10. THAT SINKING FEELING 173

Jules Wright has a fistful of arty platinum knuckleduster rings and looks you straight in the eye. An Australian
boiler-maker's daughter, she was, like Rickman, a late starter in the theatre. They have humour, directness and a working-class
background in common. But she freely admits: 1 did have a fiery relationship with Alan when I worked with him/
It was to get even fierier with the Riverside fiasco. Jules remains convinced that all along Alan Rickman never really
intended to get closely involved with running Riverside: his was the name on the marquee, and he caught all the flak. The publicity
has plagued him ever since,' says Jules, who welcomed the chance to put her side of the Riverside story on record once and for all.
Legal constraints prevented her from stating the facts at the time; when I approached her in 1995 for the first edition of this
book, it was the first time she had been persuaded to speak.
Her conviction about Alan's true intentions stems from an incautious outburst he made during their 'blazing row' in the Royal
Court foyer on 28 November 1993.
'Alan has always been an honourable man, so he would never say something he didn't mean - even in anger,' Jules told me. 'I
swear to this day,' she continues with a husky laugh, 'that someone set us up to sit next to each other in the Dress Circle in a
packed theatre at Max Stafford-Clark's farewell at the Court.' (This the Court flatly denies, saying that the box office would have
processed hundreds of names for a very packed seating plan. But Jules said, 'Thanks a bunch', so Max Stafford-Clark sent her a
postcard that thanked her for her support over the years and then added wryly, Sony about the seating arrangements'.)
'I was sitting in my place and Alan came into the Dress Circle. He saw that he would be next to me, so he turned round and
walked out. Then he must have had second thoughts, because he turned round and came back in again. I quickly swapped seats with my
husband, who sat between us in the end.
'I suppose Alan was expecting us to have a row after Riverside, because I felt incredibly attacked by all the bad publicity.
We then
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had a very, very loud argument later in the foyer afterwards; all the onlookers were extremely entertained. It was a fairly
monumental row which ended up as a rather long conversation, as these things tend to do when you both calm down.
"We had spent an hour or so avoiding each other, and then I went up to him and said, "What the hell were you playing at with
all the Press coverage? Why the hell didn't you ring me up to get the facts?" I think Rima said something angry at that point and
then Alan snapped, "I didn't speak to the Press." I really felt like replying, "But you were spotted handing out photocopies of the
critics" letter of support.'
'He also said, "It's about time directors had problems. Actors are always getting stick." But what was curious in the middle
of all this was a remark he made when he said: "I'll never lend my name to anything again."
'I can only take his word for it: that he was only lending his name to the project,' concluded Jules.
A close examination of the Rickman camp's proposals for the New Riverside Studios shows just what kind of role Alan envisaged
for himself: giving tone to the pkce as a visiting star with creative input. Thelma would have been the real powerhouse.
'Riverside should not be a platform for an individual ego,' stated the first page of the New Riverside policy document,
drafted by the triumvirate of Alan, Thelma and Alan's old RADA contemporary Catherine Bailey. 'Rather, it should seek to embrace
the community it stands in whilst sending out beacons to London, Europe and beyond.
'For a long time now Riverside has held a significant place in the loyalties of a very particular group of actors, directors
and designers who cannot always exercise their ideas within the national companies,' it commented . . . perhaps carrying what might
be taken as a faint whiff of paranoia.
Thelma and Alan are mavericks - always have been, always will be. Widely respected for their innovations, but far too
individualistic to fit into a big organisation. This was their bid for a rival to the Royal National Theatre on whose stages,
incidentally, Rickman had never performed in a National production (his original debut there in Peter Barnes's reworking of The
Devil Is An Ass had been a transfer).
(Not that there was a sinister reason behind that curious omission. 'I've often considered Alan for roles here, but for a
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variety of reasons we've never managed to find the right pan at the right time. I think he is a wonderfully original actor,'
was the view of the National's then Artistic Director Richard Eyre when I contacted him for a comment in 1995. It was to be Trevor
Nunn, under whose RSC stewardship Rickman had made his great breakthrough in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, who would give him that
opportunity in 1998, an opportunity that turned out to be something of a poisoned chalice.)
Their ideas for a genuine mingling of different art forms under one roof make a nonsense of William Hunter's pompous letter in
the London Evening Standard on 10 August 1993. Hunter, Chair of the Riverside Trust, wrote: 'Most importantly, Riverside Studios is
an arts centre, not a theatre. We present a very wide range of an forms. This has been overlooked during the controversy over the
[Rickman] consortium's proposal.'
To imply that Rickman and Co. were a narrow-minded bunch of luvvies with only theatre in mind is highly misleading. Their
policy document makes it clear that they wanted to create a market place for all kinds of artistic ideas at Riverside ... 'an
all-day space, a magnetic place where you can look at a painting or buy and read a book over lunch, have a drink before an evening
performance and then supper afterwards'. In other words, a West London alternative to the South Bank arts complex and die Royal
National Theatre in particular.
It was always planned as a Steppenwolf operation. 'Actors there have an itinerant but umbilical connection to the company ...
We want to actively encourage its use by those performers who do not fit into the mainstream of artistic endeavours.' In other
words, a home for talented outsiders.
All very laudable but fatally vague to the dozen trustees on the Board of the Riverside Trust, which included three
councillors. The first thing that strikes you on reading the Rickman consortium's New Riverside proposals is that there's no
mention whatsoever of their source of finance: i.e. a list of sponsors and their donations. Money makes the bid go around, the bid
go around ... It was a glaring omission.
Jules Wright's bid for the Women's Playhouse Trust (WPT) also carried its fair share of stirring rhetoric, but she provided
the names of 21 WPT benefactors in her statement such as Coca-Cola, NatWest Bank and Reuters.
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Hard-pressed borough councillors are constantly trying to balance the books and figures inevitably speak more loudly than
words. The rest is just promises. Or, as Hammersmith & Fulham Council Leader, Iain Coleman, succinctly put it in a letter to me
about the Riverside affair: 'a wish-list'.
In times of belt-tightening and general restraint, the average councillor also tends to cut back on syllables as well as
money. An encounter with 'palliatives' on page two of the Rickman document might have wasted valuable debating time as they thumbed
through the dictionary to see if it had any relevance to more meaningful concepts, such as money, sponsorship and start-up capital.
Not that councillors are stupid; but they have to be immensely practical. As for bandying about such expressions as 'community',
councillors use the term themselves with so much gay abandon that they're hardly likely to be impressed by the C-word from other
people.
