STORMY WEATHER is the story of two utterly contrasting misfits in post-War Britain - the gay artist, designer and film maker Derek Jarman and his New Zealander father Squadron Leader Lance Jarman, an outstanding Wartime bomber pilot and athlete.

As a Pathfinder Lance Jarman was at the sharpest and most dangerous end of the Allied bombing missions over Germany. During the RAF Officer’s returns home from his harrowing sorties little Derek was the object of his nerve frayed father’s blazing and violent emotions.

After the War Lance Jarman was determined that Derek become the epitomy of the well-bred British middle-class Establishment male which, as a hardy Colonial outsider, he secretly despised. The anything but conventional evolution of his colourful son and their relationship, with its mixture of comedy and pathos, gives the story a universal appeal.

Part 1 of STORMY WEATHER describes Derek’s eccentric suburban home life and his abortive attempts to live up to the ideals of Dad during his public school education in the Fifties.

Part 2 follows the introverted and artistic young man as he emerges from the repressive shadows of the post-War era to become an overtly gay artist during the heady days of the Sixties. As his son embarks on a vivid lifestyle and career whose open espousal of gay sexuality and gay rights will ultimately lead him into numerous conflicts with society at large Dad begins to pursue his own secret war with respectable society.

Part 3 culminates with Derek’s discovery of how Dad has become a kleptomaniac who has targeted his son and other members of the family, including saintly and long suffering Mum, for his bizarre vendetta. Derek, whose life and work are explicit challenges to the British cult of secrecy and discretion, makes a pact with his sister not to reveal to Dad their knowledge about the apparently upright gentleman’s dark secret.

After Mum’s death both father and son wage ever more extreme battles with British mores. Whilst the country is being subjected to the moral rearmament of the Thatcher years Derek’s films provoke public outrage and death threats to the director. And from his stronghold in London’s suburbia Dad extends his kleptomaniac campaign to the high street supermarkets.

In Part 4 Dad, paralysed by a heart attack and finally at baby-like peace with himself, is agonised at his realisation that his children have discovered his secret.

Derek, deeply affected by the pain that secrecy has caused his Dad, and himself now faced by his own mortality after being diagnosed as an HIV carrier, courageously resolves to use his notoriety as a means to break the taboo surrounding the AIDS crisis. He becomes the first celebrity to publicly admit his HIV-positive status.

The offbeat story of the Jarmans in STORMY WEATHER is pointed up by the ironic use of newsreels and propaganda extolling the British way of life and values as the nation struggles to maintain its crumbling post-Imperial identity.

The fundamentally serious themes of male and British identity, of the cultural landscape of the post-War years, of gay sexuality and repression, of the AIDS crisis and human mortality, are treated with the lightness of touch and humour which characterised Derek Jarman.

The film will be highly coloured and non-naturalistic. With its echoes of ‘The Naked Civil Servant’, ‘Prick Up Your Ears’ and Fellini’s work STORMY WEATHER will also be moving, funny and ultimately uplifting.

Late night, 1986. An artist’s apartment in Central London. In the shadows loom the strange shapes of mediaeval-style furniture, sculpted rocks, dried flowers, crucifixes and church candles. Amongst the artist’s bric-a-brac laden worktop is a skull. The telephone rings. DEREK JARMAN, asleep with his LOVER, answers an anonymous caller threatening him with death on account of his recently televised film about Britain ‘Jubilee’. (titles)

A YOUNG DOCTOR reiterates her advice that DEREK should have an HIV test. He is still haunted by the prospect of being further hounded by the tabloids and other cranks. “But you really could just keep mum about it...” says THE DOCTOR. “But, honestly, I really am hopeless at keeping secrets!” replies DEREK with an impish, knowing laugh.

From high over a leafy London suburb and ambulance siren wails. AN ELDERLY MAN is rushed out on a stretcher from a semi. DEREK receives a telephone call from his sister GAYE telling him that their Dad has had a heart attack. She laughs as DEREK jokingly rues Dad’s probability of survival.

Their v/o continues over still, airless images of Dad’s home - with its genteel furnishings, its Forties photos of the handsome trouble-eyed young RAF Officer, his beautiful, elegant wife and their two perfectly turned out children. His sideboard displays his collection of sporting trophies and model planes. One of them is a Wellington bomber.

_ _ _ _ _

Newsreels extol the heroism of the Pathfinder bombers leading the bombings over Germany. Inside one of them there is consternation amongst his CREWMEN as SQUADRON LEADER LANCE JARMAN insists on holding his plane rigidly steady through the night time flak.

Back at base MRS ELIZABETH JARMAN impresses her FELLOW WIVES with her expertise as a former Norman Hartnell designer as they make their sterling contribution to the War effort’s ‘Make Do And Mend’ campaign. She glows with the news of her pregnancy. If it’s a boy she wants to call him Ashley. Her strong-willed mother MIMOSA advises a real boy’s name. “After all, your husband is a New Zealander ...” she opines, “Even if he has learned how to speak the King’s English...” she adds disdainfully to her sweet-natured daughter.

