Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998) Movie Script
Like a bomb exploding in reverse.
Thoughts, ideas...
fragments of images.
Shards of memory, like shrapnel,
all come back to me,
and are forced back out
in a cruel pastiche of experience.
Shit.
And who might you be?
You're not much of a burglar, are you?
Take your clothes off.
Come to bed
and you can have whatever you want.
You actually make money out of painting?
Mm.
It's not something I've ever
really thought about.
There were some pictures at my mum's
but they weren't really for looking at,
they were just...
Just sort of there.
Oh, yes.
That's interesting, George.
But nothing like yours, obviously.
Obviously.
I've done a few jobs
but I'm not much of a crook, really.
I've spent more time inside than out.
He is all of them compressed into one man.
I love what closes him out.
Not quite the Nietzsche of the football team
but still...
I know, dear,
but worse things happen at Hiroshima.
Now, which lovely member's
going to buy Mother a drink?
I'll get these.
Deakin, what'll you have?
I need a big one to calm me down.
Then I'll tell all.
So what's new? He needs a big one!
The sphincter without a secret's
come over all queer.
Give her a fag and pull up a pouffe
for her to sit on.
What's got your knickers in a twist, then?
It's her ladyship.
I think she might be going steady.
What are you talking about?
Do I know this woman?
You most certainly do. Miss Bacon herself.
The tom-tom drums have started already,
have they? That's quick.
The lady has got a new tart.
I don't like talking about Francis's
private life. I need to get some air.
So, this big brute drops out of the sky
and into her bed.
I find that rather suspect.
The cottage at Piccadilly, more likely.
You want to watch your vile, poisoned tongue,
missy.
You've got your nose jammed so far
up Francis's arse,
you're not going to notice the axe
hanging over your head.
Thank you, Muriel, darling,
I value your dishonesty.
Perhaps you could steal
this one off him, Dan,
as a sort of revenge thing.
Or have him on your telly programme.
'The Twilight World of Unhappy Poofs.'
How do you know they're unhappy?
They've only just met.
If they're getting on, then they're unhappy.
That's what love means.
That kid the Krays are pumping,
he really hasn't got a decent left hook.
I can't see him going more than four rounds.
Yeah, but I think Ronnie's pumping him
quite a different way.
I met this bloke.
- What, a fighter?
- No, a painter.
I need someone to do my lounge.
Not that sort of painter.
- He does paintings.
- That's no bloody use, is it?
Arghh!
Our time together has given me a whole new...
energy.
Not just for the work,
but moments like these.
You may well become a subject.
For a painting.
That'd be fantastic.
I always wanted a picture of me.
To me, you're like a sorbet.
You cleanse the palate between courses.
Sometimes, of course, it's a little bitter.
What?
It doesn't matter.
Come along. We have an appointment.
It's time for the emperor's real clothes.
A man being measured for a suit
is not dissimilar to his being measured for
the old wooden box.
Feels like a bloody coffin.
It's fucking hot in here, Francis.
Yes, it is hot, George.
Mr Dyer will arrange to collect the suit.
I think we're going to have some shirts
and some appropriate ties.
Hold on, hold on, don't go overboard.
I feel so...
So clothed?
You just don't care
what people think, do you?
I want you to meet my friends.
We can have a drink. God knows, I need one.
- Your mates?
- The Colony is a refuge for lost souls...
no longer in possession of living bodies.
Can't we just go to the pub?
No.
Oh, come off it, you fell in love
with yourself. Love at first sight.
And you're the only one
you're fucking faithful to.
I drink for the thirst to come.
Mm. And everyone else's.
I never see you getting out your bead bag,
Lottie.
- I don't think you know me at all, Muriel.
- No, I don't give a fuck, dear.
Twat.
You're an arty little shit, Deakin.
You're a waste of space and you bore me.
Why don't you go and ponce somewhere else?
Miss Hitler was more generous than you.
Anyway, do go on, Isabel.
So, anyway,
Margaret stepped up to the microphone
and started singing I Get a Kick.
The whole ballroom was reverently pretending
to be entertained when...
from the back of the room came a series
of loud and vigorous boos and hisses.
No, no, not my naughty daughter, was it?
Was it?
No!
Total impatience with ineptitude of any kind.
And the poor little midget seemed to shrink
even more as she ran from the stage sobbing.
Francis, of course, thought it the only
reasonable way to respond.
Naturally!
Oh, here's my daughter now.
Bravo.
Everybody, this is George.
This is Muriel, Isabel,
the beautiful Henrietta,
and Deakin.
Introduce yourselves. George is a little shy.
Hello.
So...who's Arthur and who's Martha?
Oh, piss off, Deakin! I'm really sick of it!
I'll talk to you after you've had a shave.
Welcome to the concentration of camp.
Why are you so down on Deakin?
I'm sick of that tight-fisted little ponce,
scrounging on all my lovely members,
putting everybody off coming in.
People have been complaining.
- We wouldn't want to give your chum...
- George.
..your charming chum George
the wrong impression, would we?
Cheerio.
Cheerio!
Smells good.
Does it?
Yeah.
Nice and simple.
Not like that muck with all those sauces
you took me to last week.
- It's Boulestin, George.
- Yeah, but it's all so poncy, isn't it?
I mean, all that cutlery.
You only need one knife and one fork.
And those fucking waiters...
Hanging around like bloody vultures.
I love it when it's just me and you.
So do I, George.
So do I.
Well, he took us for dinner,
which was fantastic,
but then he refused to pay for our taxi home.
I had to walk the whole bloody way.
Can you believe that anybody who is so rich
can be so fucking mean?
But then he said he wanted to paint me
and I was thrilled.
OK?
So, what are we doing?
Is this what you usually get up to for Vogue?
If I photographed their string beans
naked I'd get done by Obscene
Publications. God, no.
These are sort of er...technical.
How should Francis know
what a fanny looked like?
- True.
- Ooh.
That ought to knock 'em dead.
Push your tits to either side.
That's it. And lay them in the aisles.
- Is that right?
- Oh, yes. Yes!
Move your right leg more over this way.
OK.
Yes, yes, yes.
That ought to slaughter them.
Stick both legs in the air
and point your toes just like Nijinsky.
- Really?
- Yes. Good.
I think you're taking Francis
too literally, Deakin.
I don't want the camera inside me.
A bottom shot, lovely.
Oh! Piss off!
- I'm rather looking forward to this.
- Yeah, I like a good fight.
Boxing is such a marvellous aperitif to sex.
I don't know how you work that one out.
Bullfighting does it too.
It unlocks the valves of feeling.
I've never been to Spain.
Do I detect a hint, George?
- Hello.
- Good to see you, George.
Hello, George. Haven't seen you about.
What've you been up to?
- I'm working for Mr Bacon here.
- That's all right, then, innit?
- Don't see you down the Turkish these days.
