DIARY KEITH WATERHOUSE
In Buffalo for the US premiere of That Play ('Uproariously, despairingly funny . . . a tour de force' — Buffalo News), I had my first experience of serious American snow. Like most Brits, I have gone through life imagining that while we just talk about the weather the efficient Americans do some- thing about it. Ho ho ho. No sooner had we had six or seven inches of 'precipitation', as they call anything that falls from the heav- ens, than we were plunged into an all-too- familiar round of cancelled trains and frozen points, flights delayed by hours, blocked roads, closed schools, chaos and misinformation. One thing that did impress me was the private snow-plough, which citi- zens affix to their car bumpers, so that they can clear a way through their silted-up streets instead of waiting for the council to come along and do it for them. I cannot imagine that initiative catching on in this country until long after hell has frozen over. But I was personally a victim of the snowstorm — slithering on a patch of ice, I landed flat on my face, sustaining a lacerat- ed nose, a black eye and a fat lip. Now at home, everyone would have said, 'My God, what have you done to yourself?' Not in the United States. What everyone said was, 'My God, what have they done to you?' the automatic assumption being that I had been mugged. What they all said next, once I had explained the circumstances, was 'Sue the city!' Had I done so, I should undoubt- edly have sought the advice of Mr Harry H. Lipsig, billed as the Undisputed Dean of Negligence Attorneys, whose advertising Includes this testimonial from the New York Times: 'For thousands of accident victims, the first words out of their mouths after "ouch" have been "Harry Lipsig".'
In an American bar of the old-fashioned kind, I fell into the company of a retired American newspaperman of the old-fash- ioned kind — one of those grizzled old- timers who never majored in journalism but can quote Mencken and Damon Runy- on by the yard. We had both known Cas- sandra, the Daily Mirror's greatest colum- nist in its own greatest days, and we were reminiscing about his celebrated interview with Senator , Joe McCarthy of the UnAmerican Activities Committee — hav- ing cornered him at the dentist's with his mouth clamped, Cassandra took the oppor- tunity to tell the Senator exactly what he thought of him, to which McCarthy could only reply in indignant gurgles — when we were interrupted by that well-known bar character, Mr Excuse Me, Gentlemen, I Couldn't Help Overhearing What You Were Saying. This was a young man who claimed some distant kinship with the late Roy Cohn, one of McCarthy's two odiously
youthful legal side-kicks. To me, the young man said, 'You're British, sir. I guess you won't remember Mr Cohn and Mr Schine?' I said, 'Oh, I remember them all right. The Leopold and Loeb of American politics.' A spasm of pain crossed the intruder's face. 'Sir, that's not a kind thing to say about a person's family connection.' I said, 'I'm sorry, but your family connection was not a kind man. He helped destroy a good many people's lives.' The young man, possibly himself a lawyer, nodded judiciously. 'I would have to go along with that, sir, but maybe you'll concede that in the wider con- text this was only one aspect of a crowded life.' My grizzled friend swilled the ice cubes around his Jack Daniels and growled, 'And they tell me Adolf Hitler was an accomplished watercolourist.' The young man looked fixedly at his watch and remembered an appointment.
Variety, the showbiz bible, points out that more screenwriters had a hand in the script of The Flintstones, Universal's up-coming epic, than there are residents of Bedrock 35 writers in all. The American Writers Guild, the absolute arbiter in these matters, is expected to whittle the screen credits down to a mere nine. I wish them luck in their weighty task (literally weighty — the screenplay went through around 16 drafts). Willis Hall and I, some years ago, offered the Guild a lighter chore when we most unusually asked to be denied a screen cred- it. This was for Hitchcock's lacklustre spy drama Torn Curtain, on which we had been called in to polish up the creaky dialogue. We did our best, considering that the film was shooting even as we frantically re- wrote, but a good many dud lines got We's not been right since his doctor.' vasectomy, through, notably a classic from the lips of Julie Andrews: 'East Berlin? But — but that's behind the Iron Curtain!' Mindful of a geographically unco-ordinated audience in such centres of insularity as Dubuque, Mr Hitchcock steadfastly refused to allow us to modify the line, not even to the extent of getting rid of the superfluous 'but' and its hesitant dash. When we heard that he was asking the Guild to give us an addition- al dialogue credit, we appealed, successful- ly, for our names to be kept right out of it.
Ihave recently transferred my weekend affections from Brighton to Bath. No regrets. Brighton, once engagingly raffish, has now grown raddled, while Bath is still beautiful, and, just as importantly, clean, which is what one is supposed to look for in a new love these days. One minor irritation, on the journey up and down, is British Rail's policy of training its staff in certain repetitive parrot phrases. Before every sta- tion we are informed that the train, or rather 'the service', is now approaching Reading or wherever (the auxiliary verb italicised, as if until that moment there had been some doubt whether 'the service' was approaching Reading or Kingston-upon- Hull), and then, after being reminded not to forget our luggage, we are counselled not to open the doors before 'the service' has come to a complete stop, not only for our own safety but for that of 'customers' on the platform. After we set off again, we are re-welcomed aboard and told yet again where we are going; then we are informed that buffet facilities are (after all?) avail- able and that there is a choice of 'bever- ages' etc. etc. Between Paddington and Bath I endure 15 of these announcements, all of which I already know by heart — 15 per journey, 30 per week, 1,500 per year. Daily commuters have to put up with hear- ing the same old mantras around 7,500 times a year. When they privatise the line, could we not have a silent train? Many years ago, when I was in Moscow during some frightful youth festival and the city was clogged , up with coaches packed with frightful youths in their frightful national
costumes singing frightful folk songs, I felt very proud when I came across the British contingent's coach, for it carried a banner proclaiming 'This bus does not sing.' How about 'This train does not speak'?
Life is a campus: in a Greenwich Vil- lage bookstore, looking for a New Yorker collection, I asked of an earnest-looking assistant where I might find the humour section. Peering over her granny glasses, she enquired, 'Humour studies would that be, sir?'
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