Friday, February 27, 2015
By Craig Brown for the Daily Mail
Published: 01:32 GMT, 11 December 2014 | Updated: 01:32 GMT, 11 December 2014
Were I to be given one wish for the New Year, it would be this: that Johnny Depp’s new film, out next month, will be a terrible flop.
How could anyone be so bitter and twisted? Let me explain.
Years ago, in the late Nineties, I received a letter out of the blue from the head of a small publishing house, the Black Spring Press. He wanted to publish a novel called The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery. There was just one problem: the author, Kyril Bonfiglioli, had died without finishing it. Would I write the missing chapter?
Will the fop flop? Johnny Depp stars in the The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery, out next year
He wasn’t offering a fortune — £200 or so — but I thought it might be an amusing exercise, and certainly a lot easier than thinking up a novel of my own, so I said yes.
It turned out to be infinitely more difficult than I had anticipated. Bonfiglioli had written a last chapter, but had failed to write a second-last chapter, in which all the various ends had to be tied up. The reasons soon became clear: his loopy plot had spun completely out of control, and all the ends were in a most frightful tangle.
Trying to write the missing chapter was rather like trying to complete a crossword with half the clues missing, or, rather, with far too many clues for the available number of squares. The late Kyril Bonfiglioli had been, by all accounts, an unreliable, ramshackle character. Asked to fill in an author’s questionnaire for his publisher, he had written, ‘Married again and again; one died; one I deserted; one threw me out. You can’t really want to know their names even if I could remember.’
Having created a hundred loose ends, he was just the sort of person who would have put off tying them up. Nevertheless, I persevered, did my best to mimic his black humour and baroque, sub-Wodehousian prose style, and posted the completed chapter to the Black Spring Press.
The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery was duly published, without much fanfare. It was read by Bonfiglioi fans (he had published three previous Mortdecai books, and had something of a cult following). The few reviews it received suggested that I had done a pretty good job. And that, I thought, was that. But then, some years later, a film company bought an option, so I started receiving relatively modest annual cheques of a hundred pounds or so.
Many books are optioned, but few are filmed, so I wasn’t getting my hopes up. At one point, word trickled down that Sacha Baron Cohen was keen to play the hero, Charlie Mortdecai. But then his Borat film made him a huge star, and he appeared to lose interest.
More years passed, and then one day my son received an email from a friend saying ‘Johnny Depp is starring in your dad’s book!’ I Googled ‘Craig Brown + Johnny Depp’ — not a combination of names that usually springs to mind — only to find that, sure enough, Johnny Depp (pictured as Mortdecai) was indeed starring in it, alongside — wait for it! — Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor, Paul Bettany and Jeff Goldblum. Furthermore, this was not just some distant dream of some pie-in-the-sky film producer: the film was already in production.
Obviously, my first thought was of money falling out of the sky straight into my pockets. I began daydreaming of hobnobbing with the stars on the set, and, a little later, on the red carpet. ‘Hi, Johnny! Seen Gwyneth around? Just wait your turn, Ewan — can’t you see I’m talking to Johnny?’
Dreaming of glory: After a long hunt Craig Brown (above) hoped for red carpet fame, but alas, it was not to be
But it is not to be. Some time ago, long before a film had ever looked like coming to fruition, I popped into the foyer of Penguin books to sign a new film contract. I was in a rush, and so, it seemed, was the person in charge of the contract. She happened to mention that they had added in a clause saying, in appropriately impenetrable wording, that if nothing from my chapter was used, then I wouldn’t get a penny.
Still in a rush, I had pointed out this seemed a little unfair. After all, the book would never have seen the light of day if I hadn’t completed it. But it seemed churlish to go on whining, and, at that time, there wasn’t any real hope that it would ever be filmed. So I dutifully signed on the dotted line. It now turns out that nothing in my chapter will be used, or so I am assured.
I have seen in the Press that the premiere is scheduled for early in the New Year. I haven’t been asked, but I plan to pay to see it soon afterwards, a sad, embittered figure, sidling in through a sidedoor with a pair of binoculars, pen, notepad and a copy of the paperback with my name on the cover.
Heaven knows what I’ll do if I manage to spot a detail lifted from my chapter. Presumably, I’ll corner the person selling the popcorn and she’ll direct me to a security guard, who’ll direct me to someone in the box office, who’ll direct me to the duty manager, and so forth. Somewhere down the line, I’m bound to reach Johnny Depp.