- We tend to go up West, Soho and that.
- We do, do we? We tend.
- Yeah.
Yeah, us too of a weekend.
Francis! George!
And who are your charming friends?
Henrietta, this is Ken Bidwell, Joe Furneval.
Do let's get together for a drink
after the fighting.
- I don't think so, love.
- Aw!
George, you should come down the club.
We've really pulled it together.
And don't bring the freak show.
I'll see you soon enough.
Francis keeps me pretty busy.
Yeah?
Listen, George,
you want to watch those poncy types.
A right old tart, isn't she?
You stick with your own kind, mate.
- He pay you all right?
- It's the life of Riley.
We booze it up,
play the tables down Charlie Chester's.
They look like a right bunch
of wankers to me.
You take care, George.
They'll drop you like a ton of shit when
they've finished with you, you mark my words.
I push the buttons.
Use your right, use your right!
Killer! Get him down!
The only trade was in the ring.
Francis was in his usual state of grace
in the face of violence.
And Mr Dyer on the right hand of the Father
as usual? Of course.
Trailing behind like a sick puppy.
He quite brightened up when some demi-Krays
came sniffing round Henrietta.
God, it was so sad, those shabby little men
with their sad little women.
Pond life, darling.
Dear George.
- Does anyone like her?
- Thick as shit.
And half as interesting.
- She's hung like a horse, dear.
- Not like you, then.
It's the '60s, darling.
You're living under bloody rationing.
Let's have a bottle of your
disgusting giggle, madame.
Darling, of course.
George is pond life, darling, I just know it.
You can smell it a mile off.
George has qualities.
A combination of amorality and innocence.
And note that I say innocence
and not ignorance.
Oh, no! Fantastic!
Champagne for my real friends.
Real pain for my sham friends.
You see, George has an innocence,
which I couldn't possibly expect
any of you to recognise
even if it was jammed up
your arse on his fist.
I'm sure that's exactly
how you came across it.
Cheers.
When I went into the house of pleasure,
I didn't stay in the room where they
celebrate acceptable modes of loving
in the bourgeois style.
I went into the rooms which are kept secret
and I leaned and lay on their beds.
I went into the rooms which are kept secret
which they consider it shameful even to name.
But there is no such shame for me
because then, what sort of poet,
and what sort of artist would I be?
Sorry.
Submitting entirely to the service
and pleasure of a dominant partner
is, I find, a catharsis,
in that all responsibility is relinquished,
every move is dictated.
No decisions are your own.
You exist solely for the service and pleasure
of another man.
They weren't satisfied with just one, either.
No, they were there all night.
They did it three times each.
Plus, after the first go,
they removed the gag
and replaced it with what
I'm told is a piss gag.
So we had to drink piss, too.
There you are, you see.
The Germans were very advanced in the '30s.
I really can't say that I can see
the pleasure in drinking piss.
Although, I gather that certain actresses
drink gallons of it for their skin.
Eurgh.
Much better to just take the piss, dear.
la Deakin.
What is Princess Tiny Meat up to now?
I don't know. He's probably still trying
to sell those photographs
to any Soho pervert
with five shillings to spare.
They're totally the wrong angles.
Far more Penthouse than Portrait.
Beef curtains and everything.
It's as if he's trying to shove the camera
up her arse.
I'm a stickler for convention.
Carpet-munching and nothing else.
My lovely girl looks after me.
She's the bees knees.
Mother, please. You're sabotaging my seafood.
Some seem to think my work is drawn from
an expression of horror,
which has never really concerned me.
Pleasure is impossible to define.
And I feel horror occupies
much the same territory.
But, you see, I'm optimistic by nature.
I'm optimistic about nothing.
You know, the fascinating thing
about early cinema is that,
apart from the actual patina of time,
there's the exquisite knowledge
that you're communing with the dead.
Like everyone living today, these people
flickering up there on the screen
could never envisage their own death.
Everyone always imagines
they'll live for ever.
It's always the next man
who will certainly die.
Francis, please, I'm trying to concentrate.
- It's not The Sound of Music.
- Ssh, Hen.
Francis, stop it.
I'm Daniel Farson.
Tonight on Hungry Eye,
it gives me great pleasure to welcome
Britain's greatest living painter,
Francis Bacon.
Good evening.
Francis Bacon,
your work is known internationally
as some of the most challenging and powerful
of the post-war years.
You've resisted the Abstract movements,
which have dominated those years,
and have championed the importance
of the figure in modern art.
Why is the figure so important to you?
Er... well, it's difficult
to describe, really.
- One can only talk about one's instincts...
- Hm?
..and avoid the rest.
I do it with a chance brush stroke
which locks the magic in place.
It's a fortuitous thing.
It's not something I can
predict or orchestrate.
The work carries the mark of life,
rather like a man whose flesh
retains the scars of an accident.
I suppose there are scars on the psyche too.
I was in a cold sweat.
I ran so bloody fast, I tell you.
Oh, not another cigarette.
George, we all have nightmares.
They can't be as horrific as life.
I'm having these dreams more and more.
And, you know, it feels like a...like a...
- Like a premonition.
- Premonition.
An omen of things to come.
I bloody hope not.
I watch him while he's sleeping.
A prisoner of dreams.
Fighting the battle
he's always going to lose.
But I'm powerless to help him,
as I'm powerless to help myself.
So I watch.
And wait.
Now...
out into the gymnasium of the city...
..to cast my rod into the sewer...
..and see what comes up this time.
- Good evening, Mr B.
- Ah, good evening.
That's all right.
Nice to see you back so soon, sir.
Have we met before?
Not exactly, sir. I helped your friend
out of the building the other night.
- My...
- You were busy at the tables.
Oh, yes. George, Mr Dyer.
Oh, yes, I remember.
Yes, I remember.
Well, it's good to see you again.
Why not pop in for a drink
when you're finished up here? Hm?
As my guest?
I don't mind if I do, sir.
- I'll have a word with the boss.
- Yes, you do that. So will I.
That's all, thank you. No more bets.
This painful inability
to sustain relationships.
The selfishness my work demands
leaves no room for an emotional self.
Can tenderness ultimately only manifest
itself in the motion of a brush?
Even this remains invisible.
The visceral reach,
running fingertips along the curved notches
of a spine.
The line of a femur,
the curl of tendon into muscle.
The smell.
To violate, desecrate,
to examine a person from the inside,
eroticising the white shirt cuff
glimpsed beneath a dark suit.
The girth, the solids, the sack of flesh,
just offal bags.
Ruminating intestines.
Fine wines filled and swilled with rich food,
trying to create some distance
between myself and some dead lover.
If I was going to do it,
I'd use one of those pill things
the Germans used.
One... one crunch and two minutes of agony
and that's it, you've gone.
But I prefer to explore other people.
That interests me far more
than my own misery.
