The Wah-Wah Diaries - The Making of a Film
by Richard E. Grant
Pan Macmillan, HK$120
Swaziland at the end of British colonial rule in the 1960s was a strange place for a child, particularly when one's mother was having an affair with a family friend and one's cuckolded and alcoholic father, the minister for education, pointed a revolver in the direction of your head and pulled the trigger. Ah, such memories. Richard Grant, he of the piercing blue eyes better known as an actor in Withnail & I and Gosford Park, conceived the idea for a semi-autobiographical film called The Wah- Wah Diaries, which was shot in his homeland and came out last May to generally favourable reviews in the US, although the New York Post says 'the story lacks focus'. This book, Grant's journal of the making of the film and all the trials and tribulations that entailed, is 'a memoir within a memoir', according to The Observer. 'Grant's story is funny, dramatic and moving,' it says. His bete noire is the French producer brought on board because of funding problems - Grant had impeccable acting credentials, but none as a director - and his clashes with her become a laugh-out-loud running joke. It's Waterloo all over again. Jolly good.