Sunday: with Ms Silke to the NFT, now rebranded as the ‘BFI Southbank’. Though all the signs around Waterloo and the South Bank still point to the National Film Theatre. We see ‘To Be Or Not To Be’, the original 1942 version with Carole Lombard and Jack Benny. Pleased to discover that many jokes I’d assumed were added by Mel Brooks in his 80s remake are in fact in the original, like Hitler saying ‘Heil myself.’ It’s one thing to make jokes about Nazis in Poland, quite another to do so while it was all still going on – and when it looked like they were winning. The opening sequence – a lone Hitler suddenly appearing on the streets of Warsaw in early 1939, stopping traffic and getting shocked stares from the crowd, while underscored by a wry newsreel narration – is just wonderful.
Afterwards to the ICA bar for Stephen Harwood’s birthday cocktails, repairing after that to the Retro Bar in the Strand. Both unchanged for years, though the ICA is in trouble. There’s news afoot of debts, redundancies, threats of closure and general angry finger-pointing at ICA boss Ekow Eshun. Were it down to me, I’d appeal to the Queen and Prince Charles about the rules stopping the ICA putting up adverts, or indeed any indication there’s something going on at all, on the building exterior on the Mall (close to Buckingham Palace). Many passers-by aren’t even aware they’re walking past a famous arts centre. A friendly, classy redesign of the ICA’s logo and all its advertising is equally overdue – the kind which rejuvenated the Barbican a few years ago.
I’d also redo the bar and corridors to give it a more cosy, ornate salon and club feel: red walls, drapes, Greek columns, ferns, mirrors, artists’ tiles, plush chairs and sofas. An ICA to out-Palace the Palace. I’ve been a guest of Buck House myself, and much as I was grateful for my mother’s MBE, I did think HMQ’s place could have done with a bar. So that’s my ‘vision’ for the ICA, if Mr Yentob is reading (again). Make it the New Palace Of Glittering Art (With Special Offers On Cocktails).
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Ms Silke has a Joe Orton-style montage of photos and clippings on her wall. Favourite actors, rock stars and writers are mixed in with her friends and relations. She’s put a photo of me between Lord Alfred Douglas, Richey Manic and Lassie.
Tags: ICA, NFT, Silke, Stephen Harwood
