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- Okay, here we go. - Yeah.

Arrival Joe, take one.

Camera speed.

Action.

Hey, Joe.

- Peter. - Jesus Christ!

Hey, how are you?

- I knew you would be... - What brings you here, mate?

...in the fucking bar.

- Nothing's changed, has it? - Give it to me.

It's great to see you, pal.

Great to see you.

- Lovely to see you. - Yeah, long time, eh?

I just wonder if I should walk into this...

Given that we get this other shot.

Uh, just carry on.

Action.

- Joe! - Hey.

- Peter, how are you? - Jesus Christ!

- I haven't seen you for years. - Oh, my God.

What's happening?

- Good to see you. - How are you?

Lovely to see you, mate.

It's incredible we're doing a film

on our own film,

which is completely insane.

- Never been done before. - Yeah, I don't think so.

Not by the people who actually made it, you know.

but they waited until everyone is dead.

- Yeah. - But not yet.

On every movie I made,

I put a book together,

and there are 24 movies I made over the years.

And this, I just, just in case

it reminds you of anything,

but this was the book on ghosts.

This was the first day of shooting.

I remember the first day of shooting

was absolutely magnificent.

Mind your head!

We were on the boat and I jumped off into the water.

It was so hot.

And looking at the hull of the pirate ship,

and the sun breaking through,

and it was the most magnificent memory of mine.

Because from that point on, it was a nightmare.

You know, because you are responsible

because you are the fucking director.

For 43 years,

I covered up this very dark

spot on my life.

I carried this grudge against myself,

all my life, for all these years.

Now I'm here...

and I'm lost.

What have I done?

So we find ourselves on the Kings Road,

and why, precisely, are we here?

The Kings Road was this absolute

monumental place.

And it was absolutely packed

on a Saturday.

There's people walking and parading,

and showing off their new clothes,

and the latest fashion,

and everything like that.

And it was just sensational.

Were you working as a director?

I was... Yes, I mean, from 1968

I've been directing movies.

And why are we here at this spot?

It's because, because of this place at which

was a restaurant called Alvaro's.

And this was the most important restaurant in London.

And everybody from Michael Caine

to Roger Moore,

- Mick Jagger... - Would all be

- in here. - The cream of England was here.

On a Saturday, I'm walking down

and I see Peter Sellers, you couldn't miss him.

And I said, "Peter, baby, you're back!

You're back from New York."

"That's absolutely perfect.

I want you to come and direct my movie.

It's a 17th century pirate comedy in Cyprus.

And we're all ready to go, and all you gotta say is 'Yes.'"

You know? And like an idiot, I said "Yes."

We must find that woman.

Stick your arm out.

When the idea of this film came out,

I jumped at it.

He was the greatest comic actor in the world.

Mr. President...

I would not rule out the chance

to preserve a nucleus of human specimens.

It will be quite easy.

at the bottom of...

some of our deeper mineshafts.

Because it's right after Dr. Strangelove,

it's right after the first two Pink Panther movies,

which became an enormous hit in the world.

Peter Sellers.

- Spike Milligan. - Mmm.

It gave me an incredible chance

to work with Spike Milligan.

And you couldn't have got two more bigger comic geniuses

in England in 1973.

How about a film possibly scripted

by Spike Milligan starring Peter Sellers

and of course, Spike Milligan.

What about it, Spike Milligan?

Yes!

Well, quite clearly, I'm not gonna get anything

- out of you. - Okay, okay.

- Now I think this... - ♪ I want to be unhappy

♪ But I can't be unhappy

♪ Until I make you unhappy too ♪

This film was a great opportunity

for Peter and me

and Spike Milligan

to work together

and to create something completely wonderful and crazy.

For a director, it was irresistible.

So, you haven't been here since 1973,

so tell me what it was like

when you came here all those years ago to see Spike?

Well, I... It was a sensational idea

to do this 17th century pirate comedy, you know?

And, uh, Spike was such an important part of it.

Because of his incredible, zany, crazy humor.

"You're lucky to be alive.

"And I was about to say why."

Well, I was struck head on by the 10:40...

I can't...

Peter!

Oh, my God. There's Norma.

Good God.

The Hungarian refugee.

I know, I escaped again.

- I can't believe it. - I'm here.

I cannot believe it.

- It's been, what, 42 years? - 42 years?

- I know. - You look the same.

- Except you've gone gray. - I know.

- Lovely to see you. - Yes.

I'm really thrilled.

I bet Spike is laughing his head off, you know.

Come in.

- And you are? - I'm Simon.

- Simon. - Hello, Simon, I'm Norma.

- Happy to see you. - Nice to see you.

Sit down.

Nothing's changed here.

Look at all these pictures of Spike.

Bernie, darling, it's Norma.

I know I'm in trouble.

As usual.

So here we are after 42 years,

sitting in your office,

Don't keep saying that. It makes me sound so old.

Well, its makes us old, but it doesn't matter anymore, does it?

No, it doesn't.

Hello, darling, how are ya?

Just... It brings back incredible memories being here.

I mean, that's all is left for me.

Ghost in the Noonday Sun.

Lots of pictures of Spikey...

No, no, wait a minute.

This is not all that's left of you.

No, I mean my memory.

All, yeah, all your joy.

- I know. - And listen, 42 years later,

- I know. - We are laughing about it.

- I know. - And we're smiling about it.

We went through hell, we had nightmares, you know.

But, you know, it, it, it... It never left me

ever since then.

Well, I can see that.

What happened to the film was an absolute tragedy.

- Mm. - Because instead of

this kind of wonderful thing,

- however crazy... - Mm.

And instead of that,

the film was never shown.

I was accused of all kinds of things

which I wasn't responsible.

My career nearly was completely

destroyed by this movie.

- Mm. So... - And it's so, it's so

upsetting even today.

- You've gotta let go. - You're right.

You've gotta let go.

- This is not all you've got. - Yeah, absolutely.

You've got it all up here, you know?

And Spike wouldn't like that.

- No. - He wouldn't, you know...

If you said to Spike, "This is all I've got,"

- he'll call you a fucking idiot. - No.

- I know. - Give me your hand.

Give me your hand. It's a matter of your memories.

- This is not all that is left. - I know.

It's rubbish.

Negatives was a wonderful book,

I started shooting it,

and it was like an absolute dream come true.

And that was the beginning of my career.

Out of the blue, I had a phone call from Columbia Pictures.

if I would be interested in reading the script

on A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.

And The Ruling Class, you know,

it was the crown of it all.

It went to Cannes,

and had tremendous attention.

It couldn't have been better.

We're interested in the work of the director, Peter Medak,

who can be something special.

He has done two pictures.

Fantastic growth, I think, in England.

- He's Hungarian. - He is?

- Yeah. - I didn't know that.

We're part Hungarian.

And me, naively thought,

that that's how it's always gonna be.

He really was very high on the fact

that you were gonna do it.

- Yeah? - I mean, he was excited.

It was the happiest I had seen him for ages.

You had just you know, come off directing

Peter O'Toole.

Peter always loved having

something that somebody else had had

- so... - Took over a big success.