An almost contented DAD shows MUM a birth announcement card he has drawn of their newly arrived BABY DEREK in a Spitfire. The yowling baby is baptised ‘Derek’ under the gaze of his ever smiling MUM and shy, buttoned up RAF Officer DAD. DAD becomes animated as he films his little scion in MUM’s arms under the tree of a tranquil garden.

On another terrifying bombing mission his CREWMEN are by now wryly stiff-upper-lipped about DAD’s strange fixation with maximising engine and fuel efficiency by not taking evasive action - and about his home movie buff’s obsession with recording with his Bolex camera the bloody inferno raging around the cockpit.

His lens follows a fellow bomber spiralling earthwards in a fireball to the sound of Paul Robeson’s ‘Lullaby’ - which is playing in MUM’s living room as she rocks her crying BABY DEREK whilst sirens wail outside.

On his return home nerve frayed DAD, unable to tolerate his noisy son, takes to an extreme the Babycare ads exhorting young mothers to cot their offspring in newspaper lined drawers. MUM watches helplessly as he shoves the drawer on the floor containing BABY DEREK back into its place in the living room dresser. His muffled crying echoes through the woodwork.

Newsreels proclaim Allied progress in the War. Churchill’s calls to “Fight on the beaches! Never surrender!” are continued on the family’s front. When LITTLE DEREK refuses to eat their precious rations DAD flies into a rage and force feeds the screaming boy. BABY GAYE adds to the bedlam. MUM anxiously calls MIMOSA to take little Derek under her wing.

GRANDMA MIMOSA’s eccentric boudoir - with its pearl grey walls, peach mirrors, cut glass baubles, exotic jars and entrancing bluebird decorations - is an alhambra for LITTLE DEREK as he closely watches her making herself up. She lays on a special breakfast for him which she has managed to charm off a man she knows. “These are cornflakes - we used to have them before the War - and this is a banana!”. LITTLE DEREK now scoffs his food.

GRANDMA MIMOSA casts a tolerant eye over LITTLE DEREK happily experimenting with her lipstick and nylons, whilst the airwaves resonate to the post-War promises of a better world for the nation and its future generations.

Princess Elizabeth has a baby son amid national rejoicing whilst LITTLE DEREK is subjected to the character forming regime of an English prep school. The puny and hopelessly uncoordinated boy’s spirited attempts to meet the school’s physical and athletic standards fail dismally.

He seeks solace in the bed of a fellow laggard GAVIN. After an innocent and magical night’s cuddle together the 9-year olds are woken by THE HEADMASTER’S WIFE descending like a terrifying harpy and ripping the mattress from under them. The boys are whipped by THE HEADMASTER and threatened with parental revelation of their crime. They are then subjected to public humiliation at assembly, amidst dire warnings about the perils of mutual masturbation.

Seared by this experience LITTLE DEREK remains huddled in his bed drawing whilst his fellows cluster excitedly around the dormitory bed of A BOY who claims to have successfully ejaculated. He completes a sketch of a black bomber flying menacingly over an ornate Tudor castle with a Union Jack flapping at its masthead.

The family’s Christmas dinner party is ruined at Grandma Mimosa’s flat as the table tips up under the weight of the huge turkey on Grandma’s special charger. The charger runs amok, sending LITTLE DEREK sprawling. He naturally receives a verbal lashing from his DAD. GRANDMA blames MUM for wrecking the plate that survived Hitler’s bombs.

After a semblance of order has returned DAD gruntingly tunes Grandma’s new TV set for the Queen’s Speech. A misty, indecipherable image persists on the infernal machine despite all Dad’s engineering expertise. So DAD has a film show of The Family Home Movie. LITTLE DEREK watches enchanted as his father’s magic images of his Wartime days and his gleaming bomber, of ever smiling and elegant Mum, and of his apparently blissful family life flicker across the screen.

DAD zealously pursues the Government’s post-War austerity campaign on the home front. LITTLE DEREK and GAYE are made to recite the daily litany; “No more than two sheets of lavatory paper. No more than four inches of bath water...”. DAD, determined that his kids should be models of Establishment mores, sternly rebukes LITTLE DEREK for accidentally using the common word ‘toilet’.

LITTLE DEREK’s query about DAD’s insistence on driving the family car at a maximally efficient, rigidly maintained 40mph produces a splenetic outburst from his father. Absolute silence is demanded as DAD concentrates on evading the enemy idiots haunting the highways.

LITTLE DEREKand GAYE squint bemusedly at DAD as he strides through a Devon churchyard and triumphantly locates his grandfather’s grave. He snorts at his mother-in-law Mimosa’s slights about his origins. “No one could be more British than you, darling,” Mum says soothingly.