I'd love to get my fingers inside them
and just have a good old feel about, you see.
But you can't break down
the barrier of the skin.
You are a cup of tea, Daughter.
Mr and Mrs Martyr went to the lions together.
Here she goes again, dear.
They were eaten alone.
- 'We who are about to die salute you.'
- Oh, shut up, Deakin.
Yes, and none too soon, either.
What I'm trying to say is,
I can't do it for other people.
I can only do it to excite myself.
It's always torture with you
when it comes to exciting yourself.
Or some kind of abuse, eh, George?
Well...
We're all in our own private personal prison.
Hear, hear!
And you never see the blood...
Until your throat is cut!
So you're showing the feelings?
Feelings?
Feelings!
I prefer to show two men fucking.
That's the fact of it.
Cut out all the talk and go straight -
if you'll pardon the expression -
to the action.
This is just a trophy.
- Cheerio.
- Cheerio.
There's a fleeting substance to reality.
Ghostlike deposits.
Sometimes, a man's shadow
is more in the room than he is.
The void which spreads across his face
as he daydreams
is the void of death.
Place your bets.
That's all. No more bets.
That's all. No more bets.
So you like it like this?
Why didn't you say?
I've seen some old Tory bastard
who's well into it.
Have you, now?
Francis!
Francis, open the door!
Francis, open the door, please.
Please open the door, Fra...
Francis!
It's not a funeral. Can we force
a smile, please? Lovely.
You knew it was me but you let me stand there
in the pouring fucking rain.
We've missed you, George.
What have you been up to?
Still posing...as a sodomite?
Don't start on me, Deakin.
I'm really not in the mood.
You have no idea
what goes on with me and Francis.
You're the fucking ponce, not me.
At least I don't try to make a career
out of someone else's life.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Oh, what are you on, you silly old cow?
Glamour shot. Happy happy, now.
Oh, get out of the way, buggers!
We'll have to do it again.
Well, there's someone worth letting in.
In more ways than one.
No...
No!
What's the matter?
Oh, God, you're a fucking pain
even when you're asleep.
Agh!
Must you make so much noise?
I'm going to die.
I'll arrange a hearse.
- What are you having?
- Cheap and cheerful.
Francis! Francis.
How wonderful you're here.
I was just talking about you to Volker.
He is such a fantastic painter.
Volker Dix, Francis Bacon.
Mr Bacon, it's such an honour to meet you.
Your paintings have changed my life.
- Truly?
- Your paintings have shown me the way.
It says: Painting is self-expression.
Oh! I wouldn't want to do that!
In fact, my paintings are quite spiritual
and meditative,
and abstract, naturally.
Oh, naturally.
I wonder if you'd do me the honour
of visiting my studio. I'd so value
your opinion.
Well, I don't have to see your pictures.
I can tell by your taste in neckties
that you have absolutely no talent at all.
- Champagne.
- He doesn't mean it, darling.
Where the hell is George?
He's here.
George, what on earth's happened?
Oh, no, he looks pretty as a picture.
It was that blond slag
from Charlie Chester's.
Him and a couple of little bastards
were ragging on me.
I had a few words, that's all.
We all know what a way you have with words,
George.
What did you write on the poor angel's face,
dear? Poetry?
What's the bloody use
if you can't even get it up?
- I don't fucking want to!
- Come on, George, you can do
better than that.
Francis, you're a fucking bastard.
You'd better go, George.
Social success
and domestic happiness can be expected.
- Bright spells, some rain at times.
- Similar.
Another one of those bombs went off.
Shopping centre.
Hundreds of kiddies blown to bits.
George, will you please shut up?
It's bad enough you sitting there
rustling that paper.
All right.
I'm off.
I've got things to do.
I've got people to see.
And people who want to see me.
Yeah, I did have a life
before I met you, Francis.
You know? Wide circle of friends.
Once a stone's been polished,
you can't return it to the rough.
A flower that's been picked
has only one fate.
That's why whores consider it bad luck
to receive cut flowers.
They know that they are going to die.
Oh, do stop staring at Mr Knife and Mrs Fork,
George!
From the expression on your eek,
anyone'd think they'd been covered in poison.
Try to relax.
Give her another drink.
Everywhere she looks,
she sees potential tools of destruction.
Mm. The cutlery drawer at home
is a riot of possibility.
The beam in the studio
is screaming to have a noose thrown over it.
And the poor, innocent bath
can't wait to be filled with hot water, gin,
and bleeding wrists.
The whole world's in a conspiracy
against her.
We won't even mention the chemist.
Every inanimate object wants to help
poor Miss Thing here with her susan-side.
- Don't they, George?
- Go on, laugh.
I was reading a thing with Hockney the other
day and he was talking about you, Francis.
He said the thing he really loved about
your paintings was he could smell the balls.
Typical.
They say you're pure horror.
'The morbid poet of the world of evil.'
Great artist/great art. Evil and vicious.
Or not.
Do you think it's possible
for a poof to be a great artist?
Let's not be so tiresome
as to run down the list.
But you are a great artist,
everybody knows that. Everybody says so.
Thank you for your expert appraisal, George.
Eat your heart out, Anthony Blunt.
What mad misfortunes
make his eyes blaze with despair?
I dream of some tough lover.
Big as the universe,
his body blemished by shadows.
He'll crush me, naked,
in gloomy bars between his golden thighs.
A mundane yob transformed into an archangel.
Is my lover to be my assassin?
Or I his?
Loneliness -
my only true companion -
will always rival any lover.
Its greedy desire...
..always drive a wedge between me
and any contender for my company.
And I question myself.
Do I possess some inner destructive demon?
Yes, I've decided to take George with me
to New York.
Yes, he has several new suits.
He looks quite convincing.
I shall have my own personal bodyguard.
Of course, darling. That's what I want.
Yes, but he's been really rather good lately.
Come on, Isabel, we all like a drink.
Of course I'll keep a watch out for him.
No! I would never do that. Really, Isabel!
I sometimes wonder what sort of a person
you think I am. Hm?
Oh, yes, I know, yes. I'm a stupid idi-ot.
Yes.
Yes. Goodbye.
What? Yes.
When I die,
they're going to open me up and they're going
to find 'Loser' tattooed on my heart.
Fuck off, George.
Mr Francis Bacon?
Yes.
Mr Francis Bacon,
I have a warrant to search your abode.
We have reason to believe you're
in possession of controlled
or illegal substances.
Oh, well, then you'd better come inside,
gentlemen.
Do you mind if I call my solicitor?
Hello. Geoffrey?
Um...well...
I've got some of our boys
in blue with me here.
Yes, that's right.
Yes, all right, Geoffrey.
Yes, well, I think George
has been telling tales.
Yes, of course. That would be marvellous.
I'll put him on.
Got something here, sarge.
Sergeant, would you?