And as for the notion of an all-day space, just what does a drop-in centre of artistic excellence do when Johnny Fortycoats or
Wandering Mary with her push-pram lurch onto the premises? The streets around Riverside in Crisp Road form a very mixed, partly
industrial area, pitted with urban poverty. Most councils would see such a venue as the ideal place for an old folks' day centre or
a youth club with table-tennis to prise the disaffected Yoof of Hammersmith off the streets. Those are the tram-lines along which
they tend to think.
Catherine Bailey was designated Executive Director of New Riverside, co-ordinating artistic policy and the smooth running of
the studios. The artistic policy itself would be led' by Alan Rickman (i.e. presumably starring in it), and Thelma Holt was to be
the director of it. The proposal promised that these three people would be the key to its success.
Again and again the document invoked the National Theatre plus the RSC's Barbican Theatre, pointing out that Riverside was not
far off their scale.
A panel of Associate Artists, of which Rickman was one, would be consulted about programming. The heavyweight names proposed
included director Deborah Warner, designers Hildegard Bechtler and Bob Crowley, playwright Christopher Hampton, the actors Fiona
Shaw, Mark Rylance, Juliet Stevenson and Richard Wilson, BBCl Controller Alan Yentob and Dance Umbrella Artistic Director Val
Bourne.
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Thelma and Catherine's business expertise was obvious in the staffing proposals, which carefully costed everyone down to the
part-time cleaners (?10,000 per annum). Ideas for opening the smaller of the two studio spaces to television companies were mooted,
with a possible BBC link.
Projects in the pipeline were productions of Twelfth Night, directed by Deborah Warner; The Way Of The World with Fiona Shaw
and Geraldine McEwan, directed by Alan Rickman; Sharman Macdonald's new play The Winter Guest; and Deborah Warner's production of
Miss Julie, with the French film star Isabelle Huppen in the title role alongside Rickman.
Geraldine McEwan did eventually star in a revival of The Way Of The World, but at the National Theatre instead in the winter
of 1995 (she won Best Actress at the London Evening Standard Drama Awards for it). The Winter Guest was directed by Rickman to
great acclaim at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and London's Almeida Theatre early in 1995. As for Isabelle Huppert, she did indeed
come over to London in the spring of 1996 to star in Mary Stuart at the National Theatre.
Alongside the glamour projects in the New Riverside manifesto were also laudable ideas for community education and youth
theatre, unemployment and summer projects. The potential weekly box-office income and annual budget for both studio theatres were
carefully costed. The architect, Sir Richard Rogers, already responsible for the Thames Reach complex next door to Riverside in the
Crabtree Estate area of Hammersmith, was approached to redesign the interior; and there were even plans to reopen the bookshop and
create a recording studio. But all these good intentions mean nothing without the guarantee of start-up cash.
Confucius say: lack of S-word (sponsorship) lead to F-word. Or some such ancient Chinese proverb.
Grants were envisaged by Rickman's consortium as the core funding for running the building, with starry productions plus the
hiring-out of space as the income-generators that would subsidise other activities. All this was placing an immense responsibility
on the shoulders of a floating population of stars to pull in the crowds; even Corin and Vanessa Redgrave's Moving Theatre could
not work a box-office miracle in a 1995 season at Riverside.
Catherine Bailey's draft concluded on an inspirational note, proposing an arts complex the like of which had never been seen
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before in this country. There was a clear promise that they would put Riverside once and for all upon the international map.
'At first I thought it was a lunatic plan to get involved in bricks and mortar in these economic times, but when you see the
abilities of the group behind it, you know it would work. With the pulling power of the actors in the company, the place would be
packed. With names like the ones we have, the money will follow,' enthused Thelma to Michael Owen in the Evening Standard on 20
July 1993 well timed to influence the Board.
So what went wrong? The capital's listings magazine, Time Out, was the first to break the news that the high-profile Rickman
bid had been rejected.
According to Time Out, Jules Wright of WPT looked the likely new Artistic Director despite a track record which, according to
TO, did not begin to compare with Alan and Thelma's starry panel.
The Evening Standard picked the story up and made much of the fact that Jules had been on the Board of the Riverside Trust
until shortly before her appointment. It even alleged that she had drawn up a job description for the new Artistic Directorship.
Even more ominously, the intermediary to whom Rickman and Co. had submitted their proposal was deemed by Time Out and the
Standard to have delayed handing in their bid until too late for the crucial Riverside Board meeting on 15 July. So why use a
go-between? Because a team rather than an individual was applying for the job of Artistic Director, they felt their unorthodox
approach needed explanation.
Smoke began to issue from various heads. They smelled conspiracy, or at least incompetence. Six leading theatre critics -the
Guardian's Michael Billington, the Evening Standard's Nicholas de Jongh, The Times' Benedict Nightingale, the Daily Telegraph's
Charles Spencer, the Independent's Paul Taylor and Time Out's James Christopher - felt sufficiently strongly to write a letter of
protest to the Evening Standard about the conduct of the Riverside Board in selecting Jules Wright as its director-designate.
This thunderous missive, published on 6 August 1993, blamed then councillor and Riverside Board member Jane Hackworth-Young
for failing to pass on the Rickman submission to the selection panel until after shortlisted applicants had been interviewed.
The board's choice as the next director of Riverside was herself on the board of directors until just before the deadline for
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applications,' they fulminated. 'Miss Wright, Riverside Studios has admitted, helped draw up the job description for the new
director. We believe it may be a conflict of interest . . .' They urged the Riverside Board to revoke its decision.
William Hunter, chair of the Riverside Trust, wrote a languid reply to the Standard on 10 August: 'It was the Alan Rickman et
al consortium's own fault that the application arrived so late -not only after the closing date but after the interviewing panel
had completed interviews. The commonsense thing to do would have been to send the proposal straight to Riverside, not use an
intermediary. This is what everybody else did.'
Further foot-stamping was to come: The reason we did not interview the consortium was that its application was unconvincing
administratively, artistically and financially.' Very damaging, if you take William Hunter's artistic credentials seriously (he's a
barrister).
Hunter has since refused to talk further about the entire episode, saying pompously: 'It's ancient history.' But Rickman and
Co. took their rejection as a Philistine slap in the face for some of London's best-known actors.
Indeed, Nicholas de Jongh wrote in the Standard on 12 August: 'Perhaps one should conclude that the Riverside Board has a
phobia about stars.'
Catherine Bailey later became convinced that it was a simple case of the turkeys not voting for Christmas. The Board
interfered all the time: had we got in, the first thing we would have done was to dismiss the Board. It's weak. They knew that,
that's why they refused us. The Board is full of councillors wanting to hang on to their honorary positions.