Back at school LITTLE DEREK shows GAVIN the elaborate Sumerian hieroglyphs he has drawn by which they can communicate in secret code. At swimming lessons he flounderingly attempts to swim the length of the pool. “Are you a man or half a man?” exhorts THE SPORTS MASTER. A BEAUTIFUL OLDER BOY flexes his athletic torso at the poolside as THE MASTER fishes the spluttering LITTLE DEREK from midway down the pool.

In the sanctuary of Grandma Mimosa’s flat LITTLE DEREK makes crystal gardens with his chemistry set in the bathroom and adds exotic stamps from the Colonies to his collection book. He emerges at the weekly smashing of broken glass and china as the cleaner MRS PEACHY methodically breaks them with her duster. Equally methodically GRANDMA sets about repairing her valuables as her favourite songs from ‘Oklahoma’ grind out on her old gramophone.

New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary plunges the Union Jack on to the peak of Mount Everest and Queen Elizabeth the Second is crowned. Despite his pride in his fellow countryman’s achievement DAD manfully adheres to his teetotal regime at MIMOSA’s celebrations.

Meanwhile YOUNG DEREK curiously sniffs the sticky wet evidence of his emergent manhood before morning bells summon him to the daily round of prayers, exercise and lessons on Britain’s Imperial heyday. He proudly tells A SCHOOLMATE of his Dad’s Colonial background. “He says it was really tough out there! Not like it was for those back here!” YOUNG DEREK faithfully recounts.

DAD, disgruntled by YOUNG DEREK’s near moronic IQ test results, upraids his under-achieving offspring with his assiduously stored collection of school bills. YOUNG DEREK and HIS SCHOOLMATES are exhorted by their jogging obsessed, pipe smoking housemaster MR SHORLAND BALL to make good their conspicuously empty trophy cupboard.

As British prestige suffers from its ill fated military venture to defend the Empire’s bridgehead at Suez YOUNG DEREK vainly struggles to meet the bracing standards of the cadet corps beneath the grim, feudal spires of his public school. At the earliest opportunity he beats an eager retreat to the art school, where he flourishes under the boyish enthusiasm of his goatee bearded, vintage Rolls driving art teacher ROBIN NOSCOE. He happily carves a mediaeval door for the house which NOSCOE is building with THE BOYS’ help.

Macmillan’s ‘winds of change’ are gusting through the old colonies during the fearful Fifties. Back at home YOUNG DEREK finds his vivacious MUM being cajoled by a 7-foot dreadlocked BLACK PREACHER to accept his baptism with some cooking oil. MUM demurs on account of her hairstyle. She appoints her son to be anointed, kneeling on the kitchen floor. Their laughter is disrupted by the return home of bowler-hatted DAD, who takes in his wife’s and son’s fun and games with a reproving eye before wordlessly striding past to the sanctuary of his garden workshop.

At house assembly MR SHORLAND BALL congratulates YOUNG DEREK for winning the house’s solitary school cup - for art. YOUNG DEREK’s pride in his achievement is shortlived in the face of HIS SCHOOLMATES’ derision. So at rugby football he gains quiet satisfaction from repeatedly letting his irate side down with his wimpish tackling and cackhanded ball play.

Afterwards in the showers he tries to keep his eyes averted from the pleasing form of A FOOTBALLING ADONIS whom he has surreptitiously admired from afar. His panicky self douching with jets of freezing water to shrivel the evidence of his secret desires produces uproar as the OTHER YOUNG BATHERS are drenched in scalding water.

DAD agrees to see DEREK through his dreamed of Slade Art School provided he first has a proper university education. DEREK enters MR BALL’s study clutching a letter. MR BALL assumes that he has come to say that he has failed his university entrance. A shyly smiling DEREK hands him his acceptance letter.

DEREK returns home from his London university. MUM tells him and GAYE that she has been diagnosed as having cancer. She may only have six months to live. She is as serene and practical as ever. She chides them for their long looks. DEREK retreats to his painting to the accompaniment of heavy Gregorian chants, a serious and introverted young man.

During the family’s seaside holiday in the Isle of Wight DEREK and GAYE are as usual commandeered by DAD to crew his Firefly sailing dinghy. “I didn’t pay for your holiday so that you could just sit around in the sun all day!” he barks at them. MUM watches through her binoculars as the apprehensive youngsters scurry about the boat under Dad’s stentorian command. As ever DAD wins the race.

MUM returns from a party, exhilarated by her meeting with a distinguished looking psychic who had immediately divined that she was very ill with cancer. But he’d foretold that she had a good few years left, she says gaily. More importantly he had also divined that her son was an artist - who would one day be very successful. DAD retreats to his bed as his wife and son share their happiness at the psychic’s prophecies.

As Ideal Home ads extol the coming of the post-War boom and Macmillan proclaims ‘You never had it so good!’ DAD maintains his austerity campaign for the family and DEREK paints away in his room. He hurriedly hides his bedtime reading of Genet’s ‘Our Lady Of The Flowers’ at the sound of DAD going to the bathroom.