It would seem that the situation is somewhat
different since you spoke to Mr Bacon.
Yes, sir, I'll see you down at the station.
Right...
Well, then, Mr Bacon,
we'd best be getting down to the station.
Will this take very long?
I do have some appointments today.
You'll have to be fingerprinted and charged.
It's mere formality.
I think I can already tell you
who most probably placed that substance here.
It's more than likely the same person
who suggested that you pay me a visit.
A rather disturbed gentleman
who works for me as an odd-job man.
We'll let the court decide that, sir.
The court? Oh!
Oh, how exciting.
Well, officer, if one of your men
would like to lead the way.
Would you like to handcuff me?
Hello? Dr Banway? Hello.
Yeah, yeah. It's George.
Look, I need some more...
I've stopped doing the heroin injections.
These things just keep me on an even keel.
It's just such a fucking wind-up!
The people I'm running with at the moment,
they'd push me under a bus
as soon as look at me.
Yeah...
I'm really grateful. I'm really,
really grateful.
Look, you won't be hearing from me again,
I promise.
Here you are.
Here you are, George, you'd better take that.
Christ.
Wait for me at The Colony.
We've got to be at the airport by 6:30.
Jesus, this is a fucking fortune.
Even in your salubrious world, and even in
New York, 500 is not exactly a fortune.
- Ta, Francis. I'm really...
- Shut up. Just take it.
And don't let Deakin pick your pocket
while he's fiddling with your cock.
I wouldn't let him near me or my money.
Yes, I know, Isabel.
I know you told me.
Yes, I know.
No. I don't know.
He's probably in one of those bars
at the meat market.
He could be anywhere in Manhattan
for all I care.
No.
No, but it is jolly boring, not knowing.
The hotel have already gone mad.
No, oh, no!
It's those fucking rent boys.
I don't know how he finds...
Well, they find him.
He's got some sort of invisible signal.
Hustlers can spot him a mile off.
Darling, I must go.
I've got to go and see the picture in situ.
Yes, another beauty
lost to the corporate wasteland.
Still, the Seagram Building
is rather spectacular,
and I don't suppose
there'll be any shortage of booze.
Come in.
Sorry, darling, somebody's at the door.
Probably the police demanding George's bail.
Yes.
Yes. Goodbye.
Come.
- Good evening, sir.
- Oh, good evening.
I'm sorry to trouble you, Mr Bacon,
but it's your friend Mr Dyer.
- Oh. What is it now?
- I'm afraid he's on the roof
of the building.
- And he says he's gonna jump.
- Ohh!
- We were wondering if you might...
- Come up and give him a push?
No. Er...obviously we'd like you to talk him
back down.
It's very hard for the hotel.
Oh, bloody hell.
Mr Dyer?
Mr Dyer, Mr Bacon's here.
Why don't you just come on up?
And every time the chance of death.
First the waiting, always and endless.
A form of time inexpressible.
Seconds stretched across expectation.
And always endless.
All I'm fucking saying is,
I don't like it when you get queeny.
- It makes me fucking nervous.
- 'Ooh, I don't like it, I don't like it.'
You sound like my father.
He was always frightened of the woman in me.
I suppose only the very young
can get away with drag.
Nothing more revolting than old,
painted poofs.
I don't see how the tone of my voice
gets on your nerves.
I think you need a break, George.
Here you are.
Try to use it constructively.
But what about Paris? Am I still coming?
The man had killed the thing he loved
and so he had to Dyer.
Of course you're coming.
You are the exhibition!
You stupid fucking cunt.
Peter Lacey died in Tangiers.
Slumped across his piano, no doubt,
the full night's row of empty G&T glasses
stained with his fingerprints.
Slices of lemon, like little dead fish.
And they told me this the opening night
of my Tate retrospective.
George is becoming tedious.
He's a tragedy waiting to happen.
It reminds me of my dear friend Peter.
Like George, he was a little bit greedy.
A sort of compulsive joke
which no-one knew was funny.
There was an inevitability.
His shadow always chasing him.
It's like the flaw in the Japanese pot.
That's what makes it so superb.
There's no beauty without the wound.
Lucifer was the most beautiful angel.
That was his fatal flaw.
Too much like their creator, darling.
Mm.
I'd just like to make one picture
that would annihilate all the rest.
A violent fusion - all the past,
all the present,
concentrated into a single, raw,
sliced-open nerve.
The portraiture of your pain.
Oh!
The tenderness is so visible
in every brush stroke.
The paintings of George
are like exquisite love poems.
That's the irony of the George pictures.
You seem to put more into the work
than into the relationship itself.
And, ultimately, you suffer just as much.
And as we know, Isabel,
those who forget the past
are condemned to repeat it.
Cheerio.
Bobby's Girl
The sad thing about old photographs
is that everybody's dead.
Not always.
That's because he likes middle-aged
lorry drivers and I like young boys.
- George, you like me, don't you?
- Yes.
Oi! More champagne!
Cheerio.
Yeah, I like you all.
Because you like me.
You can have whatever you want.
You can have whatever you want, you know?
You want a new suit, it's yours.
Look. Look at this.
Fuck it.
Take it easy, mate.
I'll get the little slag.
I'll show him. He's...
He thinks he knows it all.
His pieces are fucking horrible anyway.
Who'd want that hanging in their front room?
Doesn't even look like the person.
They're just a bunch of shits,
hanging around him like dogs on heat.
They think they're so fucking clever.
No?
All they're trying to do
is get into my knickers behind his back.
A bunch of fucking tarts and poofs
the lot of them.
Here, let's have another bottle.
Hm.
If I cried out, who'd hear me?
Why don't you just go, George?
I've got to get on with this.
I'm going.
I'm going.
Anyway, when you gave me the keys,
it was meant to mean I could live here.
What's past is past.
Oh, you call yesterday the past?
George, I am a painter, this is a studio,
that is a painting.
You are in the way.
But it's a painting of me.
Not that anyone would bloody well notice.
Thank you for the critique, George.
I feel much better now I know where I stand.
After that enlightening discussion,
will you just piss off!
Will I see you later?
- Tomorrow?
- Oh, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Cheerio.
I don't want to go to Paris.
Put yourself in my shoes.
- As if I'd want to.
- You wouldn't like it.
You've no idea, have you? No idea at all.
I don't understand
why you can't get yourself sorted out.
What about this place in Brighton?
I'm told you have quite a little cell...
I hate Brighton, it's so miserable,
the fucking sea just going on and on and on.
Twenty bloody portraits hanging in a space
not graced by an English hand since Turner,
and you don't wanna go.
Sorry. I'm sorry.
Perhaps you should go.
After all, you'll be hanging
in the Grand Palais.
Rather more chic than hanging off some
skyscraper on the wrong side of Manhattan.
There's something about you and falling,
George.
So beautifully consistent.
