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VI: St Sebastian
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132 VI St Sebastian J A N U A R Y 1 9 7 5 I met James Whaley, who was to become the producer of Sebastiane, at a Sunday lunch. He asked me what I did. Films. 'What sort?' 'Little ones.' Have you ever thought of features? No - impossible! Well I'm going to make one, he said, what ideas do you have? The Tempest perhaps. I've always dreamed of that; I chatted with John Gielgud for a whole evening about it. He said if he did it he would film it in Bali. I've made a script of it. Prospero's a schizophrenic locked into a madhouse Bedlam . He plays allthe parts - Miranda, Ariel and Caliban; the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan and the rest of them visit him and watch his dissolution from behind the bars. It works very well, but uses less than one third of the play. Then there is Akhenaten the heretic pharaoh. Heliogabalus! EPICS!! and St Sebastian. We should make that one, he said. Well why don't you write a treatment, I said - not really believing the project would survive the coffee. We chatted about Sebastian and the London Film School, where James had just completed the course. A few days later James arrives with a synopsis. On our journey through Italy three years before, Patrik Steede, fascinated by the St Sebastians in every gallery and church, dreamed up the idea of writing a film. During the next year Patrik lived at my studio at Bankside and in Sloane Square, and the project lurked in the background. But Patrik was reticent about putting pen to paper —he had written a play which he threw over Southwark Bridge one evening. So Sebastiane remained firmly in the mind - he came with me to Rome on the Gargantua project in 1973 to write Sebastiane; but six weeks later, after the project collapsed, we were back in London with nothing done. Before he left Sloane Square in February he promised me that I'd have the script by summer. But when we met up in NYC the subject was evaded and nothing more was said about it; and Pat cloistered himself with a young American producer. Maybe I had misinterpreted the 133 James Whaley, the producer of Sebastiane and Jubilee (Photo. Jean Marc Prouveur) [3.83.81.42] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:19 GMT) 134 situation, believing the project would be written for me. James' enthusiasm presented a problem - was Sebastiane to be made that summer or not? Time was the factor. After talking to Anthony, I decided to go it alone. The lines to NYC went dead. Three years later, when the film opened in the Village, Patrik told me: 'I took my lawyer, but at the end of it he said, "It's so terrible it's not worth suing."' Sebastian. Renaissance. Pretty boy smiles through the arrows on a thousand altar pieces - plague. Saint. Captain of Diocletian's guard. Converted, stoned, and thrown into the sewers. Rescued by a Holy Woman. Androgyne icon banned by the bishop of Paris. Danced by Ida Rubinstein. Impersonated by Mishima. In love with his martyrdom. February 1975, Sloane Square: James wants an oil and vanilla film full of Steve Reeves muscle men working out in locker-rooms. Paul Humfress, who is to edit, wants a very serious art film, slow and ponderous. I want a poetic film full of mystery. The debate rages as I write, and the script is caught in a tug-of-war between the grey mirrors of Sloane Square. March 1975, Sloane Square:Jack Welch, a Latin scholar from Oxford, has arrived with the translation of the script. It's brought a coherence into the work, the poems sound good: Sagitta funesta acu tetigit Umbraque tegit aquas Et aura facet Aves non canunt Deficit ab orbe color. Sebastianus de mundo discessit Ad solem modo sagittae advolat Nox non umquarn eum occupabit Discessit ab horis orbis atris. 135 Ecce vulnera sagittarum Sanguis vitae fluit in harena Calthae solis in radis folia Explicantes surgtmt. Flores apollinis aureos Sebastiane Sebastiane Da iuveni deo qui luminibus aureis est multa basia Da amatori multa basia Et vesperis in luce Mundum hunc recordare. (The fatal arrow has found its mark / A shadow has fallen across the waters. / The breeze is still/ No birds sing / Colour has deserted the world. / Sebastian takes leave of the world / Like an arrow he flies to the sun...