Either that, or I’ll just sit and brood.
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Published: 01:32 GMT, 11 December 2014 | Updated: 01:32 GMT, 11 December 2014
Were I to be given one wish for the New Year, it would be this: that Johnny Depp’s new film, out next month, will be a terrible flop.
How could anyone be so bitter and twisted? Let me explain.
Years ago, in the late Nineties, I received a letter out of the blue from the head of a small publishing house, the Black Spring Press. He wanted to publish a novel called The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery. There was just one problem: the author, Kyril Bonfiglioli, had died without finishing it. Would I write the missing chapter?
Will the fop flop? Johnny Depp stars in the The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery, out next yearHe wasn’t offering a fortune — £200 or so — but I thought it might be an amusing exercise, and certainly a lot easier than thinking up a novel of my own, so I said yes.
It turned out to be infinitely more difficult than I had anticipated. Bonfiglioli had written a last chapter, but had failed to write a second-last chapter, in which all the various ends had to be tied up. The reasons soon became clear: his loopy plot had spun completely out of control, and all the ends were in a most frightful tangle.
Trying to write the missing chapter was rather like trying to complete a crossword with half the clues missing, or, rather, with far too many clues for the available number of squares. The late Kyril Bonfiglioli had been, by all accounts, an unreliable, ramshackle character. Asked to fill in an author’s questionnaire for his publisher, he had written, ‘Married again and again; one died; one I deserted; one threw me out. You can’t really want to know their names even if I could remember.’
Having created a hundred loose ends, he was just the sort of person who would have put off tying them up. Nevertheless, I persevered, did my best to mimic his black humour and baroque, sub-Wodehousian prose style, and posted the completed chapter to the Black Spring Press.
The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery was duly published, without much fanfare. It was read by Bonfiglioi fans (he had published three previous Mortdecai books, and had something of a cult following). The few reviews it received suggested that I had done a pretty good job. And that, I thought, was that. But then, some years later, a film company bought an option, so I started receiving relatively modest annual cheques of a hundred pounds or so.
Many books are optioned, but few are filmed, so I wasn’t getting my hopes up. At one point, word trickled down that Sacha Baron Cohen was keen to play the hero, Charlie Mortdecai. But then his Borat film made him a huge star, and he appeared to lose interest.
More years passed, and then one day my son received an email from a friend saying ‘Johnny Depp is starring in your dad’s book!’ I Googled ‘Craig Brown + Johnny Depp’ — not a combination of names that usually springs to mind — only to find that, sure enough, Johnny Depp (pictured as Mortdecai) was indeed starring in it, alongside — wait for it! — Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor, Paul Bettany and Jeff Goldblum. Furthermore, this was not just some distant dream of some pie-in-the-sky film producer: the film was already in production.
Obviously, my first thought was of money falling out of the sky straight into my pockets. I began daydreaming of hobnobbing with the stars on the set, and, a little later, on the red carpet. ‘Hi, Johnny! Seen Gwyneth around? Just wait your turn, Ewan — can’t you see I’m talking to Johnny?’
Dreaming of glory: After a long hunt Craig Brown (above) hoped for red carpet fame, but alas, it was not to beBut it is not to be. Some time ago, long before a film had ever looked like coming to fruition, I popped into the foyer of Penguin books to sign a new film contract. I was in a rush, and so, it seemed, was the person in charge of the contract. She happened to mention that they had added in a clause saying, in appropriately impenetrable wording, that if nothing from my chapter was used, then I wouldn’t get a penny.
Still in a rush, I had pointed out this seemed a little unfair. After all, the book would never have seen the light of day if I hadn’t completed it. But it seemed churlish to go on whining, and, at that time, there wasn’t any real hope that it would ever be filmed. So I dutifully signed on the dotted line. It now turns out that nothing in my chapter will be used, or so I am assured.
I have seen in the Press that the premiere is scheduled for early in the New Year. I haven’t been asked, but I plan to pay to see it soon afterwards, a sad, embittered figure, sidling in through a sidedoor with a pair of binoculars, pen, notepad and a copy of the paperback with my name on the cover.
Heaven knows what I’ll do if I manage to spot a detail lifted from my chapter. Presumably, I’ll corner the person selling the popcorn and she’ll direct me to a security guard, who’ll direct me to someone in the box office, who’ll direct me to the duty manager, and so forth. Somewhere down the line, I’m bound to reach Johnny Depp.
Either that, or I’ll just sit and brood.
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