The idea was to generate our own income from high-profile productions, plus companies and well-known directors from abroad
such as Peter Brook and Peter Stein. They were too small-minded to see our vision. Thelma is the only true impresario of our time,
a new Lilian Baylis. Thelma and Alan are both such larger-than-life characters. Alan has put a lot back into the business, and
people really rate him.'
But such a mythology has grown around 'Rivergate' that someone from outside the Rickman camp even gave me the initial
impression that Jane Hackworih-Young was a Tory councillor, as iа the scuppering of Rickman's bid was a wicked Conservative plot
Nothing could be further from the truth.
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Enter the first Rivergate scapegoat: a neat figure with cropped grey hair and a rather pukka accent. She apologised for that
plus the double-barrelled name; people were always leaping to the wrong conclusions about Jane, the Labour councillor for Addison
Ward in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. She also had a useful background in theatre: 'I worked with Donald Albery, then I
was the director of the British Theatre Association for ten years. And 1 was on the Board of Riverside at the time the bids were
invited.
'It happened like this. Jacqueline Abbott, our Mayor, was the original contact for Catherine Bailey. They couldn't get hold of
her, so they contacted me instead. 1 had met Alan originally at the BTA; I liked him enormously. He has a nice sense of humour.'
So far as her left-wing credentials are concerned, she was an impeccably correct contact for the Rickman consortium. A member
of Hammersmith and Fulham Miners' Support Group, she had joined protest marches by the Women Against Pit Closures. Jane's family
comes from Sedgefield, a former mining community. 'I'm left of centre. I'm not a Blairite.' Until she talked exclusively to me for
this book, she had stayed silent on Rivergate, taking the rap at the time because there was grave doubt about whether the council
could continue to cough up cash for both Riverside and the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith.
For this small London borough is unique in having three high-profile theatre venues - the third being the small but innovative
Bush Theatre - within a square mile of each other. Keeping them all afloat is a nightmare for any council.
But it seemed there were grounds for paranoia over the decision on who ran Riverside. The reason why Alan Rickman's consortium
chose, unlike any of the other bidders, to use a go-between was because, according to Jane Hackworth-Young, they were absolutely
convinced that Jules Wright was the favourite for the job of Artistic Director. So they felt they needed, to put it bluntly, some
special pleading on their behalf in order to get a fair hearing.
They thought their bid might not be taken seriously for several reasons,' claims Jane. The proposal from a consortium would
not answer Riverside's specific job specification. Jules Wright was on the Board, and they believed that the Chair William Hunter
supported her very much. Indeed, I had that impression too, and perhaps at the cost of other bids - although I had no objection to
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Jules. And Riverside had a deficit of ?250,000, a debt they didn't want to take on. So they felt they needed an intermediary
to smooth the way and put their case.'
Jane met Alan and Catherine over lunch in a French restaurant in Kensington Park Road on 10 June 1993.
They showed me their draft. They said they would tidy it up a bit; I made a few suggestions, such as extra figures here and
there. It was not absolutely clear at that time that Thelma Holt was committed to the project.
Time was already very short, because I understood that the shortlist was to be drawn up on 15 July. I said I would take their
bid to lain Coleman, the Leader of the Council, to canvass him on the monetary situation and also because he was quite close to the
Chair of the Riverside Trust, William Hunter. That was how it was left.'
What Alan and Co. did not understand were the manifold pressures on councillors with so many causes clamouring for cash. Given
that Alan's partner Rima had been a councillor in the neighbouring Kensington & Chelsea for seven years by then, one would have
thought she might have advised them. But anyone with any integrity — and Rima prides herself on that — would take care not to get
involved with an issue in which there was a personal interest. So she stayed well clear.
'I didn't get the bid document from the Rickman group until 22 June, because I had been away for a long weekend,' says Jane.
'I arranged to see Iain Coleman on 24 June. The main gist of that meeting was on another subject, but I left him the Rickman
submission.
We set up another meeting to discuss the matter on 5 July. To be fair to Iain Coleman, we didn't talk at length about the
Rickman bid. I asked him to look at it and hoped that if he considered it worthwhile, he would speak to William Hunter.
'One of my main reasons for seeing him was to sort out whether we were going to be able to fund all three venues for the same
year. Both the Lyric and Riverside had a deficit, and we are the smallest London borough after the City.
'I was really deeply concerned that we weren't going to be able to fund both of them. There were rumours every day about what
was going to happen. I used my contacts in the theatre to there were other options to fund the two of them. The selection
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process was going on for the next elections; I had to go up north; and 1 was also writing a paper on the future of the
libraries, because I was anxious that we were going to have to cut them.
'I wrote to Derek Spurr, Director of Hammersmith's Leisure and Recreation, on 28 June. I was still scared that the Lyric would
have to go. Catherine and Alan thought I was working against them because I was talking to other organisations, but I was trying to
explore all the options for both the Riverside and the Lyric.
'At very short notice, lain cancelled our meeting on 5 July. He's a very busy man. I spoke to his PA because I said all the
submissions have to be in and I had to see him.
The earliest we could set a meeting was for Tuesday 13 July at 6 o'clock. I thought to myself, do I approach Hunter directly?
I had previously indicated to him that there might be another bid. I was in a quandary. Then during that week I heard there had
been a meeting of the leadership of the Council - and it had been decided not to fund either of the two theatres. 1 felt 1 must
clarify the situation once and for all with Coleman.
'In the interim Catherine Bailey had confirmed to me that Thelma Holt would be involved, which had not been absolutely certain
up to that time. And because of my knowledge of her work, I became even more convinced that the consortium could administer and
develop Riverside.
'I saw Iain Coleman on 13 July. He was very candid and confirmed to me that the council could not fund Riverside's deficit. He
said "We will definitely be funding only one of the two theatres in the forthcoming year." I pushed him on it and asked if it would
be Riverside. He said it would. I tried to ring William Hunter that night, but he wasn't in.'
What appeared odd to Alan Rickman was the legal situation. Jane explains: 'Because both theatres might become insolvent or be
liquidated and there were councillors on both boards, there had been concern about councillors renewing their membership of the
board. The Council's Legal Services recommended that councillors should resign.
'Subsequently I think that Legal Services rather changed that view, but the important thing about it is that I resigned
because the Council suggested I should - not because of any dealings with Alan, Catherine or Thelma.
'Jules Wright was definitely offered the Riverside directorship,' according to Jane Hackworth-Young, 'but my understanding is
that
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she had decided not to go ahead with the financial risk. What was ironic was that she must have known more about the financial
risk than anyone else, because she had been a member of the Riverside Board.
