Well, I think a revue sounds much more interesting and fun than all those modern playwrights any day. Where do I buy my tickets for opening night?
Best Hotels:
The Duke's Hotel in London. I was put up here my first month in 1982 when I went to do my Sherlock Holmes. It was small but elegant and very quiet right in the heart of London. In a little courtyard cul-de-sac right off Picadilly. The Lovely Wife and I still go there for a drink in their great bar every time we're in London.
I was invited to attend a film conference in my hometown area by the Cincinnati Film Commission. They put in the Netherland Hotel, an elegant old hotel, right downtown. With a view of the Ohio River and Northern Kentucky. You could have slept six people in the bed and the room had a little sitting area as well. There was a five-star restaurant in the hotel with a piano bar that played Gershwin, Porter, et al. A couple of my old high school friends came across the river (all of maybe five minutes away was my Kentucky home from downtown Cincy) and we had one of the best meals I've ever had.
My favourite place is the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, where your room is your own individual cabin with a fireplace and all the niceties. Their Stone House Restaurant is my favourite restaurant in Southern California and we've had many a great meal there. Ocean breezes, quiet woodsy serenity. The place also has a great history. It was once owned by Ronald Colman and many celebrities have passed through. Olivier and Leigh honeymooned there.
The most unusual place was a Pub/Inn called the Golden Fleece in York, England. Our stunt co-ordinator friend, Paul Weston, had driven us up there to visit with a colleague and friend who was dying of cancer. After our visit, we drove into the town of York and had a great pub meal of traditional Roast Beef and Yorkshire pud and then stayed at rooms in this inn that had been there since Elizabethan days. The stairs and floors rolled and tossed. A giant sheepdog had the run of the place. It was all very quaint. The only drawback to the place was you shared a communal bathroom with other rooms, down the hall. Never my idea of fun. But, of course, worst of all was having to get up in the middle of the night and put your clothes on to go to the loo. But the next morning, they served the best traditional British breakfast I ever had.
Worst Hotel: In Zilinia, Slovakia. It was an old grey blockish structure, built in the communist era -- Architecture was not a communist gift -- one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen. The beds were hard as rocks. And the floor of the bathroom a bit suspect. It was un-air-conditioned, but when you left the windows opened, your room got infested with little green gnat-like bugs. In addition, there was some sort of road rally/car thingie event staying at the hotel at the same time. So you'd hear the roar of souped-up engines late into the night.
The hotel where we stayed in Cannes had styrofoam mouldings around the ceiling disguised as real mouldings.
And then there was a motel in Weatherford, Texas, just west of Fort Worth, where we stayed on a drive across country, that reminded me of the motel in Touch of Evil. I thought we'd be murdered in our beds.
