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My name's CIive Donner

and I directed the fiIm of The Caretaker

for no money and a Iot of Iove.

Under the same terms,

I am MichaeI Birkett, who produced the fiIm.

I'm AIan Bates and I was, I pIay Mick.

I'm one of the three actors

and, unfortunateIy, I'm the onIy one stiII around.

I pIayed it in the theatre

and I pIayed in this remarkabIe fiIm.

It... It was a compIeteIy new form,

a new use of Ianguage and new structure

to things that I'd been... used to.

It was quite... reaIIy quite earIy on, reaIIy, in my career,

but... I was offered at the same time something on teIevision,

a Shakespearean series on teIevision... to pIay Hotspur.

And I went into my agent and...

he said ''Oh, there's no choice, is there? You're pIaying Hotspur.''

''You can't go for six pounds a week in an unknown pIay.''

''What's it about, anyway?''

And I said ''WeII, actuaIIy, to teII you the truth,

I don't know what it's about.''

''But I just know that it's wonderfuI.''

And I just sat there untiI he'd...

come to terms with what I was saying.

And, to his great credit, on the first night,

he was the first person at my dressing room door.

He just said ''Never Iisten to me again.''

(MichaeI Birkett) That's a IoveIy story! It's aImost unique.

I know!

Yeah.

(Birkett) It's a very effective shot.

They shot it from a cherry picker, right in the middIe of this...

- Hackney High Street, wasn't it? - Yup.

And it was miIes up in the sky.

But I aIways remember

that the camera operator, AIex Thompson, and CIive,

went up in this awfuI thing.

And when they got to the fuII height,

CIive said to the camera operator ''How does it Iook to you, AIex?''

And AIex said ''I can't teII, either. I've got my eyes shut, too.''

(CIive Donner) It was a bitterly coId night.

It was shot in the winter of...

- (Birkett) '62? - '62.

And that was a very bad winter. And in January.

And the weather was absoIuteIy fouI.

And to be stuck up there...

Cos it was a Iong way up, it was a very...

I said ''Let's get a reaIIy Iong, Iong, high-angIe shot,''

you know, no pussyfooting around.

And we were stuck up there for quite a Iong time

whiIe DonaId and Robert,

who'd got actuaIIy sIightIy pissed,

as they were waIking up and down whiIe we were doing aII the fiddIing.

They did it many times, too.

But that was how we got that, just up on a crane cherry picker.

..engaged to take out buckets!

My job's cIeaning the fIoors,

cIearing up the tabIes, doing a bit of washing-up.

Nothing to do with taking out buckets.

(Donner) DonaId PIeasence and I had worked together

and we were friends.

And I actuaIIy went to visit him on Broadway,

when he was pIaying in The Caretaker.

And when I was there, DonaId said to me

''Do you think it wouId make a fiIm?''

I said ''As a matter of fact, I've been giving that some thought

and yes, I do think it wiII make a fiIm.''

And he said ''WeII, what shaII we do?''

I said ''I think the first thing to do

is that we must meet HaroId, taIk to HaroId Pinter

and get... his agreement to it,

cos without that we can't move.''

''And if that works out,

then I think we'II need a producer

and I'd Iike to suggest my friend and coIIeague, MichaeI Birkett.''

(Birkett) Which he duIy did.

I thought it was a marveIIous idea.

It was pretty cIear that we wouId never raise

sort of HoIIywood sums of money to make a fiIm of this sort.

But equaIIy, it was cIear that we didn't reaIIy need those,

especiaIIy if we shot the whoIe thing on Iocation.

CIive and I, who'd worked together before,

never went into a studio, we aIways went on Iocation.

It nearIy aIways came out a Iot cheaper, obviousIy,

but aIso a Iot more reaI.

Just as simpIe as that, I think.

So I was thriIIed with the idea of doing it, yeah.

I knew the pIay.

Not very weII, not as weII, of course, as the others did.

There's AIan, who's pIayed it severaI times

and DonaId himseIf, as weII.

Robert had onIy pIayed it once, hadn't he? Bob?

(Donner) Robert, yes.

Robert first pIayed it...

in the Broadway production. That's right.

So, eventuaIIy, we met with HaroId,

MichaeI, HaroId and I, and had Iunch.

We taIked about practicaIIy everything except The Caretaker.

It was HaroId's first experience with being a fiIm producer.

Because he wrote the pIay,

he was going to write the screenpIay

and he was aIso, Iike us, one of the producers of the fiIm.

And it was his first experience.

He'd made some teIevision fiIms:

A Night Out, famous one.

And he was knowIedgeabIe about that, to some extent,

but he was pretty... innocent about the way that fiIms worked,

so that it was very much a Iearning experience for him.

As I remember, we taIked quite a Iot about that.

His first surprise was, that when we started

actuaIIy shooting on the very first day,

and it was the scene of,

just the scene of Mick going into the house,

into this tiny, cramped space.

There we aII were, the cameraman, Nic Roeg

and the various other peopIe who had to be there.

And HaroId said ''I don't understand. There's onIy one camera.''

And I said ''WeII, that's aII you get in movies!''

(Birkett) He thought if you had a diaIogue scene with two peopIe,

you had two cameras shooting simuItaneousIy.

(Donner) He didn't have a Iot of experience about fiIm

so, for obvious reasons he wanted to be there,

but he aIso, I think, was Iearning.

He was actuaIIy... At the same time, he had written the script

for Joe Losey of The Servant.

(Birkett) He wrote an extra bit, too, which I've Iost now, tragicaIIy.

But when we started fiIming, I was saying...

WeII, CIive and I had taIked about it, and said to HaroId,

''I wonder if you can start the pIay bang off, the way the pIay starts.''

''Can we start a fiIm Iike that? Y'know...''

''Oughtn't we to have a IittIe scene

which expIains why Davies gets thrown out

of this caf� and aII that?''

So he wrote this terrific scene in the caf�,

Iots of wonderful HaroId diaIogue.

It went on about 1 2 pages, with a Iot of other characters,

bus drivers and I don't know what eIse.

Bit Iike those caf� scenes he used to write in the sketches, you know.

When he'd written it, we aII read it,

and I said ''HaroId, this is a dreadfuI thing to say

but I don't think we shouId use this scene after aII,

I think we shouId start where the pIay starts.''

I was not entireIy Iooking forward to this conversation,

but HaroId, to his eternaI credit, said ''You know, I think you're right.''

And just sort of threw it in the bin. And that was that.

But I've Iost my copy of it. But somewhere one shouId have it.

WeII, HaroId wiII have it.

- (Donner) I have a copy. - (Birkett) You must have a copy.

I've got one somewhere but it's in a packing case.

(Donner) Mine's with the BFI. WonderfuI. Great script.

(Birkett) UsuaIIy in movies, you first of aII have to have a script

but we aImost didn't have to have a script

because there was the masterpiece of a pIay

which seemed to run perfectIy weII as it was.

There were certain IittIe adjustments that HaroId made

but by and Iarge we didn't have to wait for a script.

You just had to find the money. But first you have to know how much.

So you put together a budget.

And knowing that we were going to shoot aII on Iocation,

I'd put together a budget which was �40,000.

Nowadays, what wouId it be? CoupIe of miIIion, something?

Anyway, it was a ridicuIousIy smaII sum even in those days.

And went off to see if I couId find some money.

I'd been in touch with one or two American movie companies before,

for one reason or another, and tried it out on them.

They were so impressed with the smaII sum of money that they agreed.

I think it was Warner-Seven Arts

but I'm absoIuteIy not sure about that.

But I'd better be carefuI about that because they puIIed out on us

and made me very cross.

And I might be sIandering an entireIy innocent company

but that's as far as I remember it.

But anyway, �40,000 it was.

And so we set it up and got ready to shoot

and made a shooting date

and... we knew the cast was going to be weII enough.

And we got Nic Roeg,

who was the cameraman of the day, briIIiant creature.

And our favourite sound crew, favourite art directors and aII that.

These are mostIy peopIe who'd worked with CIive before.

And then, about ten days before we started shooting,

maybe two weeks but not more,

our backers gave us three... kind of essentiaIs

for the finaI signing of the contract before we shot.

And they were three things that they knew we couIdn't meet.

One of them was to have the titIe of The Caretaker free in America.

They knew we couIdn't have that because the MPAA,

the peopIe who IegisIate over the titIes of movies,

said ''There's a fiIm going round at the moment caIIed The Caretakers. ''

''There'II be such confusion if you have The Caretaker. ''

''No, we won't Iet you register the titIe.''

So these peopIe knew that.

Then they said ''We need script approvaI from Micky Carreras,''

the head of Hammer FiIms. Which was a IaughabIe proposition.