Absolutely.

Think of Wardour Street and you think of film.

For the whole of the 20th century,

this famous thoroughfare

has been the center of the film business.

John Heyman was the producer of it.

And John Heyman, uh, was absolutely

the brain of

independent financing in England

in the early '70's.

And I knew John because

he was a very dominant figure

in British movies.

This was the money side of the business.

And the money side of the business

was, "Well, if we could set it up for people."

And, Peter Sellers was one of those names

that made it work

from a distributor's point of view.

And any Peter Sellers picture

was deemed to have a financial chance.

But, in those days, it was pretty unusual

to be able to go into Columbia

and raise $2.6 million to make a picture,

- sight unseen, unread. - Yeah.

Which was the power of Peter Sellers.

And the reputation after The Ruling Class of Peter Medak.

And, Peter was a genius,

but very difficult.

I mean very, very, very difficult.

I mean, I have a name of being very difficult.

I am not difficult at all.

I just cannot take mediocrity.

I just cannot take it on any level.

If you take it, you sink absolutely

or you have the luck.

And it is luck,

to work with great directors only.

I've had that maybe just on two or three occasions.

The rest of the time has been, you know, a bit ropey.

But, it won't be in future because

I feel that I want to be very, very discriminating.

I knew Peter was a lot of trouble.

But that never worried me because then

I worked with the most difficult actors.

That is okay, you know, you have to just

cope with them and deal with them.

But then, I saw the script was weak.

Not unsolvable, but it needed some clever grafting, you know.

I turned up at Spike's office

and started working on the script

and we gone through the whole thing.

And Spike was

divinely insane.

The story of the film,

basically is that

uh, there was this

cook of the boat.

by the name of Big Scratch, which was Peter Sellers.

They come to this island

to bury the secret treasure.

They dug the hole and they're burying the treasure,

And then he throws the knife into the captain,

goes back to the boat, the pirate ship

and he says, "I am the captain now,

because I know where the treasure is."

And they immediately get lost for 20 years.

- Ah! Me Ireland! - He learned that

this little kid, has the talent

to spot ghosts.

And they all get thrown into jail.

And they then escaped from the Arabs.

It's a big battle.

And they arrive at this other island,

which I can't even tell you which country it is.

I don't think you know where the treasure is!

By finding the wrong treasure...

I know where the treasure is!

They find the right treasure.

It is unexplainable.

And I tried to talk to Peter about it

on the phone.

And every time I talked to him,

I had this terrible feeling that Peter doesn't

understand what I'm talking about.

And that's where my suspicion grew more and more and more.

To realize, I don't think he's ever read this bloody script,

you know.

So, one Saturday, I decided to visit

Peter when he was living in this house

as he was running away from one of his wives

because he was convinced that she was a witch.

The phone rang, suddenly.

And it was his then girlfriend, Liza Minnelli,

who, they were having this

great love affair.

Well, folks,

it's love time at the Copacabana.

And, yes, we're in love.

It's frightfully good.

And she was very upset and she was crying on the phone.

And I could hear her crying, but also could,

Peter was saying, you know, "Darling, please don't cry,

I really love you and there's nobody else, it's just you.

And I'm going to count to 10

and with each number, everything is going to get more and more

"purple around you." And he started counting,

I couldn't believe it. I'm sitting with the script open

at page seven,

and he counts and "You feel it yet?" and

"two, three..."

"Can you see? Can you feel?"

"Is your eye closed? Is it purple?"

"I love you."

And he gets to 10 and he hangs up.

Now he breaks down and starts crying.

I get up and I go over to him

and he's crying on my shoulder,

And I said, "Pete, come on, let's go for a walk."

So we went for a walk

and I realized, this is the end of it.

We're never gonna get through the script.

The script is vital.

It's essential. Absolutely essential.

You can't move without it.

Uh, and it's got to be as good as it possibly can be

before you start shooting.

And so many people rush into productions

- one way or another - True.

unless you have

- some amazing talent. - Yeah.

You can actually pull it off. But it's rare.

You can't, you should never start a film

when you know the script isn't ready.

I know, but by then, the whole thing was set up.

- It's too late. - And the boat is sailed, it was too late.

It's a great lesson by the way.

You don't make films

- because you can get them made. - Yeah.

You get films because you got an erection to make it.

I still thought that I can manage

his genius talent and get the best out of him.

But there was no choice for me, I had to carry on

because my wife was pregnant with my second son.

And I needed the money desperately

and I had to continue.

We found this boat yard in Athens

which looked like a junkyard.

My producer's boat,

old African cigarette boat.

And out of that, it went into the shipyard.

Then, they started building the superstructure

and try to make it up into

a wonderful looking pirate ship.

At the time Ghost in the Noonday Sun, came along,

there were only five of us

working in a small office in South Molton Street.

I had worked on three films with Peter.

We got on very well and that,

the idea of working in Cyprus sounded very tempting.

I looked forward to working with him again.

But, when I took a careful look at it,

well, not even that careful,

just the concept to build

a pirate ship,

put a film crew on it with a couple of stars, go out to sea,

I thought, "Well, this is courting catastrophe."

And you are completely at the mercy of the

weather and the waves, the currents and the wind.

It worried me about it,

because of that, I suggested to Peter

that the schedule should be longer

than the schedule that they were proposing to give him.

On every movie,

film financiers were the guarantors,

there's an absolute file on it.

And in these two boxes, is the entire history

of what happened in Cyprus.

Let's see what we have in here.

It brings tears to my eyes, because this is

43 years ago.

- Everything is in here. - Yeah.

These are amazing, these documents.

Well, it's just a history of what happened day by day.

But if you look at the report,

by John Croydon, he was

extremely cautious about this.

As a matter of fact, they used to say about John,

anything with water,

even somebody washing their hands,

He would say, he wanted nothing to do with it.

Because it was scary to him.

But I knew, because David did say

that when he looked at the budget,

you know, that it isn't sufficient.

Which I then went and told

John Heyman immediately.

And it was totally and completely ignored.

That was the end of my involvement with the film.

What's amazing is that nobody

thought carefully enough, before they started.

Just, I thought an extremely impractical way

of approaching this film.

I wanted to make this film work.

But that's when I realized

that, you know, I'm really kind of fucked, you know.

I remember when I was on the plane,

I got a little drunk,

and I was saying to myself, saying,

"What the hell you doing now?"

My God.

I can't believe this.

I feel like, back in 1973.

It's like nothing changed here.

Everything is the same.

How can time stand still?

It is haunting.

Absolutely haunting to be here.

My first real

strong, strong memory of Cyprus

is standing with Peter,

watching the boat arrive.

And the boat came onto the horizon

and it was beautiful

and it was a beautiful day.

And this absolutely marvelous boat came.

Then I heard all the locals

from the villages rushing down,

you know, because they said, "the pirate ship is coming,"

"Your pirate ship."

And there, in the horizon,

sailed this beautiful, beautiful pirate ship

with three sails,

And they were slowly coming,

it took forever. I think it took couple of weeks

from Athens to get here.

And it finally came here and made

this magnificent turn here.

