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| David Sherwin obituary | David Sherwin obituary |
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| The screenwriter David Sherwin, who has died aged 75 from sepsis, wrote three acerbic, funny, trailblazing films for the director Lindsay Anderson, each starring Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis. In If.… (1968), the most influential of these, Mick was a public school revolutionary who opens fire on the quad with his fellow rebels. In the surreal, picaresque O Lucky Man! (1973), he was a coffee salesman who is mistaken for a spy, falls in with a rock band and then a CEO, and eventually emerges from prison to play the lead in O Lucky Man! And in Britannia Hospital (1982), a scathing satire that used the failing establishment of the title as a metaphor for Britain, Mick was a muckraking journalist who is killed and then resurrected as a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster. | The screenwriter David Sherwin, who has died aged 75 from sepsis, wrote three acerbic, funny, trailblazing films for the director Lindsay Anderson, each starring Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis. In If.… (1968), the most influential of these, Mick was a public school revolutionary who opens fire on the quad with his fellow rebels. In the surreal, picaresque O Lucky Man! (1973), he was a coffee salesman who is mistaken for a spy, falls in with a rock band and then a CEO, and eventually emerges from prison to play the lead in O Lucky Man! And in Britannia Hospital (1982), a scathing satire that used the failing establishment of the title as a metaphor for Britain, Mick was a muckraking journalist who is killed and then resurrected as a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster. |
| Sherwin’s partnership with Anderson was combative and playful; the director treated him, he reflected, with “vast affectionate scorn”. Typical conversations would revolve around how much Sherwin had or had not written of whatever project he happened to be working on. “As I coughed and spluttered and said, ‘Everything’s going brilliantly, Linds,’ he’d say, ‘That nervous cough in your throat. I know you’re lying.’” Anderson was a fierce champion of his work, however, and remained Sherwin’s guide and mentor throughout the latter’s various personal and professional travails. | Sherwin’s partnership with Anderson was combative and playful; the director treated him, he reflected, with “vast affectionate scorn”. Typical conversations would revolve around how much Sherwin had or had not written of whatever project he happened to be working on. “As I coughed and spluttered and said, ‘Everything’s going brilliantly, Linds,’ he’d say, ‘That nervous cough in your throat. I know you’re lying.’” Anderson was a fierce champion of his work, however, and remained Sherwin’s guide and mentor throughout the latter’s various personal and professional travails. |
| He was born in Oxford, to AN (Adrian Nicholas) Sherwin-White, the ancient historian, and Marie (nee Downes), who taught Latin at Oxford. David was educated at Tonbridge school and got into Oxford on an English literature scholarship, only to leave at the end of his first year after failing his exams. He blamed this on his obsession with a script that he and his friend John Howlett were writing about their bruising memories of public school. | He was born in Oxford, to AN (Adrian Nicholas) Sherwin-White, the ancient historian, and Marie (nee Downes), who taught Latin at Oxford. David was educated at Tonbridge school and got into Oxford on an English literature scholarship, only to leave at the end of his first year after failing his exams. He blamed this on his obsession with a script that he and his friend John Howlett were writing about their bruising memories of public school. |
| The 18-year-olds sent copies of the screenplay, Crusaders, to several producers (one declared it “evil and perverted”, another that the writers should be horse-whipped), the great Hollywood director Nicholas Ray (who offered Sherwin a job and then promptly suffered a nervous breakdown) and the literary agent Peggy Ramsay, who found Sherwin work as a writer for the industrial film unit of Perkins Diesels in Peterborough. It was to be the first of many odd jobs, including house-painter, glass-blower and freelance photographer, which he held while waiting for Crusaders to be made. | The 18-year-olds sent copies of the screenplay, Crusaders, to several producers (one declared it “evil and perverted”, another that the writers should be horse-whipped), the great Hollywood director Nicholas Ray (who offered Sherwin a job and then promptly suffered a nervous breakdown) and the literary agent Peggy Ramsay, who found Sherwin work as a writer for the industrial film unit of Perkins Diesels in Peterborough. It was to be the first of many odd jobs, including house-painter, glass-blower and freelance photographer, which he held while waiting for Crusaders to be made. |
| The producer and director Seth Holt eventually took an interest in the script and showed it to Anderson. Agreeing that the film should be both epic and poetic, Anderson set Sherwin to work on a complete overhaul during 18 months of revisions. “You know, I’m only making this for a few friends in Cannes,” the director said. “And I’m making it for the world,” Sherwin replied. His tasks during shooting included preparing a dummy screenplay to present to the main location, Cheltenham college, which would never have allowed the real, incendiary one to be shot there. Daphne Hunter, a secretary at Albert Finney’s Memorial Enterprises (which was producing the film), suggested for the fake version the title If…., after the Kipling poem, and it stuck. | The producer and director Seth Holt eventually took an interest in the script and showed it to Anderson. Agreeing that the film should be both epic and poetic, Anderson set Sherwin to work on a complete overhaul during 18 months of revisions. “You know, I’m only making this for a few friends in Cannes,” the director said. “And I’m making it for the world,” Sherwin replied. His tasks during shooting included preparing a dummy screenplay to present to the main location, Cheltenham college, which would never have allowed the real, incendiary one to be shot there. Daphne Hunter, a secretary at Albert Finney’s Memorial Enterprises (which was producing the film), suggested for the fake version the title If…., after the Kipling poem, and it stuck. |
