Going Mad over Hollywood

When I read yesterday that President Trump was calling for a 100 per cent tariff on foreign movies, I thought to myself, I wonder who could have put him up to that? Then I learned that the Three Wise Men who advised him on the film industry were Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson and Jon Voight. I thought, No, surely he hasn’t been listening to Jon Voight. No, surely not! And sure enough, waking up in the middle of the night, having nothing better to do, I visited The New York Times website to find this headline hovering about the obligatory picture of the Hollywood sign:

I laughed. But not as much as I laughed when thirty years ago I read in David Sherwin’s diaries his account of what it was like to help Jon Voight in the mid-1970s with a script that the star wanted for a movie about Robin Hood. A year later I helped David to publish a book based on the diaries, which he called Going Mad in Hollywood. He called it that because working in Hollywood really did drive him mad.

David wasn’t that hot on conventional accuracy, but over the years, as I chanced upon separate accounts of episodes or people that he described in the book, I was impressed by how often he got the big picture right. He was a fine writer with a great ear for poetic dialogue and a natural satirist who understood that the best satire is always true.

This is how his time with Voight began:

15 July 1974

Gay [David's then wife] says she definitely wants a divorce once we get back from America. I can think of nothing to say and my silence infuriates her. She snatches off my spectacles and hurls them to the floor. When still I say nothing, she leaves the room and reappears. With a carving knife…

  My life is saved by the telephone. Jon Voight, star of Midnight Cowboy and Deliverance, phones from Hollywood. He’s been talking with his friend Lindsay Anderson, who’s said a lot of nice things about me. He’s heard I have a beautiful wife and child. He too has a beautiful wife and child. He wants us to come to Hollywood where we’ll all live as a happy family. He wants me to write with him a modern version of Robin Hood. Playing Robin Hood has been his lifelong dream.

  I say, “Great!”

  Jon says he'll be in London at the Dorchester on 28 July. Can we meet?

  Of course…

25 July 1974

After supper, Lindsay gives me Howard Pyle’s book of Robin Hood stories as preparation for my meeting with Jon Voight.

28 July 1974

I catch a number 2A bus to Park Lane, and skim through the rest of the Robin Hood book. It seems a little simple, to say the least. I haven’t managed to form any opinion about Robin Hood. And I have even less idea when I come face to face with the star in the Dorchester lounge. All I am conscious of is Jon’s height, and his amazing lips. They are like a woman’s. Soft pink rosebuds.

  At least he’s chatty: “We both have beautiful wives and children. We can all live together as a big happy family, just like in Robin’s day, and write the script. It’ll be just wonderful!”

  He writes his name and Hollywood address in my address book. He adds the names of his wife and child. “Marceline and Jamie.”

  “Gay and Luke,” I reply.

  “We’ll all get together when you’ve finished with Halmi [Robert Halmi was the producer of another misbegotten project that David was then working on]. We’ll live like Robin and Marian round the camp-fire…” He smiles dreamily.

  Maybe life round the camp-fire with the Voights will help to mend my troubled marriage, I think to myself.

  O Lucky Man!

It takes another twenty or so pages for David to realize what he should probably have realized on the day he took the 2A bus to the Dorchester Hotel. It was never going to work out. After many fruitless weeks of brain-storming with Voight around the camp-fire in Hollywood, the ever-escalating absurdity compels him to walk out on a futile gig. He sums up the courage to face up to the star: “I respect that you want Robin to be a dreamer and a priest,” he tells Voight. “But I fundamentally disagree with you about the nature of Robin Hood… I think you’re going to ruin the original true hero.” He was about to become a little poorer, but at least he was free again!

I've heard that Donald Trump doesn’t read books, but to avoid any more confusion in Hollywood, he would do well at least to read David’s account of what it was like to work with Voight. Only twenty pages. Maybe he can have Laura Loomer read them to him. Or hook the book up to one of those automated voices that seem to be taking over The New York Times. It’s long been out of print, but I still have a Penguin copy, which he is welcome to borrow – at no cost, tariff-free. After all, as someone once said in a famous old movie, "Humanity is a duty!"