To be fair to William Hunter, he did ask me whether the bid was coming in. He behaved honourably; and when I finally reached
him on the morning of the 14th, he agreed that he and members of the Board would meet me before their "shortlisting" meeting the
following evening. But I was still aware that he might be biased towards Jules.
The council officer who was dealing with Riverside also spoke to me on the morning of the 14th, as he had been approached by
Catherine Bailey who gave him a copy of the bid. I explained to him what had happened - and about my conversation with William
Hunter - and we agreed to go down together to see Hunter and members of the Board. The officer's advice to the members of the Board
that evening was that they should consider the Rickman bid, and the members agreed to consult with the Board.
We were informed that the Board had agreed to consider the bid over the weekend, yet within hours Jules had been approached
about running Riverside.
'Iain Coleman had even said to me that he didn't think the Rickman bid was a particularly good one, though 1 thought it was
very businesslike. But I think lain was terribly busy with the decisions on cuts for the forthcoming year.
'1 categorically did not withhold the bid. 1 passed it on. Alan, Catherine and I had agreed I would take it to Iain Coleman,
but I hadn't had dialogue with him. It was not a case of withholding the bid, but of not being able to put their case in good
time.'
The timing of the actual decision now seems terribly vague.
'Hunter said the Rickman bid was in late; I said "I thought you were looking at all the bids, not making a final decision," '
says Jane. 'I had opened Rickman's bid on 22 June and passed it on. There were other bids from the Royal Opera house, the Old Vic,
Carnival Theatre, Jules Wright's WPT and the English Shakespeare Company.
'I was a bit of a scapegoat because I felt that Iain Coleman didn't support me in processing the bid or subsequently when the
matter got to the Press.'
When the public storm broke, Jane was frustrated by the tact that she had to stay silent. 'I could not tell the Press that the
council
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had made a decision to fund only one of the venues. Other funding bodies, such as the Arts Council, would have withdrawn
funding from the Lyric, as some funding was dependent on the local authority matching it.
'Ц would have produced a disastrous domino effect. So I couldn't say a thing publicly without endangering the Lyric. Since
that time, the Lyric has launched an appeal which has resulted in attracting funding that has wiped out its deficit.
'1 had given the Rickman proposal to Iain immediately I received it. The only reason I had then delayed was because I had
understood there would be no funding for theatres at all, which might well not be made public until after people had committed
themselves to Riverside.'
In retrospect, Jane could be said to have panicked from the worthiest of intentions. Clearly she didn't wish to lumber Alan's
team with a building that carried a deficit of a quarter of a million pounds and had just had its funding withdrawn . . . otherwise
she might have been guilty of dropping them in it.
'I think the Rickman application was good; I also think some of the others were good. I didn't think Jules' application was
amazing.
'My sadness was that I wasn't able to explain fully to Alan, Thelma and Catherine what had happened. I did try Catherine's
phone and left a message; she never rang me back. She was away on and off during that time.
'The decision by Hammersmith and Fulham to continue funding the Lyric from 1994 to 1995 was taken in the autumn/winter of
1993. The lawyers didn't want me to go to the Press at all, and they wanted me to keep my explanatory letter to Thelma very, very
short. It was really just an apology.
'Thelma and Alan rushed to the Press. If only they had held for 12 hours, I felt I could have done something. I wish they had
talked to me before they went to the papers.
'In retrospect, I don't know what I would do differently. I don't think it would have had a different outcome if they hadn't
used an intermediary. There was nothing anti-Alan about the whole affair at all.'
In fact there was a certain coolness between Jane Hackworth-Young and William Hunter that hardly helped to advance the Rickman
cause. A one-time political rivalry meant that she was not, perhaps, the best choice of cleft-stick messenger under the
circumstances.
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'Hunter was Treasurer and I was Vice-Chair of Hammersmith Labour Party. We both stood for the Chair, and I got it over him.
'Alan's consortium just saw the problem as a threefold one: the deficit, the future funding and the fact that Jules had been
on the Board. They had deep concerns about being treated fairly because of that.
'And it was also very strange that the Riverside Board didn't go back to the other original bidders after Jules decided not to
go ahead. They offered the directorship to William Burdett-Coutts instead.'
Burdett-Coutts himself was equally mystified. 'I went through a rather strange process with this whole thing,' he admits. 'I
went for an interview in July, but I thought that Rickman had got it. Then as soon as they approached me, I phoned up Alan. We must
have had three or four meetings about ways in which his team could work together with me, but I never really got a final response
on that.
Thelma did once request both the main studios gratis while I ran the building; they didn't even offer to pay rent. But I would
still happily work with Alan. I'll work with anyone; I'm in the business of survival,' added William, valiantly trying to keep his
head above water.
Riverside was forced to close for five months from April 1994 for a face-lift under the directorship of Burdett-Coutts, who
had made his name by running the Edinburgh Fringe's Assembly Rooms. He moved the entrance from the side to the front and gave it
the look of a trendy art gallery instead of the student hang-out it was before. Fingers, not to mention legs, have been crossed
ever since.
'It's all fallen flat,' Catherine Bailey later said to me in 1995 with grim satisfaction. Asked to comment on Jane
Hackworth-Young's performance in the great drama, she rolled her eyes, and hummed and hawed.
In 1995, Council Leader Iain Coleman confirmed to me the rockiness of the Riverside funding at the time of the Rickman/Holt/
Bailey bid. 'It has been public knowledge since 1993 that the support we gave to Riverside would have to be curtailed and
eventually abolished. We gave the Trustees of Riverside as much notice as possible of our future intention.'
Hammersmith & Fulham Council combines the positions of Chief Executive and Finance Director in one job that carries the
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title of Managing Director. There is an odd postscript to the Rivergate story that suggests the Rickman consortium made a
second attempt to succeed. On 10 August 1993, the Managing Director of the authority received a letter from Catherine Bailey
Limited on behalf of Catherine, Thelma and Alan.
They enclosed a copy of their proposal, which had been rejected by the Riverside Board. In it, they declared that they would
only reveal their sources of start-up money - at last, the dreaded S-word - if the Council maintained funding. 'You will note our
omission with regard to finance, should the two funding bodies reduce the level of funding, and we wish to state our willingness to
reveal our sources of start-up money should the matter proceed.'
In other words, the Rickman consortium appeared to be playing a poker game and keeping their financial cards close to their
chest. You show me your willy if I show you mine . . . then we'll see who has the biggest. With cash-strapped councils, however, it
doesn't work like that.
'Although we had no direct locus in the matter, the Council's Managing Director did meet with Thelma Holt and Alan Rickman on
two occasions,' admits Iain Coleman. This was done to have a fallback position if the Riverside Board had to cease trading, in
which eventuality the site reverted to the local authority.'