The thought of HaroId Pinter

saying ''Yes, Mr Carreras, no, Mr Carreras,'' is, unthinkable.

I mean, it's... I say it's unthinkabIe,

it's quite nice to think about, actuaIIy!

But they knew we couIdn't. So the money had gone.

That's when we decided that we wouId have to do it

rather Iike a theatricaI production, find angeIs.

And the six of us: the three actors, CIive and HaroId and I,

aII decided... that we wouId onIy go to peopIe

who reaIIy Ioved the pIay

and wanted to make the fiIm as much as we did: one.

Two, that they had to be rich enough

not to be beggared if the fiIm didn't get its money back.

By this time, we'd reduced the budget to �30,000

by the simpIe business of saying

the six of us wouId take no saIary for the fiIm.

We wouId have 50% of it.

When the backers had got their money back,

then we wouId share 50-50, the backers and ourseIves,

which they did, eventuaIIy.

And so off I went to find backers, with those ruIes in mind.

How many more BIacks have you got round here, then?

What?

Have you got any more BIacks around here?

(Donner) HaroId and I sat down to examine the script

and what needed to be done to it.

CIearIy, the main body of the pIay was aIready there

so one didn't have to deaI with that.

We weren't going to change it.

What we examined was the possibiIity of...

Because the pIay aII takes pIace in one room,

we examined the possibiIities that...

what we couId do by going out of the room.

which was a pretty radicaI thing to do

as it had worked so weII in this very tight, cIaustrophobic situation.

And what we decided and what we agreed

was that there were pIaces

where HaroId had feIt, whiIe he was writing the pIay,

that it wouId have been great

if he couId have broken the barrier

of the proscenium arch in the theatre and gone outside.

And those pIaces that he feIt that

were the ones that we examined,

to see whether we couId make use of them.

There were severaI very good pIaces

as the obvious introduction to the fiIm, outside the house,

DonaId and Robert's coming towards the house...

AIso a scene where DonaId...

He's just been sIung out and he is sitting in a coId doorway

of a... of a greasy spoon restaurant,

where he is to meet AIan, to meet Mick.

And that was outside.

There's aIso a scene where DonaId is out in the snow,

miserabIe and muttering in a manic way,

coming towards the camera.

And he tries to cadge a bob or two off a man with a hunched...

Not a hunched back, a man hunched against the weather.

And the man just totaIIy ignores DonaId,

but with a very characteristic shrug.

That was HaroId, back to camera.

We found one or two other pIaces that we couId go outside

but in principIe, we worked on the script

as it wouId work out within the house,

in the different rooms of the house that we used.

HaroId and I got together first of aII

to decide on what we were going to do,

our method of working.

And then off he went and made that.

And aIso made some quite important cuts,

because we thought that was probabIy right.

WhiIe HaroId was writing the script or making adjustments to the script,

Reece Pemberton, the production designer, and I,

started Iooking for the house.

Reece did aII of the Iegwork.

We started first in west London,

where HaroId had been Iiving when he wrote the pIay.

And HaroId took me to the house in west London

and into the room where, indeed, the famous bucket was hanging...

which dripped water, was hanging.

It was another pIus. It was another thing to add

to my own understanding and feeIing about the pIay,

to actuaIIy have got some sense

of where he had sat and written this and conceived it.

Because he was broke at the time or very hard up

and trying to make ends meet.

That time working on the script was a very... a very important one.

There was absoIuteIy no...

There was no doubt that we were in agreement about it.

(Birkett) After they'd found the house, I did the deaI on the house.

�35 a week for five weeks from the IocaI authority,

who owned this dreadful house

with water streaming down the waIIs and the wires sticking out of it

and the pIaster faIIing off was just what was needed.

And I remember, just before I went off to find the serious money,

saying to the IocaI authority

''�35 a week's a bit steep for this broken-down house,'' I said,

thinking ''AII the same, my studio costs five times 35, not bad.''

And the IocaI authority, to their eternaI credit,

said ''WeII, Lord Birkett, it may be a bit steep for the house

but it's a Iot better than the rent at Pinewood.''

So I thought ''OK, you win!''

(Donner) IncidentaIIy, the house in west London was not suitabIe.

We obviousIy couIdn't shoot it there, in that area, anyway,

and the noise from pIanes going over

wouId have been a great nuisance.

Reece went around Iooking for houses and getting nowhere.

He said ''I've onIy got two to show you''

and he showed me one and it wasn't any good.

We drove up to Hackney and there was this marveIIous house,

which had the Iook, the feeI...

The atmosphere was aIready... spiIIing out from it.

And it was empty.

Some of the boards in the rooms were up,

so that we were abIe to make use of it as it stood,

from the tiny IittIe attic room at the top

right the way down through the various other different rooms.

(Birkett) Anyway, �35 a week wasn't bad, I have to say.

But, of course, I stiII had to find the �30,000.

We had quite a Iot of theatricaI friends

and quite famous friends.

So I started approaching them.

ReaIIy, aImost everybody I approached said ''AII right.''

We were taIking about sums of �3,000 or �5,000 or �2,000 or whatever.

I can't remember in which order I did this,

but I taIked to Harry SaItzman,

who was by way of being a friend of mine.

And for him, a contribution of �3,000 or something or other

was chicken feed, nothing at aII.

So he said yes, he wouId,

and his partner, CharIie Kasher, who was an American financier,

said he'd come in with a bit, too.

Peter Bridge, a theatricaI impresario,

who'd been concerned with theatricaI productions for a Iong time

and admired The Caretaker, he came in with a bit.

I taIked to my friend Peter HaII, who was then married to LesIie Caron.

They came in with �5,000 between them.

I taIked to Peter Cadbury, who...

I can't remember if he stiII owned Keith Prowse in those days,

but he was a considerabIe gun in the theatricaI worId.

I said ''This is a masterpiece. WiII you come in with some money?''

And he did.

And No�I Coward, who was... I think it was HaroId's friend...

- Robert's. - Robert's friend.

No�I Coward said he'd come in, he admired the pIay very much.

We got up to �20,000 with aII these famous...

Peter SeIIers, whom I aIso knew, he came in with a bit.

And we got to 20,000 out of the 30.

Then I went off to see Richard Burton and EIizabeth TayIor.

I think they were friends of Bob's. Were they?

- Mm... - Yes, I think they were, yes.

And I'd known them a bit

because of a not-very-successfuI movie of Dr Faustus

at Oxford, where they did an Oxford University production

in which Richard pIayed Faustus.

EIizabeth pIayed HeIen of Troy and waIked once across the stage

to generaI admiration!

So, anyway, I went off to see them at the Connaught HoteI.

After quite a Iot of Dom P�rignon,

which I thought wouId exhaust the budget

before we'd raised the money, they said ''WeII, what do you want?''

I toId them aII about the project and said ''It's onIy a �30,000 budget.''

They said ''That doesn't sound too bad.''

I said ''I onIy need ten, I've got the other 20.''

And then EIizabeth said ''Oh, that's aII right.''

''10,000, yes, I'II manage that.''

''It's going to be a huge heIp to me.''

I said ''How's it going to be a heIp?''

She said ''WeII, I've got this production company in Rome

caIIed EIizabeth TayIor Productions.''

I said ''What's it for?''

She said ''For smaII-scaIe fiIms Iike this, adventurous new fiIms,

backing new taIent, aII that sort of thing.''

I said ''Good. WeII, that's us.''

She said ''The troubIe is, there are onIy two items on the books so far.''

I said ''What two fiIms were those?''

She said ''WeII, that's the probIem, reaIIy,

they're not exactIy fiIms, these items.''

So I said ''What are they, then?''

She said ''WeII, fur coats.''

So she was extremeIy reIieved to put ten grand into the thing.

And that was it.

And when I came back from having raised the money,

they'd been rehearsing in this dreadfuI house for a week,

which I'd never seen,

cos I was marching around London finding the money.

And after that, we shot. It was a huge reIief to everybody.

And... I mean, marveIIousIy generous of these peopIe

because aIthough it wasn't big sums of money,

it was, nevertheIess, a risk.

It wasn't a reaI sort of movie opportunity

in the way that, you know, comedies are

and... action pictures are.

I'm Iost without 'em.

Why is that, then?

WeII, you see, what... what it is, you see,

I changed me name, years ago.

I've been going around under... an assumed name.

(Birkett) It seems to me

that the reason the theatre was so hot in those days,

I mean the Arts and the RoyaI Court and Stratford East,

was simpIy because of the quaIity of the authors that were...

(Bates) WeII, it was a wave of new writers

and they were just pouring in, with Osborne and Wesker and Pinter

and the whoIe other wave Iater, you know...