In all the motor accidents I've seen,
people strewn across the road,
the first thing you think of is
the strange beauty, the vision of it,
before you think of trying to do anything.
It's to do with the unusualness of it.
I once saw a bad car accident
on a large road,
and the bodies were strewn about
with broken glass from the car
and the blood and the various possessions,
and it was, in fact, very beautiful.
I think the beauty in it is terribly elusive,
but it just happened to be the disposition
of the bodies, the way they lay in the blood.
There you are, you see.
There's no logic to grief.
Just the blistered hole in the pit of my gut.
A banal emptiness.
I say it to journalists but I really mean it.
I'm optimistic about nothing.
George's suicide attempts are so adolescent.
Of course it's a cry for attention
but he seems to turn it into a sort of art.
He never really wants to die.
He just does it to find out
if he can hurt me.
I know how much he means to you.
And I know your tastes lead you
onto the beaten track,
but I know George
and I know he'd never really hurt you.
More's the pity.
No, Isabel.
George has other qualities.
I lie there looking at that profile.
The nose, the shy, devious eyes.
The mouth, that skin.
I start doing sort of X-rays in my head.
Yes, dear, but he's not just a photo
you can pin to the wall
then throw to the floor once you're done.
Well, there you are, you see.
He's even bloody here when he's not here!
No, Isabel, George is all right.
It's just that...
he has a hard time keeping up, that's all.
I think he thinks these altered states
make him a teeny-weeny bit more special.
You could say it's his gimmick.
Look, I like George, Francis.
I just think he should see someone
or at least have a holiday.
When I saw him in the French pub
he could hardly stand up.
And between Deakin and two rent boys he was
being divested of quite a sum of money.
Frankly, he looked rather like a corpse.
Isabel, darling, George is a grown man.
My work drains me at the best of times.
No, no. George is perfectly happy.
He's just celebrating
coming to the new show in Paris.
Oh, Francis, you can't be serious. You can't!
The fact is he needs a bloody detox clinic,
or at least psychiatric help.
Why are you doing this?
I've already bought the tickets.
Time is not a healing instrument.
That's all bollocks.
I'd miss her.
I'd miss her sweaty armpits.
Her socks.
I'd miss the stubble dried round
the bathroom sink when I go to shave.
I'd miss the sound of his key
as it turns in the lock.
I'd like just one more night
of cowering under him.
One more night of love,
of true affection.
And a few more days of tenderness.
But, after all, in the end, what's left?
A pile of bones
and a few teeth.
I've had to change to be with you.
I'm always watching myself,
making sure I behave properly.
Yes, we had noticed.
I only know how I feel.
I'm making a real effort.
What am I supposed to do?
Deakin is here to look after you.
Your chaperone.
Keep you out of my hair.
- Yeah, if he can stand up.
- Calm down, George, or take another pill.
I love you, Francis.
Where do you get your slogans from, George?
Off the television?
La ville de Paris a le trs grand plaisir
d'accueillir Monsieur Francis Bacon
ce vernissage qui annonce
l'exposition de son oeuvre Paris.
Monsieur Bacon est le premier peintre anglais
depuis Turner
recevoir l'honneur
de montrer son oeuvre au Grand Palais.
Cette exposition situe Monsieur Bacon
parmi les grands matres
de la peinture contemporaine.
Son oeuvre nous renvoie
notre condition humaine
et nous rvle sa beaut et sa souffrance.
Oh, Francis, the show's really wonderful.
It's marvellous.
I must say, I'm so sorry to hear
about George. Really awful.
Well, dear, one can only laugh or cry. Hm?
Boo-hoo.
She's about as interesting
as a vase of her tulips.
Everything is running down.
The sun is burning out,
the stars are burning out.
It's the only thing in life that's certain -
that it's all running down.
It's all dying.
Cheerio!
Time on my hands
You in my arms
Nothing but love in view
Then if you fall
Once and for all
I'll see my dreams come true
Moments to spare
For someone you care for
One love affair
For two
With time on my hands
And you in my arms
And love in my heart all for you
Thoughts, ideas...
fragments of images.
Shards of memory, like shrapnel,
all come back to me,
and are forced back out
in a cruel pastiche of experience.
Shit.
And who might you be?
You're not much of a burglar, are you?
Take your clothes off.
Come to bed
and you can have whatever you want.
You actually make money out of painting?
Mm.
It's not something I've ever
really thought about.
There were some pictures at my mum's
but they weren't really for looking at,
they were just...
Just sort of there.
Oh, yes.
That's interesting, George.
But nothing like yours, obviously.
Obviously.
I've done a few jobs
but I'm not much of a crook, really.
I've spent more time inside than out.
He is all of them compressed into one man.
I love what closes him out.
Not quite the Nietzsche of the football team
but still...
I know, dear,
but worse things happen at Hiroshima.
Now, which lovely member's
going to buy Mother a drink?
I'll get these.
Deakin, what'll you have?
I need a big one to calm me down.
Then I'll tell all.
So what's new? He needs a big one!
The sphincter without a secret's
come over all queer.
Give her a fag and pull up a pouffe
for her to sit on.
What's got your knickers in a twist, then?
It's her ladyship.
I think she might be going steady.
What are you talking about?
Do I know this woman?
You most certainly do. Miss Bacon herself.
The tom-tom drums have started already,
have they? That's quick.
The lady has got a new tart.
I don't like talking about Francis's
private life. I need to get some air.
So, this big brute drops out of the sky
and into her bed.
I find that rather suspect.
The cottage at Piccadilly, more likely.
You want to watch your vile, poisoned tongue,
missy.
You've got your nose jammed so far
up Francis's arse,
you're not going to notice the axe
hanging over your head.
Thank you, Muriel, darling,
I value your dishonesty.
Perhaps you could steal
this one off him, Dan,
as a sort of revenge thing.
Or have him on your telly programme.
'The Twilight World of Unhappy Poofs.'
How do you know they're unhappy?
They've only just met.
If they're getting on, then they're unhappy.
That's what love means.
That kid the Krays are pumping,
he really hasn't got a decent left hook.
I can't see him going more than four rounds.
Yeah, but I think Ronnie's pumping him
quite a different way.
I met this bloke.
- What, a fighter?
- No, a painter.
I need someone to do my lounge.
Not that sort of painter.
- He does paintings.
- That's no bloody use, is it?
Arghh!
Our time together has given me a whole new...
energy.
Not just for the work,
but moments like these.
You may well become a subject.
For a painting.
That'd be fantastic.
I always wanted a picture of me.
To me, you're like a sorbet.
You cleanse the palate between courses.
Sometimes, of course, it's a little bitter.
What?
It doesn't matter.
Come along. We have an appointment.
It's time for the emperor's real clothes.
A man being measured for a suit
is not dissimilar to his being measured for
the old wooden box.