And then suddenly hear this terrible crashing noise.

And we looked, and the pirate ship here

was rising out of the water.

And the Greek captain, who was drunk,

crashed the entire pirate ship against the rocks.

And then the boat started to go slowly down.

And as the boat was going slowly down,

Peter was standing by my side,

- and he was going slowly down too. - I did.

That's how the movie began.

It, on the first second, it was a disaster already.

Like we're being cursed from day one.

The day before Peter arrived to Cyprus,

Peter and Liza broke up.

He was catatonically depressed.

I have been disappointed

so many times

in people

that I have become

not

uh, most certainly not bitter,

but, I

tend to

approach people very wearily, in case

they're going to clobber me.

I find I get clobbered a lot.

So finally, on a Saturday,

I pick Peter Sellers up at the airport.

And his driver, Burt, was there

and we brought him here, to this incredible villa.

So, as we walked in,

Peter said to Burt

"Before we go in,

"please just line up all the suitcases here."

So Burt lined up 15 pieces of luggages.

And he said, "First set up the stereo before we go in."

And when Ravi Shankar's music

started playing,

Peter said, "Okay, now we can enter."

So we went inside.

So, as we came inside,

here was this incredible,

Mediterranean house.

And then he said to Burt,

he said, "Burt, look at that bookshelf.

"There's a Who's Who there."

He said, "Give him Who's Who." You know, he said,

"Let me look up Tommy Clyde and Ben Kadish."

The two producers of the film.

So, he pulled this book,

opened it up,

and then he started reading out

the life of Thomas Clyde.

A titled English gentleman.

Partner of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

Had made such a, such a, such a films

and so forth, you know.

And then he closed the book, he said,

"Let's fire them."

He said, they're incompetent, you know,

"Let's get rid of them." And I said,

"They've been your partners now for two, three years,

you developed this project together."

Well, it's needless to say,

within about a week,

they had vanished

and left the island.

I didn't know that we were getting rid of Tommy Clyde.

Um, Tommy Clyde turned up in my office,

and said, "I'd been fired."

I'm the only person who can fire you.

It's the only film that I can ever remember

where the producers got sacked after the first week.

By the star.

For years, he has stuck idiots.

Idiot producers who've ruined wonderful material.

Idiot managers who told him he couldn't act.

Idiot BBC officials who treated him like a naughty boy.

And he won't take it anymore.

He just won't take it.

Know, dead mens,

we's gone with this boat

on a search

for the treasure.

Know that I'm willing to share this treasure with ya.

I'm willing to do that, so let me have a show of hands

all of you's boys. Who's with me?

♪ Fi-diddlie-do

♪ Fi-diddlie-dee Yo-ho

♪ For the rolling sea

♪ We'll sing you a song ♪

The boat was repaired

and Gareth Wigan, John Heyman's

associate was sent out

to have some kind of a control

over this insane situation.

Having not had any experience

about shooting on water,

I was totally unprepared for it.

♪ Fi-diddlie-do

♪ Fi-diddlie-dee

♪ Old Scratch

♪ Is the man for me ♪

This is where we used to moor the boat.

We used to sail off from here.

Into the Mediterranean.

And how many people would be on the boat?

How many crew?

The entire crew was about 110 people.

And normally this happened around 6:30-ish in the morning.

So very like this?

Yeah, it was exactly because now it's 7:15

But, this is what it was like.

And it was gorgeous, you know.

Until we got out into the open sea.

I want to be brought ashore. I've been kidnapped.

- Kidnapped? - But you're only a kid.

Even with this little boat, you can feel

the movement, so imagine being on the boat all day long.

What it does to you. And try to act like this.

Behind this ship,

they towed a generator boat,

with the cables going into the water, into the arc lights which were here.

We had to switch off the engines

so we can shoot sound.

At that point, the boat started drifting.

And we had to be five miles out of the land

so we don't see the land over there.

I knew one of the guys who worked on the crew at sea,

and he said it was impossible.

They're all moving, you know.

Can we go back? No, no because the sun's in the wrong position.

Boat moved about so much,

so many of the crew were being sick.

Makeup man,

looking grey,

somebody else said, "Get back." So we all came back.

And terrible smell.

I can still smell that diesel.

My two great producers

put two old engines into the boat.

Which everyday broke out at five miles out at sea.

So we had to be rescued by the Costas brothers,

who towed us in. Every day it happened.

The engines, they were in a really bad condition.

It wasn't really serviceable.

It was a second-hand boat, it always had problems.

"Unable to operate open-sea call.

Bad weather reports, so ships returned to harbor one after another."

The sea was rough, so you couldn't do the trip properly.

So we have to tow the big ship back to the harbor.

In and out, in and out, all day long.

The elastoplasts are still all over the place.

It was a nightmare.

But then to us, it started beautifully.

Ahoy, there!

And those early scenes,

the first time on the boat and all the excitement

when I was the officer with lovely Jamie Villiers.

I mean, that was a joy to play.

Welcome aboard our humble ship.

Excuse me, sir, what is that smell?

- It is him. - Yes, of course.

What are those spots?

Those red spots upon your face, sir?

It is nothing. It is the crot.

That is just the crot.

Yes, good, excellent. That's very good.

Fine. The red plague.

The red plague, sir.

The red plague? What?

Yes, sir.

- The plague? - The plague...

Abandon ship!

Number One, abandon ship!

The red plague!

The red plague!

- I think it's a lovely, lovely comedy scene. - Yeah.

And then from then on, we were told

that seeing our scene

and how good James and I were together,

- 'cause we were a great double act. - Yes, wonderful.

- Pity we only had that one scene. - I know.

Um, but were told that he'd seen that

and everybody was praising it.

And the smile went off his face,

and we were persona non grata.

And from then on, it just got worse

- Worse and worse, I know. - It did.

I mean, he turned around to me on the boat

while we were rowing along in the Mediterranean,

and everybody's seasick, you know,

and he rips his big wig off and he says,

"This is absolutely fucking crazy."

He said, "It's impossible to make a comedy like this.

I mean, who thought of this?

How could you have gone along?"

And I said, "Well, Peter, this is how the whole scene was set up.

And it's your movie."

Peter was like that.

It was the most marvelous thing in the world

and he was gonna do it, and blah, blah.

Two or three days later,

he could say, "I don't want to do that."

And that would be it.

Truly, if anyone had said to him, I think,

"You can stop filming and go home",

he would have been happy. That's all he wanted.

- Yeah. - He wanted to go back to London,

he didn't want to be there.

Suddenly, the island that he had loved that was so beautiful

became, you know, the hell-hole of the world.

I cannot stand it any longer!

Help! I can't swim!

I seen them when they do'd it.

Unfortunately, the production was very unprepared

for this impossible shooting at sea.

Save me! Save me!

Save me first!

- Save me! - I'm the captain!

And it affected the shooting and preparation on land.

You're late. Years late.

Incarcerate him.

Hark!

So Costas, what was your role in the movie? What did you do?

Well, I was, uh...

I believed I was the head of the pirates, yeah.

So we got up in the morning,

we got the costumes on and things like that,

and we did the shots.