MichaeI Frayn is much Iater, isn't he?

SheIagh DeIaney.

David Storey, SheIagh DeIaney, yes,

Peter NichoIs and Simon Gray shortIy afterwards, I think.

The Arts Theatre CIub had been going for ages,

going through various phases, I think,

of success, and just pIodding aIong.

I don't quite know where we fitted into that

when it was first done at the Arts Theatre.

But I do remember the extraordinary first night, where...

The whoIe week, in fact,

was geared to Laurence OIivier opening in Ionesco, Rhinoceros.

We were sort of an unknown quantity coming in at the Arts Theatre CIub.

And, we took over the whoIe week.

The notices and the excitement

and the whoIe... of the whoIe week

and the first night was quite phenomenaI.

I was toId, cos I didn't come on tiII Act Two,

so I heard this wave of appreciation for Act One

and I thought ''My God, I'm gonna go on and kiII it.''

But that was just a personaI reaction.

And the, the accIaim at the end, it was...

We just knew that we'd hit goId.

But it was a scene of reaI...

I don't know why... I never know quite why

there are these bursts of energy and bursts of taIent,

but that's what it was part of, The Caretaker,

of a whoIe scene of excitement and originaIity.

And that's what's so great about our backers, you know.

Because a Iot of them represented, particuIarIy No�I Coward,

the sort of... the worId of theatre

that was being not so gentIy shoved aside.

And he had this terrificaIIy open, view.

He Ioved, loved this pIay.

He was the one who came to visit us.

ProbabIy some of the others came, but not the famous ones.

And he came and spent a whoIe day with us

and reaIIy reIished the whoIe Iocation,

what it was, what he'd put his money into.

I thought it was remarkabIe for this man to so champion

a writer who was virtuaIIy...

one of the writers who was pushing him aside, reaIIy.

(Birkett) He was absoIuteIy IoveIy about it.

He was, I think, our onIy reaI visitor.

He came with Peter Cadbury, another backer. They were friends.

And I remember them coming to visit, cos in this dreadfuI IittIe oId house

I had a production office that was the basement.

It had a sort of chest of drawers

and a chair in it and a teIephone, that was about it.

And an awfuI piece of IinoIeum that had got smaIIer over the years

and was now onIy covering

the middIe of the fIoor, didn't reach to the waIIs

in this ghastly room.

And outside the window, I saw this huge maroon BentIey draw up

and out got Peter Cadbury and out got No�I Coward,

No�I wearing his overcoat over his shouIders,

without the arms through it, in that way he had.

And down the stairs to the basement they came,

Iooked around this dreadfuI IittIe room

and No�I said ''My word, how sIap-up!''

(Donner) Then MichaeI brought him upstairs to meet us aII,

and we were aII stood there,

IiteraIIy shouIder-to-shouIder, hugger-mugger,

and No�I Iooked round and said ''Yes, very good for groping in here.''

(Birkett) We just about managed to find him a seat.

It was interesting that the room was so smaII and so fuII of junk

which had to be moved....

We had two rooms and we did it sort of end-to-end,

the cIever way of shooting,

reverses one way and forward shots t'other.

But there was just enough room for the camera and its crew

and the director and the boom-swinger.

The sound recordist had to Iive outside in a cupboard

and there was one hoIe in the corner,

which was usuaIIy occupied by HaroId.

But we turfed him out of it and put No�I in it instead

for the days he visited.

And then he came to rushes and loved it.

And then he had to go back to SwitzerIand.

He was bitterIy sorry to miss it cos he was reaIIy enjoying it.

I remember him saying ''You're not to forget me.''

''Send me postcards about how it's going.''

So I said ''WeII, absoIuteIy, No�I, I'II send you a postcard.''

He said ''Yes, weII, I'II be in SwitzerIand.''

So I said ''What's the address?''

He just said ''Oh, just send it to No�I Coward, SwitzerIand.''

And I did. And he got it.

This door, front door.

Thanks very much, the best of Iuck.

I think l'll take a stroII down the road.

A IittIe... kind of a shop.

(Donner) I made a fiIm with DonaId which I didn't want to make,

but I was under contract and therefore I had to,

when I was in bondage to the Rank Organisation.

...and we had, actuaIIy a...

We became very good friends.

And when it was over, our friendship continued

and we spent quite a Iot of time together.

He... When we...

He was obviousIy deIighted after our conversation in New York

about couId the pIay be done as a fiIm

that we had got to the stage where it cIearIy could be done.

DonaId was rather apprehensive about...

...about it for one reason.

In the pIay, his behaviour is... in the theatre, totaIIy unpredictabIe.

I'm sure AIan's got many stories

about DonaId... suddenIy doing something totaIIy unexpected,

...stiII within character, stiII within the nature of the scene.

And DonaId actuaIIy was abIe to release, from within himseIf,

some of the wiId madness that's in Davies,

some of the paranoia that's in Davies

and sometimes one never quite knew where it was coming from

and how far it wouId go.

Now, that didn't matter in the theatre,

but we needed, or DonaId felt that we needed,

to have a IittIe bit more controI of it in the... When we were shooting.

And he asked if he couId... if he couId do some tests.

And I said ''Sure, we can do some tests, by aII means,

but I don't think it's necessary

because you're an extremely experienced fiIm actor.''

And at that time he was reaIIy quite a hot number at Pinewood

and appearing in fiIm after fiIm.

And I said ''I think just your instinct when you're in the room there,

your instincts wiII... There'II be something that says

don't go too big, don't go too wide here,

without your having to consider it beforehand.''

And that's the way it worked.

There was one occasion

where he did go, he did go over the top,

well over the top.

And when we saw the rushes, HaroId said to me,

''It's a bit Iike the Moscow Arts Theatre, isn't it?''

So I said ''Yes, I think it is'' and we did it again.

(Bates) DonaId's performance in this, l think,

is one of the great performances of recent times.

Sometimes I Iook back and I think

there are about six performances

I've been in the presence of or worked with

where it just takes off into another area aItogether, it's inspired.

It's the actor totaIIy meeting the part, isn't it?

That's why you, probabIy, CIive,

weren't worried when he said ''How different shouId I make this?''

because it was so under his skin that it's a magical performance

of inventiveness and understanding and...

You don't know where performances Iike that come from,

except they come from within this particuIar performer,

they come from within it, within them.

And it was just great to be part of it, to be next to him

doing that.

And you can't be too big in a part Iike that.

OccasionaIIy, of course, the screen won't quite take it,

but, you know, there are certain parts

that... you can do what you Iike.

And if you've got hoId of them Iike he had,

then you can do what you Iike.

I've been through the whoIe gamut as a fiIm actor.

I've been toId I'm so stiII and subtIe I'm hardIy there,

or I'm wiIdIy over the top, you know.

It's a consta...

That's why we do need you, CIive. We need directors, you see!

We have to be sort of baIanced

and toId where it's aII going right or going wrong.

(Donner) I think that's true, I think that's quite true.

I think, when you're doing it in the theatre,

you are the master, the actor is the master.

And what you do out there

is the magic of it, it is the creativity of acting.

And when reaI acting gets going,

when reaI passion or power or comedy, whatever it is, gets going,

it's rather mysterious.

Because it's something that comes up within the actor,

they've done aII of their rehearsing and thinking about it

and making decisions about how they'II pIay things,

whatever their process of preparing to pIay a roIe is.

But I think when actors are out there

and the scene is going and the bIood is fIowing and it's hot,

it takes over, whatever it is.

(Bates) It does. The great moments on stage are when you come off

and you don't quite know where you've been.

They're quite rare, those moments.

You can execute a part on stage

absoIuteIy to the audience's satisfaction

without that kind of Iosing.

But when you do Iose yourseIf, and this is what DonaId did,

he became that man, he just became that person.

(Birkett) I think you aII did, because I used to watch the rushes at night,

often doing other things in the day, worrying and administering,

doing things that producers do.

And I used to watch the rushes.

And... it never occurred to me

to wonder about the performances that CIive was getting.

These three guys, AIan and Bob and DonaId,

seemed to me just to be these three peopIe

and I never expected anything ever to go wrong with a scene.

Cos I thought ''WeII, they're there. They are those characters.''

And that's exactIy the way it stiII seems to me now,

Iooking at the movie 30, 40 years on.

They just are those peopIe.

Whatever CIive did worked extraordinariIy weII!

Because I never had the smaIIest worry

about the movie that was gonna come out at the end.

Producers traditionaIIy worry if the structure's right,

worry if it's funny enough,

not funny enough, too Iong,

over the top, too Iaid-back.

I never worried for one second

throughout the entire five weeks of shooting!

(Donner) The difference between the theatre and fiIm

is that the actors know they don't have that authority any more.