Feels like a bloody coffin.
It's fucking hot in here, Francis.
Yes, it is hot, George.
Mr Dyer will arrange to collect the suit.
I think we're going to have some shirts
and some appropriate ties.
Hold on, hold on, don't go overboard.
I feel so...
So clothed?
You just don't care
what people think, do you?
I want you to meet my friends.
We can have a drink. God knows, I need one.
- Your mates?
- The Colony is a refuge for lost souls...
no longer in possession of living bodies.
Can't we just go to the pub?
No.
Oh, come off it, you fell in love
with yourself. Love at first sight.
And you're the only one
you're fucking faithful to.
I drink for the thirst to come.
Mm. And everyone else's.
I never see you getting out your bead bag,
Lottie.
- I don't think you know me at all, Muriel.
- No, I don't give a fuck, dear.
Twat.
You're an arty little shit, Deakin.
You're a waste of space and you bore me.
Why don't you go and ponce somewhere else?
Miss Hitler was more generous than you.
Anyway, do go on, Isabel.
So, anyway,
Margaret stepped up to the microphone
and started singing I Get a Kick.
The whole ballroom was reverently pretending
to be entertained when...
from the back of the room came a series
of loud and vigorous boos and hisses.
No, no, not my naughty daughter, was it?
Was it?
No!
Total impatience with ineptitude of any kind.
And the poor little midget seemed to shrink
even more as she ran from the stage sobbing.
Francis, of course, thought it the only
reasonable way to respond.
Naturally!
Oh, here's my daughter now.
Bravo.
Everybody, this is George.
This is Muriel, Isabel,
the beautiful Henrietta,
and Deakin.
Introduce yourselves. George is a little shy.
Hello.
So...who's Arthur and who's Martha?
Oh, piss off, Deakin! I'm really sick of it!
I'll talk to you after you've had a shave.
Welcome to the concentration of camp.
Why are you so down on Deakin?
I'm sick of that tight-fisted little ponce,
scrounging on all my lovely members,
putting everybody off coming in.
People have been complaining.
- We wouldn't want to give your chum...
- George.
..your charming chum George
the wrong impression, would we?
Cheerio.
Cheerio!
Smells good.
Does it?
Yeah.
Nice and simple.
Not like that muck with all those sauces
you took me to last week.
- It's Boulestin, George.
- Yeah, but it's all so poncy, isn't it?
I mean, all that cutlery.
You only need one knife and one fork.
And those fucking waiters...
Hanging around like bloody vultures.
I love it when it's just me and you.
So do I, George.
So do I.
Well, he took us for dinner,
which was fantastic,
but then he refused to pay for our taxi home.
I had to walk the whole bloody way.
Can you believe that anybody who is so rich
can be so fucking mean?
But then he said he wanted to paint me
and I was thrilled.
OK?
So, what are we doing?
Is this what you usually get up to for Vogue?
If I photographed their string beans
naked I'd get done by Obscene
Publications. God, no.
These are sort of er...technical.
How should Francis know
what a fanny looked like?
- True.
- Ooh.
That ought to knock 'em dead.
Push your tits to either side.
That's it. And lay them in the aisles.
- Is that right?
- Oh, yes. Yes!
Move your right leg more over this way.
OK.
Yes, yes, yes.
That ought to slaughter them.
Stick both legs in the air
and point your toes just like Nijinsky.
- Really?
- Yes. Good.
I think you're taking Francis
too literally, Deakin.
I don't want the camera inside me.
A bottom shot, lovely.
Oh! Piss off!
- I'm rather looking forward to this.
- Yeah, I like a good fight.
Boxing is such a marvellous aperitif to sex.
I don't know how you work that one out.
Bullfighting does it too.
It unlocks the valves of feeling.
I've never been to Spain.
Do I detect a hint, George?
- Hello.
- Good to see you, George.
Hello, George. Haven't seen you about.
What've you been up to?
- I'm working for Mr Bacon here.
- That's all right, then, innit?
- Don't see you down the Turkish these days.
- We tend to go up West, Soho and that.
- We do, do we? We tend.
- Yeah.
Yeah, us too of a weekend.
Francis! George!
And who are your charming friends?
Henrietta, this is Ken Bidwell, Joe Furneval.
Do let's get together for a drink
after the fighting.
- I don't think so, love.
- Aw!
George, you should come down the club.
We've really pulled it together.
And don't bring the freak show.
I'll see you soon enough.
Francis keeps me pretty busy.
Yeah?
Listen, George,
you want to watch those poncy types.
A right old tart, isn't she?
You stick with your own kind, mate.
- He pay you all right?
- It's the life of Riley.
We booze it up,
play the tables down Charlie Chester's.
They look like a right bunch
of wankers to me.
You take care, George.
They'll drop you like a ton of shit when
they've finished with you, you mark my words.
I push the buttons.
Use your right, use your right!
Killer! Get him down!
The only trade was in the ring.
Francis was in his usual state of grace
in the face of violence.
And Mr Dyer on the right hand of the Father
as usual? Of course.
Trailing behind like a sick puppy.
He quite brightened up when some demi-Krays
came sniffing round Henrietta.
God, it was so sad, those shabby little men
with their sad little women.
Pond life, darling.
Dear George.
- Does anyone like her?
- Thick as shit.
And half as interesting.
- She's hung like a horse, dear.
- Not like you, then.
It's the '60s, darling.
You're living under bloody rationing.
Let's have a bottle of your
disgusting giggle, madame.
Darling, of course.
George is pond life, darling, I just know it.
You can smell it a mile off.
George has qualities.
A combination of amorality and innocence.
And note that I say innocence
and not ignorance.
Oh, no! Fantastic!
Champagne for my real friends.
Real pain for my sham friends.
You see, George has an innocence,
which I couldn't possibly expect
any of you to recognise
even if it was jammed up
your arse on his fist.
I'm sure that's exactly
how you came across it.
Cheers.
When I went into the house of pleasure,
I didn't stay in the room where they
celebrate acceptable modes of loving
in the bourgeois style.
I went into the rooms which are kept secret
and I leaned and lay on their beds.
I went into the rooms which are kept secret
which they consider it shameful even to name.
But there is no such shame for me
because then, what sort of poet,
and what sort of artist would I be?
Sorry.
Submitting entirely to the service
and pleasure of a dominant partner
is, I find, a catharsis,
in that all responsibility is relinquished,
every move is dictated.
No decisions are your own.
You exist solely for the service and pleasure
of another man.
They weren't satisfied with just one, either.
No, they were there all night.
They did it three times each.
Plus, after the first go,
they removed the gag
and replaced it with what
I'm told is a piss gag.
So we had to drink piss, too.
There you are, you see.
The Germans were very advanced in the '30s.
I really can't say that I can see
the pleasure in drinking piss.
Although, I gather that certain actresses
drink gallons of it for their skin.
