for news by phone.

Finally, the print turns up around 5:00 p.m., but the preview theatre is booked for the early part of the evening, so we reschedule my screening for 9:30 p.m. and I go home to eat and rest up – I am still jetlagged after returning with Charong from Taiwan last week (a fifteen-hour time difference), following a five-week long research trip to Asia and Australia for another project for Sarah Radclyffe and Channel Four.

I know Tim is nervous about my finally seeing the film, and so am I. After so many years of working on it, what if I don’t like it? I love Tim as a friend, but I know I’ll never be able to hide my disappointment from him – he is far too good a bullshit-detector.

I am tired and anxious as I sit down in the small screening room with Judd Landon, my agent at Ilene’s company.

The room goes dark, the curtains part, and the gently building sound of breaking waves accompanies the stark opening shot – a bleak sky as seen through the unglazed slit that is the shelter’s only window, its dimensions exaggerated even further in the widescreen format. Simon Boswell’s haunting score begins, and Freddie appears on screen, the camera gliding effortlessly after him as he cycles through Devon hedgerows.