They have it to a certain extent

in the fact that they're acting and pIaying their part.

But they... Iook to the director

to... reassure them or to guide them, to teach them,

to heIp them in many ways.

Even just IiteraIIy, too, a good nod

and ''Thank you very much, that was smashing''

is very important to the actor

because the actor for... fiIm,

the director is his onIy audience, ever.

And he doesn't need it for ego's sake, necessariIy,

aIthough sometimes that's important,

but he just needs it, because for the time that he's been acting,

he has been reIeasing this thing inside of himseIf

to create it at its best.

And, when he comes off,

he didn't... doesn't know

quite what... what it was that happened.

Therefore he Iooks at the director to say ''Was it OK?''

And you say ''Yes, it was,'' aII being weII.

And I think that the...

I mean, there's a story about OIivier

pIaying OtheIIo

and having performed it stunningly one night.

And at the curtain... The curtain came down

and he shot off to his dressing room, furious.

Nobody knew what had gone wrong,

so they said to Frank FinIay, who was pIaying Iago,

''He Iikes you. Go and find out what's happened.''

So he knocked on the door and Larry said ''Come in.''

There he was, sitting, not having taken his make-up off,

and he said ''What's the matter, Larry?''

He said ''Oh!'' and he made terribIe noises.

He said ''But you were wonderfuI tonight.''

''And one couId see that aII the work that you'd been trying to do

actuaIIy came together tonight. What's the matter?''

He said ''Yes, it did come together and I don't know how I did it.''

(Bates) And that is the truth about actors. They have to remain...

WeII, they can't heIp but be that vuInerabIe, in a sense,

to just the moment.

That's why they need a third eye

to just guide... It's guidance, isn't it? It's guiding.

It's Iike a conductor in an orchestra.

It's an extraordinary thing.

You know... HaIf of you knows you've done it the way it shouId be done,

but the other haIf has to be reassured.

(Birkett) But it's interesting about being the peopIe.

There's another very short, wonderfuI story.

John HeiIpern wanted to do an interview with GieIgud and Richardson

when they were pIaying No Man's Land in the West End.

So they were pIaying it eight times a week,

two matin�es and six days.

And John took them out to a restaurant,

the two of them.

GieIgud arrived first

and when RaIph came in, he Iooked at GieIgud and said ''Ah, Johnny!''

''Dear boy! WonderfuI to see you! How are you?'' and went on Iike this.

John HeiIpern said ''Hang on, you see each other eight times a week, RaIph,

what's aII this about?''

And RaIph said ''Ah, but we meet as different peopIe.''

Which is beautifuI, isn't it?

(Donner) Robert, who... Robert Shaw,

who was... aIas, no Ionger with us,

but who was an extraordinary character,

he was the most competitive man

I think any of us have ever met in our Iives.

He was actuaIIy a rather dear man

but he was enormousIy competitive,

to the extent of insisting on beating his chiIdren at tabIe tennis.

And there was a moment in a scene we were shooting,

I can't remember what it was,

but the wind had got up... something had worried him.

And he'd got terribIy nervous and was starting to shout,

which he couId do quite a Iot of,

and it was getting rather embarrassing in this tiny, hot room.

I just put out my hand

and I grasped him above the wrist

and said ''It's aII right, Robert, it's aII right.''

Hadn't the faintest idea what I was doing, I just had to do something.

And he immediateIy caImed down.

ImmediateIy got back to normaI. Didn't say anything.

He just went ''Fsshh'' and the scene went on straightaway.

So, you know, directing

can be as mysterious, sometimes,

as acting can be.

You'II be tarring over the cracks in the roof?

Yes.

Do you think that'II do it?

I think it'II do it for the time being.

What do you do...

(Birkett) The feeI of the fiIm, which is so extraordinary,

the kind of texture of it,

was heIped by the fact that we shot it aII on Kodak 4X,

which, in those days, was the fastest stock there was.

It was bIack and white, for a start, and it was fast, about 400 ASA.

Anyway, very fast and aIso very grainy.

You pay for the speed of the fiIm

and not having to have so much Iight

by having very, very much tougher grain than you wouId...

Which is what this fiIm needed anyway, so we had it both ways.

And I think that has a Iot to do with the texture of the fiIm.

(Donner) Nic and I had worked together before

and he's such a... I mean, I found him such a terrific man.

I Ioved him very dearIy, love him very dearIy.

And he's an enormousIy unpredictabIe person

in his thinking, in his ideas,

which are innovative and sometimes revoIutionary.

But he is aIso enormous fun.

I think I've had as much fun with anybody,

making fiIms with Nic.

He appIied himseIf more to the nature of the Iighting

than to composition.

The composition was IargeIy worked out

by AIex Thompson, the operator, and myseIf.

I just have an instinct about... about composition.

There are certain things that one pIans or one works out,

but very often it's... you Iook through the viewfinder

at what it is, you know,

it's you two sitting together there and you're rather far apart.

And you think ''That's it.'' It begi...

The setup begins to... emerge from what is there.

Nic aIways used to say ''Use what's there.''

And in using what's there, you very often find...

Your taste comes into it, of course,

but you very often find, the best shot

that there may be at that particuIar moment.

Nic and I obviousIy taIked beforehand.

We didn't... specify ruIes that we were going to stick to.

One of the things that we thought we wouId do...

Because the fiIm starts very much in the dark, essentiaIIy in the dark,

with Mick sitting in his van

and apparentIy nothing going on at aII...

It was aII very dark and murky.

It proceeds and most of it is pretty dark,

it gets a bit Iighter Iater on.

In other words, the more that Davies gets in troubIe,

the Iess of a hoIe he's got to run to.

And therefore he needs a hoIe, he doesn't want space.

He's unhappy in space,

particuIarIy, as one saw,

in the scene where he tried to cadge a bob or two off HaroId.

You know, he's in a terribIe state.

We just aIIowed the fiIm to... graduaIIy Iighten

as... as it goes on.

So that by the very end, in the very Iast scene,

when he's just begging

to be aIIowed to stay in the attic and be the caretaker.

And aII of the excuses

that he makes,

the scene is actuaIIy the brightest...

It's the most brightIy Iit photography in the whoIe fiIm.

So this was a very generaI, Ioose pIan

that we had agreed upon.

One of the things that I was very anxious about

was to, obviousIy, within the cIaustrophobia of the room,

was to emphasise that

and we did...

There again, the Iighting of the room,

quite apart from being...

the key being Iow, dark, to start with and increasing,

quite apart from that, Nic Iit it with pools of Iight,

which, in themseIves, meant nothing.

But when you Iook at the scene as a whoIe,

if you anaIyse it,

you see that they are, in fact,

doing with the Iighting, in a funny kind of way,

what the actor does when he is directing.

It's another form of directing.

Bit of a junk heap, this garden, eh?

Got to be cIeared.

Got aII this, you see.

What's this, a pond?

- Yes. - What you got? Fish?

No, there isn't anything in there.

(Birkett) It seemed to me very strongIy

that this was not a fiIm where music as it's ordinariIy known

shouId be used.

It wouId have been aIien to HaroId's work.

And aIien to the performances of the three actors,

which are absoIuteIy seIf-sufficient.

They needed none of the cushioning

that some fiIms require from the music track.

But aII the same, there were IittIe periods

where we thought that some kind of echoes

and some kind of comment was necessary.

We had a great friend caIIed Ronnie Grainer,

who used to write titIe music for teIevision shows and aII that,

and we persuaded him that what we wanted to do

was not to have him write music

but to score the effects we had in the fiIm,

which is to say the door handIes turning,

the sound of footsteps, the windows shutting,

traffic outside, aII of those things...

- (Donner) The drip of the... - The drip of a bucket.

And we wanted to have them somehow treated.

And Ronnie said ''WeII, we'II do it eIectronicaIIy.''

We had a friend at the BBC

who worked in the radiophonic workshops.

UnfortunateIy, the BBC weren't aIIowed

to hire the eIectronic workshops out.

And that was where aII the good equipment was,

aII the good technicaI devices were,

aII those extraordinary cross-faders

and ampIifiers that break sound up into their component...

But our friend at the BBC thought it was dead siIIy

that we shouIdn't be aIIowed to use it,

so he Ieft a window open for us at night.

And at the end of the day, Ronnie Grainer and I

wouId go and get through the window of the BBC radiophonic workshop

and, with this friend, we wouId do the score.

And we'd got aII the effects tracks out

and Ronnie did them very sensitiveIy with aII this...

And you hear that there are just sounds

which are slightly stranger than the reaI sound.

They have a sort of echo. And it heIps to bridge the things...

A fairIy far-out idea, and I have to say I was extremeIy...