By that time, after two shots...

You know how film is.

It was break for lunch.

I got into the queue to go to the buffet there to eat.

The lady there, she said, uh,

"I'm sorry, you are not having food."

I said, "I beg your pardon?"

She said, "No, you are not allowed to eat."

"Only for the actors."

I said, "Excuse me, what do you think we are?"

"What? You are extras."

We are treated like natives.

"We are the natives! Oh-ho-ho!" This kind of thing.

You know, who should say, "Ah, thank you for...

- Yes. - ...putting us in the picture."

No, it was embarrassing, I remember.

So I said, "Okay, if you insist.

We'll go, and we'll go in our huts.

Have our bread and olives.

And then we'll have a siesta,

and when... if we feel like it, we'll come back."

I remember also some sweet guy who was wearing a huge turban,

being so angry that he threw his turban on the ground

and jumped on it and shouted, "I actor!"

I was going, "You don't have a turban anymore,

actor or not.

Then it was a big riot.

I remember, three quarters of them had left

with their clothes on, and they never came back.

Uh, we knows exactly where he's hiding.

- Yes, yes. - We know that.

I love the idea of all those extras going

- with their costumes on. - I know.

So all over Cyprus, there were pirates

- and extras in villages. - I know.

They really left with their clothes.

I remember Ruth Myers, poor Ruth didn't know what to do.

We did actually manage to buy a fair amount of them back

from the local market a few days later.

So as you went back to the market,

- you spot bits of costume... - Oh, yes.

- Oh, that's brilliant. - They were all sitting there.

- You had to negotiate it. - Yes.

The truth of the matter is, I should have got on the plane

- and come to see first-hand for myself. - I wish you had,

because you would have seen the truth.

We had about four or five films shooting.

Seven movies you were doing, I think, at the time.

And we had a great boat,

great location, everything beautiful.

We had less than competent producers.

But we thought we could make it good enough,

and we kept going, A, because we had to,

anyway, we were going to get paid,

and B, because we thought it would look good.

♪ I'm a raggling boy from Dublin

♪ He had black hair and...

♪ Dum-dee-dee-dum-dum-tee ♪

One day, he came to me on this beach, and he said,

"You should quit the movie."

He says, "I've got director approval,

so they won't pay you because you quit,

but they pay me, and I give you half of the money.

on my children's life", you know.

And I said, "You see those people?

They've been here since 6:00 in the morning.

So, get your fucking make-up on,

and let's get ready and shoot

because the sooner we shoot, the sooner we'll be home."

So here we are in the top of the hill

overlooking this incredible bay.

And it was in the second week of the film, to do the shot

of the pirates burying the secret treasure,

and behind them, Peter tied up his pots and pans.

So we started doing the tracking shot

and we were tracking away and tracking away,

and when we got to the middle, suddenly...

Peter collapsed.

My god! Everybody was running in from all over the place,

Jerry Crampton, Joe Dunne, everybody,

they knew something was desperately wrong with Peter,

and Peter is lying on the floor,

having a heart attack.

So they took Peter away into the local hospital

over there in Kyrenia.

We knew that he had this terrible heart condition.

In 1964, on his kind of honeymoon,

he suddenly suffered eight heart attacks

and he actually physically died, but was revived.

It's a miracle he was alive.

And me saying, "Oh, my god, this is the beginning of the movie.

What am I gonna do?

Is he gonna die, is he gonna survive?"

We closed down production.

And we're not shooting, and I'm sitting

two days later in the harbor.

I open up the Evening Standard.

In the Evening Standard is Peter

at San Lorenzo's restaurant in Beauchamp Place,

near Harrods, having dinner with Princess Margaret.

And I looked at this and I can't believe this.

He's supposed to be in the hospital there.

How did he get off the island?

Then he turned up two days later

with some fake doctor's certificate from...

- Remember Tony Greenberg? - Of course I do.

And in his hand, there was this medical certificate

by Dr. Tony Greenberg,

who issued it saying that he was unfit to work.

I can quite easily understand

because it would be the sort of thing I would have done.

If it was a good friend, if he said, "You know, I'm ill."

I'd say, "Yes, of course you're ill."

What kind of a person would do that?

To fake a heart attack when you have a terrible heart condition?

From that point on, he decided

that he has got to get off the movie somehow.

So he did everything to sabotage it.

Ah, this is a terrible time in me life.

I'll have to think of something else.

Now then, what's another thing?

He knew his influence and power over everybody,

- and he had to control it. - Yes.

He had that extraordinary ability

- to draw you in. - Of course.

I mean, you wanted to be there. I mean,

- who wouldn't? It was exciting. - Of course.

It was never dull.

My crew and myself got up at four o'clock that morning.

We laid a track for a crane,

which was a big deal.

We had to have that ready by eight o'clock

- and Peter never turned up. - Never turned up.

And then we got a message,

then we got a message to go back to base.

Peter Sellers was having a meeting with the crew

to vote no confidence in the director.

- That's him, Mr. Kite. - Hey, you!

Suddenly, I hear Peter parading

in front of 99 people, the entire crew.

- With the hands up, honestly. - With his hands up.

And he said, "I hereby elect myself...

...the shop steward of all directors and the crew."

He said, "I declare myself

that this is absolutely impossible

to make a film under these conditions,

and I want all of you to vote who thinks

that Peter Medak has no idea what he's doing."

And I said,

"Peter thinks he's Fred Kite."

Right, brothers. Have we all gathered?

My purpose in convening you is to lay before you certain facts.

A few minutes ago...

I then realized that he's now taken the character he played

which was the shop steward,

and it's a scene directly out of I'm All Right Jack.

And everything about it constitutes quite definitely,

a definite breach of the existing agreements

that exist between management and union.

A diabolical liberty.

Hear, hear!

I started screaming.

And I said, you're all a bunch of...

Fucking assholes.

You also said, "You all decide."

And you got into that dune buggy or whatever...

Yeah, the Minimoose.

...and sped off into the sunset.

And I drove up the hill,

and I said, "One more fucking thing, Peter,

I can go back to Hungary and never come back."

And I drove off.

And everybody was looking at each other, saying,

"What sort of film is this?

There's the director going in that direction,

and there's the actor

standing up as a shop steward."

I said, there's no way I'm going to quit

because I can't quit. If I quit, I get sued.

I'll never work again, and I'll be held responsible

because I'm the idiot who everybody will blame.

Because they always blame the directors.

In the film business, I mean, you have to be tougher than I was.

I mean, I was not street-smart enough.

I went three days with Peter on the set

where he didn't talk to me.

No, it's true. It's tragic. It's absolutely tragic.

But we were young,

and not that we were full of ourselves,

but we did our first movies and it was absolutely bang-on.

- Yes, yes. - Nothing stood in our way.

You know, so it was an incredible period.

And then I have to go listen to this shit.

Everybody's looking at me and I'm dumped in Cyprus,

and my responsibility was to complete the movie.

And Peter's answer to it was,

is to somehow manipulate the film

that he would get paid off

and the film would not happen.

I mean, this is insane.

- What could you do? - Nothing.

You can't bring him to the set screaming and...