MUM proudly inserts in a scrap book her son’s first newspaper clipping announcing the winners of the national art student competition - Professional Class: David Hockney; Amateur Class: Derek Jarman. DAD harrumphs about him at last standing on his own two feet.

When packing up his belongings before moving out of home DEREK is disturbed to discover that his stamp albums are missing.

DEREK wakes up in his little unfurnished flat which is laid out with the impeccable neatness of his Dad. He tunes in his radio. The airwaves are full of a big new band called The Beatles. He quickly switches to some Sibelius. He masturbates to the images of gay convict love in Genet’s ‘Un Chant D’Amour’.

After finishing painting DEREK visits the flat of A YOUNG COUPLE OF FRIENDS. An older, eccentric man MICHAEL is quaffing home brewed beer as he sings lewd songs about sodomy on the piano. The older man eyes DEREK knowingly as he belts out some more suggestive numbers. DEREK cringes with embarrassment at the hint of any knowledge of his dark secret.

DEREK has tea with MUM, who is as saintly and self effacing about her illness as ever. MUM smilingly admires the wedding portrait of herself and Dad, so full of youthful sunlight and joy. “It’s a pity neither you nor your sister inherited our good looks,” she remarks wistfully. DEREK winces.

DEREK spends another evening with THE YOUNG COUPLE. The doorbell rings. It’s a handsome young Canadian called RON, who is looking for Michael. DEREK hardly knows which way to look as RON relaxes in their company with the laid back physical ease of the American lifeguard that he is. THE COUPLE invite their visitors to stay the night.

DEREK lies in his bed, his heart pounding. RON quietly suggests that he join him as it’s so cold. DEREK almost trips over in his haste to leap into bed with the lifeguard. At the age of 22 DEREK finally tastes the forbidden fruit of his sexuality. His parents’ home, with its darkened windows, squats in the jaundiced neon which bathes their suburban neighbourhood.

The Slade School Of Art resonates with the sounds of rock music and the influences of American pop culture. DEREK checks out his Beatle cap in the washroom mirror and savours with an insouciant grin to A STUDENT FRIEND his forthcoming visit to the glittering delights of the USA.

At a New York party DEREK is surrounded by an intimidating melee of voracious drag queens, S & M enthusiasts and other exotic men of varying ages. The young Englishman in his Beatles cap is eyed hungrily as a prize catch. A BLACK GUY leads him away to the safety of a back room and strips him wordlessly. Others come swarming to join in on the act and are angrily fended off by THE BLACK GUY.

Next day a shattered looking DEREK is collected by his MUM and DAD at London Airport. “What have you been up to?” asks MUM worriedly. To his horror DEREK finds that he has insects in his crotch. MUM laughingly tells him to see the family doctor. THE FAMILY DOCTOR mulls over some large tomes whilst DEREK waits nervously. He finally asks DEREK from under his furrowed, suspicious brow if he has been sleeping with whores. “Yes!” his patient blurts out desperately.

In the classroom the beaky SIR WILLIAM COLDSTREAM squints at DEREK’s latest designs of naked men in chains. COLDSTREAM’s bloodless Anglican features are pained as he delivers a bleak lecture on the acceptable limits of art. DEREK and A COUPLE OF GAY STUDENT FRIENDS spend the Sabbath at the Biograph Cinema in Victoria, with its esoteric programme of German ‘Health and Efficiency’ flicks and the latest arthouse movies.

The auditorium seethes with CRUISING MEN. DEREK is torn between wanting to see out a Bunuel film and the temptations of an unknown neighbour’s hand. All hell breaks loose as A TRAMP erupts at the mistaken approach of A CRUISER. The darkness is scythed by a welter of torchbeams as THE ATTENDANTS hustle out the miscreants. DEREK and HIS FRIENDS dance out the night at a gay Soho club where the men carefully avoid touching each other under the watchful eyes of TWO BOBBIES checking the premises for lewd and illegal conduct.

DEREK hides his cuttings from Physique Pictorial as DAD arrives at his flat. Whilst DEREK prepares tea in the kitchen DAD skulks around and finds the cuttings. From the doorway DEREK spies his father furtively studying them. DAD quickly slips them back in their hiding place at the sound of Derek’s return. They converse about Mum’s health as though nothing has happened.

DEREK and GAYE sit with a wan looking MUM on the verandah of the yacht club whilst DAD prepares his boat. DEREK, peering through Mum’s binoculars, can’t help but notice the superb shape in which his father has kept himself. His contemplation is ruptured by DAD’s barking at him and GAYE to hurry down and crew for him in the next race. “You don’t want to end up like that damned lot!” DAD snorts at the braying, overfed specimens of the British middle class surrounding them.

MUM knits and DAD puffs his pipe as their TV carries the news of the Wolfenden Report legalising homosexuality between consenting adults. At a luridly lit bottle party a hippy clad DEREK is among the CROWD OF CELEBRANTS dancing drunkenly to the sounds of these heady days of liberation.