In other words, the council would have to pick up the bill. 'I am advised,' concludes Coleman, 'that the meetings were
inconclusive. The proposals continued to be a wish-list of artistic programmes without any of the financial back-up being
substantiated.'
So the sticking-point was money all along. The apparent delay in submitting the application had been a red herring which made
people suspect a fishy conspiracy. 'Jane did pass on the bid to Iain Coleman because he and William Hunter had worked together as
longstanding members of the local Labour Party. But it wasn't passed on to Iain as a formal submission; just as an informal
consultative exercise,' says Peter Savage, who was head of the Council Leader's office.
'But the crux of the problem all along was money. One bid was underfunded; the other wasn't. But it was all taken personally,
which was a shame. Thelma, Alan and Catherine were given plenty of time to come forward with information about sponsors.
'And they had just the sort of image that we were looking for; so there was absolutely nothing personal. It was a pity that it
was interpreted that way.'

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Savage explained to me that it's essential to see the colour of the applicant's money first before other funds are
forthcoming; it's a delicate balancing-act.
'For instance, we are supporting William Burdett-Coutts in his Lottery bid. That means we would look at practical ways of
supporting Riverside, e.g. giving them the freehold or perhaps cash funding. But all this would only happen if he was given money
from the National Heritage fund. We wouldn't be able to fund him if the Lottery bid wasn't successful. Our help can only be part of
a package.'
Nevertheless, London's artistic community was fired up on Alan and Thelma's behalf, sensing an outrageous and unforgivable
snub by the Riverside Board. Frankly, William Hunter's rather rude letter to the Standard on 10 August had done nothing to correct
that impression.
In his feature published on 12 August, the Evening Standard's chief theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh demanded that Riverside's
Board must go as a result of the Rivergate fiasco. He compared Alan's bid with that of Jules Wright, calling the Women's Playhouse
Trust proposal 'four pages of pipe-dreams, aspirations and vague platitudes'.
A cut-out of Alan's head was thrust like an Aunt Sally above the parapet. So far as the Press and the general public were
concerned, his was the best-known face in the consortium despite the fact that he was only one of the trio who drafted the wording
of the bid.
And now to the second scapegoat in the affair.
This is where connections become terribly incestuous in the close-knit world of theatre. The President of Jules Wright's WPT
was, paradoxically, Alan's old friend and co-star Geraldine McEwan. Even more strangely, Alan Rickman was among the ten actors
credited with a close connection to the WPT as one of those who was approached to lead the teachers' workshops. (Unsurprisingly, he
hasn't yet taken up that option.)
Those who did lead the workshops were Kathryn Pogson, Prunella Scales, Timothy West, Anton Rodgers, Neil Pearson, Fidelis
Morgan, Janet Suzman, Gary MacDonald and Celia Imrie. So the Riverside row appeared to have bust up a beautiful and fruitful
friendship between Jules and Alan that had brought together some of Britain's best-known, most adventurous thes-pians. No wonder
there was a feeling of betrayal and treachery.
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Thelma was publicly bitter about Riverside. She told the Hammersmith and Fulham Post on 5 August 1993 that the apologies
received from the Board and from Jane Hackworth-Young had been completely unsatisfactory.
'It would be difficult to think how a consortium led by Alan Rickman which put forward such ambitious proposals for the
Riverside did not even merit an interview.'
However, Jules Wright says: 'As I understand it, no application from the Rickman consortium was submitted before the closing
date, before the interviews or before the Board of Riverside and the representatives of the London Aits Board and Hammersmith &
Fulham Council had met to decide how to go forward. I don't understand that."
Alan forced himself to be philosophical to the Press, telling Michael Owen in the Standard on 22 October that year: There's no
point conducting an inquest now, it's so depressing. There was a positive result in the amount of discussion it opened up. I felt
we'd started a new wind blowing through the London arts scene. But at the end of the day, I do believe a great opportunity has been
lost. It comes down to the stifling, grinding mediocrity we have so much of at home.
'No one is prepared to accept the challenge of making a brave decision, to take a risk on something that might come crashing
down or really break through to something new.'
Jules Wright saw things very differently. 'Thelma and I have not spoken since, which is very sad. None of them knew that I
spent Ј5,000 on lawyers . . . and was unable to pursue it because I couldn't afford it. It was just a waste of money.
'I suspect that Alan's group might have thought there was public money around; but they would never have got involved if they
had known the state of Riverside's finances. I'm glad the WPT didn't get involved either, in the end.
'It all began when I was pursued non-stop for eighteen months by the then Artistic Director Jonathan Lamede to join the Board
of Riverside. I finally did in November 1992.
'But then Jonathan was removed in an extremely brutal Board meeting after a financial crisis. He was asked to leave the room
and then William Hunter, the Chair, said, "I think it's time for Jonathan to go."
'I was very suspicious of the way the Riverside accounts were presented - inaccurately, I suspected. There were terrible
problems

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with the whole finances. I spoke to the London Arts Board about this.
'WPT has a freehold building in Islington, and we had money in the bank at the time, too. So I thought we could come to some
kind of arrangement to solve the Riverside financial crisis.
'I talked to my WPT Board about it and then resigned from the Riverside Board. I wrote a draft proposal in note form for my
Board, which was what ended up being published in the Evening Standard.
'I sent the proposal to Riverside; and I and WPT's accountant, Mark Riese of H. W. Fisher & Co, were interviewed by the
Riverside Board, the representative from the Hammersmith & Fulham Council and a representative from the London Arts Board. There
was no enthusiasm for my proposal in principle from the other side. But by the end of what I thought was a courtesy meeting, we
felt they had shifted ground. They subsequently decided to proceed with further discussions between the two charitable trusts.
'I have never understood why the Rickman bid was late. I understood that it was delivered after all the interviews, after the
Board meeting at which they had made their decision. Nevertheless, I understand it was seriously reviewed by the Board.
The next thing I knew was that I got a call from a woman on Time Out who said I had been offered the Riverside directorship. 1
said "Oh no, I haven't." She said "The entire artistic community of London says you have."
There was just this one draft document to our WPT Board. It was faxed to all those members who had a fax, and a letter was
sent to one member who was in New York. Then suddenly it appears in the Evening Standard. I still wonder from whom they got it. We
can only speculate on this. All I can say is that I know for a fact that none of my Board members or staff was involved.
