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Chapter 8 THE BRITISH IN HOLLYWOOD
I like to live in the centre of things. I have a flat just off Piccadilly : the Ritz is my local. The raucous sound of the West End traffic is sweet music in my ears. I can make do without nightingales and the smell of heather. I can't tell one flower from another.
When I am writing, I prefer to have to do it to a deadline (otherwise I do not think I would ever get anything written) . I think it was Dr. Johnson who said that if you know you are going to be executed tomorrow it concentrates your mind marvellously; knowing you will appear in print tomorrow has the same effect. I like the illusion that life is fast.
I did not find Hollywood particularly fast. Perhaps the newspapers did carry the following day's date, but they also carried the previous week's news. The idea that it is a place full of high-pressure executives is just another myth. Life in Hollywood can be as slow as its worst film. And all the time you feel (and are) 3,000 miles from where anything is happening.
I think the stars who are leaving Hollywood must have begun to feel this, too. If you are functioning as a creative artist (on any level) you need the stimulus of being in touch with something that can pass for life. Although Hollywood sits like a rich aunt on the outskirts of Los Angeles (where there is enough raw life to satisfy anyone) it rarely visits its poor relative. They are barely on speaking terms.
Seeing a place through the window of your car is not the same as living in it. And in Hollywood life tends to
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