A cavorting BEATLE-CUT YOUNG MAN invites him to his suburban home and goes to the kitchen for coffee. From the couch where he is lying being caressed by his new friend DEREK peers up hazily to see that its owner is a small, bald older man. THE MAN huffs off, returns with his Beatle wig readjusted, and vainly tries to rekindle DEREK’s desire with a capsule of amyl nitrate up his guest’s nose.

At the opening of his first show to the sounds of ‘Sergeant Pepper’ DAD’s eyes are fathomless as his son is kissed and embraced by MALE FRIENDS. DEREK introduces MUM and DAD to his aristocratic Svengali ANTHONY HARWOOD - immaculately dressed in silver wind jacket, black polo neck and diamond buckled shoes - and Harwood’s wife the diminutive Russian fireball PRINCESS NINA. HARWOOD assures MUM and DAD that their son is bound for success. He’s going to introduce Derek to all the right people.

A tense DEREK enters Nureyev’s Royal Ballet dressing room with the costume he has designed for the maestro’s new show ‘Jazz Calendar’. He hesitates at the sight of NUREYEV drying his naked torso. NUREYEV plays cat and mouse with the young designer. He flings down the costume disdainfully and gives DEREK a wide-ranging lecture on tights whilst rubbing himself down suggestively.

DEREK is a bundle of nerves as MUM fits him out in a silk shirt and pearl tie-pin she has given him for the opening night. After the show’s rapturous reception HARWOOD is coolly triumphant. “What did I tell you!” he observes proudly of his protégé, who is standing with MUM and DAD in a garland of bows and silver bells, flushed with success.

As student revolt rocks the West and the nation is exhorted to ‘Sell British, Help Britain, Help Yourself!’ DEREK shows HARWOOD his designs for ‘Don Giovanni’. HARWOOD is delighted with Derek’s colourful attempts to give a modernist touch of life to the opera buff’s classic, including the use of contemporary household appliances as costume props. The loud hissing echoing through the Coliseum’s foyer on opening night deeply perturbs DEREK. “Pygmies, all pygmies compared to you!” pronounces HARWOOD loftily.

KEN RUSSELL, looking like a mad empress with his wild hair, smock and numerous rings, strides around the film studio garden flailing with his cane for an idea that will really shock English audiences for his film ‘The Devils’. DEREK wearily jokes that Louis XIII carelessly shooting peacocks as he dines al fresco might do the trick. RUSSELL proposes detonating dummy birds. “No, you have to shoot real peacocks,” replies DEREK patiently. “Marvellous!” enthuses RUSSELL at the screening of his camp enactment of the idea with Louis XIII lisping “Bye, bye, blackbird,” as he blitzes EXTRAS DRESSED AS PEACOCKS. DEREK buries his head in his hands in despair.

DEREK and GAYE have tea with MUM and DAD. He and GAYE are chuffed to overhear MUM telling DAD in the kitchen “I’m so glad our children haven’t grown up normal. They’re so much more interesting than their friends.” DEREK waxes enthusiastically about his own first experience of making home movies. Derek’s symbolic masques - a world away from Dad’s home movies - flicker against the living room wall in front of a COTERIE OF HIS FRIENDS as MUM thrills at her son’s intention to follow in Dad’s footsteps.

DEREK is as distressed as MUM at the mysterious disappearance of her engagement ring. DEREK tells GAYE that he thinks it may be the cortisone treatment playing tricks with her memory. DAD remains buried in The Times.

In New York DEREK enters the dreamworld of a palatial bath house and eagerly takes the hallucinogenic drugs offered by ANGEL DUST-EYED BOYS. WELL HEELED SOCIALITES sip their cocktails by the fountains as they watch the STONED BODIES writhing in the surrounding cubicles. DEREK readily enjoys these sensual delights with a lazily tumescent YOUNG DUDE for whom the mention of England now produces only a hazy memory of recognition.

He visits ANTHONY HARWOOD in his half completed and eccentrically decorated downtown flat. The debt ridden HARWOOD, preoccupied with his current beau, has scant sympathy for Derek’s financial worries. Anyway Derek has always treated money like dirt and simply sloughed off any taint of solvency, he observes. HARWOOD is clearly disappointed by his former protégé’s propensity for turning his back on success as a painter and designer.

The Seventies sour amidst stock market crashes and The Winter Of Discontent and DEREK triumphs at Andrew Logan’s Miss World competition. As the newly crowned Queen Of The Ball DEREK formally offers to close bankrupt British industries by tying them up with pink ribbon. A friend telephones DEREK to tell him of the sudden death of Anthony Harwood in New York.

MUM takes out her most treasured possessions - Grandma Mimosa’s collection of pearls - and tells DEREK and GAYE that she is leaving these heirlooms to them in her will. Concerned by her bad memory they check where she is keeping them.