Eurgh.
Much better to just take the piss, dear.
la Deakin.
What is Princess Tiny Meat up to now?
I don't know. He's probably still trying
to sell those photographs
to any Soho pervert
with five shillings to spare.
They're totally the wrong angles.
Far more Penthouse than Portrait.
Beef curtains and everything.
It's as if he's trying to shove the camera
up her arse.
I'm a stickler for convention.
Carpet-munching and nothing else.
My lovely girl looks after me.
She's the bees knees.
Mother, please. You're sabotaging my seafood.
Some seem to think my work is drawn from
an expression of horror,
which has never really concerned me.
Pleasure is impossible to define.
And I feel horror occupies
much the same territory.
But, you see, I'm optimistic by nature.
I'm optimistic about nothing.
You know, the fascinating thing
about early cinema is that,
apart from the actual patina of time,
there's the exquisite knowledge
that you're communing with the dead.
Like everyone living today, these people
flickering up there on the screen
could never envisage their own death.
Everyone always imagines
they'll live for ever.
It's always the next man
who will certainly die.
Francis, please, I'm trying to concentrate.
- It's not The Sound of Music.
- Ssh, Hen.
Francis, stop it.
I'm Daniel Farson.
Tonight on Hungry Eye,
it gives me great pleasure to welcome
Britain's greatest living painter,
Francis Bacon.
Good evening.
Francis Bacon,
your work is known internationally
as some of the most challenging and powerful
of the post-war years.
You've resisted the Abstract movements,
which have dominated those years,
and have championed the importance
of the figure in modern art.
Why is the figure so important to you?
Er... well, it's difficult
to describe, really.
- One can only talk about one's instincts...
- Hm?
..and avoid the rest.
I do it with a chance brush stroke
which locks the magic in place.
It's a fortuitous thing.
It's not something I can
predict or orchestrate.
The work carries the mark of life,
rather like a man whose flesh
retains the scars of an accident.
I suppose there are scars on the psyche too.
I was in a cold sweat.
I ran so bloody fast, I tell you.
Oh, not another cigarette.
George, we all have nightmares.
They can't be as horrific as life.
I'm having these dreams more and more.
And, you know, it feels like a...like a...
- Like a premonition.
- Premonition.
An omen of things to come.
I bloody hope not.
I watch him while he's sleeping.
A prisoner of dreams.
Fighting the battle
he's always going to lose.
But I'm powerless to help him,
as I'm powerless to help myself.
So I watch.
And wait.
Now...
out into the gymnasium of the city...
..to cast my rod into the sewer...
..and see what comes up this time.
- Good evening, Mr B.
- Ah, good evening.
That's all right.
Nice to see you back so soon, sir.
Have we met before?
Not exactly, sir. I helped your friend
out of the building the other night.
- My...
- You were busy at the tables.
Oh, yes. George, Mr Dyer.
Oh, yes, I remember.
Yes, I remember.
Well, it's good to see you again.
Why not pop in for a drink
when you're finished up here? Hm?
As my guest?
I don't mind if I do, sir.
- I'll have a word with the boss.
- Yes, you do that. So will I.
That's all, thank you. No more bets.
This painful inability
to sustain relationships.
The selfishness my work demands
leaves no room for an emotional self.
Can tenderness ultimately only manifest
itself in the motion of a brush?
Even this remains invisible.
The visceral reach,
running fingertips along the curved notches
of a spine.
The line of a femur,
the curl of tendon into muscle.
The smell.
To violate, desecrate,
to examine a person from the inside,
eroticising the white shirt cuff
glimpsed beneath a dark suit.
The girth, the solids, the sack of flesh,
just offal bags.
Ruminating intestines.
Fine wines filled and swilled with rich food,
trying to create some distance
between myself and some dead lover.
If I was going to do it,
I'd use one of those pill things
the Germans used.
One... one crunch and two minutes of agony
and that's it, you've gone.
But I prefer to explore other people.
That interests me far more
than my own misery.
I'd love to get my fingers inside them
and just have a good old feel about, you see.
But you can't break down
the barrier of the skin.
You are a cup of tea, Daughter.
Mr and Mrs Martyr went to the lions together.
Here she goes again, dear.
They were eaten alone.
- 'We who are about to die salute you.'
- Oh, shut up, Deakin.
Yes, and none too soon, either.
What I'm trying to say is,
I can't do it for other people.
I can only do it to excite myself.
It's always torture with you
when it comes to exciting yourself.
Or some kind of abuse, eh, George?
Well...
We're all in our own private personal prison.
Hear, hear!
And you never see the blood...
Until your throat is cut!
So you're showing the feelings?
Feelings?
Feelings!
I prefer to show two men fucking.
That's the fact of it.
Cut out all the talk and go straight -
if you'll pardon the expression -
to the action.
This is just a trophy.
- Cheerio.
- Cheerio.
There's a fleeting substance to reality.
Ghostlike deposits.
Sometimes, a man's shadow
is more in the room than he is.
The void which spreads across his face
as he daydreams
is the void of death.
Place your bets.
That's all. No more bets.
That's all. No more bets.
So you like it like this?
Why didn't you say?
I've seen some old Tory bastard
who's well into it.
Have you, now?
Francis!
Francis, open the door!
Francis, open the door, please.
Please open the door, Fra...
Francis!
It's not a funeral. Can we force
a smile, please? Lovely.
You knew it was me but you let me stand there
in the pouring fucking rain.
We've missed you, George.
What have you been up to?
Still posing...as a sodomite?
Don't start on me, Deakin.
I'm really not in the mood.
You have no idea
what goes on with me and Francis.
You're the fucking ponce, not me.
At least I don't try to make a career
out of someone else's life.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Oh, what are you on, you silly old cow?
Glamour shot. Happy happy, now.
Oh, get out of the way, buggers!
We'll have to do it again.
Well, there's someone worth letting in.
In more ways than one.
No...
No!
What's the matter?
Oh, God, you're a fucking pain
even when you're asleep.
Agh!
Must you make so much noise?
I'm going to die.
I'll arrange a hearse.
- What are you having?
- Cheap and cheerful.
Francis! Francis.
How wonderful you're here.
I was just talking about you to Volker.
He is such a fantastic painter.
Volker Dix, Francis Bacon.
Mr Bacon, it's such an honour to meet you.
Your paintings have changed my life.
- Truly?
- Your paintings have shown me the way.
It says: Painting is self-expression.
Oh! I wouldn't want to do that!
In fact, my paintings are quite spiritual
and meditative,
and abstract, naturally.
Oh, naturally.
I wonder if you'd do me the honour
of visiting my studio. I'd so value
your opinion.
Well, I don't have to see your pictures.
I can tell by your taste in neckties
that you have absolutely no talent at all.
- Champagne.
- He doesn't mean it, darling.
