Category Archives: Writing

If Not You Pay

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UMBRIA

Climbing the steep via della Reppublica to our place at the top of Amelia,
an ancient town in which I hope to grow old,
I find a lady breathless with bags
Or rather, she detects me, and, with cunning timing a beat before I pass,
turns and asks me where am I going? All the way to the top?

LONDON

In our street in London, smug with community (and I am the most guilty)
We nevertheless cross, if we are honest, to avoid the inevitable delay of (let’s call her) Louisa
(My granny, Louisa, was in some ways such a lady)
Who, despite your hasty breezy passing-by Morning! How are you!?
Which requires in return a hasty breezy All right thanks and you!?
Will stop you instead with a shake of the head and a sad look down and say
Not very good. No.
And then it’ll be her leg or her cat or something with the council and a brushed-away tear
And at minimum it’s minutes, and a train missed, of miseries itemised, woes forlornly bewailed.

She is sprightly, this lady with the bags. I’d say she’s eighty, and fit from living at the top
And she looks at me, carrying my own bag and the larger of hers and says
Can I feel that bag you’re carrying, to see if it’s heavier than this one?
And I say, Signora, give me the other bag too, as she calculates I will,
and, considerably feebler than her,
I feel my heart telegraphing its tribulations as we pass under the two-thousand year old Porta Cubica arch into the once-important oblong of Piazza Marconi

Piazza Marconi (formerly Emanuele) – AMELIA

Something about the understanding of time
When an arch is that old
(And not even that old, compared to the town itself –
I saw it described in a guide as “much more recent”.)
The relationship with it, and therefore with others.
Something about who it makes us want to be

Wide as an arch, and encumbered by a walker and the permanent paraphernalia of shopping
Louisa, as we’re calling her, has never seemed young but her voice is brittle; she makes me think of a little girl.
She is, I think, the caller of the ambulances. There was a summer when they would flash by most Thursdays or Fridays and stop down that end
And you’d wonder at it – why she called, and why they came.

These days if she sees you across the road she’ll call out – she’s not a fool, she’s probably reading this – and draw you over, into her world of need.
One day, Sarah, snagged, asks her if there’s anything she can do to help
And she says yes, could you keep me company in the evenings?

How old would you say I am? asks the sprightly signora. How many years would you put on me?
I protest but she insists so I say Perhaps your sixties? and she beams
Eighty! she declares. Almost eighty! Do you know my secret?
I keep the heating on. In these cold days, all night!
Very wise, I say. Eighty!? It obviously works!
Do you know what I say? I say if you don’t pay at the gas company, you pay at the pharmacy!
Very wise, I say. I like heating too. I have to be warm too.
If not, you pay at the pharmacy, she says.
And there is a gleam in her eye.

She’s taken recently to calling across the street, Louisa
I know you crossed
I know you crossed the road when you saw me.
I know you’re avoiding me.

Half way up via del Duomo, at my turn, she challenges me to give back her bags and let her tackle the last few yards to the top alone
And I refuse of course, as she calculates I will.
She says I could see her place
How warm it is
And I say that’s very kind but
And she says she has coffee
And I say maybe next time
And, now we’re there, at the top, and she takes her bags and says
You would like my coffee. I’ve got Lavazza
– and there’s that gleam again –
Lavazza Gold.

One Night In Capri

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This article was written for YES & NO Magazine’s special edition feature on Anthony Minghella, which appeared in Spring 2018.

Special people leave a trail behind them. Memories to be picked up and owned by others, turned over and treasured. Anthony was one of those people. Everybody has a piece of him. And it is correspondingly hard to find that one thing to define him, to communicate his essence through some singular experience or recollection.

But one of the most Anthony-evoking experiences for me is watching, or listening to, the scene in The Talented Mr Ripley in which they sing Tu Vuo Fa L’Americano. It feels like Anthony is there. He isn’t, I don’t think. Not lurking in the deep background of picture. Nor even adding (as he might easily have done) to the crowd singing voices in post-production. He isn’t there. And yet, in all the choices and flavours of that particularly delicious dish, he is there.

Firstly in its exuberance and joie de vivre. That was him. A day in which you sang with him felt like a hymn to life.

Secondly in the characters in the scene. The singer Fiorello’s easy, disarming way with his admirers. That was one side of Anthony. Jude Law’s sun-blessed Dickie. That was Ant too. The planets aligned for him. And above all, Matt Damon’s awkward Tom Ripley in the crowd, an admiring, detached observer of the on-stage high spirits – looking on, not belonging, not entitled; the writer’s detachment. That was Ant too. The boy who went to the smart hotels of our youth, but never through the front door – instead, delivering ice cream to the tradesmen’s entrance.

(He wore some of that blue-collar status even in success. When he took his first film, Truly, Madly, Deeply, to Cannes, the security guys wouldn’t let him in to his own screening. He protested that he was the director, and they laughed. “Sure!”)

Of course the importance of this scene in the movie is that Tom doesn’t remain at one remove. He is called forward, onto the stage to join in and sing with Fiorello and Dickie. This magical night in Naples changes the dynamic between Tom and Dickie. Dickie views him in a new light, and invites him into his life with Marge. Tom’s hard work in learning about jazz as a way of ingratiating himself with Dickie has paid off. He’s got himself an in.

