Making Priscilla by Al Clark Read Free Book Online Page B

to re-approach Rupert Everett — who has retained a commendably ironic perspective on an earlier misunderstanding — for Tick. As he is already staying in the south of France, we arrange to meet him in Cannes later that week.
    To play Adam, we pursue an idea we had about Jason Donovan,with whom we arrange to have lunch the following day. We are not sure if he is a sufficiently experienced actor to make Adam more than a mincing pastiche, but it will make intriguingly provocative casting in view of his recent history of litigation. He in turn can be conciliatory towards an audience which largely forsook him when he took legal action, and won, against the magazine The Face for suggesting he was gay.
    We have another thought for Bernadette: John Cleese. A call is made to his agent: he is not interested.
    *
    So that there are no misunderstandings later — with PolyGram realising that the soundtrack to a picture they are half financing is being released by a rival record company (the terms of which agreement they would in any case need to approve) — I outline to various PolyGram executives and lawyers the deal we have with PWL Records. It is a pleasant but inconclusive encounter, and the two people present from the music division appear perceptibly underwhelmed by what I delude myself is the persuasive vigour of my pitch.
    When we meet Jason Donovan and his manager at II Siciliano, the kind of old-fashioned Soho Italian restaurant where it is a matter of policy not to take any notice of the famous, I realise that this is the third time I have approached him about appearing in a film. (I flew to the Gold Coast during the 1989 Australian pilots’ strike to see him about The Crossing — when he felt unable to cancel a week of European record promotion to complete our mandatory ensemble rehearsal schedule — and to London in 1991 with the same director, George Ogilvie, to discuss another movie.) He is as charming as ever — equal parts surf yob and gracious young man — and he insists he is enthusiastic about playing the role, particularly ashis appearance in Rough Diamond as, claims its synopsis, ‘a cattle rancher and a superb guitarist’ seems to have fallen through. (The film is later made.)
    Towards the end of the meal, at around the time he is telling us that he has never seen Some Like It Hot, a tall black woman runs into the restaurant, kisses him and rushes out. Suspecting a stunt, we speculate without success on where she came from and at whose prompting. We conclude that she was probably a drag queen spontaneously auditioning for the movie. By now, we are on drag queen alert: as far as we are concerned, any big-boned woman with a vocal register lower than alto could be one.
    We invite Jason to join us in Cannes, where Frauds is screening in competition, and where he can also meet his possible co-star Rupert Everett and witness the process that makes the picture come together. It is beginning to look promising.
    *
    In the departure lounge at Heathrow, one can identify the various European nationalities by how they choose to kill time. The French and Italian talk among themselves. The Germans drink beer. The British read newspapers.
    By the time we stand shuffling around the luggage carousel in Nice, the British have loosened up sufficiently to make small talk, punctuated by a kind of braying, mirthless laughter designed to obfuscate the steely resolve with which they are entering the Cannes Film Festival. It is my tenth visit to Cannes and the first on which a car is scheduled to meet me at the airport. Inevitably, it is nowhere to be seen. After telephone calls to the publicists DDA — who represent Priscilla’s sales agents, Manifesto — to JAC, the publicists who are handling Frauds, and to the festival office itself, nobody is prepared toaccept responsibility for the car’s absence. We take the bus.
    As I frequently do on the first day, I have lunch on the beach with the producer Hercules Bellville, who is