Fraser’s second volume of memoirs after Quartered Safe Out Here is a weird sort of book – lots of short chapters, half of which concern his adventures in the screen trade, half which are essay-style rants about how bad things are in Britain, plus a final, bigger chapter where he gives an autobiographical sketch.
The adventures section is charming: teaming up with Dick Lester on the Musketeers films, his admiration for Oliver Reed, script doctoring Superman (something I was unaware he did... he admits to not doing much, just defending what was a fine script... this was when Guy Hamilton was going to direct), working on Octopussy, dealing with Steve McQueen on an unmade Tai Pan (I wish this project had come to fruition – that and his William Tell script), discussing Crimson Pirate Two with Burt Lancaster.
The essays section is a drag – lots of whining, very little of it surprising (he is opposed to British involvement in Afghanistan), some of it dim (political correctness ranks as a force of evil after fascism and communism – what about Islamic fundamentalism?; people in his day didn’t have to worry about sexual identity?), all of it relentless (TV is bad, newspapers are bad, parliament is bad, Blair is bad).
Luckily the book is structured so you can skip this bit – you just wish he’d devoted these chapters to fleshing out incidents in his life he hadn’t written about in detail (life as a journalist in the 50s and 60s, his Canada years, etc). What a cranky old bugger. Great writer, though.
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