'In retrospect, I feel I was incredibly attacked in a concerted effort to discredit me; I was Australian and seen as an
outsider. On Sunday the Observer followed the Time Out and Standard pieces. The lawyers told me not to talk to anyone. The coverage
appeared to imply that I had fixed myself a job. I was never offered a job!' explained Jules. 'It was simply two meetings between
two charitable trusts. Our accountants were instructed to carry out a due diligence examination of the Riverside accounts, which
went nowhere. Riverside's finances were in a pretty parlous state.
19O
'I never saw a final job description. And I couldn't believe that William Hunter would write a letter to the Standard without
ringing us up and talking about it: it was impossible to pursue discussions properly thereafter.
'I felt abused,' she says. 'I didn't think Alan was doing this . . . but I dithered about phoning him. Then the extraordinary
thing was that I got phone calls from seven actors, saying that Alan had been spotted giving out photocopies of the letter from the
critics to the Standard in the returns queue at the Almeida Theatre. This was the evening of 6 August; the critics' letter had been
published in the Standard that day.
'I still think people thought that Riverside was a passport to public money. In actual fact it was one godalmighty headache; 1
knew it was a financial disaster area because I had been on the Riverside Board.
'So then 1 went to the solicitors and said "1 can't stomach this." Citygate are Press troubleshooters in the City; they came
and monitored my calls.
'I have never spoken to William Hunter since. 1 had met him only three times at board meetings. As for his so-called
admiration for me, 1 was incisive and thoughtful in those three board meetings - maybe William was impressed by that.
'One thing 1 think the solicitors were right about was that you have got to retain your dignity. 1 think the whole thing did
Alan a lot of damage - but not Thelma, funnily enough.
'1 was so wounded by everything. It was reported to me that one theatre director held a dinner party with an exceedingly
well-known actor there, and they spent the entire evening slagging me off.
'1 have known this director a long time. You never ever discredit or accuse someone without asking "What is the story?" 1
still can't understand why they didn't contact me directly instead of having all this stuff in the papers. I had launched a rescue
bid, not a bid for a job. And 1 resigned from the Riverside Board long before we opened negotiations for an alliance between
Riverside and WPT.
'Time Out started it all, and we served legal proceedings on them on 28 September.
'In actual fact,' adds Jules, '1 don't think the Charities Commission would have worn us linking with Riverside. As a
registered charity, WPT is not allowed to risk its money.
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The Commission would have thought it too big a financial risk: it would have been hell on earth.
'From the moment that Jonathan resigned, there were rumours that Alan and Thelma were planning to put a bid together. My first
meeting with Thelma was one of the great theatrical images of my life. It was after the dissolution of the Roundhouse.
Thelma walked across one of the biggest spaces I can ever remember entering, and she looked so devastated and sad. It was the
end of her dream after the liquidation. They dispensed the money to other charitable trusts, and we had asked for money for our
inaugural production, The Lucky Chance.
'I think the Rickman bid would have been taken very seriously; they would have been a formidable team to interview. Alan and
Thelma are very articulate, talented people. But if you feel that passionately about your cause, speak about it yourself. Why use
an intermediary?
William Hunter's letter in the Standard about their bid being unconvincing really upset Alan. But he behaved with dignity. I
suspect,' concludes Jules, 'that it got out of hand for all of them.
'Nevertheless, I do hope to work with Alan again; I have done availability checks on him from time to time. The reason there
is now this silence is that everybody now knows they got it horribly wrong. As far as I'm concerned, the whole thing has been
consigned to the dustbin of history.'
Jules felt particularly upset at what she saw as a personal attack by Nicholas de Jongh in the London Evening Standard. She
did, however, feel comforted by the support of Ilona Sekacz, the composer of both The Lucky Chance and also Les Liaisons
Dangereuses.
"What you must be going through!' wrote Ilona to Jules on 13 August 1993. 'I just want you to know that I'm thinking of you,
and ready to lend a hand in whatever way I can. I've written to the Evening Standard to register my protest at the way you're being
treated.'
That letter, which was not published by the Standard, read as follows:
'I was distressed to read your theatre critic Nicholas de Jongh's articles about the recent appointment at the Riverside
Studios. He places a lot of emphasis on the applications submitted by Alan Rickman's consortium and Jules Wright.
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'When a panel meets to consider giving jobs or grants, the first thing it notices is the huge diversity in the manner and
content of the written applications. But even the most detailed and beautifully presented papers are not necessarily the best. It
is whether an applicant can prove that he or she is capable of fulfilling the brief that counts.
'Jules Wright runs the Women's Playhouse Trust impeccably. She commissions and produces a huge volume of new work on a tight
budget, and her past record shows she is capable of turning ,i debt into a profit. She is a tireless and committed worker for women
in the theatre, and one of the few people currently fulfilling the taxing dual role of director/manager.
'I know Alan Rickman, Juliet Stevenson and Christopher Hampton, and love and respect their work, but their application to the
board of Riverside Studios is not supported by evidence of their managerial skills.
'Jules Wright may be running the WPT single-handed, but this is because the funding the WPT receives is spent on commissions
for new work . . . She has always maintained a low profile in the press, preferring to devote her energies to the daily running of
a successful company, rather than fighting her battles for funding and recognition in public.
'1 know nothing of the rights and wrongs of the Riverside Board's behaviour, but I think it is wrong of your theatre critic to
give a false impression of one of our most charismatic and talented theatre directors.'
Thelma Holt's last words on the subject are these: '1 don't think any blame of any kind should be laid at the door of Jules
Wright. who was merely after the building like we were. The position of the others involved, though, was, to say the least, a
little quaint. In spite of all the criteria we were given to understand were required of us, we were not even considered. There arc
many opinions as to why this was so, but they are all speculations.
'I'm as confused now as 1 was then about the rather cavalier, if not uncivil, manner in which Alan, and indeed Ins colleagues
including myself, were treated. Print that if you want to: it is what I feel.'
With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that Rivergate was a public-relations disaster for the Riverside Trust as well as a
major disappointment for the hopes of Alan, Thelma and Catherine. If the
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nub of the problem was money, why did the trustees not make that clear?
Instead of which, William Hunter's sneering letter in the Evening Standard had claimed that the Rickman consortium's
application was unconvincing 'administratively, artistically and financially'.
The first two were demonstrably not true; so it was an insulting remark to make. And that was what made the affair so
acrimonious. "You may think William Hunter is a pompous ass,' says one of the people involved. 'I couldn't possibly comment.'
Yet it's likely that Alan would never have spent enough time at Riverside to be a consistent box-office draw, given a rapidly
developing film career that took him all over the world. Rima had found the year a tough one, too. After standing as the Labour
Party's parliamentary candidate in the safest Tory seat in the country, she had found that even a power-dressing course hadn't
helped for reselection.
