TheGuardian.com – 26th September, 2015

By Steve Martin.

Richard E Grant as Withnail in Withnail & I (1987). Photograph: Allstar

After Martin met Grant filming LA Story they began a correspondence that could fill a book. The star of Withnail & I sent faxes full of gossip, hilarious character assassinations, self-loathing and charm.

Between 1995 and 2000, REG (Richard E Grant) and I communicated by fax – yes, fax – after becoming friends when we worked together on the film LA Story. REG’s faxes to me were composed on a typewriter set with wide margins, jammed up with no spaces between sentences and paragraphs – and very selective capitalisation. When viewed from a distance, a single page looked like it had been overtaken by an army of disorderly ants.

I kept these faxes, which grew to a stack more than 2in thick, because they entertained me, and because I thought they were valuable aesthetic chunks from a screeching mind, a stream-of-consciousness faucet spewing sentences – sometimes a mile long – none of it rewritten, and bearing just the right amount of acid and alkaline. Here is his description of the director Stephen Poliakoff, transcribed keystroke for keystroke:

He is a miniature clone of Stanley Kubrick in the looks dept.i.e: no chin,pubic beard scrawling everywhere,fat and sloshy lower lip,huge eyes and poodle curly tousled hair,all of which is untidily held together in a cardigan,collapsed tweed jacket and fucked corduroy pants,above his flat-footed scuffed brogues. A walking unmade bed,who slurps coffee,scratches his arse mid conversation with the conviction of someone expecting a tooth to be coming through down below, dribbles, gurgles and relocates bits of his fast eaten lunch in the lower sections of the beard,is knock-knee’d,a few inches higher than five feet, compulsively says ‘ok,alright then,ok?alright then ok?,ok,alright then,’whilst circling round his own thoughts,all the time twiddling a straw in the left hand,like a miniature helicopter in full flight,and has even called ACTION! before the boom is even dangling or actors fully assembled.YET. He is so passionate about his words,characters , situations,so opinionated about everything, informed and intellectually ferocious,that you CANNOT dislike the little dweezil.

Stephen Poliakoff. Photograph: David Levene/Guardian

The downside of rereading all of Richard’s effervescent faxes to me was rediscovering a computer file that contained all of my letters and faxes to him. I was swept up in his style and tried to emulate it, and consequently my letters lay flat and dead on the page. Plus, in one of them, I was reminded of the headline of a bad movie review I’d received. After a critic had sniped at him, I’d sent it to Richard in order to offer some salve: TIRED MARTIN REHASHES HUMORLESS BORE. You might notice, as I did, that every word of that banner, with the exception of my name, is negative. This is how actors cheer each other up: “I got a review worse than yours.”

Richard, I should add, has an ability – which I shall call “charm” – to relax anyone into a state of comfort that might take others three years of regular tea parties and intimate lunches to achieve. Once, after only five minutes of sitting next to a woman at a dinner party, he was asking about the duration and flow of her menstrual cycle. The question seemed reasonable at the time, and no one was bothered or offended. I can assure you this is true because I was there, and the woman was my wife-to-be.

In reading his faxes, most written after his film diaries were published, I notice many well-known names are mentioned, and some of those well-known names aren’t so well known today, yet the observations about them are compelling. I understood that while Richard was writing about individuals, he was also writing about human types, and we no longer needed to know exactly who they were in order to appreciate their foibles (again, keystroke for keystroke):

The penalty for being an aging actress seems especially loaded with cruelties.Currently accruing,with interest,upon the head of [Miss X].Who is now facing a crisis of beauty. For herein has resided the source of all her worldly powers since she stepped onto our screens FIFTEEN YEARS AGO.Now 36, having coasted through twenty lead roles in films of variable quality,more often than not,notable for how many times she slung off her bra,she now faces the terrors of playing THE MUM.Of a spectacularly gorgeous 20 year old.Upon whose poised young head,our director lavishes all his waking attention. To the point where,having rehearsed [her] in the most intimate one-to-one mode this side of actually licking her all over,announces ‘Right,let’s go for a take! At which point she yodels up with her plea, ‘What about me?’.His eyes momentarily flicker recognition that this other person is actually breathing,looks quizzical,decides “No,you are fine’turns on his heels and moseys to the monitor. Not that she has metamorphosed into an old boiler overnight. BUT.Her powerbase,if you can call it that,was her beauty.The reliable eyelid flutter and dulcet tones that commandeered men,rooms,service,cash, contracts, attention,with the ease and relish that a repulsive,height impaired fatfuck gets from breaking wind violently and daring anyone to sneer…Now this may sound glee-filled and ‘serves you right’ coming from me,but,for once,I am filling up somewhere with the faintest trickle of pity.Because,this vulnerability is the human stuff that joins us all.