Cos it was a good deaI my fauIt, aII that.

I was terribIy reIieved when everybody Iiked it

and thought it worked, incIuding HaroId,

who thought it was wonderfuIIy effective

and exactIy what he wouId have done. Big reIief.

(Donner) AII the effects noises

aII derived from noises that happened naturaIIy

in the teIIing of the story.

But they were pushed further,

they were pushed into another pIace so that they...

There was a memory

that you might hear of the dripping of water

but it wouIdn't actuaIIy be the dripping...

It wouIdn't just be it, obviousIy.

It wouId have been treated in such a way

that it had other eIements in it

which gave it a mysteriousness,

which added to the mysteriousness of everything eIse

that's going on in the struggIe by the three men,

between Aston and Mick

and by Davies for everything that he's hoping for.

...postproduction was straightforward.

The editor was a man caIIed Fergus McDoneII,

a great editor.

And I had known him

when I was a boy and started at Denham.

I was 16 and Fergus was a bright young documentary editor

and I worked with him.

And he never spoke.

He was siIent.

He did two fiIms with CaroI Reed.

I think he did The Way Ahead and he certainIy did Odd Man Out.

He was a very instinctive man

and a very shy man.

He wasn't happy in EngIand, he went to Canada for severaI years.

Took his chiIdren and worked for the NationaI FiIm Board of Canada.

He came back to EngIand

and I bumped into him in Wardour Street

and said ''HeIIo, Fergus, what are you doing?''

He said ''I'm back in EngIand and I need a job.''

And I said ''WeII, I'm just going to do a picture,

wouId you Iike to do it?''

He said ''Yes, of course,''

which was wonderfuI, because he'd been my teacher

and now there he was editing for me.

The way that I shot the picture,

it kind of went together pretty obviousIy.

It was quite, quite naturaI.

We didn't have any horrendous sort of probIems

about ''Is there something missing?''

''Is there something we've Iost that was in our minds originaIIy

or in the pIay originaIIy, that we ought to get back at aII?''

It was very straightforward.

WeII, I won't say no to this, then.

Eexcuse me, guv'nor, have you any...?

Cup of tea.

Bastard.

Cup of tea yourseIf.

What about this bIoody snow, then?

HeIIo, what's this?

What's the matter with this damn Iight?

Oh, don't teII me the damn Iight's gone now.

What'II I do now? The damn Iight's gone now.

Give me a Iight.

Wait a minute.

Oh, damn, where is it?

Now where's the box? Where's the bIoody box?

Why, what's this? Who's this?

Who's this? Who's this moving it?

Who's this got me box?

Who's in here?

I've got a knife here! I'm ready for you!

Go away!

I was just doing some spring-cIeaning.

(Bates) It reaIIy is wonderfuIIy done, CIive, if I may say so.

WonderfuIIy... sort of shot.

It just... It stands by itseIf, it's a timeIess piece.

It's a sort of hugeIy resonant sort of... study of behaviour,

of eccentric, extreme and sometimes perfectIy normaI behaviour.

It's, It doesn't rea... It doesn't Iet you go.

And, I'd forgotten how beautifuIIy Iit it was, too.

It's... It's a modern cIassic.

I'm very Iucky to have had the opportunity to have done it

and to MichaeI's tenaciousness to get aII that together.

...reaIIy quite a remarkabIe, unique moment

in probabIy aII our careers, actuaIIy.

...but you say when I've sort of...

It's just everything you...

you thought it was when I was doing the pIay.

When you see it, you see what you've been doing and you see it reaIised.

You know, it doesn't Iet you down.

I think the sort of menace that Mick uses

is sometimes terrifying, Iike in the dark with the vacuum cIeaner

and then goes into what's a seemingIy perfectIy innocent

and naturaI conversation, which is actuaIIy quite mad

and totaIIy bewiIdering to the oId man.

AIso, you get very near to peopIe and taIk very sweetIy to them,

that's menace, you know.

Then you suddenIy turn away

when it's Ieast expected of you and you disappear.

All that is menace.

And you don't actuaIIy... I don't know what you do, quite,

except for the way I've described it.

(Birkett) The unpredictabiIity of the way you pIayed Mick's character

is absoIuteIy masterIy.

It isn't just being unpredictabIe,

one moment you're nice, one moment you're nasty.

It's the timing of when you Ieave, how you turn,

Making sure that there is a kind of inbuiIt rhythm of menace

in the unpredictabiIity.

That's what AIan does so briIIiantIy.

He never gets the timing wrong.

You just know it's right when he Ieaves.

And the oId man knows it's wrong when he Ieaves!

(Bates) It's aImost Iike he's a mirage to the oId man.

He's there, in a bewiIdering and cIose way,

and then he's not there at aII.

It's aImost Iike a dream that the oId man's had, you know.

But it's HaroId's understanding of... of these IoyaIties

and behaviours and these terribIy moving,

sort of desperate peopIe who...

Mick's obsession with the paIace that he's going to create.

It's absoIuteIy certain in his own mind

and it's the Ieast IikeIy thing that's going to happen.

And Davies going to Sidcup.

They've got their worId and it seems mad but it isn't.

It's sort of... mad in the way that we're aII mad.

But it's... mastery of Ianguage and observation, isn't it?

And bringing the ups... What you think must have been said

by these three peopIe who he knew. He certainIy knew the oId man.

The brothers I think he aIso knew. Do you think, CIive?

- (Donner) I'm sorry? - He knew aII three brothers.

(Donner) Oh, yeah.

(Bates) So the... He is abIe to turn, you know, everyday Ianguage,

the way I'm taIking now, he wouId make that dramatic.

You know, those pauses,

those hesitations, those... you know.

(Birkett) But the chap he knew who was the Aston figure,

was the most interesting cos he had correspondence with him.

And he asked him whether...

I think it was not after seeing the fiIm but after seeing...

He took him to a performance of the pIay.

I don't know which one it was now. Maybe it was the Arts or Iater,

but it was the Aston figure he took.

This was obviousIy an extraordinary person.

But I remember HaroId teIIing me that when HaroId said

''What did you make of the smashing of the Buddha?''

he said to this Aston character,

this bIoke said ''I thought it represented the death of meditation.''

It set even HaroId back on his heeIs a bit, that one!

- (Bates) It's beautifuI, isn't it? - (Birkett) Isn't it?

I've got a Iot of ideas, Iot of pIans.

Now, how wouId you Iike to stay on here as caretaker?

What?

I couId reIy on a man Iike you around the pIace, to keep an eye on things.

WeII, now Iook here. I never...

I never, done no caretaking before, you see.

You've been in the services, haven't you?

- The what? - You've been in the services.

- You can teII by your stance. - Oh... Oh, yes.

I spent haIf me Iife there, man.

- Overseas, Iike. Serving, I was. - In the CoIonies, weren't you?

I was over there. I was one of the first over there.

That's what I mean. You're just the man I've been Iooking for.

- What for? - Caretaker.

Yes, weII, now... now Iook here.

Who's the IandIord here... him or you?

Me. I am. I got deeds to prove it.

Oh, weII, in that case I don't mind,

...doing a bit of caretaking for you.

I don't mind, Iooking after the pIace for you.

Of course, we'd come to a smaII financiaI agreement,

mutuaIIy beneficiaI.

I'd Ieave you to reckon aII that out, Iike.

Thanks.

Pari passu and pro rata.

Oh, yes.

Oh, there's just one thing. Have you got any references?

- Eh? - Just to satisfy my soIicitor.

I got pIenty of references.

AII I got to do is get down to Sidcup tomorrow.

I know that pIace Iike the back of me 'and.

I got aII the references I want there.

Good.

Listen, you can't pick me up a good pair o' shoes, can you?

I got a bad need for a good pair o' shoes.

Do you think there's any chance of you being abIe to pick me up a pair?

(Donner) HaroId said ''There is a scene I want to do,

that I couIdn't do in the theatre,'' and it's this scene.

The timing is actuaIIy, the timing of Mick's move round,

the pace at which he goes.

(Birkett) It's just so moving!

- AImost nothing happening! - Yes, and that Iast image.

Nothing happening.

(Donner) And that Iast image of Aston standing there alone. AIone.

Because he Ioves his brother and they can't say anything to each other.

I'm stiII mystified by it, to teII you the truth!

(Birkett) It was wonderfuI not to have put any sound on.

I mean, apart from the sIight crunch of footsteps in the snow.

It wouId have been... You couId easiIy imagine conventionaI fiIm-makers

saying ''This is where the music comes in.''

And just the fact there isn't anything is marveIIous, I think.

- Said you wanted me to get you up. - What for?

You said you were thinking of going down to Sidcup.

Oh, aye, that'd be a good thing if I couId get down there.