That’s Anthony too. The effort behind success. The little guy on the outside. Waiting for his moment to sing.

If there is something of Anthony in all of the characters in the scene, and in the musicality of it, there is also something in the actual song, Tu Vuo Fa L’Americano. It’s a song which speaks, for me, of the feckless youth of I Vitelloni – one of Anthony’s favourite Fellini movies – and of our equivalent experiences on the Isle of Wight: colourless winters spent dreaming of glamour elsewhere. Empty beaches and pockets, and yet the determination to walk like a somebody. You want to be an American. You want to drink whiskey and soda. But the money for the Camel cigarettes comes from your Mum’s purse. It’s Ripley’s dream too, of course. Better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.

Anthony did want to do the American thing. And he was aware of what a ridiculous, ersatz dream that was. Even when he was living it.

Which is not to say his life was phony. It was the opposite. His honesty could be arresting. Like the best of poets, his success was in his truth and integrity. His moments, faithfully and sometimes painfully reproduced, resonated. Maybe in the final analysis that’s why the Club Vesuvio scene in Ripley is so essentially him – because it is, of course, something which actually happened to him. He was dragged to a club one night in Capri with a gang of people in far more ebullient mood than him. He planned only to stay for a few moments and then retreat to his hotel room. But he was called to the stage – by a charming singer who turned out to be the famous Fiorello – and they ended up singing until four in the morning.

So when I see the Ripley scene, another one is conjured in my head, set in a club one night in Capri, starring my beautiful brother. I wasn’t even there, but I’ll pick up that moment from his trail, thank you, and turn it over, cherish it, make it mine.

For more memories of Anthony, and some extraordinary photos by Brigitte Lacombe, contact Yes & No Magazine for back issues.

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Tell Me The Story

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Robert Halmi, Sr

Really sorry to hear of the death of Robert Halmi, Sr, the man behind Hallmark Entertainment, for whom I worked (and with whom I briefly shared offices) in 2000/2001.

He was a charming, irascible, impatient, twinkle-in-the-eye, can-do personality, who’d seen a lot – including, if the internet is to be believed, not one but two death sentences – but didn’t want to dwell on it. He only cared about the next project.

I first met him after he had effectively hired me without meeting me. I was to write a modern take on Sleeping Beauty for TV. I went to meet him and take my briefing in his offices in Soho and was late. I ran in, puffing, and literally before my bottom hit the seat in front of his desk, he said in his once-Hungarian accent, “So? Tell me the story.” I thought there must be a mistake – I had not yet met anybody to hear what the brief was. He said, “You’re the writer. You decide. Use your imagination. We can do anything you can think of. Fairies. Any fucking thing.”

So I went away, came up with a “take” and returned. This time I was ready. As my rear hit the seat, he fired me the same question. I started to tell him my story, and he waved me away. “Just write the fucking thing.” He liked to move fast. Six weeks later, I delivered a script to his offices. It was faxed to New York. By the time I got home, it had already been read (and admired) and he wanted to know how soon I could write another project.

We lost touch in the last few years, but he called me recently out of the blue, announcing he was “ninety and not dead”. He said for his 90th birthday he had given himself a new career – in films – and pitched me an idea. Now I wish I had taken it on. They don’t build ’em like that anymore.

Just Because

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18 June 2012

There’s a thing we say in our family: Just because….

It’s a something my brother Anthony used to say, when he was a boy. When in trouble, he would start to explain himself, “Just because I forgot my boots…” and burst, before he could say more, into tears of despair.

Our Dad thought it was hilarious, and it has since been adopted family-wide as shorthand for ‘sorry’. I forgot your birthday? Just because. Your present is late? Just because. It is, inevitably, a much deployed expression.

And today I deploy it myself, for having neglected to send my fabulous Dad anything for yesterday’s Father’s Day. Again.

Here he is (below) at the recent opening of Reading University’s Film TV and Theatre Building, named after Anthony. One can only imagine the pride and the pain of attending such an event; celebrating a son prematurely taken. Our Dad handles these things with dignity and, always, a joke.

He is responsible for many aspects of our family’s collective personality. We have inherited, extended, developed and downright copyrighted so many of his attributes. His pleasure in playing on words. His boyish, infectious humour. And we aspire to his unfailing, sentimental love; his willingness to question the status quo; his satisfaction in simple things – food, family, a pack of well-worn playing cards.

Whenever there was a gathering of the Minghella clan – there are a lot of us now (a plague of Minghellas? a rash? a canzona?) – Anthony used to turn to Dad, point to all the kids, partners and grandchildren, and say, proudly, “All this is your fault!”

Ah. It’s hard to imagine saying that nowadays. The family is incomplete. And that joke belonged to Anthony.

It brings a tear to the eye, but Dad has a line for crying too: “Why are you laughing on the wrong side of your face?” You’ll find that line all across Anthony’s work, and mine.

In a few days’ time, our wonderful Dad will be 91. I should send him something now.

Meanwhile, here’s to you, Dad. It IS all your fault, and I love you and thank you and – in case I do forget – just because.