Richard E Grant, Victoria Tennant, Steve Martin and Sarah Jessica Parker in LA Story (1991). Photograph: Moviestore/Rex

Throughout the pages, with fax headers telling me the exact dates of delivery and typed like Archy of Archy and Mehitabel (the early 20th-century office insect who wrote at night by leaping on to the keys of a typewriter, and therefore couldn’t use the shift key), are moments of career analysis:

…as the flick I was scheduled to shoot in south africa in may has gone kaput,i may well come to l.a. in june to squat on my agent’s hor- rible little head for a couple of weeks to see whether there is any chance of breathing life into the inert corpse of my american career.

… analysis of his profession:

A lawyer in my ski group said, whilst engulfing the chair-lift with her posterior,that ‘acting is not that special.Just a job like anything else’.Yeah,thought I,suppressing a supreme urge to tip her out,sure honey : every time you do something,anyone and everyone is a fucking critical expert,in print and in person. You try maintaining some equilibrium in the face of that scrutiny and sure as hell,you will need another lawyer to maneuver your shattered self-esteem back on course.

… and self-analysis:

…my self-loathing propensity for vitriol is a warped form of ‘intimacy.’ This was a form of intimacy between my father and me. so that my most familiar way into a buddy-buddy situation with another human is to establish a slag-fest collusion……..Nothing thrills me more than to sit down at this enclosed, hidden,secret world of my computer,banging out messages.

Along the way, I was reamused by this observation:

I suspect the number of folk who maintain proper friendships with their ex’s,is on a par with,with….Swiss Sea battles?

And this opener from a fax of August of 1996:

Steve—Just got back from a week’s break,went to the south of France en famille to our house and had perfect weather,sex and enough garlic to kickstart a dead donkey.

And this one quoting his wife, Joan Washington:

I spoke to Joan (who is in France) and she said ‘I think we should just pull up the draw-bridge and not let anyone else in who is full of shit.

And finally this, from one of the earliest communications, received on 18 February, 1995

“…I HAVE LANDED MYSELF A LITERARY AGENT AS A RESULT OF MY PRET A PORTER DIARIES PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY OBSERVER LAST SUMMER AND SUBSEQUENTLY HAD THE PLEASURES AND TERROR OF A PUBLISHERS’ AUCTION. THE HIGHEST BIDDER WAS MACMILLAN-PICADOR WHO HAVE AGREED TO PAY ME TO WRITE UP MY COLLECTED DIARIES AND LETTERS FROM THE MAKING OF WITHNAIL THROUGH TO PRET A READY TO WEAR.ASSUMING MY ARSE IS NOT STRAPPED WITH A LIBEL CASE FROM MESSRS WILLIS,BERNHARD AND CO.? I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW PLEASURABLE IT WAS TO GO INTO VARIOUS PUBLISHING HOUSES AND HAVE A BOARD ROOM OF ADULTS BLOW SMOKEY PRAISE UP WHERE IT COUNTS,AND FOR ONCE NOT TO BE SOME DIRECTOR’S OR PRODUCER’S NAME ON A LONG LIST.IT IS THE FIRST TIME IN MY DOZEN YEARS OF DOING THIS SHOWBIZNESS ‘THUNG,THAT I HAVE FELT SOME RAT’S FART WORTH OF CONTROL.THAT THE WRITING IS SOMETHING IN MY HAND THAT I CAN THWATT DOWN ON A DESK AND SAY TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT FUCKERS,RATHER THAN THAT MIMSY-MAYBE YO-YO OF THE CASTING CIRCUS…A REVELATION TO THIS TIRED OLD HEAD!!MY DEADLINE IS JUNE FIRST…THE TOME TO BE TITLED WITH NAILS AND MAY WELL BE PROPHETIC IN ENDING MY FEW FRIENDSHIPS AND CRUCIFYING WHAT’S LEFT OF MY CAREER.BUT ON A GOOD DAY,THE WRITING FLOWS LIKE……….AND ON THE BAD ONES LIKE QUICK DRYING CEMENT.

REG, friend for life unless I do something to upset his moral applecart, is still acting, writing and directing – the crucifixion did not take place. Restacking all the faxes to put them back into their file, noting that they are as thick as a healthy novel, I realise that all this correspondence makes me feel like I’ve had a more exciting life than I’ve had. I, the Zelda B Toklas to his Gertrude Scott Fitzgerald.

• With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E Grant is published as a Picador Classic on 8 October.