No. No, no.

And if I had quit, I would have been blamed.

If I don't quit, I'd be blamed.

- You were blamed anyway. - The whole crew was there.

Every, um, serious artist

tries to engineer

the circumstances in which they can shine.

- We all do it. - Yes.

We all try and change it so it works for us.

And then, when you have actors on a set,

everybody is maneuvering that,

and hopefully, it's all harmonious,

but Peter did that ruthlessly.

- Mmm-hmm. - Absolutely ruthlessly

without any consideration for anybody else.

- most of the time. - Hmm.

I was just unfortunate not to work with Peter Sellers

- who I loved and admired and had seen. - Yes.

Somebody who would come in and fire you up

and you would continue...

Even in a good film, it was never fun.

- No. - Never fun with him.

- Never fun. - No.

And he gave me gifts.

And it's not enough. It's not enough!

- Completely irrelevant. - It's not enough.

I spent a lot more time with my mom

and then my dad, there was always a different lady.

And he always would make such a big deal,

but probably because he felt bad

because he didn't spend any time.

So when he did, he had to go so over the top.

It couldn't just be normal. It had to be like, "Whoa!"

Because he never did that that often, so.

Yeah.

But, I mean, I was used to that.

You could say, right,

successful millionaire,

three beautiful children,

all these material things around me,

why aren't you happy?

He was completely unpredictable.

As a person, he could never actually feel comfortable

being Peter Sellers.

He had to become a character.

It was very hard to get to the real Peter Sellers.

And I'm not the real Peter Sellers.

I am, in fact, a mock-up.

A plastic mock-up.

I'm beginning to think that increasingly every day.

I don't think I have ever worked on a film

where I found it noticeable

how isolated one star was.

And he was. He was really isolated.

He didn't have any social skills

with other actors.

I don't think he was even very interested in them.

He was always under pressure

to be the greatest comedian in the world.

That brought a tremendous loneliness

and he was very alone all the time.

But at times, you could see him switch off

in the middle of a take.

The filming and everything is fantastic,

and suddenly he just goes...

He wasn't there.

There was nobody inside.

He's kind of gone somewhere else.

But the thing was that Peter was never...

never really diagnosed with his problem.

It was always like, "Peter's nuts, watch out."

But nobody ever really took care of him.

We lost a tremendous amount of time.

We started getting behind and I had to make up for it

and shoot all the scenes quicker, and...

But it was impossible to keep up

with Peter and with the weather,

and the technical complications, as well.

With the boat which kept breaking down.

It looked like a madhouse. An insanity.

And at the same time, I'm receiving

these absolutely disgusting threatening telegrams

from John Heyman saying,

that unless I can control your star,

I have no alternative but to fire you.

If we had stopped the picture

at the moment it should have been stopped,

which was probably the second week of production...

Yeah.

there was nobody to pay for it.

We'd have all gone broke.

We only got paid if we delivered it.

So at that stage, it was too late to stop

- because we couldn't afford to stop. - Yeah.

The reports I got

were that Peter Medak had not done his homework,

and he was the person to blame for what was going on.

And they said, "There is no way we can salvage this film."

And my instructions were to finish it

and get out as cheaply as possible.

Deliver it, and let's all walk.

Once you start in a bad race,

it's very difficult to recover from it.

And I said, "Well, tell fucking Heyman

to come here and try to control Peter

because nobody can."

He probably missed 14 days of the film

when he physically refused to be there.

He felt he knew everything about comedy

and I didn't.

Making a film is a war.

It's like a suicide mission.

And the one who's forced to commit suicide is the director

because everybody has his own excuses about the film.

Heyman had 800 other movies to make.

All the producers want to do

is the minute you start,

is to finish it as soon as possible.

"Why is he bringing all these tracks?

"What is the helicopter for?

What are all these things?

Let's just get this bloody thing over."

I mean, I want to kill people,

but they're all dead.

This letter was written by the already fired producers

as the excuse for being removed from the island.

Let me read the letter to you, and you can tell me how you feel about it.

"I was most concerned about Peter Medak's general approach

which involved lack of communication with heads of departments,

lack of detail in preparation,

over-coverage, and a refusal to shoot the picture

at any pace other than his own.

And I immediately gave him my views,

which are in essence that Medak should be replaced,

and unless he was,

I felt I could not be responsible for the outcome."

So this is the first time you've ever seen this letter?

- It's the first time. - So you've never seen...

I've never seen this letter because it's a complete,

absolutely disgraceful, disgusting...

It's a complete lie.

And it's because of that,

it's nowhere near what my career would have been

had this fucking letter not been written.

I should have hidden that away from you.

No, no, it's okay.

I know. He is quite upset about it.

It's great to know the truth, you know.

I'm interested to know

why you're putting yourself through the pain,

if you like, of revisiting this story

and making this documentary film.

Of course, it throws up a lot of the past,

a lot of memories, you know,

a lot of things which kind of held me down over the years.

Because when I look back at some of the memos

which are fortunately kept, you know,

it's blatantly obvious from the first week on

when I'm just starting to cry out

for help from somebody

instead of turning against me.

I was blaming myself.

Never mind those telegrams threatening to fire me,

I was crucifying myself.

I was born in '37.

Hungary was invaded by the Germans in 1944.

I was seven years old, so I was a very young kid.

But I remember when Eichmann came in with his forty tanks.

I walked into my father's study

and I overheard his two best friends

saying that, uh,

what is to come, we will not survive it.

That's the first time I was scared.

So we pretended to be Christians

and we started living with a lie.

By some miracle, we survived the war.

But my poor brother died

when I was 14 and he was 16.

That's when my first guilty feeling started about anything,

because I felt I was responsible for his death.

And then, the next was my father

who was imprisoned by the Russians,

and when he came out,

he died in my arms of a heart attack when I was 15.

And tragically, my first wife committed suicide

when I did Ruling Class.

And I'm responsible for everything.

So I was like a sponge of guilt-ridden feelings.

And why do you make movies?

Because it's an escape from your own life, that's why.

You know, because you get very busy

creating a whole other life.

Which becomes real life,

and then, your life becomes secondary

because you have no time to do anything about it.

- You know what I mean? - I do.

You're right, but...

Because I can have characters that do things that I can't.

Exactly.

Like be heroic, or fall in love properly,

or kill people or...

We're too sensitive.

So our characters can do the things we can't do.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Okay, cut.

One day, we were shooting on the boat

and I was in the helicopter.

Talking on the walkie-talkie with all the rotor blades,

it was impossible to communicate.

And Peter refuses to do what I'm asking him to do.

I said, "Fuck, forget it."

I said, you know, "Let's just go up."

We went up 10,000 feet,

and there is my pirate ship with the crew and everybody.

I looked to my left, and there were Russian jets flying

and there was the Russian warships.

To the right,

there was the American Navy.

It was the few days before the Israeli war broke out.

And I saw, I said, "My god, I've got this total insanity below me,

and the world is coming to an end up here."

And I thought, "God, you better go back down

and try to finish that scene."

- 'Cause the war was on the boat... - Absolutely.

