in detail, others hardly needed more than a few words. It’s a strange process of cross-fertilisation, and I can only describe it by examples.
Dick wanted the Musketeers to be rather less stainless than they are usually portrayed; could they be seen stealing, say, in some novel way which would take the hard edge off the crime, perhaps diverting wine along a gutter by some ingenious device? I suggested a tavern fight in which their brawling would hide the fact that they were lifting all the food in sight – that was enough; we kicked around various ways of pinching comestibles, I sketched the scene out in script form, and Dick arranged and choreographed the whole thing as only he could.
The same thing happened when we were looking for a new way to stage a sword fight which would give opportunity for some knockabout action; I suggested staging it on a frozen pond, and Dick gave what I can only call a hungry grin and said: “Say no more!” And beyond writing a line or two for Porthos to bellow, and devising a piece of sadism for Aramis, I didn’t need to.
It was fascinating, in writing a scene, to see what he would do with it. I had a perfectly tranquil meeting between the Queen of France and Buckingham which, for sheer novelty’s sake, I set in the palace laundry – Lester doesn’t miss chances like that, and concluded the lovers’ meeting with the most colossal turn-up among the soap suds between the Musketeers and the palace guards. I had what I thought was another cute idea, with the King and Cardinal Richelieu eating canapés from a line of gold plates; pull back, and lo! each plate is on the head of a dwarf. A nice little visual effect, which Dick embellished by having the little buggers talking.
My technique then, and I followed it in later films, was to describe every shot in detail, the idea being to let the director and actors know exactly how I saw the thing. If they liked it, fine; if they didn’t, it could be done another way. Some directors regard this as an intrusion on their territory; the best ones, the Lesters and the Fleischers and the Hamiltons, are all for it, because as experienced professionals they are always open to suggestions – which is not to say that they will always follow them. They have forgotten more about composition and camera angles and various kinds of shot than I will ever know, but there’s no harm in giving them your ideas.
It could be very rewarding with Lester, because when the movie was shot and I saw the rough-cut, I realised a strange thing – he and I had very much the same visual sense, in that we saw things the same way. Time after time I would have envisaged a scene in my head – and there it was on the screen, “realised”, as the French say, by Lester. One instance sticks in my mind: when D’Artagnan arrives at the Hotel Treville and becomes embroiled with one Musketeer after another, the overall scene is one of tremendous bustle and activity, with people jostling and hurrying and a fine confusion reigning. Dick approved my final draft (probably my fifth or sixth) and then suddenly asked: “What does it look like?” Off the top of my head I said: “Like a Breughel painted by Rembrandt.” He smiled, nodded, said nothing – and shot it gloriously.
I can’t be sure how long it took before the four-hour script was finished, but I know that Kathy and I were on holiday in Borneo in March, and Dick was phoning via Australia about something or other – I rather think it was to do with the scene in which the Musketeers rescue Christopher Lee from a firing squad commanded by Bob Todd, but I’m not sure. By that time the casting was coming together, and I was going about in a state of euphoric disbelief that I had written a movie for Heston, Dunaway, Welch, Reed, Finlay, Chamberlain, Lee, York, and a supporting cast which included the likes of Roy Kinnear, Geraldine Chaplin, Simon Ward, and Spike Milligan. (Someone remarked to me that I had managed to get Spike into bed with Raquel Welch, to which Spike retorted: “It’s in the script, mate, not in my contract.”)
I was at home working on a novel while Dick shot the picture, mostly in Spain, and did it in some incredibly short time – I’m not sure how long, but I know that as the weeks went by and his schedule shortened he was going at high speed, for he told me afterwards that with the second half he was “shooting the script”, which I took to mean that he was not hanging about worrying about different ways of doing things.
The rough-cut of the first half was shown at Twickenham Studios on a bleak morning of early autumn, and I found myself sitting in the front row of the little viewing theatre with Michel Legrand, who was to do the music, while Dick and Ilya and Pierre Spengler, that prince of executive producers, sat behind. Michel had the devil of a cold, and made frequent forays into his attaché case, which contained, as he explained to me apologetically, “les medications”.
He was plainly feeling awful, poor soul, and from time to time would give a deep groan, which was disconcerting at first because I wasn’t sure whether it arose from his condition or what he was seeing on the screen. It didn’t worry me long; I got lost in the magic.
Seeing a film that you’ve written is a weird experience, and one of the most thrilling I know. I’d hate to have to choose between it and holding the first copy of your first novel in your hand. I think the film probably has it by a nose – there they are, up there, the biggest names in the business, speaking the lines you’ve written, enacting the scenes you’ve constructed, and doing it far, far better than you’d imagined it could be done. You sit lost in admiration of Olly Reed’s first glowering look and rasping opening line, of Faye Dunaway’s gorgeous languor, of Christopher Lee’s splendid nonchalance, and of Michael York’s bumbling heroics … and that’s only the start. Forgive me if I warm still at the thought of them, and of the superb director who made it all happen.
You can even forgive the occasional lines changed or added during shooting, or the recast scenes, or the total surprise of something you just don’t recognise, like the laundry fight, or those voice-over ad-libs which Dick so dearly loves (talking dwarves yet!) – if it’s for the good of the movie, your only regret is that you didn’t think of it yourself. From what I’ve heard, I’ve been lucky in having my stuff left pretty well alone, especially in the Musketeer movies; before that first screening Dick told me: “It’s 85–90 per cent you,” which in view of some of the horror stories about writers finding themselves entirely rewritten, was vastly reassuring.
I learned for the first time that morning that we might have not one movie with an intermission, but two separate films. My contract, when I came to look at it (I didn’t sign until the job was half-done, which happens more often than you’d imagine, or used to) specified a film “or films”. I had written the thing as one complete picture with an interval, and the entire script was there, all four hours of it, before shooting began.
I emphasise this because all kinds of garbled rumours get about in the film industry, and one of these was enshrined in Alex Salkind’s obituary in a quality newspaper in 1997. It said, without qualification, that
halfway through the filming, Salkind realised that the director Richard Lester had shot twice as much film as he needed. Without telling the actors, he asked the writer George MacDonald Fraser to string together the spare scenes, with a few new ones thrown in, and so make a sequel.
Twaddle. Likewise tripe. As I said in a letter to the editor, I never discussed the screenplay with Alex at all, and certainly never strung together “spare scenes with a few new ones thrown in, to make a sequel.” The decision to split the picture into two, The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers (or, as they became known to the production team, the M3 and M4) was taken long after the script had been written, and for all I know, possibly after the whole thing was shot.
That not all the actors knew about this I didn’t discover until the Paris premiere, which began with a dinner for the company at Fouquet’s and concluded in the small hours with a deafening concert in what appeared to be the cellar of some ancient Parisian structure (the Hotel de Ville, I think). Charlton Heston knew, for when we discussed it before the dinner he shrugged philosophically and remarked: “Two for the price of one.” Roy Kinnear did not, for Kathy
