He has had a really good meeting with David Aukin: the script has been approved and the production is greenlit. The plan now is to shoot next spring. Tim and Nikki will move their family to Europe this summer, while Tim acts in Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean in Italy; then they will find a house in London and Tim will start pre-production on The War Zone. We’re already starting to think seriously about casting ideas.
There is a general election in Britain today, which I have been following closely from Miami via the BBC’s excellent websites – streaming audio and video of political coverage that really does erode the barrier the Atlantic Ocean presents.
The British Labour Party, which I have always supported, may finally win from the Conservatives and end the grim era that began when the dread Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979 (although she was ousted by her own party in 1990, just as I was moving from Britain to Miami Beach). When I ask Tim what the mood is like in London, he says that it’s exciting, there is a sense of real change in the air.
Later, as Charong and I walk along Collins Avenue, after we have had dinner on Miami Beach, I receive excited calls on my cell phone from friends in Britain, saying that there has been a massive swing to Labour.
We get home to an ecstatic answering-machine message from our best friend in London, Spike Denton, loudly proclaiming, ‘It’s a landslide!’
After years of Thatcherism and then the appalling John Major, there finally is a new beginning. It augurs well for the film, I think: the sense that the repressive, male-dominated (Thatcher never did much for her own gender) power structure may be changing.
It has been strange living in America under Bill Clinton when, on many levels, the US has seemed a good deal more liberal than Britain.
Wednesday June 4, 1997
Tim calls from the Chateau Marmont to tell me that he likes my recent Guardian Questionnaire (a regular feature in the newspaper), and particularly my answer to the question, ‘How often do you have sex?’ My response: ‘Why would anyone want to know?’
Tim’s comment about my comment: ‘It’s a little bit sweet, a little bit, “Fuck you.”’
Tuesday January 27, 1998
(Charong and I are now living in Los Angeles, having moved here from Miami in August 1997.)
My birthday today. A videotape of The War Zone screen tests arrives, together with a birthday card from Tim, Dixie, Sarah and everyone in the production office – a great birthday gift. I play the tape, a little nervously but mostly feeling confident that Tim has chosen well.
We have discussed the casting of the parents, Ray Winstone and Tilda Swinton, and I am excited by both, because we want parents who in the first instance appear sympathetic – a father especially who, on first sight, would seem like a good father, a man to be trusted, at least as far as his children’s welfare is concerned.
It is the children who are still to be decided upon, because we want newcomers who have never acted before.
The tape contains two or three options each for Tom and Jessie, from the thousands of teenagers who have been seen by the casting director – although I know that Tim is already fairly clear in his mind whom he would like to use. Ray and Tilda generously offered to take part in screen tests with the kids, and Seamus McGarvey, our brilliant young director of photography, has shot them in the widescreen format we intend using for the film, so when I see the tape, there is a real sense of how the film might be.
I watch the early tests with interest, but I know Tim has saved his favorite family for last, and when I see them, I know he’s right.
Lara Belmont, as Jessie, has the perfect mix of really interesting beauty (as opposed to simply glamour), vulnerability and strength that her character needs, and Freddie Cunliffe has the nervous smile, the awkwardness and what looks like a totally believable potential for trouble that immediately brings Tom alive for me.
It’s funny to think that, like a fabricated Hollywood publicity story, Lara has actually been found by our casting director walking through Portobello Market in London, and Freddie turned up to an open casting only because his friend wanted to play the role of Tom – Freddie merely thought he might get a day’s work as an extra.
Aside from the fact that Lara and Freddie look so good individually, I am encouraged by how believable they are as brother and sister – and how complete they look with Ray and Tilda as a family. At one point in the screen test, Ray tousles Freddie’s hair (and looks as if he might clip his ear, should it become necessary) and Lara makes a joke, then they all gather together – and I can see that the War Zone family I first imagined back in 1983, when I was about to become a parent myself and first outlined the book, has become a flesh and blood reality.
I call Tim and Dixie at home, to tell them how happy I am with the screen tests. Tim seems relieved. There are only a couple of weeks now before I fly to England to meet the cast and crew, and go down to Devon to look at our locations. Our start date for the film is Monday, March 2nd. It’s finally happening!
Friday February 20, 1998
I fly into London early this morning, tired after the long haul from Los Angeles. I never sleep well on planes.
I go straight to Dixie’s flat in Hampstead, where I’m staying. I take a bath, then make it back into the West End just in time for The War Zone production meeting/pre-shoot cast and crew party at the Berkeley Square Cafe.
I feel somewhat jetlagged and slightly dazed as I sit listening to various members of the production discuss their needs and expectations. With Lara and Freddie in mind, Tim and Dixie have deliberately assembled a crew who are as friendly and positive as possible – in Tim’s words, people the kids would want to hug, if necessary.
This is a difficult subject to deal with, so we want the process of making the film to be at least bearable, and at best a memorable experience for all involved. Most of the crew has made a huge effort to work on the film and feels it’s an important subject that needs to be addressed. Lara and Freddie’s parents have read the script and are aware of what’s involved, as are Lara and Freddie themselves. The last thing any of us wants is for the production to scar the kids in any way.
After some words of encouragement from Tim the meeting breaks up and the party begins. Christine and Christine, two friends of mine who have a chocolate shop in Brighton, have made a special War Zone cake for the occasion. I am introduced to everyone, but after a while the faces and identities start to melt into a jet-lagged blur.
Tilda and Freddie aren’t there, but I am especially interested to meet Ray and Lara. Ray is instantly likeable, a big man with a nononsense East London accent and a face you could love or fear in about equal measure. I sense him sizing me up, deciding whether I’m all right, and I reckon I’ve passed the test when he calls me ‘Al.’
Lara is simply beautiful – slight, deceptively vulnerable at first, aware of all the difficulties the film might raise, but at the same time confident and excited. She has a great laugh – more than anything, I remember her laughing at the party. I have a very encouraging conversation with her younger sister, who has read the script, too, and thinks it important that Lara does it.
I meet Kate Ashfield, who will play Lucy, a local Devon girl who cleans house for the family, and who must suggest the subtlest sense that something is wrong, while also dealing with Tom’s teenage crush on her. And I talk to Aisling O’Sullivan, the Irish actress who has the highly challenging role of Carol, Jessie’s London friend and mentor.