- ...at that time. - Exactly.

There.

And next time, my boy,

you listen to me, you hear me?

You're a real pirate though, aren't you, Pierre?

If you say so.

Not like Scratcher.

No.

Not like Scratcher.

I remember when he said,

"Rita, can you be ready soon?

We're going on location to Cyprus."

He is going to play a pirate.

And it was a happy location for us.

It was just like, I was happy to be there,

uh, I loved it that the kids were with us.

He was happy.

Tony was this incredible, kind of vivacious,

great-looking, swashbuckling hero.

And I knew that he was a friend of Peter Sellers,

and Peter very much wanted him.

Right, that's right. He's right.

Tony was really excited to work with Peter.

Tony always knew that Peter...

was a difficult man.

So was Tony, I mean,

I think every artist has had their problems.

But Tony took it very serious.

And what happened in Cyprus,

very quickly, he found out

that Peter might not have taken it that seriously.

And for what reason, we didn't know.

Well, I remember. I used to take Peter myself

with my speedboat,

and he always used to come at 12 o'clock,

one o'clock, two o'clock,

very sleepy,

and everybody was upset with him, you know?

And they all waited for nothing the whole day.

So obviously, Tony, he had enough.

I mean, how many times you don't turn up?

Tony never came back in a bad mood, per se.

He just said, "Poor Peter Medak."

Now look, Capitan, we are four points off the course,

and I will tell you now,

that this is the true course.

If that's how you want it.

Come and fight like a man.

Peter Sellers just kept, "Oh, you big American cowboy..."

- It was insulting Tony. - Very, yeah.

So what are your memories of that, Rita?

- Was that very powerful? - I do have memories of that

because that is one thing he just couldn't take.

- And Tony had his Italian temper, and... - Yeah.

Um, I mean, he, he felt like

killing Peter sometimes, you know.

Of course he didn't, but, uh...

- Something like that. - I mean, what happened is

there was this dueling scene between the two of them.

Peter was teasing Tony.

And by then, poor Tony was absolutely

at the absolute edge of his nerve.

And so, Peter was leaning over the poop deck.

Tony pulled his pirate sword out,

and he went up like this,

and he brought it down, but he stopped this far away.

- But Burt, Peter's driver... - Yes.

...was on the deck, and he saw it.

And Burt was telling him that you nearly got killed.

And I saw Peter suddenly taking off his wig,

throwing it over the boat.

And Sellers turned around to me, and he says,

"I know what happened," and he says,

"I'm never, ever going to be in the same frame with Tony Franciosa."

And we had, like, 30 pages of the script

- between the two of them. - Oh, my god.

We just... After that, they just didn't talk at all, did they?

- They just... - Oh, no, they hated each other.

You couldn't get anywhere near the two of them.

- They absolutely hated each other. - Yeah.

I started writing letters to John Heyman

that we're in a very dangerous situation,

and the quality of the film is at stake.

So, I wrote this letter which I've got here.

You know, it sums everything up.

And the only thing I can do is read it.

I mean, this, kind of, sums up, basically,

what the hell was going on.

- It was a nightmare. - It was an absolute nightmare.

I was just trying to stay alive, and keep shooting.

And every evening, when you got off the boat, you would die.

So, Norma, you and Spike arrive on the island,

and all of this is going on.

So, how did he feel being caught in the middle and, kind of, what happened?

Oh, no, he wouldn't be caught in the middle.

That wouldn't be Spike.

He'd just say, "I'm not getting involved," you know?

And then walk. But he knew when we went to rushes,

and he said, "This is not good."

He said, "The film is on a disaster course.

"And somehow or other, he's got it in for Medak."

That was the first night we were there.

Spike went at it very quickly.

Pokey, pokey, pokey.

But sometimes, it made less sense.

Fire!

It didn't matter to him how insensible it is.

The more it was like that, the funnier it was for him.

Oi, Captain, think of his mother!

- Get out! - Think of your mother!

- Mother. - Push him in.

Spike couldn't really understand film.

I'm sat right here!

And we'd gone through the whole thing,

and he kept forgetting what we did before.

When Peter Boyle gets killed in the story at the beginning,

he said, "Oh, let's kill him again."

And I said, "But he's dead."

You know, so it was that kind of stuff.

But Peter had calmed down a bit.

And we had dinners in the evening,

and everybody was getting stoned, and...

You know, so it was...

We had a lot of fun as well at the same time.

Oh, Bill. Bill Bombay, my darling.

I see you're still working the old pea cup game.

So, I'd like to put a bit of money.

I'm feeling a betting mood.

Spike's character was this other lunatic,

Billy Bombay from Bombay.

I got treasure on my own!

What? Treasure?

Treasure? Treasure? Treasure? Treasure?

Treasure? Treasure? Treasure?

And there was a palm tree,

and when they start to confront each other,

I wanted Spike to hit this palm tree

so it kept coming between them.

The exact spot!

Listen, listen, I'll give you one last chance.

Bill, will you come with me or not?

Well...

All right then, a pox on you, Bill.

Get out of here! Get out of here!

But then, for us, it was a nightmare because...

I mean, what was the day when Spike took over?

And he had this shot where, um, it was...

It wasn't obligatory to be in it

because it wasn't in the script.

And I know I refused, which Spike didn't really like,

when he made everybody dress up as Spike Milligans.

Thirty years I've been your captain.

And 30 years ago, I promised you a side of the treasure.

And half of the time I couldn't tell who's who

and which is Spike, and I completely lost him.

So, I had to say, "Spike, where are you?"

And then, he got them trained, all the others,

so they were answering with his voice.

Oh!

It was driving me crazy, and I said,

"For fuck's sake, Spike, put your hand up!"

Peter comes to me,

and, you know, when he wanted something,

he said, "Oh, darling," you know.

He said, "You need to do me a favor."

I said, "What?" And he said, "Next weekend,

"you've got to direct this commercial for me at Benson & Hedges.

"Because the only way I can make it

"is if they shoot it here in Cyprus, you know."

We were night shooting for two weeks,

so it was the first weekend of a rest day,

when everybody could sleep on Saturday, Sunday.

He said, "I'm getting £50,000,

"and I'm getting a Mercedes."

"Spike," he says, "is getting £25,000,

And James Villiers, he said, we can get him £5,000.

I said, "Okay, I'll do this commercial,"

just to have my peace with him, you know,

thinking that now he's gonna be more accommodating and nicer,

and will do what I ask him to do.

Dennis said to me, "Look, I've got this very strange note from Peter.

"saying that he wanted a brand-new Mercedes

"and, um... And cash in the car."

In the car itself?

In the car, he wanted an envelope of cash.

In England, it was 90% tax in those days, or some huge amount.

So, we got agreement, in principle, to do this thing.

Needless to say, the next Saturday,

I'm in this same place here, standing here,

making this Benson & Hedges commercial.

I dressed Peter up as the Clouseau character

from the Pink Panther movies,

with the hat and the raincoat, and all that.

But there's an alarm bell.

The jam the Benson & Hedges pack into that.

Spike and Peter and Jimmy Villiers

go through this door.