At the opening of his first big film ‘Sebastiane’ DEREK eyes MUM and DAD nervously as his images of gay love and punishment amongst the Roman soldiery flicker above them. Afterwards he asks A FRIEND who had sat next to his parents what his father had made of it. “He said ‘I was out in the Middle East before the War and it’s really quite accurate’!” HIS FRIEND relays with amazement to the gleeful film’s director. MUM adds the reviews to her voluminous scrap book. They are at best quizzical, not least because the film’s dialogue is entirely in Latin.

During a family get together at MUM’s and DAD’s home GAYE accuses her 4-year old son LITTLE SAM of losing something from her car. “Grandad took it,” the boy protests innocently. DAD overhears this and flies into a rage. DEREK and GAYE watch helpless and appalled as DAD forces SAM to make a grown-up apology.

On a late balmy summer’s night in Holland Park A HANDSOME YOUNG STRANGER lures DEREK into a side alley. Immediately TWO PLAINCLOTHES POLICEMEN jump DEREK and flash their cards aggressively as ‘THE STRANGER’ watches. DEREK blusters about being on the way back from his film ‘Sebastiane’. He blithely asks them if they have seen the film. They shakes their heads nonplussedly and let him go.

Reconnoitring a notorious punk clothes shop in the Kings Road DEREK approaches A GUM CHEWING GIRL (JORDAN) with the most extraordinary version of a beehive hairdo. She treats his suggestion that she play a part in his forthcoming film about contemporary Britain with world weary nonchalance. Even his enthusiastic description of her role - Queen Boadicea in cheap black underwear - is indifferently received.

At a warehouse party of ANDREW LOGAN’s DEREK delightedly trains his home movie camera on JORDAN and her friends in an unknown band called THE SEX PISTOLS. Its feral, wild-eyed lead singer JOHNNY ROTTEN bows out with a fusillade of spit at the BEMUSED CROWD OF GLITTERATI. “Thank God that’s over,” sighs A CLOSE CONTEMPORARY OF DEREK’s, “At least we’ll never have to hear of them again!”.

DEREK is deeply disturbed to discover from MUM that her pearls have now vanished. This appears to confirm his worst fears about the extent of her decline. She confirms her determination to attend the opening of her son’s new film as she has always done. His Punk Age ‘Jubilee’ is full of bleak, angry and irreverent reflections of his home country. The reviews dismiss the film as Chelsea On Ice. “It’s one of the best films I’ve seen. It’s so accurate!” MUM tells a delighted DEREK with a brave smile as he pushes her in a wheelchair out of the cinema.

DEREK admires A YOUNG ITALIAN SOLDIER lounging outside a coffee bar. THE YOUNG SOLDIER tells him that Derek’s hotel is too dangerous for a tryst. The Englishman must get his passport and accompany him to a hotel he knows. THE OLD DESK PORTER signs them in with studied disinterest. After their lovemaking THE YOUNG SOLDIER tells DEREK that when he has completed his national service he’s going to return home to his village family, marry his girlfriend and become a farmer. DEREK smiles at this easy normalisation of what for men like him in Britain is a somewhat more complicato affair.

DEREK and GAYE hurry into hospital to visit their dying MUM. DEREK gets furious with DAD’s attempts to excuse himself from the proceedings. Under duress from his children he pays a cursory call to MUM’s bedside before beating a retreat to the waiting room. He is completely unable to deal with her last moments. DEREK and GAYE sit at either side of her bed, each holding one of her fragile hands. “Are you alright?” DEREK asks her. “Of course not, silly, but you are!” she whispers back before expiring.

DEREK diverts DAD’s attention whilst GAYE checks Mum’s hiding place for her pearls. They are not there. The penny finally drops for them that their father is probably responsible for the disappearances. Out of earshot DEREK, who by now loathes the British cult of discretion and secrecy, agrees with GAYE that, for the old man’s sake, they will conceal from Dad their knowledge of his predilection. DEREK is desperately worried that he may destroy The Family Movie, knowing how much Derek treasures it. He persuades DAD to let him borrow the reels of film to make a videocopy.

A newly elected Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher promises to unite a divided nation. At the family’s Christmas party at GAYE’s home her daughter LITTLE KATE comes running in to say that her bicycle has disappeared. GAYE and DEREK exchange looks. Out of Dad’s earshot DEREK agrees to start a diversionary argument with him about South Africa. Meanwhile GAYE checks the boot of Dad’s car. She finds the missing bicycle. She and DEREK laughingly agree to let his trophy be and GAYE promises her daughter a new bike.

On Christmas Day DAD pointedly gives LITTLE KATE a present. “There’s something for you, Kate, but there’s nothing for you, Sam. And you know why,” DAD says gravely. DEREK chokes back his anger at LITTLE SAM’s hurt incomprehension - so reminiscent of his own boyhood experiences. He later takes the small boy aside and quietly tells him that “Some people have bad fathers and grandfathers, you understand?”. The boy nods numbly.

