this, never knowing if our barbarism denotes vigour or decay. Across the hedgeless fields are the rebuilt towers of Ypres, looking, behind a line of willows, oddly like Oxford. At which point, with a heavy symbolism that in a film would elicit a sophisticated groan, a Mirage jet scorches low over the fields.
For all the dead who lie here and the filthy, futile deaths they died, it is still hard to suppress a twinge of imperial pride, partly to be put down to the design of these silent cities: the work of Blomfield, Baker and Lutyens, the last architects of Empire. The other feeling, less ambiguous here than it would be in a cemetery of the Second War, is anger. Nobody could say now why these men died. The phrase ‘Their glory shall not be blotted out’ was a contribution by Kipling, who served on the War Graves Commission. This is the Friday after President Reagan’s Libyan venture, and to assert that there is anything under the sun that will not be blotted out seems quite hopeful. We instinctively think of the conflict between East and West on the model of the Second War, the one with a purpose. The instructive parallel is with the First.
Dinner at Noon
I have had unfortunate experiences in hotels. I was once invited to Claridge’s by the late John Huston in order to discuss a script he had sent me. The screenplay was bulky (that was what he wanted to discuss) and looked like a small parcel. Seeing it and (I suppose) me, the commissionaire insisted I use the tradesman’s entrance.
On another occasion, during the run of Beyond the Fringe in New York, Dudley Moore and I took refuge from a storm in the Hotel Pierre, where we were spotted by an assistant manager. Saying that there had been a spate of thefts from rooms recently, he asked us to leave. A small argument ensued, in the course of which an old man and his wife stumped past, whereupon the assistant manager left off abusing us in order to bow. It was Stravinsky. We were then thrown out. I have never set foot in the Pierre since, fearing I might still be taken for a petty thief. Dudley Moore, I imagine, goes in there with impunity; the assistant manager may even bow to him now while throwing somebody else out. Me still, possibly.
Dinner at Noon was a documentary about the Crown Hotel, Harrogate, which Jonathan Stedall and I made for the BBC TV series ‘Byline’ in April 1988. Up to that time I had never embarked on a TV programme without carefully scripting it first, but this was obviously neither possible nor appropriate when making a documentary, particularly a ‘fly-on-the-wall’exercise such as this was intended to be. I was accordingly a little apprehensive.
The film was also meant to illustrate some of the work of the American sociologist Erving Goffman. * Goffman’s first field study was in a hotel in the Shetlands, and much of the research he did there was incorporated into his pioneering book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , though other insights gleaned at this eccentric and sometimes hilarious establishment crop up in all his books.
In the era of Fawlty Towers it might seem folly to try to say anything more on the subject of the roles of staff and guests in a hotel, and certainly it became plain in the first two days of filming that a respectable sociological study of hotel life would take much longer than the ten days we were scheduled to film. The early material we shot was also pretty stilted and banal, and I became even more apprehensive about the end result. Documentary film-makers, of course, must often find themselves in this predicament, but it was new to me, and so, feeling slightly panic-stricken, I scribbled some autobiographical notes which I could deliver either straight to camera or as a commentary over footage of the various functions and goings-on in the hotel.
Thus the finished film ended up having not much to do with Goffman and a lot more to do with me; it certainly wasn’t the film we set out to make, but this
For all the dead who lie here and the filthy, futile deaths they died, it is still hard to suppress a twinge of imperial pride, partly to be put down to the design of these silent cities: the work of Blomfield, Baker and Lutyens, the last architects of Empire. The other feeling, less ambiguous here than it would be in a cemetery of the Second War, is anger. Nobody could say now why these men died. The phrase ‘Their glory shall not be blotted out’ was a contribution by Kipling, who served on the War Graves Commission. This is the Friday after President Reagan’s Libyan venture, and to assert that there is anything under the sun that will not be blotted out seems quite hopeful. We instinctively think of the conflict between East and West on the model of the Second War, the one with a purpose. The instructive parallel is with the First.
Dinner at Noon
I have had unfortunate experiences in hotels. I was once invited to Claridge’s by the late John Huston in order to discuss a script he had sent me. The screenplay was bulky (that was what he wanted to discuss) and looked like a small parcel. Seeing it and (I suppose) me, the commissionaire insisted I use the tradesman’s entrance.
On another occasion, during the run of Beyond the Fringe in New York, Dudley Moore and I took refuge from a storm in the Hotel Pierre, where we were spotted by an assistant manager. Saying that there had been a spate of thefts from rooms recently, he asked us to leave. A small argument ensued, in the course of which an old man and his wife stumped past, whereupon the assistant manager left off abusing us in order to bow. It was Stravinsky. We were then thrown out. I have never set foot in the Pierre since, fearing I might still be taken for a petty thief. Dudley Moore, I imagine, goes in there with impunity; the assistant manager may even bow to him now while throwing somebody else out. Me still, possibly.
Dinner at Noon was a documentary about the Crown Hotel, Harrogate, which Jonathan Stedall and I made for the BBC TV series ‘Byline’ in April 1988. Up to that time I had never embarked on a TV programme without carefully scripting it first, but this was obviously neither possible nor appropriate when making a documentary, particularly a ‘fly-on-the-wall’exercise such as this was intended to be. I was accordingly a little apprehensive.
The film was also meant to illustrate some of the work of the American sociologist Erving Goffman. * Goffman’s first field study was in a hotel in the Shetlands, and much of the research he did there was incorporated into his pioneering book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , though other insights gleaned at this eccentric and sometimes hilarious establishment crop up in all his books.
In the era of Fawlty Towers it might seem folly to try to say anything more on the subject of the roles of staff and guests in a hotel, and certainly it became plain in the first two days of filming that a respectable sociological study of hotel life would take much longer than the ten days we were scheduled to film. The early material we shot was also pretty stilted and banal, and I became even more apprehensive about the end result. Documentary film-makers, of course, must often find themselves in this predicament, but it was new to me, and so, feeling slightly panic-stricken, I scribbled some autobiographical notes which I could deliver either straight to camera or as a commentary over footage of the various functions and goings-on in the hotel.
Thus the finished film ended up having not much to do with Goffman and a lot more to do with me; it certainly wasn’t the film we set out to make, but this
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