Rima plodded on, but Alan had moved on to another movie. Anton Mesmer, the man who invented the concept of animal magnetism,
was the subject of a Dennis Potter script about to go into production.
In one of those stories that are the much-embellished stuff of Hollywood legend, Alan was handed the script by one of the
producers in the back of an LA cab. At last this was to be the first film of his career in which his character was absolutely
central. It would capitalise on Rickman's growing reputation as a leading screen actor; and also his astonishing, unorthodox sex
appeal. With Anton Mesmer inducing multiple orgasms in society ladies, it couldn't fail.



11. ANIMAL MAGNETISM 195

Once upon a time there was a fez. Magic acts, however, have come a long way since the days of the homely British comedian
Tommy Cooper. This is the age of paranormal TV.
Given the vogue for such glamorous showmen as the Heathclif-fian (not to say werewolfian) magician David Copperfield and the
slick, sharp-suited hypnotist Paul McKenna, a feature film about the father of modem hypnotism would appear to have a ready-made
audience.
Friedrich Anton (otherwise known as Franz) Mesmer, the German physician who invented mesmerism, was born at Iznang, Baden, on
23 May 1733. He graduated in medicine in Vienna, and later dabbled in the use of astrology and electricity in medical treatment.
After finding he could obtain results by treating nervous disorders with the aid of a magnet, he developed the notion that an
occult magnetic fluid - which exerted a force he called 'animal' magnetism — pervaded the universe and that he alone had a
mysterious control over this force. He believed that disease was the result of obstacles in the magnetic fluid's flow through the
body, and that they could be overcome by trance states often ending in delirium or convulsions.
In 1766, he published his first work (in Latin) on the influence of the planets upon the human body.
A portrait shows a fat-faced, bland-looking individual. Despite this unprepossessing appearance, he does appear to have
achieved a close rapport with his patients and to have alleviated various nervous illnesses. He cured many people by
auto-suggestion; but he used much mumbo-jumbo and was pronounced an impostor by his fellow physicians. Expelled from Austria for
his unorthodoxy, he became a favourite at Louis XVI's court in pre-revolutionary Paris. Exactly contemporary with the Vicomte de
Valmont . But in 1784, the French Academy of Medicine and Sciences, whose members included such eminent individuals as Dr Joseph
Guillotin and Benjamin Franklin, recognised only that Mesmer's fashionable seances exercised a suggestive influence on his patients
and denounced him as a charlatan. In effect, he practised an early form
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of psychotherapy. Eventually he withdrew from Paris and died in obscurity at Meersbury on 5 March 1815, a man so far ahead of
his time that he has almost disappeared into the name he coined.
The early attempts at producing a trance-like state or sleep were a combination of trickery and charlatanism, but the modem
scientific study of the process of mesmerism has become better known under the name of hypnotism. Mesmer's consulting-rooms were
always dimly lit, hung with mirrors and filled with the scent of burning chemicals. He dressed in the long flowing robes of a magus
or necromancer. His methods were inevitably copied by all kinds of swindlers and tricksters, with the result that mesmerism fell
into disrepute until it became the subject of scientific study towards the end of the nineteenth century. Hypnotism is an
artificially induced state that aims to help people to help themselves, but its effects are notoriously uncertain and even harmful
to impressionable people. There's an old canard that says women are more easily hypnotised than men; certainly Mesmer had a
preponderance of female patients. His hands-on methods involved bringing them to a delirious state similar to orgasm.
With the right script to flesh out the story, this faith-healer, miracle man, visionary or Svengali (take your pick) is a
natural subject for drama; and Rickman had the right footlights appeal. Mesmer's makers, Mayfair Entertainment International, hoped
to capitalise on the paradox of such an attractively ugly man. Once again, it was also a period role for which Rickman is
peculiarly suited. On this occasion, he elected to stay true to the eighteenth-century fashion for being clean-shaven in order to
put as great a distance between Mesmer and Valmont as possible. The project generated enormous interest, especially when David
Bowie became an investor. In May 1993, Alan was interviewed about the role at the Cannes Film Festival for Barry Norman's Film 93
slot on BBC Television. Rickman was banging the drum for Mesmer at a Mayfair Films lunch in his honour; yet he was deliberately
dressed down in a blue denim jacket and white vest, as if he were trying to look like a roadie.
'Nobody asked me to make movies until a few years ago,' he admitted cheerfully with a face-splitting grin, looking as if he'd
spent his day humping equipment and checking sound-levels.
'I said yes to Mfsmer because of the script. The writers are the least respected people around; they are a service industry.
Dennis
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Potter is an artist: it's irresistible. You are very glad and lucky to be involved.
'I'm staying on someone's yacht. A driver said, "You come with me, we go to David Bowie's yacht."' Alan grinned again and
thanked David Bowie.
It was easy to see why Dennis Potter had been attracted to the theme of one man's sexual power, transmitted by
thought-processes alone, over women. Just the kind of thing over which the crippled Dennis had been fantasising throughout his
career. His Christabel serial excepted, Dennis did not write substantial roles for women: he saw them as sex objects.
The director Roger Spottiswoode admits the screenplay had been around for quite a time: 'We all came to the project
separately; the script was about seven years old.'
Filming took place in Hungary, near the Austrian border. The first thing that hit me when I read the script was the erotic
charge of it. It's on every page,' Rickman told Michael Owen in a London Evening Standard piece in October 1993.
'He has a relationship with a blind girl which certainly goes beyond the usual doctor-patient relationship.
'He touched his patients intimately, we see treatment which borders on love-making, but anyone expecting any romping around on
a bed will be disappointed. Not my style, I'm afraid.' (His tune changed for An Awfully Big Adventure.)
'Mesmer was a man of moral courage, which always creates a certain aura,' added Rickman somewhat stuffily, clearly psyching
himself up to be a serious sexpot. 'He could be selfish and egotistical, but also had great innocence and didn't mind making a fool
of himself. I find that quite attractive. He was also close to being an actor. He was very theatrical in his work, used lots of
music.'
The minimalist Michael Nyman composed the music, which worked rather better than the film itself. For somewhere along the
line, the movie that was to have given Alan Rickman his greatest starring role went so disastrously wrong that it ended up mired in
litigation.
Even Rickman was heard complaining to his American agent in a Late Show special on his career in November 1994 that his
non-naturalistic bits had been cut out of the film, that someone had pointed out you never get to know the enigmatic Mesmer.
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Director Roger Spottiswoode was probably the only person happy with the finished product in the end as slanging matches broke
out everywhere.