This is a Customs shed

filled with gold bullion.

Spike was wearing a long, white raincoat with his funny hat.

And they finally come out here.

They need to get the pack out of the alarm bell.

So, what do they do? So, I said to Peter, he said, "Darling."

I said, "Just twirl it in the beautiful sun."

And Peter puts his arm around me and he said,

"Daddy, didn't Dennis tell you?

"I cannot touch the pack." And I said, "What do you mean you can't touch the pack?"

He said, "I'm not allowed to touch the pack."

He said, "I'm chairman of the Anti-Smoking League."

I said, "What?"

I said, "Are you kidding me?" I said, "Really?"

I said, "Are you joking?" "No, I'm not joking."

I went to Spike, I said, "Spikey, look."

I said, "Your idiot friend will not touch the pack."

He said, "Peter, I love you.

"Don't ask me something I have to say no to."

He said, "I will not touch the pack."

I said, "Why?" He said, "Because I'm the assistant chairman

"of the Smoking League."

Assistant chairman and the chairman.

I'm surrounded by two fucking idiots, you know.

And they're doing a Benson & Hedges commercial,

they won't touch the pack.

So, I go to Jimmy, I said, "Jimbo, will you touch the pack?"

He said, "Yeah, absolutely. Give it to me."

So, he went there. He was very tall.

Pulled it out.

Spike ran across, jumped into the boat,

broke through the boat, and it sunk.

Boom! That's the end of the commercial.

Because the commercial required

Spike to jump in the water,

Spike had this fixation, right,

that all these pieces of seaweed, right,

that were floating around in the harbor were turds.

So, he got a whole group of people

to get in their boats with fishing nets

and take all these pieces of seaweed out.

- And he wouldn't get in the water... - Until it's all cleared out.

...unless we got all the "turds" out of the water.

- I doubled for Spike on that commercial. - Did you?

He was very, very happy, and then, the next day, he was...

You know what Spike was like.

- Yeah. - He was miserable.

And I said, "What's happened to Spike?"

He said, "He's realized that he's done a commercial

"for cigarettes which he's damned."

He's gone on TV and said, "Nobody should smoke,"

and he's doing a commercial for it.

Then Norma came and said, "Look, Spike insists

"that the check is made from Gallaher's,"

who are the cigarette people,

insist that they pay,

uh, Anti-Smoking and Health.

- Yeah. - The company, right.

And who've spent all their money

trying to stop people smoking.

Gallaher said, "Look, we don't mind giving them cash,

"we don't mind them paying the lawyer or the agent,

"but we're simply not going to

"write a check out to Anti-Smoking and Health."

- I mean, there's no way this could happen today. - No.

You know, and they were really two wonderful, brilliant, genius,

major lunatics, you know.

And one inspired the other one all the time.

Yeah, they were like two catalysts of a nuclear bomb.

- I know. - They just...

You know, one of them by themselves was fine,

but you put them both together and you had mayhem.

I know. It's a disaster.

It was a way of trying to finish my movie.

Because I thought, "Well, if I do him this favor,

"he will do me another favor."

But that's not how his brain worked.

Spike had formed a very good bond with Peter Medak.

And... But Sellers was his old, old, old friend.

You know, they started together

in The Goon Show, as you know.

That was a tremendous love-hate relationship.

They... I think they respected each other's talent,

but they also were vying for top dog all the time.

He'd go to Sellers, and he'd say,

"Hey, you're behaving like a bloody idiot.

"What's the matter with you?"

And of course, Peter didn't want to hear that from Spike.

What he wanted Spike to say was,

"It's okay, Peter. You show them. You're brilliant."

Yeah, yeah.

So, he went into battle on my behalf.

And then, he and Peter fell out,

then they weren't talking to each other.

I suspect when Spike came to the island originally, I mean, he...

Peter felt this was gonna... He's gonna have an ally

- who is 100% on his side. - Yeah.

And, of course, that's not quite true.

He thought that Spike was gonna fix everything...

- Yeah. Right. - ...which he couldn't, you know.

And they started arguing.

Peter and I barely spoke to each other anymore

because I wanted to kill him.

This insane situation

continued to the end of the shooting.

With Tony Franciosa,

I was forced to shoot them separately

because Peter would not appear in the same frame.

How would you like a taste of Irish steel?

I was forced again by the producers

to put the camera low down

so you're looking up at the sky,

you're thinking you're out at open sea.

What language is it you're speaking, sir?

We couldn't afford to go to Ireland anymore.

The designer built a Irish village in Cyprus.

This is not Greece, sir, this is Ireland.

Ireland! Ireland!

Oh, me Ireland. I love ya! Oh!

God bless all here, lads. God bless all here.

And the weather went from 100 degrees to a bit more than sub-zero.

But somehow we got out of the island alive,

which was a miracle.

And then, I had to shoot some stuff in Bray Studios, which is in Windsor.

And I remember the end-of-picture party,

and I didn't want to go,

and I thought I have got to go because of the crew,

you know, who suffered through this 67 days of nightmare.

And so I went on the set,

and there was nobody there

except couple of electricians

from another movie, who were completely drunk.

And they had no idea.

I said, "Did you work on the film?"

They said, "Oh, no, God," you know.

"We're working on another movie on the other stage."

Nobody turned up.

So, Dick Scratcher has to live to sail again, then.

Not with me. For I should never have listened to you in the first place.

Oh, so it's you then, Bill.

- Yes! - Oh, then I should have never listened to you...

- Yeah. - ...in the second place, how about that?

What are you thinking when you watched the cut taking shape?

I was just thinking that you have to get it right.

You have to make the best possible version out of this kind of thing,

where certain things were missing.

But it was completed,

and Columbia refused to accept it,

because they said that certain scenes had not been shot in the film,

and because of that, the film is incomplete.

I knew it was a disaster.

I knew it. And I knew that I failed

because I hadn't been able to pull it off.

And in the first three movies, I succeeded like a clockwork.

So, this was like a dagger through me.

And here is this incredible fucking genius, you know,

and everything you wanted, you know,

and it doesn't work?

What happened?

And the guilt of it, too, you know.

We all were to blame.

None of us should have made this picture.

I mean, it's not as though we didn't know Peter was nuts.

- Yeah. - Truth of the matter is

- none of us knew how nuts. - No.

But there is no question, on reflection,

and I've seen the film.

- I actually did sit through it. - Yeah.

Uh, that it shouldn't have been made.

- No. - Now, it shouldn't have been made

because the script wasn't ready,

it shouldn't have been made

- because the production organization was not ready. - No.

It shouldn't... The only thing that was ready was the money.

I was desperate, absolutely desperate, after the first week.

And I knew at that point...

I mean, when I got your telegram saying...

You know, which puts me on notice

that unless I behave in a first-class director manner,

uh, I have to replace you.

But I knew if I would quit the movie,

I still would be blamed for everything.

But I had to fight it through and finish the film

because that was my duty. I signed that contract for you, with you.

The amount of passion you have to put into a film, to make a film...

- Is unbelievable. - ...on which you have a credit...

- Yeah. - Um...

- It's a personal investment. - Absolutely.