DEREK stands nervously at the back of a cinema auditorium for the preview of his latest film ‘The Tempest’, which is dedicated to his Mum. His tamperings with the great bard’s text - with its showstopping finale ‘Stormy Weather’ sung by Elisabeth Welch to a dancing chorus of sailor-suited men - attracts vitriolic reviews in New York.

With the reviews ringing in his ears (“It’s a fingernail scratched along a blackboard, sand in spinach, like driving a car whose windscreen is shattered”) DEREK visits a bath house with A YOUNG FRIEND. He tells him defiantly that he doesn’t give a damn about the critics. He’s never made films for ‘audiences’ or ‘markets’ - they’re really only for his friends and fellow workers. “Making a film should be like having a party!” he enthuses. He shudders at the sight of ageing executives with hangdog moustaches and workout muscles grimly cruising the former palace of dreams. “God, how I hate all those muscles and taches!” he groans.

Moustachioed DAD, fit as a fiddle, is in his element as he skippers an ocean going yacht through the gale lashed Solent with a crew of STRAINING YOUNG CREWMEN. DEREK laughs in amazement at the bodycount of Dad’s latest bizarre acts of kleptomania, including his theft of Kaye’s wedding ring recounted to him by GAYE on the telephone.

Since Mum’s death Dad has pointedly refused to let them into his home. DEREK suggests that they visit Dad during some really atrocious weather in the hope that this might make their father finally relent. DAD brings out a pot of weak tea and three cheap tea biscuits as they huddle outside his home in driving rain. He is disgruntled by Derek’s failure to return The Family Home Movie. DEREK makes an excuse and changes the subject.

As Britain is gripped by memories of past glories in the Falklands DAD sets out on a mission to the supermarket to the rousing music of ‘Chariots Of Fire’. He marches into the local Tesco
armed with a duffel bag and casts his eagle eye over the shelves loaded with the fruits of the spoiled consumer society which he detests. He secrets rolls of loo paper and tins of food in his bag before marching out of the supermarket, every inch the upright English gentleman.

DEREK is meanwhile ensconced in an Italian studio with fellow enfant terrible KEN RUSSELL, who is kitted out in a bloated sailor suit, as they pore over Derek’s designs for ‘The Rake’s Progress’. They include operatic punks, flamboyant New Romantics and a set of a London Underground station. KEN RUSSELL wants some graffitti added to the set.

DEREK digs his heels in at the ageing shockmeister’s suggestion and launches into a colourful diatribe about the fakeries of punk culture. “You are getting middle aged!” RUSSELL ribs him.

Margaret Thatcher reiterates her calls for a return to Victorian values and the sanctity of the family as DAD restlessly busies himself chopping wood and dismantling cars around his suburban stronghold from dawn to dusk.

DEREK doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he and a fellow GAY FILM MAKER consider the front pages of the daily tabloids devoted to ‘The films which should never be shown to your kids!’, including ‘Sebastiane’. DEREK is splenetic about the long spoon with which they are being treated as nervous TV executives wilt in the face of the renascent guardians of public morality. Violent excerpts from ‘Jubilee’ are screened to MP’s debating the proposed Video Nasties Bill.

A public health warning is given by a leading film critic introducing ‘Jubilee’s first screening on TV and a chorus of disapproval echoes over the screening. As the debate rages DEREK asks THE HEADMASTER of his old school for permission to film a home movie there. He shoots a gentle gay love story beneath the feudal spires of his alma mater.

The New York bath house is dark and deserted. The air is thick with panic and grim warnings about AIDS. DEREK discusses with A YOUNG DOCTOR the pros and cons of having the test. He ruefully tells THE YOUNG DOCTOR that he came to the pleasures of passive sex relatively late in life. It had been a painful sacrifice to bury the centuries of male conditioning. He hasn’t regretted the experience one jot, he enthuses. “Since then I’ve been the most wonderfully balanced man imaginable!”.

THE DOCTOR advises him to have the test. DEREK tells her his worries at the prospect of being hounded by the tabloids. He has even received death threats. THE DOCTOR tells him he can and should keep the whole matter to himself. “But I’m the last person in the world to ask to keep a secret!” he exclaims exasperatedly. Anyway he has been practising safe sex religiously for a long time now. He needs a bit more time to think about the whole question.

DAD watches the premiere of DEREK’s new film ‘Caravaggio’. He doesn’t bat an eyelid at the beautiful and angry cockney Renaissance version of the outcast painter’s story, with its echoes of Derek’s own experiences. Afterwards DAD proudly confides to A YOUNG ACTRESS that Derek has always stood on his own feet. ‘He never asked me for anything,” he nods approvingly.

DEREK and GAYE visit their DAD in hospital after his stroke. The old man is speechless and paralysed. At the sight of them he breaks into a radiant baby-like smile. DEREK and GAYE look at each other in amazement at this miraculous transformation. He seems at last to be at peace with the world.

