Gilliamesque A Pre-posthumous Memoir

Surprisingly bland, sturdy. No drugs, for instance. But actually this is well and good - a stable life being very helpful in the production of the wild and new. Lots and lots of name-dropping, which I feel is included for our benefit rather than his; "ah, yes, recognise that one, ok". He endorses something that I, a sheltered western European, have previously felt about America, but which I assumed was a ridiculous exaggeration: Disembarking in Southampton, I remember... feeling, for the first time in my life, totally safe - safe from people who might want to hit me, or do things to hurt me... one of the weird things about America is the feeling you get there that if someone doesn't approve of you, there's a good chance they're going to pop you one. It's probably just that go-getter American attitude which dictates that guys who don't like you feel they have to do something about it... I've to ascribe it to the fact that people in England seem to have a much better sense of personal space... They don't feel entitled to invade your territory the way Americans do - perhaps they just scratched that itch with the whole British Empire thing. I was intrigued to learn that Brando was a compulsive consequentialist: I said the only way to get [Brando] was to... tell him we'd pay him $2 million, but only if we could give the money direct to the American Indians. I think we would've got him that way, because his own moral scheme would have left him no option but to accept. The first thing about him I like. Here is one real hallucination: ...people will often be telling me that my producer is a bit of an operator, and my reply to them is generally "Well, that may very well be true, but I'm only interested in one thing, and that's getting the film done - whether or not I get screwed in the process"... we got two films made together, and no amount of documentaries about his pivotal role in the Israeli nuclear weapons programme can change that. 3/5.. Skip to chapter 7 in fact.