I didn't have a personal investment in Ghosts of Noonday.

Ghosts of Noonday Sun was another piece of inventory.

Of course, of course. And I totally understand it, you know.

But for a director, to make every...

To create a frame of film,

you put your entire life into that film.

Your identity. It doesn't matter what the subject is,

your soul is going on the line.

I understand all of that.

- Everybody lost something. - Yeah.

The most... You lost reputation, you lost...

- Tremendous because... - Self-respect.

- Whatever you lost. - Absolutely.

- I lost money. - Yeah.

Believe me...

I'm still here, I'm still eating three meals a day.

- Not catastrophic. - Yeah. Yeah.

The bottom line, if you take all of the bullshit away,

Ghost in the Noonday Sun had no message.

- Nothing. - We weren't politically motivated.

Ghost in the Noonday Sun as meant to be

a pure piece of entertainment

that would take people out of their drab lives for two hours,

and make them laugh, and cry and smile.

- It did none of those things. - Mmm.

I don't know how many nails there are in the coffin,

but this is a very small nail.

We're all to blame. We all have a teeny scar.

- Yeah. - But to make the scar more than teeny...

- Yeah. Is insane. - ...is insane.

In the period after that, did you work?

Did I work? Yes, I did.

I mean, in my mind, I blocked up everything so much that I thought

the next film I did was, like, six months later,

but, actually, it was five years later.

And I did work because I've worked on a number of films,

which I then walked out of for various reasons, you know.

And probably my walking out of those films

was really driven and governed by my own guilt

of what happened on this film unconsciously.

And then, the minute I walked out of something,

then I felt a tremendous remorse and, and upset

of allowing myself to do that.

Out of the blue, I was offered The Odd Job

with Graham Chapman, Diana Quick and David Jason.

He's got to come in on the next shot

because I can't get him to go away.

The great merit from this kind of financial source

is that there is no interference whatsoever.

Nobody tells you who to cast in the film.

You don't have to have star names.

And Peter is shooting his next Pink Panther movie with Blake Edwards

next stage to my stage.

And... So, I'm shooting away,

and Burt, his driver, comes on the set,

and taps my shoulder.

I said, "Hey, Pete. You know, lovely to see you."

And he said, "You know, Pete is shooting here next door to you, you know."

I said, "How could I not know?"

I said, "The whole studio was painted pink, you know.

"I know."

But he would love to come...

Why don't you come and say hello?

He'd love to see you.

So, of course, I didn't go.

A day or two days later, tap, tap on my shoulder, it's Peter

in his Pink Panther outfit.

He said, "Baby..."

He said, "I sent for you.

"You didn't come to say hello, you know."

And I said, "Peter, don't you remember what happened?"

He said, "What are you talking about?"

You got rid of everybody else,

you tried to get rid of me, you know.

And...

And he said, "No, no, darling. What are you talking about?

"It was us against them."

I said, "Peter, there were no them left."

"It was just you and me."

He said, "Oh, no, come on. I love you."

And then, he said to me, he said,

"You know, we should buy back the movie,

"and you and Spike rewrite the narration,

"and then I'll get the movie released.

"I'll buy the fucking movie back."

And we then really, kind of, reunited that evening, you know.

And he was absolutely just lovely.

So, I was there quite late, and we got quite drunk,

and that was the evening I last saw him, and then...

One day, I pick up the paper, and he's dead.

And I said, "You motherfuck, you cheated death, you know.

"It's not fair. You can't be dead."

And that was it.

And despite of it all, which I keep saying all the time,

I absolutely loved him

because he was a fucking genius.

And it was just great to be there for a second,

you know, whatever pain it caused.

And I remember truly, truly being heartbroken that...

That he was on his own.

Because, for Peter, the worst thing in the world was to be alone.

And he was alone. He died alone,

which, for him, is so wrong.

I'm sorry.

It's silly, isn't it?

And people keep saying to me, "So, what's the point of you

"doing this now?" And I don't know.

Uh, it's probably to free myself of it.

As I said to you just now, even for me, I think it's cathartic.

- Yeah. - I mean, you just...

It's saying things that perhaps we've only thought for a long time,

and not had an arena to say them, to get it out.

- Uh, some of your... - Yeah.

Some of the hurt as well. It's not just frustration.

- I mean, we're all human... - Of course.

...and we can be hurt.

And I think it was very hurtful, a lot of what he did to you.

Particularly because when you admire somebody

and their talent, and their work, and, uh...

- You didn't stand a chance. - No.

It's not you.

God, it is absolutely incredible ruins

of 3,000 years ago...

And Simon, it puts everything into perspective, you know.

Me being here 42 years ago, which is nothing.

And what little, unimportant creatures we all are,

- Mmm. - And it's just wonderful to be here.

How do you feel as more and more people who were involved in it

have died and passed away,

and you're still going strong?

And every time I meet you, you're gonna make a new film,

- you've got this, you know. - Yeah.

You're a vibrant, living spirit

surrounded by these ghosts. How do you feel about that?

I feel incredible,

but I really feel the presence of Peter and Spike.

I really do.

I feel that Peter and Spike are laughing their head off.

And the best way to describe it is John Heyman's take on it

that we should have never, ever have made this movie,

any of us,

because it was impossible to make something great out of it.

And it's absolutely right.

He said, "Forget it. It's past. It's gone.

"It doesn't exist anymore."

Do you feel that you've stopped blaming yourself

about Ghost?

I think so. I really think

because it's really so long ago.

And it was terribly important for me, terribly important,

to have that conversation with John.

And to release me and give license

to go on, which he did,

without him knowing, actually,

what good he was doing to me, you know.

Thank you, Simon.

There's so much inside, you know.

I know. I know. It was great.

Okay, let's start up the next thing.

I mean, this is such a great angle here.

Isn't it?

- This way? - Yeah.

Yeah, two shot.

It's important to get, really, a good shot of him.

Yeah.

And action!

Oh, my God. There you are.

Hey, Spikey, you picked the right bloody spot.

It's a beautiful place.

And you've been sitting here for 13 years?

See? I get the final laugh now.

I mean, Norma should come up,

or Terry Gilliam should come up

and do this once a week,

and John Cleese and all of them.

You see, I'm here. You never thought

I was gonna turn up on one day.

Because you cannot get rid of me.

Never, ever.

I don't have the same boots as you do,

but I'll sit exactly the same way.

Like this.

Here, like that.

Have a little nod, okay?

All right, darling, sleep well.

I love you.

Subtitles by explosiveskull www.OpenSubtitles.org

♪ You can never hope to know just the way a life can go

♪ When you think you know it all

♪ Something makes you fall again

♪ Life is just a dance with time

♪ I learned the moves and learned to climb

♪ All the games I play to win

♪ Yet somehow it's just beginning

♪ Oh, I've danced with fools and kings

♪ In my time I've seen most things

♪ But in the twilight now it's clear

♪ No more pain no more fear

♪ Just a dance with time

♪ That's all life is

♪ Just a dance with time

♪ And memories

♪ Just a dance with time

♪ That's all life is

♪ Just a dance with time

♪ And memories ♪