| The picture was a hit, capturing the volatile mood of the times and enjoying an explosive screening at Cannes, where it won the grand prix exactly a year after the May 68 student protests in Paris. | The picture was a hit, capturing the volatile mood of the times and enjoying an explosive screening at Cannes, where it won the grand prix exactly a year after the May 68 student protests in Paris. |
| Sherwin then rewrote John Schlesinger’s controversial drama Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). He adapted an idea of McDowell’s, The Coffee Man, to create the script Lucky Man; it was Anderson, with whom writer and actor had formed the company SAM, who suggested the “O” to lend it an epic flavour. The story’s constantly shifting shape and locations made it, Sherwin said, “the hardest thing I’ve ever done – an absolute nightmare to research and write”. | Sherwin then rewrote John Schlesinger’s controversial drama Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). He adapted an idea of McDowell’s, The Coffee Man, to create the script Lucky Man; it was Anderson, with whom writer and actor had formed the company SAM, who suggested the “O” to lend it an epic flavour. The story’s constantly shifting shape and locations made it, Sherwin said, “the hardest thing I’ve ever done – an absolute nightmare to research and write”. |
| In the wake of its success, Sherwin was in demand. He wrote a remake of Camille for Franco Zeffirelli and worked on a version of Robin Hood with the actor Jon Voight, who asked him to invest the hero with shades of Hamlet and to create parts for Muhammad Ali and Bob Dylan. (Neither film was made.) He was a writer on the thriller Venom (1981), touted by Paramount as “Jaws on dry land”, then watched as only one of his lines ended up in the finished film. | In the wake of its success, Sherwin was in demand. He wrote a remake of Camille for Franco Zeffirelli and worked on a version of Robin Hood with the actor Jon Voight, who asked him to invest the hero with shades of Hamlet and to create parts for Muhammad Ali and Bob Dylan. (Neither film was made.) He was a writer on the thriller Venom (1981), touted by Paramount as “Jaws on dry land”, then watched as only one of his lines ended up in the finished film. |
| It did not bode well for Britannia Hospital that the projector showing the rough cut to studio executives burst into flames. The picture had a mixed reception – Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times declared it “a disaster”, while Patrick Gibbs in the Telegraph praised “the exuberance of the comic invention” – but Sherwin was thrilled when British guests stormed noisily out of its Cannes screening. “Success!” he declared. “We’ve achieved what we set out to do … An assault on Thatcher’s Britain that hurts.” | It did not bode well for Britannia Hospital that the projector showing the rough cut to studio executives burst into flames. The picture had a mixed reception – Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times declared it “a disaster”, while Patrick Gibbs in the Telegraph praised “the exuberance of the comic invention” – but Sherwin was thrilled when British guests stormed noisily out of its Cannes screening. “Success!” he declared. “We’ve achieved what we set out to do … An assault on Thatcher’s Britain that hurts.” |
| Work was scarce in the aftermath of the film’s commercial failure. He scripted the TV movie Wet Gold (1984), an underwater Treasure of the Sierra Madre starring Brooke Shields, but by 1985 he was trying to claim dole, only to be told that he was ineligible because he “thought creatively” for more than 24 hours a week. | Work was scarce in the aftermath of the film’s commercial failure. He scripted the TV movie Wet Gold (1984), an underwater Treasure of the Sierra Madre starring Brooke Shields, but by 1985 he was trying to claim dole, only to be told that he was ineligible because he “thought creatively” for more than 24 hours a week. |
| He appeared as himself in Anderson’s wry documentary Is That All There Is? (1992) and continued to write, completing an unpublished autobiographical novel, The Great Advertisement for Marriage, and screenplays such as If 2, commissioned by Paramount, which foundered shortly before Anderson’s death in 1994. | He appeared as himself in Anderson’s wry documentary Is That All There Is? (1992) and continued to write, completing an unpublished autobiographical novel, The Great Advertisement for Marriage, and screenplays such as If 2, commissioned by Paramount, which foundered shortly before Anderson’s death in 1994. |
| A film of Sherwin’s 1996 published diaries, Going Mad in Hollywood, was planned by the director Michael Winterbottom, with McDowell cast as Anderson, but never materialised. | A film of Sherwin’s 1996 published diaries, Going Mad in Hollywood, was planned by the director Michael Winterbottom, with McDowell cast as Anderson, but never materialised. |
| Sherwin struggled with alcoholism and mental health issues throughout his life. His second wife, Monika (nee Hayden), whom he married in 1977, retired in 2015 to become his carer, and predeceased him last year. He is survived by their daughter, Skye, as well as a son, Luke, from his first marriage, to Gay (nee Conolly), which ended in divorce in 1974, and by three grandchildren, Sidney, Cecily and Tallis. | Sherwin struggled with alcoholism and mental health issues throughout his life. His second wife, Monika (nee Hayden), whom he married in 1977, retired in 2015 to become his carer, and predeceased him last year. He is survived by their daughter, Skye, as well as a son, Luke, from his first marriage, to Gay (nee Conolly), which ended in divorce in 1974, and by three grandchildren, Sidney, Cecily and Tallis. |
| • David Sherwin (Sherwin-White), screenwriter, born 24 February 1942; died 8 January 2018 | • David Sherwin (Sherwin-White), screenwriter, born 24 February 1942; died 8 January 2018 |
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