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| 31 Jan 2018 | |
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| SHERWIN-WHITE, David Nicholas Died on 8 January 2018, aged 75. The following obituary was published in The Times: When Malcolm McDowell was auditioning for the role of Mick Travis, the lead part in Lindsay Anderson’s classic 1968 film If. . . ., David Sherwin was so excited by the unknown actor’s performance that he jumped to his feet and shouted to the director: “Lindsay, you have found your Mick!” Irritated by the outburst, Anderson turned to his scriptwriter and scolded him. “That is not how you cast a film, David. Now piss off!” Yet, he was forced to concede that they had found their man. “However much he poured scorn on me, he always trusted my instincts,” Sherwin said. McDowell was cast in his first screen role in the searing, spirit-of-the-age movie and went on to reprise the role of Mick Travis in O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital, which were also directed by Anderson and scripted by Sherwin. The heated exchange during the auditions for If. . . . was characteristic of the rancorous but hugely creative relationship between director and scriptwriter. The tone was set during their first meeting in the Pillars of Hercules pub in Soho to discuss Sherwin’s script, which had the working title The Crusaders. “I was greeted by this charismatic gnome-like figure, who said, “Well the script is very bad, isn’t it,” the writer recalled. When he had the temerity to stand up to Anderson’s bullying and insist the script was “bloody brilliant”, Anderson replied: “Is it?” — before he agreed to make the picture. Sherwin described their partnership as based upon “vast affectionate scorn”. When Anderson rang to ask how much progress his scriptwriter had made, Sherwin would splutter: “Everything’s going brilliantly, Linds.” To which Anderson would reply: “That nervous cough in your throat, I know you’re lying.” On one occasion when working on the script for O Lucky Man!, Sherwin opted for honesty and admitted that he had only written “a bit”. “A bit? That’s no f***ing use, you lazy c***,” Anderson screamed before slamming the phone down. Minutes later they were back on the line as if nothing had happened. They convened for an intensive writing session at Anderson’s mother’s house in Rustington on the Sussex coast, where Sherwin spent much of his time drinking Gold Label Barley Wine and the director downed copious amounts of malt whisky. Cast in the lead role again, McDowell recalled receiving a postcard from Anderson saying: “Author drunk on floor, I don’t think we will ever make O Lucky Man!” They sobered up, thrashing out script ideas by “walking up and down a freezing pebble beach”. A week later McDowell received another card: “Things looking up . . . Looks like we will do the film after all!” Sherwin’s original script for what would become If. . . . was a savage satire based on his time at Tonbridge School. It was written with John Howlett, his friend and fellow old Tonbridgian. Their witty but withering portrayal of the English public school system as brutal, anachronistic and elitist was dismissed by one producer as “evil and perverted”, and another opined that the writers should be horse-whipped. It took five years before the script reached Anderson, who as a socialist was not blind to its potential for baiting the establishment. He demanded an extensive rewrite, which took 18 months to complete, and got his scriptwriter to incorporate some of his own bruising experiences from his time as a pupil at Cheltenham College. Charterhouse and Cranleigh refused to allow them to film on school premises after they discovered the nature of the movie’s subject matter, but Anderson tricked the headmaster of his alma mater by showing him a dummy script, complete with fake title, and was granted permission to shoot at Cheltenham College. Anderson told Sherwin that he was only making the film “for a few friends in Cannes”, to which his scriptwriter grandly replied: “And I’m making it for the world.” Both men achieved their ambitions in their different ways. If. . . . won the Palme d’Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival and has since featured prominently in “best movie” polls, including the British Film Institute’s list of the greatest British films of the 20th century, in which it was ranked 12th. Among the film’s fans was David Cameron, who was asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today if he thought McDowell would be a good choice to play him in a biopic — a reference to the actor’s portrayal of the public-school cad Flashman in the 1975 film Royal Flash. The prime minister neatly sidestepped the unwelcome analogy by expressing his admiration for McDowell’s performance in If. . . . an improbable endorsement of a film best noted for its incendiary critique of the class system. Despite their verbal sparring, Anderson proved to be a loyal and supportive friend through the personal problems that at times dogged Sherwin’s career. He struggled with alcoholism and his mental health, and wrote at least some of the screenplay for the 1982 film Britannia Hospital while sectioned in a south London hospital. Sherwin discovered that the director was someone to whom he could always turn in need. “I would almost use the word priest,” he said. His first marriage, to Gay (née Conolly), ended in divorce in 1974. Three years later he married Monika (née Hayden), who worked as a receptionist for a physiotherapy practice near the family home in the Forest of Dean. She died last year after becoming Sherwin’s carer as his health declined. From his first marriage he is survived by a son, Luke Sherwin-White, a copywriter, and from his second, by a daughter, Skye Sherwin, who is an art critic at The Guardian. He was born in Oxford, the son of dons. His father, Nicholas Sherwin-White, known by the initials AN, was a fellow of St John’s and a noted historian of ancient Rome. He worked in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War and his demob suit was worn by McDowell in the opening scene of If. . . . His mother Marie (née Downes), taught Latin. After boarding at Tonbridge, Sherwin read English literature at Oxford. By then he was already writing the script that was to become If. . . ., a distraction which, to the disappointment of his parents, contributed to him failing his first year exams and being rusticated. While he hawked his script around, he worked briefly as a writer for an industrial film unit. By the time he met Anderson he was making a decent living as a commercial photographer. “I gave up being a swish-fart overpaid photographer with a silver Porsche and became an underpaid scriptwriter with a Citroen 2CV,” he noted wryly. After the success of If. . . . Sherwin’s screenwriting skills were in demand, but he seemed blighted by bad luck. He comprehensively rewrote John Schlesinger’s Sunday Bloody Sunday, which won a Golden Globe and a Bafta for best picture, although his key role was not fully reflected in the film’s credits, which merely noted that “the producers gratefully acknowledge the assistance of David Sherwin during the production of the film”. Other projects on which he was employed included a remake of Camille for Franco Zeffirelli and a version of Robin Hood with the actor Jon Voight, who asked him to create parts for Muhammad Ali and Bob Dylan. Neither film was made. With McDowell and Anderson, he formed the production company SAM and revived the character of Mick Travis in O Lucky Man! Adapted from an idea by McDowell and with a soundtrack by Alan Price, Sherwin described its surrealist allegory as “the hardest thing I’ve ever done”. It won two Baftas and was nominated for a Golden Globe but Britannia Hospital, the third part of the Mick Travis trilogy, fared worse. A black comedy about the hypocrisy and post-imperial decay of modern Britain, it appeared at the height of the Falklands War. When it was shown at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, the UK delegation walked out. Anderson and Sherwin were “chased down the street for being anti-British”, McDowell recalled. Sherwin was delighted. “We’ve achieved what we set out to do,” he said. “An assault on Thatcher’s Britain that hurts.” However, the film’s commercial failure did little for his career. By 1985 he was on the dole. There were more thwarted film projects, including a plan to put his 1996 memoir, Going Mad in Hollywood, on screen. He at least had the consolation of some stellar reviews for the book. JG Ballard praised his writing as “witty, shrewd, and unflinchingly honest” and described the book as “the best script that David Sherwin has yet produced”. (Sc 55-58) |
