Chariots of Fire___Whole 002.Pdf
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0 THE MAKING OF “CHARIOTS OF FIRE” From memory, it was in late 1978 or early 1979 that I first read in the Sunday Times that Colin Welland was scripting a movie on Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, gold- medallists in the 1924 Paris Olympic Games. It bore a less than inspiring title, and was called “The Runners”. Don’t ask me how, but I somehow secured Colin’s address, wrote to him offering my help, and within a week he was sitting opposite me in my living room. It immediately became clear to me that Colin Welland was a sports nutter. OK, perhaps not quite as nutty as me, not a fanatic who had devoted his life to sport, but a fellow nutter nevertheless. Thus, we immediately got along together like a house on fire, and within a week I was appointed to the role of “script consultant”, at the prodigious sum of £500. Colin was still in the early stages of his research on the film, which was the product of someone called David Puttnam, at the head of a film- company called Enigma Productions. The central themes of the film would be the anti-Semitism endured by Abrahams at Cambridge University and Liddell’s refusal, on religious grounds, to compete in the Sunday Final of the 100 metres. In the case of Abrahams, I had the advantage of knowing him, as he had in effect been my previous employer, as a National Athletics Coach. Abrahams, who had died a couple of years earlier, had been a member of a privileged Blazerati, a group who believed that they had been given by birth the Divine Right to rule British athletics. He was not therefore an immediately likeable character, and it would not be to be easy for Colin to make him one. And, to my knowledge, Abraham’s being Jewish had not hindered him in reaching the ruling class of British athletics. Eric Liddell, on the other hand, he had the advantage of being a Scot, he was a man of a totally different complexion. But I pointed out to Colin that he had not refused to compete in the 100 metres, simply because he had not been chosen by his country for that event in the first place. No, as far back as 1923 Liddell had known that the 100 metre final would be on a Sunday, and as a devout Christian, he did not wish to compete on the Lord’s Day. He had instead therefore chosen to go for the two longer sprints, the 200 metres and the 400 metres. But I was to learn early in my role as script-consultant that in the area of biographic feature film, writers tend to be free in their attitude to literal truth. All that was 1 going to matter was that the characters of the two men were accurately portrayed, within a plausible plot. And so I kept to myself my concerns about historical accuracy for the moment and let Colin get on with his research And get on with it he did, but he soon came up against his first problem, difficulties in securing the help of another medallist, Douglas Lowe, who had achieved gold in the Paris 800 metres. Colin never made clear to me what problems he was having with Lowe, but my reaction was immediate. And it was that we take him out of the plot. Because I felt that Lowe, being another gold-medallist, might well take attention away from our two principals, Abrahams and Liddell. Colin should therefore create a lighter, aristocratic contrast to our two principals, and I therefore suggested the fictitious Lord Linsey. I chose the 400metre hurdles as his event, not because it echoed Lord Burleigh’ s later achievement in Amsterdam in 1928, but because I felt that it might be possible to train an actor in an event with modest technical demands. These were ones which could be made even more modest by taking the hurdle down by six inches. After all, no one in the audience could possibly notice. We were, by now, into mid-1979, and it was now time to meet Puttnam and the director Hugh Hudson. Hudson, an Old Etonian, seemed to me to have arrived from some distant planet. David Puttnam, on the other hand, was quite different. Deriving from a more modest background, he made no similar display of effortless superiority, having navigated his way through the demanding world of commercial films. I was soon to find Puttnam to be a leader of quite a different calibre from those like Harold Abrahams whom I had encountered in athletics. We all came together for the first time at a Piccadilly club, and it was at this point that Puttnam asked if I might extend my role and act as a sort of Technical Director. This would mean choosing the actors for the physical roles, training them, then making certain that that the film’s athletics sequences looked real. For, although athletics would occupy less than a tenth of the running-time, it lay at the heart of the film. If, therefore, its portrayal failed to convince, then no one would have much interest in the other two hours. And so it was back to the script. I had been for weeks boring the pants off Colin with my yarns about the famous New Year Powderhall professional sprint, and he now suggested that we have Liddell run in it. No, I replied, the issue of his amateur status would prevent that. But, I suggested, why not have us introduce Liddell in a 2 Highland Games, deep in the heather and the hills? Colin immediately agreed, and inserted a new scene, but more of that later. So now, now let’s move on to October 1979, and to a sodden cinder athletics track in Putney and thirty one shivering actors, standing before me, awaiting my commands. Alas, there was a significant lack of muscle on display, for those were the days long before Health Clubs and rippling abdominals. It was therefore not perhaps a surprise that several of my prospective Olympians were sick during their warm-up. “Remember Tom,” said David Puttnam .“We’ll go by your choice. So just give us the ones that you think you can make into athletes.” Easier said than done, unless I had suddenly acquired the powers of a Gypsy Petulengro. Because it was impossible to predict how an actor’s muscles might respond to training in sprints and hurdles, with hamstrings ever-ready to twang and sensitive Achilles tendons begging to become inflamed. So this was surely going to be a shot in the dark. Nevertheless, after an hour and a half in the freezing cold, I had chosen two actors Ben Cross and Ian Charleson for the main roles and another four for the supporting parts. David Puttnam smiled. “Those were exactly the two men that we wanted, Tom,” he said. “I really don’t know how you did it.” Neither did I. Thus, in November 1979, with six months to go to the 1924 Olympic Games, I set about training six actors who had never in their lives taken part in athletics, not only to compete, but to convince an audience that they were athletes. And to coach two of them to win Olympic gold medals. Thus it was that in mid-November 1979 that I began to prepare my motley crew of apprehensive actors for what was soon to become “Chariots of Fire”. I use the word “apprehensive” advisedly, because in discussion, though none expressed any doubt about his capacity as an actor, not one had expressed any confidence in his athletic ability. 3 But first, first we still had to find an actor to play my fictitious hurdler, Lord Lindsay. And it was thus that Puttnam and Hudson now brought to the St. Albans track a fine young Scots actor, who shall be nameless, for reasons that you will soon understand. At first, all went very well, with his running as just as good as that of Ian Charleson, Ben Cross and the others had been back at Putney. True, he had no background in athletics but then neither had any my other future Olympians. But soon the moment of truth eventually arrived when I had to present my Scot with the actual clearance of a hurdle. I put the barrier down to its lowest point, at about thirty centimeters. But on being confronted with the hurdle, my prospective Olympian suddenly went pale and refused to make any attempt to clear it. This was perhaps not surprising, for it probably represented for him a personal best in high jump. He was immediately placed in the next taxi to Heathrow Airport by David Puttnam, and we all gloomily returned to my house. There, Puttnam confessed to me that he had for some time known that our Scot had been known to be susceptible to the occasional dram. I saw no great purpose in discussing the extent of his alcoholic habits, but we nevertheless still had to find ourselves a Lord Lindsey. But now another problem arose, a few weeks before I was to set off to the Lake Placid Winter Olympics as coach to our national bobsleigh team. My actors had assembled at my house and we were discussing their training for the two weeks that I would be away. Then Ian Charleson spoke. “Tom,” he said. “We have been training for over a month, but so far Enigma, they have paid us absolutely nothing.” “Oh.