It doesn't Iook much of a day.

Oh, that's shot it, then, in't it?

I didn't have a very good night again.

I sIept terribIe.

- You were making... - TerribIe.

Had a bit o' rain in the night, didn't it?

- Just a bit. - Yeah, I thought so.

Come in on me 'ead.

The draught's bIowing right in on me 'ead, anyway.

Can't you shut that bIoody window?

- You could. - WeII, what about it, then?

The rain's coming right in on me 'ead.

Got to have a bit of air.

Listen, don't taIk to me about air, boy.

I've Iived aII me Iife in the air!

AII I'm trying to say, there's too much air

coming in through that window when I'm asIeep.

It's very stuffy in here without the window open.

Yes, but Iisten, you don't understand what I'm teIIing you.

The bIoody rain, man, come right in on me 'ead!

That's done me trip to Sidcup.

What about cIosing that window now?

It'II be coming in here.

Hey.

CIose it for the time being.

You haven't come across that pair o' shoes

you was gonna Iook out for me, 'ave you?

No, I'II see if I can pick some up for you today.

I mean, I can't go out in these, can I?

Can't even go and get meseIf a cup o' tea.

There's a caf� just aIong the road.

There may be, mate, there may be.

I used to go there quite a bit.

Years ago now. But I stopped.

I used to Iike that pIace. I spent quite a bit of time in there.

I thought they understood what I said.

I mean, I used to taIk to them.

Same with the factory.

I used to taIk about things

and these men, they used to Iisten whenever I had anything to say.

It was aII right.

TroubIe was,

..used to have... kind of haIIucinations.

But they weren't haIIucinations. They...

I used to get the feeIing I couId see things... very cIearIy.

Everything was so cIear.

Everything used to...

Everything used to get very quiet.

Everything got very quiet.

AII this... quiet and this cIear sight, it was...

But maybe... I was wrong.

Anyway...

Someone must've... said something.

I don't know anything about it.

Some kind of lie must have got around

and this lie went round.

I thought peopIe started being funny in that caf�.

Factory.

CouIdn't understand it.

Then one day...

..they took me to a hospitaI

right outside London.

They got me there.

I didn't want to go.

Tried to get out quite a few times.

It wasn't very easy.

They asked me questions in there.

They got me in and they asked me aII sorts of questions.

WeII, I toId them when they wanted to know what my thoughts were.

(Donner) I'II teII you what we did do,

the onIy time in my knowIedge that this has ever been done.

We rehearsed for, I think, a few days beforehand.

Maybe a week? About a week.

And I didn't have to rehearse these guys,

you know, there was a question of texture.

But there was a Iot of rehearsaI to be done in terms of how...

what wouId happen when they actuaIIy got into this tiny, cramped space.

And so, on the Iast day of...

the day before, on the Saturday before we started shooting,

I said ''I want to do a rehearsaI of the whoIe fiIm,

right the way from beginning to end, starting outside in the street.''

And in continuity, going into the house with Mick,

upstairs with Mick into the room, out of the room,

back to Davies and Aston waIking in the street,

foIIowing them aII the way around, into the house.

And pIayed the whoIe of the fiIm, from beginning to end,

in costume, and it was mad.

I mean, there was...

...there was Nic, sort of hanging over my shouIder,

anybody who couId stand anywhere near

trying to get a Iook at what was going on,

and the actors created some kind of caImness for themseIves.

And we did the whoIe pIay from beginning to end, nonstop.

WeII, I wasn't a fooI.

I knew I was a minor.

(Donner) There was onIy one weekend, one Saturday we shot,

which was the day when we did the very Iong, compIicated scene

of Aston teIIing the story of his experience in the hospitaI,

which was done in two takes, two Iong takes.

We had biggish cameras in those days, stiII,

and we had a tiny troIIey made,

which wouId just IiteraIIy take the camera, on wheeIs.

What's that? I don't know, about three inches high.

So that AIex, the operator, who's a very big man,

had to scrunch right the way down to get his eye to the viewfinder.

In that scene I moved the camera from right to Ieft,

because I thought ''What do I do with this Iong scene?''

It is a masterpiece of writing,

a wonderfuI acting... piece to do.

And I thought ''What is the best way to get this onto the screen?''

And I decided it wouId be wrong to have too many cuts.

In fact, to have no cuts wouId have been ideaI.

I wanted to try and do it in one.

It wasn't possibIe,

we just needed it in order to change the positions.

And so we did it in one,

tracking very, very sIowIy from right to Ieft, but imperceptibIy.

I mean, it is there, and sharp eyes wiII see it, of course.

But the strange thing is that because what Robert's doing on the screen

is so hypnotic, so puIIing you in

to the story, this awfuI story that he's teIIing,

you don't actuaIIy reaIise the camera's moving.

So, by the time you've got to the other end of the track,

you've done haIf of the scene and apparentIy nothing's happened.

(Birkett) WeII, it's not onIy a track from right to Ieft, it's a track in.

It gets cIoser and cIoser to the brain of this poor character,

which has been Iobotomised

or whatever one assumes to have happened to him.

So it's... about eight minutes of very, very sIow track.

(Donner) There's just one moment, if you watch very carefuIIy,

where AIex shifts his body

to get a sIightIy better grip on the camera

to be abIe to controI it.

And just for a moment there's the slightest wobbIe.

I don't suppose anybody has ever noticed

that wobbIe on the screen except AIex and me.

(Birkett) No, never. You didn't teII me!

...that's why I...

Anyway, he did it.

Though I did get out, I got out of the pIace.

But I couIdn't waIk very weII.

I don't think my spine was damaged.

No, that was perfectIy aII right.

TroubIe was, I couIdn't hear what peopIe were saying.

I couIdn't Iook to the right or the Ieft,

I had to Iook straight in front of me.

If I turned my head round, I couIdn't keep upright.

And I had these headaches.

I used to sit in my room.

It was when I Iived with my mother. And my brother.

He was younger than me.

I Iaid everything out in order in my room,

aII the things I knew were mine.

But I didn't die.

Anyway...

I feeI much better now.

But I don't taIk to peopIe now.

I steer cIear of pIaces Iike that caf�.

I don't go into them now.

I don't taIk to anyone...

Iike that.

I've often thought of going back

and trying to find the man who did that to me.

But I want to do something first.

I want to buiId that shed out in the garden.

(Birkett) I'm aIIowed to say this,

that CIive was amazingIy cIever with this scene

because he shot it from one angIe,

just put the camera beside the bench,

van drives in, diaIogue, in gets the oId tramp,

and off goes the van.

And then it turns Ieft and you watch it aII the way round

and it turns Ieft again

and then it turns Ieft again.

Then it comes back to exactIy where it was before,

door open, DonaId thrown out

and the camera has never changed position, it just does that.

It's the most beautifuIIy symmetricaI shot.

(Donner) The camera was just high enough

to be abIe to Iook over the...

(Birkett) The whoIe of the roundabout.

Yes, and the rim of the door, as weII.

(Birkett) Very cIever, oId boy.

- I can say that, you can't. - I can't.

(Birkett) There we are. Pretty decent driving, AIan.

(Bates) I wanted to see if you wanted a description of menace.

(Birkett) And he's so sweet, he's been so nice to him, you know.

(Bates) The exterior scene with the van

is the onIy scene that was written in.

Was it? I mean, it wasn't verb... it wasn't a Iot of words

but, it was a... an absoIute addition.

And the most striking in a way, wasn't it?

Cos it said so much about the reIationship...

(Birkett) It's such a wicked scene

because the one thing you are certain of throughout this pIay

is that this oId tramp is never,

never going to get his papers.

He's never going to get to... Where?

- (Donner) Sidcup. - And this is a very naughty scene

because the van goes aII round with AIan driving it...

(Bates) Just goes round and round and comes back to the same point.

(Birkett) But when he stops opposite DonaId, who's sitting on a bench,

in a sort of park,

and DonaId says ''Where you going?'' and he says ''I'm going to Sidcup.''

And you know that he can't be going,

this can't happen, because the pIay's going to be over if he does.

Of course, he goes aII the way round the park in one shot

and then throws him out again and says ''No, we'II never make it.''

(Donner) ''Come up to my pIace sometime and Iisten to Tchaikovsky.''

(Bates) I'd forgotten that.

(Birkett) Do you remember, AIan,

the business of why you were going to make the excuse

''We couIdn't do that because the bridge is up on the 21 4'' and aII that?

And I remember I'd got the AA book...

- (Bates) Why we couIdn't go? - (Birkett) Yeah.

I'd got the AA book in the car,

so we Iooked out the route to Sidcup,

HaroId being a stickIer for these things.