This was the second project within eighteen months on which Rickman, the ultimate control freak, had lost control. A Mail On
Sunday feature by Paul Nathanson on 12 February 1995 was the first to scent blood, sniff out the scandal and tell pan of the story,
blaming Alan Rickman for being too prissy and politically correct to play the kind of intellectual sex-machine that Potter had in
mind. In other words, it seemed to be accusing Rickman of censorship and bowdlerisation.
Nathanson's piece alleged a behind-the-scenes dispute involving ' 57 unauthorised and 'substantial' changes that Rickman and',
Spottiswoode made to Potter's original script.
Mayfair Entertainment International, the majority backers of this ' Ј4.5 million movie, also claimed that Rickman's character
didn't' have the sexual magnetism that Potter intended and withdrew their Ј3.2 million contribution.
The 57 changes are substantial and were made without any consultation with us,' Mayfair's joint managing director Ian Scorer
told Nathanson, complaining that Rickman had turned Mesmer into a distant, inaccessible figure rather than a hot-blooded
sensualist.
Mesmer's new owners, Film Finances, disagreed, defending Rickman's script changes. 'Obviously he was very proactive as the
lead actor. He did have input,' James Shirras, director of legal and business affairs, told me.
'One of Mayfair's complaints was that Rickman's performance was not sufficiently erotic. But if he wasn't then that's the way
he chose to play it.'
Mayfair go further, alleging that Rickman refused to lick the eyelids of a young blind female patient because he was concerned
that it would make him look like a lecher. And Scorer also alleged that at a private screening of Mesmer in Los Angeles in February
1994, Rickman had wanted to make the ending more political. 'Instead of the final scene between Mesmer and the blind girl being
played to piano music, he wanted the sounds of gunfire and helicopter engines from Sarajevo.
'He thought it needed some really punchy, violent noise rather than the lyrical, touching finale. It was meant to make it more

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politically correct, but people said, "Whaaat? Mesmer was in Paris in 1780, not in present-day Bosnia!" '
Co-producer Lance Reynolds also rent his garments in anguish at the memory, claiming he had spent five years developing and
nursing the project with Potter. The changes were very much done by the director and Alan Rickman, and I was not consulted,' he
told Nathanson. 'I would see the rushes, call a meeting with the three other producers and express my concern, but it would be
forgotten. 1 was jumping up and down and saying "This is not the film!"
'I was upset as I adored Dennis Potter. That was the point of working all those years on it - and not to have people rewriting
his work.'
It sounds heart-rending as well as garment-rending, and certainly makes a good story, but it's not the complete picture.
Rickman was portrayed as a killjoy Dave Span whose starring role had gone to his head and who was just the kind of humourless lout
that would (like the Hackney headmistress Jane Brown) denounce Romeo And Juliet for being 'heterosexist'. It was enormously
damaging, and Scorer and Reynolds sounded very convincing.
It was felt at the time that Mayfair seized on an opportunity to validate pulling out of the film. They therefore criticised
alterations to the script, which had been made without that much collaboration with Dennis Potter because he was too ill.
James Shirras of Film Finances Services Ltd, the new owners of Mesmer, was also acerbic in the spectacular way that only
lawyers can be when they cast off the legal jargon, let their wig down and tell you what they really think.
"You've been on my conscience,' he admitted when I contacted him for a second time to try to arrange a talk about the Mesmer
fiasco. 'Fascinating is not the word for Mesmer. You need to be resilient to stick with it to the end.
'Mayfair said Rickman was not sexy enough, which is ridiculous. This is a man who has more fans turning up to see him than
Hugh Grant at the premiere of An Awfully Big Adventure, which 1 attended. Rickman has a big following.
There were certainly cash-flow difficulties at the beginning, during the first few weeks of filming. Neither Rickman nor Roger
Spottiswoode were paid properly until the fifth week. However, the suggestion disseminated in certain quarters that money which
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should haw been available to meet production expenses on Mesmer was diverted elsewhere is without foundation.
'The major cash-flow problems at the beginning meant it was difficult for the producers to get their ducks in a row. That
caused discontent on the set. Roger and Alan were implored to keep on working; they were extremely good about it.
To some extent, they blamed Mayfair for the difficulties. But they had to be kept sweet, and I understand it was not always
easy to do that.'
The budget for Mesmer was eight-and-a-half million dollars There were quite a lot of deferments for what's known as the
Talent', standard moviespeak for the director, producer and stars The deferments for Rickman and Spottiswoode were six-figure sums
in dollars. The cash budget of approximately six million dollars made it eight-and-a-half million dollars in total for the
production
'Film Finances now has the rights of distribution, which Mayfair were supposed to acquire," says Shirras. 'We have now
appointed a sales agent and sales are now being made. You would think there would be a lot of interest in one of Dennis Potter's
last scripts, but...
"Our misfortune was that Mayfair ever agreed to finance the film based on that script. They prepared a legal case based on the
divergences between the film as delivered and the original script. The discrepancies are very, very minor. It doesn't amount to a
row of beans. They put their case to arbitrators, and the arbitrators believed them, to many people's amazement. I was very
surprised
"We knew the script was very, very odd. Mayfair were saying that it had been turned into a doctor-patient relationship as
opposed to a man and his lover, but that assertion is so unverifiable.' says Shirras with exasperation.
'Alan had apparently been impressed by the script, though. I think he had found more in it, frankly, than most people did
Indeed, one friend says: 'Alan found it terribly significant.'
The originating producer. Lance Reynolds, has been smarting about it all for years. '1 worked for five and a half to six years
on Mesmer and it was such a bitter experience,' he squeaks. 'I would like to gracefully decline about commenting on working with
Alan Rickman Dennis Potter was very important to me and I was very close to him.'
When I spoke to him in the autumn of 1995. Reynolds alleged: 'I have not even been paid for Mesmer.'
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This was disputed by James Shirras, whom I contacted at around the same time. 'It was not true that Lance Reynolds was not
paid,' he insists. 'And if he felt things were going wrong, why didn't he do something about it? He was there for the whole shoot.
I think it's fair to say that his relationship with the other producers was not all it might have been.
We at Film Finances tend to get involved in these things when a producer needs to borrow money from a bank. They started
shooting in September 1993. We were contacted about providing a completion guarantee. We look at the project and the individuals
involved and decide whether they can do it. We were familiar with the Hungarian-Canadian producer Andras Hamori, so we were happy
with him. Frankly, he was the reason why we got involved in the first place.
'Lance Reynolds was the originator of the project. He got some money for Mesmer from Bowie's business manager Robert Goodale.
Goodale had nothing t