 Gregory Dark 'The Prophet of the New Millennium' |
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More about Greg I must be remarkably incurious. I know almost nothing about the personal lives of George Orwell or John Steinbeck, of Albert Camus or Joseph Heller – a few of my favourite authors. And the little I have gleaned has been exclusively from the jackets of their books. I am also, so I am told, an anachronism: I dislike today’s age of so-called ‘celebrities’ – one where bullies who can cook become national icons and where bullies who are pop promoters glorify themselves by demeaning harmless wannabes. I can’t help thinking writing about myself puts me into the category of a ‘wannabe celebrity’. Wannabedom is a mantle I find as inviting as chain-mail. Probably because, for too many years, I was a wannabe writer. I am told, however, by ‘those-who-must-be-heeded’ that I have to write something about myself for this web-site, that readers now expect it. If, that is, I want to avoid my books being remaindered within months of publication. I must admit to a certain gawkiness writing this piece. I wish I could claim such stemmed from a lack of ego. It’s probably closer to the truth, though, that my ego is so huge I don’t feel that any of my words can do it justice. Stage-fright is not the curse of the timid but of the vain. Asked by the US Customs whether he had anything to declare, Oscar Wilde famously replied, “Only my genius.” I am in equal measure awed and appalled by that riposte. Maybe that’s to do with having, like Churchill, an American mother and an English father. The American genes are “Right on”-ning such confidence and in-your-faceness, whilst their English counterparts are huffing that this simply is not what a chap does, old chap. And then, just to compound that confusion, there is the mystic in me. Who would like to believe that I am above all such worldliness and unworthinesses. But secretly, in Wilde’s situation, I would be hoping that the exchange with the US Customs’ Official would go along these lines: “And do you, Mr Dark, have anything to declare? Apart, that is, from the genius which the world knows you to possess?” Written down, that question has a sarcastic ring. It doesn’t in my head. The Anglo-American divide of my parentage was further complicated by my English father craving all things American and by my American mother striving to become more English than the English. Woe betide you, in her later life, if you failed to warm the teapot! He became successful in that most American of all arts, the cinema; and she was, during my teens, a theatre critic with a distinct prejudice against any Broadway import. As of so much in life, the significance of all these – frequently conflicting – influences only became apparent very much later. At the time of their happening … well, I doubt I was even aware they were happening. I was born on August 31st 1950. August 31st is now engraved into the British psyche as the date on which Princess Diana was killed. Richard Gere, on my birthday, was (apparently) being helped to blow out his first candle. The post-war England of 1950 was still a land of powdered milk and ersatz honey. And the middle-class into which it was claimed I entered was considerably less solid than parental folklore would lead you to conclude. John, my father, was then but a humble film technician – and, as such, subject to the diva-like caprices of the British film industry. He had been posted to Kenya during his national service. He thought we might have a better life there. We emigrated when I was about six-months old. I spoke Swahili before I spoke English. Sadly, not a skill I have maintained. To his credit, John was (so I have been told) never the archetypal colonialist. I certainly know throughout his life he has fought racism. The Mau Mau, however, were unaware of this (admittedly, somewhat arcane) fact and tried to murder my recently born sister. On the day of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, therefore, we trooped back to England. John re-entered the now re-flourishing British film industry and very speedily rose through its ranks. His job, though, involved his protracted absence for huge swathes of my childhood. Versions differ of how it was during one such ‘posting’ we ended up en famille in Hong Kong. But, however I got there, Hong Kong was hugely important to me. I suppose I must have seen poverty in Kenya. But I was only three when I left. And most of the poverty I would have experienced there would, I suspect, have been rural poverty. The poverty in Hong Kong was urban. And devastating. It’s now over fifty years since I was there. Still I am haunted by some of the sights which then confronted me, by some of the smells. By this overwhelming, ubiquitous, sprawling, haunting, glassy-eyed, desperate poverty: a poverty which demeaned those enduring it and those that allowed it to be endured. Still I am haunted by some of the cruelty I saw initiated against the ragged, the wretched and the starving by the police, by sundry other authorities and by no more than passers-by; still I am haunted by my own callousness, by the way (after all too short a time) I started to accept the ocean of awfulness by which I was surrounded. I spent about three months in Hong Kong. It was there I received my education. My schooling took place in another world – an ivory tower of Latin primers and the cane, of scrums and snobbery. Compton MacKenzie (author of ‘Whisky Galore!’) was an old boy. I remember him, by then an old man, returning to give a talk. He was able, I remember, to name which teacher had tyrannised which classroom. And I remember too being enormously impressed by his memory. Now myself of an age which would be ‘old’ to a schoolboy, I am entirely sure I could do the same. It’s what I was doing yesterday that I struggle with! These days I am more akin to another alumnus, G.K. Chesterton, who once cabled his wife: ‘Am in Tunbridge Wells. Why?’ Other distinguished survivors of St Paul’s include Milton and Pepys. And Field Marshal Montgomery. Sadly, great store was set by the military tradition and very, very little by the literary one. The school and I parted company when I was sixteen – to, I suspect, our mutual celebration. It has only been in the last ten years or so that my loathing for my alma mater has started to mellow. It dawned on me remarkably slowly how impossible it is to teach someone who already knows everything. But, sadly, even that lesson is one I remember only sometimes. John was by now an executive with Paramount. He and nepotism joined hands to secure me a job as runner (tea-boy) on ‘The Italian Job’. I was fired four weeks later! So much for nepotism! I thought mine was destined to be the shortest career ever in the history of the film industry. Peter Collinson, the director, had been on the wrong end of a … disagreement with my illustrious pappa. His way of exacting vengeance was (so, at least, the story was told me) by showing me the door. Fortunately, two of the film’s senior production crew (René Dupont and Derek Kavanagh) were so embarrassed by this pique, they secured me a job on another film. This was directed by the then largely unknown Ted Kotcheff. Ted went on to direct several Hollywood block-busters. This film was at the other end of the scale, and has never (as far as I know) been exhibited. Ted had a reputation for irascibility, but he was extremely kind and generous to me. Demanding, but kind. As was the film’s first assistant director (and thus effectively my boss), Scott Wodehouse. Who was very demanding. But also, yes, very kind. Tough love before tough love had ever been phrased. There’s been a lot of ‘tough love’ in my life. I was then in my late teens. The Beatles were at the height of their fame, flower-power and marijuana were all the rage, the ‘pill’ had just been invented. I saw myself as the tortured poet, full of angst and Allen Ginsberg, of Dylan Thomas and (both consequently and not) booze, deeply and passionately concerned with matters spiritual and political. And with sex! Professionally, I was like the (was it, Restoration?) poet with two mistresses: happy to be with either, were other sweet charmer not there. I was torn between films and the stage. I’d ‘done’ films. I wanted the stage. By a stroke of good luck which even then I compared with a miracle, I found myself working at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square. The Royal Court was then (and is now) the most celebrated theatre in England devoted to the production of new work. It was my university. I worked on very intimate terms with a spectacular array of burgeoning and recognised talent, with ‘luvvies’ of enormous commitment and huge artistic courage. Most of all, I worked with people of integrity. And I found out a lot about what that word means. William Gaskill was then the artistic director. I was privileged to have been his assistant director on the first production of Edward Bond’s ‘Lear’. I was later to assist Edward himself when his made his directorial debut, mounting ‘Lear’ at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Both Bill and Edward have been enormous influences on my life – not just professionally. For many years, Edward was a sort of cerebral mentor. Many of my decisions were influenced by asking myself, “What would Edward think?” Sadly our contact these days is only spasmodic. But he and his enchanting wife, Elisabeth, remain two of the people in my life for whom I harbour the warmest of feelings. Edward was less than enamoured of what I was then scribbling – for all I know, is equally so of what I am presently writing. But stoically he read it and commented on it. During the course of one such criticism, he did in one sentence give me a very sound piece of advice on the art of play-writing: “Be as bold as Shakespeare,” he suggested, “and as brief as Chekhov.” It is advice which holds true, I think, for all literary endeavour. I seek always to heed it, and I forward it in the hope that it will also serve others in their work. The next twenty years or so saw me commuting between film and the theatre, with sojourns also into television. Privately, my conduct was not that, let us say, to be expected of a gentleman. I continue to be appalled by how badly I treated people, particularly, but not exclusively, women. And particularly too my family. Sadly, my mother and sister both died recently. I think they were both still sporting the scars. My daughter, Lyubov (named after Chekhov’s ‘heroine’), was born in 1987. Over the rest of my private life we will draw a discreet, if shame-faced, veil. Aged 40, my then girlfriend gave me an ultimatum: Either I got help for my drinking or she would leave. (Well, she left anyway. But she started a process for which I will always be extraordinarily grateful.) I entered a rehab centre. I thought my war with booze was over. It was only just beginning. The first job I was offered on my release was to set up the now infamous television soap, ‘El Dorado’. During which period I relapsed. And was consequently (and rightly) fired. I entered another rehab, this one in Spain. There I met Sue, one of the counsellors. We started living together about a year after I came out. I’m delighted to be able to say that the reason for my subsequent visits to rehab centres has only been to tell my story to my successors. In very many ways, the drunk is only a lazy man’s mystic. He (or she) uses booze to access another plain of existence, another reality. It’s scarcely surprising therefore that the most widely used of the recovery programmes encourages an espousal of the spiritual. There are many viewpoints on a single life. One of those on mine would bisect it: my life into sobriety and my life through sobriety. Sobriety is not a lack of alcohol. But it can be achieved only via a lack of alcohol. And sobriety, like life, is a journey endowed (and enriched) by the quixotic, the quirky and the downright kinky. The late Scott Peck borrowed Frost’s phrase ‘the road less travelled’ to describe it. I have had a love/hate relationship with that road. Finally, I suppose, the consequence of my travelling it has been to give some structure to my exasperation, and some coherence to a general discontent. It has been the occasion for me of great anguish, as well as of great happiness. Sue, my partner, was a woman of enormous vitality and animation. She was one of the world’s givers. She died in great pain, paralysed from the neck down. My sister also died in enormous pain – and with remarkable stoicism. I had my own brush with cancer and am alive today only courtesy of a medical team of quite outstanding skill (headed by surgeon Peter Goldstraw and consultant Michelle Saunders) and a technology which is … well … incredible. Maybe Dr Jonson was right. Maybe if a man is to be hanged in the morning it does concentrate his mind wonderfully. I somehow doubt that, to be honest. But I certainly do think that these trysts with mortality have brought into some kind of relief all the jumble of dissociated ideas that were rummaging around my brain, looking for a purchase. And they have combined with my sliding and slithering down the very treacherous ‘road less travelled’ to bring me to where I am today. The letters that had been sloshing around in the alphabet soup may not yet be in alphabetical order, but they are (at least) finally creating whole words on the Scrabble board. Well, anyway, so I hope … |