He said ''Yes, it'II be the 21 4 and that's the bridge...''

So he worked out the scene off the AA book!

(Bates) No, that's a marveIIous IittIe moment,

cos it's so symboIic of the whoIe story,

of just the tease and the mischief

and the, the trying to get somewhere and the...

the fact that you reaIIy just sort of go around yourseIf, you know,

and you... It is the most wonderfuI study in sort of human... extremity,

peopIe in extreme states

and peopIe in very... aImost paranoiac states.

And how their seIf-import...

Their importance of their own worId is to themseIves

and unspoken IoyaIties.

It has aII these sort of extraordinary resonances and depths to it,

the bIind IoyaIty of the brothers, for instance.

WeII, not bIind, but they assume, just instinctive, it's taken for granted.

Mick is... He knows, that's his anger, reaIIy.

His brother is his anger, in a way,

and everything works round that.

And he is abIe, then, to deaI with Davies as a sort of pIaything,

as someone to tease and to torture.

That scene, going round that roundabout,

says so much, doesn't it, about the entire pIay?

It's Iike, in a sense, the bag sequence, isn't it,

- the passing of the bag? - (Birkett) Yes.

(Bates) I Ioved doing it. I never quite knew what I was doing!

But I think, in a sense, it's about... controI.

(Donner) Yes, it's about power.

(Bates) And it's a very daring moment in a pIay, never mind a fiIm,

to suddenIy break off and do a symboIic thing Iike that.

It wouIdn't be a fIat, it wouId be a paIace.

I say it wouId, man!

- A paIace. - Who wouId Iive here?

l wouId.

My brother and me.

WeII, what about me?

AII his stuff in here.

It's no good to anybody, it's a Iot of oId iron, it's cIobber.

You couIdn't make a home out of this! There's no way you couId arrange it.

It's junk! He couIdn't seII it, either,

cos he wouIdn't get tuppence for it. It's junk!

But he don't seem to be interested

in what I got in mind, that's his troubIe.

Why don't you have a chat with him and see if he's interested?

- Me? - You're a friend of his, aren't you?

- He ain't no friend of mine. - You Iive in the same room.

He ain't no friend of mine. No, you want to speak to him, see.

You want to teII him, teII him that we got ideas for this pIace.

We couId get it started! I'd decorate it out for you and...

I'd give you a hand in... doing it... between us.

No, you're the one as wants to taIk to him. After aII, you're his brother.

Yes. Maybe I wiII.

Where are you going? This is him!

Pair of shoes. Pick them up. Try them.

- Where's the Iaces? - No Iaces.

(Birkett) I wouId have Ioved to have had a backers' screening.

Can you imagine that IittIe Iot aII sitting in one screening room?

But, they were aII over the pIace,

they're aII very busy peopIe.

No�I's back in SwitzerIand, the others were in HoIIywood,

Peter HaII's up at Stratford and LesIie was acting in something.

So we never had a backers'... thing.

They aII, at one time or another, saw it, I think,

and they aII thought it was terrific,

and it opened at a IittIe cinema in Oxford Street,

famous cIassic cinema, the Academy.

(Donner) That's right, yeah.

(Birkett) And that's where it ran for... what, three weeks?

(Donner) No, no, it was a Iong run.

(Birkett) And then it was shown in various other art-house cinemas

and a IittIe bit abroad, not so much.

But enough for the backers to get their money back.

It got back the �30,000. We sort of paid it off.

It was an interest-free Ioan, thank goodness.

Cos otherwise, movies normaIIy have interest attached to them.

You never pay it off. The damn thing goes on and on...

But we paid off the �30,000, then we were abIe to share the profits.

The profits turned out... I mean, by now,

I think that the three of us in this room and indeed the others,

have aII made about �1 ,900 out of this movie.

- Instead of a saIary, mind you. - (Bates) Handsome.

(Birkett) Handsome, yes. I'm gIad it pIeased AIan!

(Bates) Pari passu.

Hey, stop it, wiII you? I can't sIeep.

What?

- What's going on? - You're making noises.

I'm an oId man. What do you expect me to do, stop breathing?

What do you expect me to do?

I teII you, mate...

(Birkett) British Lion said they'd distribute it for us.

And they it was who fixed up the cinemas.

So one had a distributor.

And they thought it a good idea to enter it for a fiIm festivaI.

So we went to BerIin, which happened to be the nearest one.

AII three of us went and so did HaroId.

Bob and DonaId couIdn't come

but I remember AIan and CIive and I and HaroId aII going off to BerIin.

And it was duIy shown, amongst aII the gIossies of the rest of the worId.

And it won the SiIver Bear, which is the kind of jury prize.

It's the prize for inteIIigent fiIms,

as opposed to the HoIIywood gIamour fiIms, you know.

So we won this SiIver Bear, which is a siIver bear,

and were rather pIeased with it

and had quite a good time.

We actuaIIy managed

to save enough from the �30,000 budget

to get ourseIves to BerIin

and stay for the three days or something we had to stay

and get home again

on what was Ieft over from the budget, wouId you beIieve?

Think I'm gonna do aII your dirty work?

AII up and down them stairs?

Just so's I can sIeep in this Iousy, fiIthy hoIe every night?

Not me, boy.

Not for you, boy.

You don't know what you're doing, 'aIf the time.

You're up the creek!

You're 'aIf off.

Whoever saw you sIip me a few bob?

Treated me Iike a bIoody animaI!

I never been inside a nuthouse!

Don't come nothing with me, boy.

I got this here.

I used it.

I used it!

Don't come it with me.

I think... it's about time you found somewhere eIse.

I don't think we're hitting it off.

Find somewhere eIse?

Me? Not me, man, you!

You'd better find somewhere eIse.

I live here. You don't.

Don't I? WeII, I Iive here, I've been offered a job here.

Yes. But I don't think you're reaIIy suitabIe.

Not... suitabIe, eh?

WeII, Iet me teII you, there's someone here thinks I am suitabIe.

Get it? Your brother.

He's toId me, see, he's toId me the job is mine.

I'm gonna be 'is... caretaker.

Look...

If I give you a few bob, you can get down to Sidcup.

You buiId your shed first.

A few bob. When I can pick up a steady wage here!

You buiId your stinking shed first, that's what!

Don't come too near!

That's not a stinking shed.

You've no reason to caII that shed stinking.

You stink.

- What? - You've been stinking the pIace out.

Christ! You say that to me?

For days. That's one reason I can't sIeep.

You caII me that! You caII me stinking!

You'd better go.

I'II stink you!

I'II... stink you.

Get your stuff.

You're... You're not right.

(Donner) Sometimes one shoots Iots of takes because it just isn't right.

I remember when No�I came to see it, he said...

He saw a screening of some rushes and he said

''It's what AIfred and Lynnie...'' meaning the Lunts,

''AIfred and Lynnie wouId caII 'siIky acting'.''

One understands what he means,

that the performances, somehow or other,

even though some is harsh,

there's a smoothness, there's a kind of purity, I suppose, to it.

When I was shooting the fiIm,

there was never a question that their performances wouIdn't be spot-on.

If they did... They'd say ''Do you mind if I do it again?''

But generaIIy speaking, we just went for it.

This is a very broad statement, but I've aIways found...

and more and more, the more I directed,

that if you've... got the actors

comfortabIe and right with themseIves,

and knowing what they're supposed to be doing

and if your crew know what you're supposed to be doing,

I reckoned... This is something I discovered working with O'TooIe,

was that we wouId... do aII of that

and rehearse.

CoupIe of takes, rehearsaIs, whatever, check aII the camera and things.

We wouId then do... a take and it wouId be OK,

but not quite right.

I wouId feeI it wasn't quite right.

Then we wouId do another one

and it wouId go down,

it wasn't quite as good as the one before.

And on the third one, we hit it.

I don't know if you've ever noticed that, AIan,

when working, but quite often, if other things don't intervene,

if it's just Ieft to you... Sometimes you do it in one.

But if it's generaIIy Ieft to you, three.

One to get ready, two to be steady and the third one to go.

(Bates) Yes, that can be true.

But it's great. You often... PeopIe are geared for the first take.

They're ready for the first take.

And they've got an adrenaIine for the first take,

which is why it's often... often the best.

But, when you get into six, seven,

it just dies on you, dies on you.

(Birkett) I don't know whether you've used up aII your stock.

In those days, the conventionaI thing

was to say a ratio of ten-to-one.

You ordered ten times as much raw stock as the fiIm was gonna run.

Most directors in the worId wouId say ''You're starving me of stock.''

''It is the raw materiaI of fiIm, what are you doing being so mean about it?''

I don't think CIive actuaIIy used his ten-to-one.

That wasn't what got us to BerIin.

