London When It Sizzles

The backstage shenanigans were funnier than anything in the movie. A true story.

Ealing comedy meets French farce.

The time: 1990. The place: London.

The Amblin’ animation studio was situated on the top floor of a former automobile manufacturing facility in Acton, a declining industrial neighborhood not far from Shepherd’s Bush, one of the dodgier parts of the city.  Our desks were wooden Ikea “Ivar” shelving that suggested horse boxes. Occasional neighs resounded from their interiors.

Nancy Beiman at her desk in the Amblimation studio. Photo by David Hutchinson.(originally published in Animation Magazine, 1990).

27 different nationalities worked there.  Some areas of the huge open studio floor were named after the artists’ countries of origin. Despite its name, “Little America” had American, Australian, German, British, and Spanish animators in it. (We were all non-smokers).  The French animators’ section was easily identified by the permanent cloud of cigarette smoke hovering overhead. I drew two group caricatures of some of the foreign animators with ‘Anglicized’ names after a local paper complained about the lack of British artists in the crew and fulminated about our alleged ‘whirlwind cocktail parties’. In the sketches, actual British artists were supposedly ‘rejected’ because of ‘foreign’ sounding names.

“All-British Crew”. Caricatures by Nancy Beiman. Left to right: Thierry Schiel (Luxemburg), Ceu D’Elia (Brazil), Rob Stevenhagen (Holland), Shane Doyle (Canada), Piet Kroon (Holland), Raul Garcia (Spain), Nancy Beiman (USA), Christophe Serrand (France), Peter Western (London, England)

The summer of 1990 was the hottest one, to that date, in British history. The building was not air conditioned. Few British, or indeed European, buildings were, then. We were on the third floor, just below a tar roof that amplified the heat. Ventilation was sporadic. The windows did not provide cross ventilation. Fans just moved the hot air around. Some  artists rushed to the W.C to soak their hands and arms in tap water to keep from fainting at their desks.

I kept a small bottle of water by my desk and poured some of it on my head at regular intervals. The water in the bottle was warm after 30 minutes or so on the floor, and my hair was dry shortly after each drench.

On one particularly hot day the lead in a blue Col-Erase pencil that I used for rough drawings actually melted and dripped down the page of animation paper. I switched to green ones which did not melt. It was clear that more proactive measures were needed to deal with the heat.

The producers rented several large portable industrial air conditioners that resembled props in Terry Gilliam’s dystopian 1984 film BRAZIL. Each air conditioner had two prominent flexible ducts in front that could be repositioned to blast cool air as directed. Unfortunately an equally strong blast of warm air was emitted from the machine’s rear, effectively canceling the cooling. You received cool air only if you were directly in front of the ducts. No one wanted to be at the rear. When one artist turned a duct ceilingward and balanced a soccer ball on top of the jet of air while explaining how the law of physics kept it suspended and rotating, a colleague heatedly told him where the ball was going to go next if he didn’t stop.

The air conditioners resembled props from ‘Central Services’ in Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL. They were also extremely noisy.

I and a few other animators arrived very early each morning to get work done before the hottest part of the day. Every Tuesday, the fire alarm would sound at precisely 7:30 A.M. We ignored it since we knew it was a test.

On this particular Tuesday the security guard stopped by and politely mentioned that we really should evacuate the building since the alarm was genuine this time. We strolled downstairs and watched the firemen arrive, mill around in the lobby, announce that it was a false alarm, and leave.  We went back upstairs and got back to work.

30 minutes later, the power failed.

Many other artists had arrived by this time. We sat at our desks while someone went to check the fuses. It was actually cooler with the air conditioners and lights off.

The frightened staffer returned with the news that our building’s fuse boxes were  located in an abandoned  and crumbling structure next door. It had six inches of water on the floor, and the ancient fuse box cases had melted and dripped down the walls. He did not get a closer look for obvious reasons.

The production manager arranged catering for a crew lunch and the producers rented a huge industrial Diesel-powered generator.

Lunch arrived without incident and was greatly appreciated. The artists were given the afternoon off and asked to return for an evening session.

A few hours later the diesel generator, which was the size of a tractor trailer,  arrived on a large flatbed and was wheeled into position near the building’s rear entrance. There was one small difficulty.  The generator had to be hooked up to the building’s electrical system with a special cable. The generator and the cable were rented from different suppliers, each located in a different part of London.  Unfortunately the truck with the cable was still in transit. Many artists simply went home when this was revealed. 

Just as the sun was setting the truck with the cable arrived, the cable was plugged in, and various switches thrown.

The generator did not start.

Someone climbed on top of it and started hitting it with a  spanner (wrench) to make it go. The generator sat impassively, illuminated by a few flashlights.  The only sound was of a spanner hitting metal. Some French animators and one of the producers went back upstairs and sat at their desks in the dark, assuming that the power would soon be restored. The directors, the production manager, the editor, one or two animators, and I remained standing in the parking lot near the building’s locked rear entrance. The scene was set for a development that was definitely not in the script.

Hallo! A great deal of engine noise! A motorcycle screeched to a stop near us!  A litany of French curses! That was a furious French artist who had left the studio a week earlier! A sound of a motorcycle helmet landing on the ground, and shouts of “I will KILL him!” I will KILL HIM!” That was him, speaking English!

He grabbed a small rock from the parking area and tried to open the rear door. When he found it locked he started running toward the front of the building, which faced the street.

“I thought he was in France,” I remarked stupidly. One of the other parties gave me a magnificently condescending look and calmly replied, “He is not in France.”

There was a momentary pause.  The production manager then did a double take worthy of Buster Keaton and started running after the French artist, followed by two animators.  “Get in the car, I’m driving you home,” the editor said. (The rest of this story is based on another witness’ report.)

As the animated procession ran around the side of the building toward the front entrance, two passing bobbies  in a patrol car noticed the unusual activity at a darkened building in a sketchy neighborhood. They got out of their car and joined the chase.

The front entrance had three flights of stairs, each with a landing. The stairs were dimly and distantly illuminated by a small flashlight that the security guard, who sat at a desk on the third-floor landing, had lit. He had also propped open the studio door with a stick, for ventilation.

The rock-bearer, yelling in French, ran up the stairs followed by the others. The animators, winded, stopped on the first-floor landing to catch their breath. The bobbies ran past them in the dark. The French artist and the rock were now in pole position, with the bobbies close behind, and the animators bringing up the rear.

The noise alerted the French animators in the studio and gave them time to hide one of their colleagues in a stall in the men’s toilet just before the rock-bearer raced past the security guard and stormed screaming through the door. The biggest French animator sat on him as the bobbies arrived and asked What’s All This Then.

The producer announced, “Enough. Everyone go home.” Everyone did.

In the morning we learned that after one especially hard whack with the spanner, the generator finally turned on at 10:45. The building’s power was restored at 11:00.

As for the motorcyclist, he and another French artist were apparently rivals for the affection of a female artist. I don’t know how the affair ended.

One artist’s father had been a cameraman for London’s Ealing studios. Their famous 1951 comedy The Lavender Hill Mob featured an hilarious chase down the stairs of the Eiffel Tower. “Ask your dad to show up tomorrow and bring his camera. We film the entire story and end it with the Lavender Hill Mob Eiffel Tower chase, in reverse. I’m directing, and everyone plays themselves except for the cops and the guy with the rock,” I said.

I still want to make that movie.

Thanks to Colin Alexander for fact checking this article.