Derek Jarman: A Biography

22. Stormy Weather

22 Stormy Weather Jubilee helped delineate the shape – that of being primarily a filmmaker – into which Jarman’s life was beginning to form. Whereas before 1977 his activities had revolved around any number of arenas, now they tended to be tied to the film of the moment. The net effect was that while Jarman’s daily existence became steadily busier and more demanding, it also became simpler and more focused. Apart from some teaching, some unrealised, unfinished film projects and the return to Butler’s Wharf, 1977 had belonged entirely to Jubilee. Almost the only trip Jarman took that year was in late October, when he and Prouveur paid a short visit to Gerald Incandela, who had recently moved to New York.1 The following year also revolved around film: even Jarman’s first London exhibition in over four years was film-related. Timed to coincide with the opening of Jubilee, it was held at Sarah Bradley’s newly opened World’s End Art Gallery at 390 King’s Road, a stone’s throw from Seditionaries. It ran for a month and included some display cases of the source material, jewellery and assorted small props from the film, plus a couple of stills taken by Prouveur in his capacity as one of the film’s two official photographers (the other was Johnny Rozsa), some photographs of Jarman’s early super-8s, two capes, a series of eight small paintings entitled Burning the Pyramids and a series of eight drawings on slate entitled Archaeologies. A modest exhibition, it passed unnoticed by the art world. 1978 also saw a revival of Jazz Calendar, for which there was a modicum of touching up to do. Sebastiane finally, and briefly, opened in New York, followed soon afterwards by the equally fleeting appearance of Jubilee. Both films were also shown in London, prompting Time Out to pigeonhole their director as the creator of ‘a double dose of Jarmanesque decadence’. Jarman made an evanescent appearance of his own on celluloid, in the non-speaking, walk-on part of a cruiser in Ron Peck’s Nighthawks. Because of the brave, open way Peck used his film to explore the necessarily schizophrenic existence of a gay geography teacher in a London comprehensive school, Jarman warmly identified with Nighthawks – and with the part he played. He made, he declared, ‘a very creditable cruiser, so lost in myself I burnt my fingers instead of the cigarette’.2 He had sufficient leisure for more film evenings at Butler’s Wharf and, on Sunday afternoons, a statutory ‘at home’, where there might be an impromptu cabaret in the form of one of Jarman’s conquests taking a bath. There were daily expeditions to Soho for sustenance, both gastronomic and sexual. Such favourites as Jimmy’s, Pollo, Presto or Pâtisserie Valerie for food; for pick-ups, the Salisbury, Global Village, Heaven or perhaps the latter’s more decadent neighbour , the Sanctuary. Another massive warehouse party, this time to celebrate Prouveur’s twenty-first birthday, illustrated just how comprehensively Jarman’s milieu had changed in the eight years since the Upper Ground extravaganza bidding farewell to the sixties. In 1970, the height of daring had been a hugely inebriated Tennessee Williams, or Ossie Clark sitting on the stairs rolling joints. ‘For JeanMarc ’s party,’ by contrast, ‘everything was boarded up and from midnight Adam and the Ants played, beer and whiskey . . . replaced marijuana and the pace was noisy and frenetic. People swam in the bath, fucked in the darkened bedrooms, the next morning it looked as if more people had danced on the walls than the floor. It took three days to get back to normal.’3 Stormy Weather 253 Exemplifying the rowdiness of 1978 was a new, and extremely troublesome, young man called Andy Marshall. Just nineteen, Marshall was the product of fiercely religious parents who, on learning he was gay, had disowned him. Jarman had met him at Bang, the discotheque on Tottenham Court Road, where, in the course of a brief conversation, he had scribbled his name and number on a piece of paper for Marshall. Shortly afterwards, Marshall was sent to prison in Ashford for stealing and crashing a car. When asked if he knew anyone who would stand him bail, he gave Jarman’s name. Although considerably taken aback to receive a call requesting bail for someone he hardly remembered, Jarman instantly complied and, in the...