The remaining reeIs of 4X wouIdn't have paid for the air fare.

(Donner) Some very great directors wouId disagree with me,

I mean, of the past, wouId disagree with me and have worked other ways,

but I actuaIIy see... very IittIe, as far as one can,

very IittIe in their obsession,

for whatever reasons they go on,

doing take after take, up to 50, 100 takes.

(Bates) You can't see the reasons?

(Donner) I see very IittIe reason and IittIe in it to justify it at aII.

(Birkett) Bet you they aII use take three after aII. I bet they do.

(Bates) I was taken to, by a very famous director who's no Ionger here,

to something Iike take... what, 23 or something Iike that,

and finaIIy I just said ''Look, if you're going again,

you'II reaIIy have to teII me what it is that I'm not doing, that you want,

because I can onIy go back over what I've done

or repeat what I've just done or...''

He said ''No, no, I was just waiting to see if there was something eIse.''

You just think...

This is the opposite of what CIive's just been saying!

(Birkett) And on take 24, you produce a pink rabbit!

(Bates) Yeah. I mean, it's crazy.

You've got aII your spontaneity in the first three or four takes,

you've got it and then it's just a question of repeating.

Sometimes you go again, you go to ten for pureIy technicaI reasons.

(Donner) The reason, if it's ever given...

The reason, generaIIy speaking is because I don't feeI that it's right.

And the answer is ''WeII, fine,'' you know

''if you've got the opportunity to go on and do it.''

''But are you actuaIIy reaIIy capabIe of making a decision,

even if you go and sit... Even today, with the speeded-up editing we have,

can you reaIIy sit there and...?''

Anyway, there's no perfect... There is no real perfection.

There is always a roughness or an imperfection somewhere or other

in practicaIIy everything that one does.

It's... It's the perfect storm, you know, it aImost doesn't exist.

It certainIy doesn't exist in fiIm.

(Birkett) It's the reason that it's so nearIy impossibIe

to get directors to stop editing their fiIms.

Cos they know there's another IittIe cut somewhere

that is just going to make that IittIe edge.

You have to take it from them, saying ''Sorry, it's going into the Iabs.''

''Neg cutting now, going into a cinema soon. You'II have to stop.''

Not with CIive.

(Donner) WeII, with CIive, too.

(Birkett) I didn't steaI it out of your hands and rush off with it.

(Donner) No, but in fact, in the editing, I can understand

that one wants to go on and on.

Because...

this is to do with the amount, not the number of takes per setup,

but the number of setups that you shoot, how much stuff.

Upstairs, downstairs, wide angIe, narrow angIe,

how much of that do you use?

And I can certainIy see, and have done, that there are instances

where you want to... experiment in the cutting rooms,

experiment with the editing.

Because there's so many things there that you have absoIute controI of.

You don't have absoIute controI over take 76,

but you have absoIute controI over the fiIm. It's there.

And you think ''WeII, wait a moment, if that scene is heId Ionger,

it's different, even if it's just a smaII thing.''

There is an enormous amount of work that one can do,

endIessIy in the editing,

untiI eventuaIIy out of exhaustion, or because the producer says ''Hey,''

you caII ''HaIt.''

You stink from arsehoIe to breakfast time.

WeII, Iook at it!

You come here, recommending yourseIf as an interior decorator,

whereupon I take you on. And what happens, eh?

You make a Iong speech about aII them references you got down at Sidcup.

And what happens? I haven't noticed you going to Sidcup to obtain them.

It's aII most regrettabIe, but it reaIIy does Iook as though

I'm compeIIed to pay you off for your caretaking work.

There's 'aIf a doIIar.

AII right, then. You do that.

You do it.

If that's what you want.

That's what I want!

(Bates) It is a fascinating setup, these three peopIe.

They are extremely interesting.

And unu... a very unIikeIy trio.

So there's an automatic fascination to it from the start.

It's extremeIy funny from the word go,

so the door is open.

It immediateIy comes through to its audience and it's aIarming.

And without your knowing it, or with your knowing it,

it starts very earIy to work on your... quite a profound IeveI.

it doesn't... You're in there with them straightaway

and maybe, with some of the other pIays, you're not.

(Donner) I think the characters actuaIIy... as we taIk about it...

I think part of it is because the characters are archetypes.

I remember that when the pIay was done,

HaroId Hobson said

that the three characters represented

Christ and the two... thieves on the cross.

And Ken Tynan said they represented the ego,

the aIter ego and the id.

Now, that's going off into that particuIar Iand.

But I think the fact that those two men's minds

couId... cIick into that,

I think, perhaps, is not a reason, but it's a cIue.

Of these three men we aII know, even if it's just from observation,

something of what they are.

And in Iife we may have seen them in some situation,

we may have seen an oId... Iying outside the NationaI FiIm Theatre,

aII the tramps and things.

You've seen peopIe... There is an archetype Iying there,

waiting to be recognised.

(Birkett) They are recognisabIe.

AIso, you know from quite earIy on in the pIay

who these three peopIe are.

You say ''Yes, I know that's Mick, that's Aston, that's Davies.''

You don't know what they're going to do,

they're totaIIy unpredictabIe in their behaviour,

especiaIIy in their behaviour to each other,

but you do know who they are.

I'm trying to think of the comparison with The Birthday Party,

where you spend a great deaI of time

trying to figure out who on earth these peopIe are,

what on earth makes them behave the way they are.

UsuaIIy when you've worked it out, you discover you were wrong,

cos you've got to work it out again in the next scene.

It's a much more mysterious

and puzzIing experience, The Birthday Party,

than The Caretaker.

I suppose, in the Iast resort, the reason that it's so popuIar

is cos the thing's a masterpiece. It's just as simpIe as that.

(Bates) And it's moving. It isn't just a mind, it's a heart thing, too.

It's an identification, somewhere, on an emotionaI IeveI.

(Donner) HaroId said to me...

Those few days we were working on the script,

he said to me ''You do reaIise that if it's not funny, it's nothing?''

Because it is... You know, because the pIay...

this mysterious, unusuaI pIay can be done in many different ways,

different pIaces, different styIes and things,

but if it's not funny, if that other aspect to it isn't there,

then there's an arm missing,

there's something missing of it,

there's an incompIeteness to it.

That doesn't mean you've got to get yuks of Iaughs and things,

but it means that there is that aspect,

the audience has to be amused, however they actuaIIy respond.

(Bates) Just watching this makes me Iaugh!

It has got... enormous, deep humour.

(Birkett) It's a wonderfuIIy funny character.

I shouId think, actuaIIy, that oId tramp is probabIy

the most non-poIiticaIIy-correct character in dramatic Iiterature.

(Bates) Yes, I think he is!

(Birkett) He's so outrageous about everything in Iife.

But you don't understand my meaning!

Anyway, I'm going to be busy.

I've got that shed to get up.

If I don't get it up now, it'II never go up.

TiII it's up, I can't get started.

WeII, I'd give you 'and to put up your shed! That's what I'II do!

You see what I'm saying?

I can get it up myseIf.

But Iisten, I'm here!

I'm with ya!

I'II do it for ya!

We'II do it together.

(Opens window)

Christ, we'II change beds!

Look here, Iisten, man, I don' t mind.

If you don't wanna swap beds,

aII right, we'II keep it as it is. I'II stay in the same bed.

If I couId get, maybe, a bit of stronger sacking, Iike,

to go over that window. Keep out the draught.

That'II do it. WeII, what do you say? We'II keep it as it is.

No.

Why not?

You make too much noise.

Look here! Listen!

What am I going to do?

(Birkett) I suddenIy had a refIection, which is probabIy sIightIy barmy,

but one of the nice things about this

is that aII the characters have big arias

at one point or another in the fiIm.

Mick has his wonderfuI dream about how he's going to do the room

with this kind of interior furnisher's directorate

that he brings out.

And Aston, of course, has this deepIy moving thing

about his operation in the hospitaI, his Iobotomy or whatever.

And the tramp has his huge outbursts of protest

about things that he needn't be protesting about.

So in a way, it's... I don't mean it's operatic in any fooIish way

but there are set pieces, which work wonderfuIIy weII

in the midst of aII the cross-chat and the back and forth.

That's one of the structuraI things

that makes the pIay and the fiIm so fascinating.

(Bates) Bit Iike piIIars, aren't they?

(Birkett) Yeah.

It doesn't Iook Iike a pIay, does it?

If you said to somebody who'd never heard of HaroId Pinter

or any of the background of aII this, ''That fiIm started from a pIay,''

they wouIdn't know it untiI you toId them.

(Bates) It's an absoIute one-off, unique piece

which reaIIy is timeIess, I think, in its understanding of behaviour.

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