Out of this came the brief resurgence of low-budget British films in the mid-1980s. The myriad tensions of life under Thatcher were irresistible to writers and film-makers. Here was the challenge of a Conservatism that had, at last, admitted to being an ideology. Here were ideas — at a time when the Left had none. The cultural reply was not presented in the language of social realism; both victims and heroes of the class struggle were eschewed. These were popular films wishing to reach a large audience hungry for debate about the new age of money and what it meant.
One issue rarely discussed in this way has been drug use. It’s an odd omission as, since the mid-1960s, in most towns and cities of a good deal of the world, young people have been using illegal drugs of various kinds. There hasn’t been much fiction about this subject and the life that goes with it; and remarkably little hard information about drugs is provided to people, though cautionary and scary stories are propagated in the vain hope of frightening them.
Although drugs are fundamental to the story, London Kills Me was never primarily ‘about’ drug use. The film is concerned mainly with the lives of the characters. It was always, for me, a story about a boy searching for a pair of shoes in order to get a job as a waiter in a diner. Even so, when we were seeking out money for the movie — and it was not expensive — there was criticism from potential backers about the drug use in the film. They were worried that they might be accused of ‘recommending’ drugs.
Many films and more television plays are planned meticulously before they start shooting. There are shot-lists and story-boards for every second of the film. The director, cameraman, producer, art director and assistants work out the camera- and actor-moves on scale plans before shooting begins. Making the film itself is then a process of reproduction. It isn’t the necessary requirements of planning that make this way of working seem objectionable. It is the expectation or hope of safety and security that is deadening, the desire to work without that moment of fear — when you really don’t know how to go on — and therefore to create without utilizing the unexpected.
I’ve never written in a planned way and I tried, even as a first-time director, not to work like this. It would bore me to know in the morning what exactly I’d be doing in the afternoon. And Stephen Frears, whose advice I sought, said it was ‘fatal’ to work to a strict plan. Having worked with him twice as a writer, I didn’t want to have any less enjoyment than he clearly had when shooting a film.
Much to my surprise, having written the film and then being in the powerful position of being able to direct it too, I felt less possessive about my dialogue and the shape of the script than I had when someone else was in charge. In the end, all I clung to was the story, to getting that, at least, in front of the camera.
The script of London Kills Me was only ninety pages long: a tight little film without much wastage. I couldn’t see there’d be much to lose in the editing. I thought every scene was essential and in the best place. We wouldn’t waste a lot of time shooting material we’d never use. Editing would be relatively simple. So I was pretty surprised when the first rough assembly of the film was over two and a half hours long. I found myself in the odd position of having written a film and then shot it — and still I didn’t know what sort of movie I was supposed to be making, what the tone was to be. The editing, like writing, I realised, would also become a form of exploration and testing of the material. It was all, even this, an attempt to tell a story by other means.
The Boy in the Bedroom
I hadn’t intended to write the scripts for the BBC’s version of The Buddha of Suburbia. My wish was to hand the book over to someone else, forget about it, and watch the series when it appeared on TV. After all, I’d written and rewritten the book, and promoted it in several countries. It was time to move on. Sometimes I wish I were better at doing things I don’t really want to do, but it can also be a strength.
The first writer hired to make the adaptation took my text and presented it as Karim’s voice-over, with accompanying pictures. I could see the point of the narration, and later, when Roger Michel and I were writing the script, we discussed it constantly and experimented with it. (There are, after all, scores of good films which use a first-person voice-over.) In the end, however, it seemed lazy and had a deadening effect, as if the events were not happening in the present. If the serial wasn’t to be like watching an illustrated talk, the first-person point of view had to be abandoned. The challenge was to dramatise everything.
The second writer was, apparently, instructed to ‘capture the spirit’ of the novel. Consequently, opening the script at random, I saw a scene set in a chip shop, featuring characters whose names I didn’t recognise, as if this ‘spirit’ was not necessarily present in the scenes I’d created, of which only a minimum remained.
Directors came and went, having refused to shoot the scripts. Finally, having been informed that at this rate the project would never get made, and being made to feel that my misgivings were obstructing it, I agreed to write it. An office would be provided at the BBC. The latest director, Roger Michel, and I would collaborate.
I enjoyed packing my briefcase in the morning, buying my newspaper at the tube station on the corner, getting on the bus and going to the office, like other people. It made me feel normal, in what was, for me, a far from normal period.
*
Only a few months before, my father had died; my father, who’d always encouraged me to take up this precarious craft and living, and never suggested I become a doctor, accountant or bus driver, had made me see that someone like me could do something like this, although the odds were not in one’s favour. And, once I’d started seriously to do it, he kept me going. Strangely, now I think about it, I never rebelled against this conviction and it remained implacably within me. You would have thought, with such a parent, who burned to be a novelist, and insisted I live the life he craved for himself, the sensible son would, without hesitation, sign up for the Navy. It’s possible, however, that my resistance consisted of my including him, parodically, in The Buddha; I know he was shocked, but he never complained.
Also during the same period, a film, London Kills Me, which somewhat innocently I’d directed, wanting to see if this was something I might like to learn about, had been roundly abused. Finally, I was sick, waiting to go into hospital for a back operation. I couldn’t stand or even shuffle without thinking a dagger was being turned in my lower back, and electric shocks administered to my legs, all day, perhaps by critics. How much pleasure pain sucks from life, making one weary and dispirited! I was swallowing pills by the handful, imagining that if I took enough the pain would stop for good. However, I had at least made a decision.
*
For over a year I’d been rolled and thumped and examined naked and robbed blind by numerous osteopaths, physiotherapists, chiropractors, aromatherapists and acupuncturists. (Everyone I knew swore by their own genius who had brought them back from imminent invalidity; for all of them in London, and further afield, I dutifully removed my trousers and bent over.) I had had more hands on me than Linda Lovelace, and on a few occasions went to bed with packets of frozen Brussels sprouts strapped to my lower back by pyjama cords. But one day, on a routine visit to an acupuncturist who favoured ‘the natural way’, I was lying on the table with pins in me, imagining I’d been reincarnated, in this life, as a cactus, when I heard odd noises. I twisted my stiff neck to look at him behind me, and opened my eyes wide. My physician was dancing barefoot at the end of the table, with his eyes closed. Not only that, he was waving a joss stick and murmuring an incantation. It was at that moment I decided to go under the knife. But this being on the National Health Service, I was waiting, waiting, for the releasing incision.