Paul Robeson’s ‘Lullaby’ reprises on the sound track and continues as DEREK and GAYE finally re-enter Dad’s citadel home. They make their way wonderingly around its becalmed gentility. They are stunned to discover shelves burgeoning with stolen loo rolls, tins of food and bottles of whisky, and drawer upon drawer stuffed with stationery and pens.

They can only laugh at their puritanical and teetotal father’s mad inheritance. In one cupboard DEREK finds two photo presentation mounts bound in leather and embossed wth The Royal Coat Of Arms. GAYE finds a glorious photo of Mum which perfectly fits one of them. There is no sign of Derek’s stamp collection, Gaye’s missing wedding ring or Grandma Mimosa’s pearls.

They return to the hospital and eagerly present DAD with the mounted photo of Mum. DEREK watches appalled as the old man slowly and agonisedly turns away from their present, a look of utter anguish on his face at the realisation of his childrens’ discovery of his dark secret.

THE YOUNG DOCTOR tells DEREK that his HIV test has proved positive. THE DOCTOR is visibly distressed at having to give her patient the news. DEREK smilingly consoles her. He was expecting the news. Anyway he’s 46 years old now. The real tragedy is all those young kids cut down before they’ve really had a chance to experience life.

“Well, nobody can say that I haven’t had a decent innings!” he says with a grin at this masterpiece of British understatement. He asks THE DOCTOR for the do’s and don’ts of daily hygiene with the virus. The litany reminds him of Dad and school. THE DOCTOR again advises him to keep the diagnosis completely secret. He shakes his head in consternation.

The Government extols the new British Economic Miracle. DEREK walks home through Oxford Street, which is bustling with Christmas shoppers and synthetic carols. He savours thee beautiful winter dusk. He buys a new diary and a scarlet Will form. He confers with HIS CLOSE CONTEMPORARY, who also advises him to keep his diagnosis secret.

DEREK and GAYE stand impassively at Dad’s funeral as THE PRIEST talks well of him and his life. GAYE addresses his ashes to his relatives in New Zealand, the homeland of his misfit spirit. The Government announces legislation to recriminalise homosexuality as A NICE NEW MIDDLE CLASS FAMILY move happily into Dad’s old home.

A troubled DEREK paces around his fisherman cottage’s exotic shingle garden full of driftwood sculptures and speckled in poppies. Back inside the cottage, surrounded by his angry paintings containing old syringes and bloody marks set in thick black paint, the memory of his father’s agony about his own guilty secret haunts DEREK.

Spurred by the memory he calls HIS CLOSE CONTEMPORARY and tells him that he feels he will have to go public about his HIV. The obituaries of well known people have been doing somersaults to obscure the true cause of their deaths. “Somebody’s got to do it,” he tells HIS CONTEMPORARY.

Excerpts from Derek’s latest film ‘The Last Of England’ flicker across the screen. They include images of young soldiers making love on a litter covered Union Jack and a mother holding up a baby to the sound of falling bombs. In v/o are the usual pained reviews of Derek’s visions of his home country, despite attempts to find mitigating circumstances on account of his HIV condition.

DEREK emerges from the cinema and is accosted by AN 18-YEAR OLD GLASWEGIAN, who shyly tells him that he saw ‘Sebastiane’ on TV when he was 16. He had had to turn the sound right down in case it attracted the attention of his parents. “I didn’t understand a word of it, but it changed my life!” says the thick accented young man. “Oh, but that’s wonderful!” enthuses DEREK, beaming as brightly as the full moon high over the spangled city.

Rock star ANNIE LENNOX visits a drawn DEREK in hospital after he has been taken ill with pneumonia. He expresses his frustration at his deteriorating energy and memory. But he seems to be on the mend. He apologises for his illness having forestalled his directing her AIDS benefit pop promo and smiles at her confirmation about her successful use of Dad’s Home Movie material instead.

The British Economic Miracle has soured and the ousted Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tearfully leaves Downing Street. In a zappy montage of media bites a defiant and re-energised DEREK JARMAN, the other misfit Brit of the story, sports a T-shirt emblazoned with a large ‘Queer As Fuck’ logo as he confronts A BARRAGE OF INTERVIEWERS.

He talks animatedly about how his AZT pills have restored his memory and energy and about his myriad current projects. Everyone seems to want a piece of him! He jokes about all the media interest in him as “A bad case of premature necrophilia!” and angers at the mistreatment of the AIDS crisis.

He laughs at the way his paintings have shot up in value. “I’ve told my dealer to take my ashes, paint them into my last picture and sell it for the very highest possible price!” he announces in a mocking sideswipe at any morbid sentimentality.

Derek’s AIDS benefit video features the androgynous Annie Lennox singing Cole Porter’s ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’, a favourite song from his parents’ youth, to a backdrop of Dad’s magic images of his Wartime days, his gleaming Wellington bomber and the happy Jarman kids and parents at play. (end credits)

© John Furse (October 17th 2005)