Free Making Priscilla by Al Clark Page A

negotiators; it is an irrevocable fact. Cash flow must have begun by the end of the financial year for the rest of the funding to be implemented and, of course, the cash flow cannot begin until the contracts have been signed.
    The acceleration towards the chequered flag begins. In thecourse of a single day I speak to six lawyers representing different interests and attempt to mobilise a collective effort. Then they all speak to each other. We have secured an increase in the final budget, which allows us to spend a greater proportion of time on the road, to build four days of travel into the schedule, and to enable a small increment in the salaries of the crew, many of whom have still not been found. Although we are offering a rare combination of adventure and profit points as compensation for low wages, several people we respect pay lip service to the principle then walk away.
    But there will be no film at all without an approved cast, and no chance of finding one if we do not keep moving forward. Everybody is too far down the track to want to pull out, so we agree to sign subject to casting being approved prior to investor cash flow. There is still one month before the start of pre-production, and Latent Image will spend its own money until then. The contracts are executed — and the signature pages circulated by fax — fifteen minutes before the close of business on the day of the deadline.
    *
    On the flight to Los Angeles — from where he will continue directly to London — Stephan encounters Paul Mercurio again. As the star of a successful movie on his way to see Pretty Woman director Garry Marshall about a leading role in Marshall’s next picture Exit to Eden, Mercurio is travelling at the front of the plane. As the director of a low-budget comedy with no cast in place and no money in the bank, Stephan is travelling at the back. Undeterred by the gulf between their circumstances, and aware that they are trapped in the air together, Stephan has a final, purposeful shot. All Mercurio can do to avoid the issue is to run behind the first-class curtain andcall a member of the cabin staff to provide security. However alluring it may seem to work with an American director on a studio picture, Stephan tells him, Priscilla will be the film to stretch him as an actor and, more importantly, will be much more fun to make. Mercurio says he is still interested, and will consider his options after meeting Marshall.
    By the time Stephan has landed in London, more names are flying around: the American actors John Cusack and Eric Stoltz for Tick and — a brilliant and deranged piece of lateral thinking — either Superman (Christopher Reeve) or Captain Kirk (William Shatner) as Bernadette.
    The people he has really come to see, however, are Rupert Graves for Tick and Tim Curry for Bernadette. I am not in favour of Graves, still preferring Hugo Weaving both as an actor and as a grounding agent for Stephan when he is trying to direct the actors — covered in flies, with their make-up running — in the middle of nowhere. But Curry, who is in Vienna playing Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers, is an interesting choice. We know each other from having studied drama together at university, although I have only seen him a few times since The Rocky Horror Show and its consequent movie version made him a celebrity. The fact that he has never eclipsed the transvestite role which launched his career makes him approach Priscilla with equal measures of curiosity and caution.
    Then it happens. It is not quite Paul on the road to Damascus, and I am unable to recall which one of us first brings up the name, but it is an indication of how congested our minds have become that we have neglected the perfect actor to play Bernadette: Terence Stamp.
    He fits all our criteria. Although for the past sixteen years — punctuated by the occasional idiosyncratic detour with directorslike Peter Brook, Stephen Frears and Pilar Miro — he has been