Where the hell is George?
He's here.
George, what on earth's happened?
Oh, no, he looks pretty as a picture.
It was that blond slag
from Charlie Chester's.
Him and a couple of little bastards
were ragging on me.
I had a few words, that's all.
We all know what a way you have with words,
George.
What did you write on the poor angel's face,
dear? Poetry?
What's the bloody use
if you can't even get it up?
- I don't fucking want to!
- Come on, George, you can do
better than that.
Francis, you're a fucking bastard.
You'd better go, George.
Social success
and domestic happiness can be expected.
- Bright spells, some rain at times.
- Similar.
Another one of those bombs went off.
Shopping centre.
Hundreds of kiddies blown to bits.
George, will you please shut up?
It's bad enough you sitting there
rustling that paper.
All right.
I'm off.
I've got things to do.
I've got people to see.
And people who want to see me.
Yeah, I did have a life
before I met you, Francis.
You know? Wide circle of friends.
Once a stone's been polished,
you can't return it to the rough.
A flower that's been picked
has only one fate.
That's why whores consider it bad luck
to receive cut flowers.
They know that they are going to die.
Oh, do stop staring at Mr Knife and Mrs Fork,
George!
From the expression on your eek,
anyone'd think they'd been covered in poison.
Try to relax.
Give her another drink.
Everywhere she looks,
she sees potential tools of destruction.
Mm. The cutlery drawer at home
is a riot of possibility.
The beam in the studio
is screaming to have a noose thrown over it.
And the poor, innocent bath
can't wait to be filled with hot water, gin,
and bleeding wrists.
The whole world's in a conspiracy
against her.
We won't even mention the chemist.
Every inanimate object wants to help
poor Miss Thing here with her susan-side.
- Don't they, George?
- Go on, laugh.
I was reading a thing with Hockney the other
day and he was talking about you, Francis.
He said the thing he really loved about
your paintings was he could smell the balls.
Typical.
They say you're pure horror.
'The morbid poet of the world of evil.'
Great artist/great art. Evil and vicious.
Or not.
Do you think it's possible
for a poof to be a great artist?
Let's not be so tiresome
as to run down the list.
But you are a great artist,
everybody knows that. Everybody says so.
Thank you for your expert appraisal, George.
Eat your heart out, Anthony Blunt.
What mad misfortunes
make his eyes blaze with despair?
I dream of some tough lover.
Big as the universe,
his body blemished by shadows.
He'll crush me, naked,
in gloomy bars between his golden thighs.
A mundane yob transformed into an archangel.
Is my lover to be my assassin?
Or I his?
Loneliness -
my only true companion -
will always rival any lover.
Its greedy desire...
..always drive a wedge between me
and any contender for my company.
And I question myself.
Do I possess some inner destructive demon?
Yes, I've decided to take George with me
to New York.
Yes, he has several new suits.
He looks quite convincing.
I shall have my own personal bodyguard.
Of course, darling. That's what I want.
Yes, but he's been really rather good lately.
Come on, Isabel, we all like a drink.
Of course I'll keep a watch out for him.
No! I would never do that. Really, Isabel!
I sometimes wonder what sort of a person
you think I am. Hm?
Oh, yes, I know, yes. I'm a stupid idi-ot.
Yes.
Yes. Goodbye.
What? Yes.
When I die,
they're going to open me up and they're going
to find 'Loser' tattooed on my heart.
Fuck off, George.
Mr Francis Bacon?
Yes.
Mr Francis Bacon,
I have a warrant to search your abode.
We have reason to believe you're
in possession of controlled
or illegal substances.
Oh, well, then you'd better come inside,
gentlemen.
Do you mind if I call my solicitor?
Hello. Geoffrey?
Um...well...
I've got some of our boys
in blue with me here.
Yes, that's right.
Yes, all right, Geoffrey.
Yes, well, I think George
has been telling tales.
Yes, of course. That would be marvellous.
I'll put him on.
Got something here, sarge.
Sergeant, would you?
It would seem that the situation is somewhat
different since you spoke to Mr Bacon.
Yes, sir, I'll see you down at the station.
Right...
Well, then, Mr Bacon,
we'd best be getting down to the station.
Will this take very long?
I do have some appointments today.
You'll have to be fingerprinted and charged.
It's mere formality.
I think I can already tell you
who most probably placed that substance here.
It's more than likely the same person
who suggested that you pay me a visit.
A rather disturbed gentleman
who works for me as an odd-job man.
We'll let the court decide that, sir.
The court? Oh!
Oh, how exciting.
Well, officer, if one of your men
would like to lead the way.
Would you like to handcuff me?
Hello? Dr Banway? Hello.
Yeah, yeah. It's George.
Look, I need some more...
I've stopped doing the heroin injections.
These things just keep me on an even keel.
It's just such a fucking wind-up!
The people I'm running with at the moment,
they'd push me under a bus
as soon as look at me.
Yeah...
I'm really grateful. I'm really,
really grateful.
Look, you won't be hearing from me again,
I promise.
Here you are.
Here you are, George, you'd better take that.
Christ.
Wait for me at The Colony.
We've got to be at the airport by 6:30.
Jesus, this is a fucking fortune.
Even in your salubrious world, and even in
New York, 500 is not exactly a fortune.
- Ta, Francis. I'm really...
- Shut up. Just take it.
And don't let Deakin pick your pocket
while he's fiddling with your cock.
I wouldn't let him near me or my money.
Yes, I know, Isabel.
I know you told me.
Yes, I know.
No. I don't know.
He's probably in one of those bars
at the meat market.
He could be anywhere in Manhattan
for all I care.
No.
No, but it is jolly boring, not knowing.
The hotel have already gone mad.
No, oh, no!
It's those fucking rent boys.
I don't know how he finds...
Well, they find him.
He's got some sort of invisible signal.
Hustlers can spot him a mile off.
Darling, I must go.
I've got to go and see the picture in situ.
Yes, another beauty
lost to the corporate wasteland.
Still, the Seagram Building
is rather spectacular,
and I don't suppose
there'll be any shortage of booze.
Come in.
Sorry, darling, somebody's at the door.
Probably the police demanding George's bail.
Yes.
Yes. Goodbye.
Come.
- Good evening, sir.
- Oh, good evening.
I'm sorry to trouble you, Mr Bacon,
but it's your friend Mr Dyer.
- Oh. What is it now?
- I'm afraid he's on the roof
of the building.
- And he says he's gonna jump.
- Ohh!
- We were wondering if you might...
- Come up and give him a push?
No. Er...obviously we'd like you to talk him
back down.
It's very hard for the hotel.
Oh, bloody hell.
Mr Dyer?
Mr Dyer, Mr Bacon's here.
Why don't you just come on up?
And every time the chance of death.
First the waiting, always and endless.
A form of time inexpressible.
Seconds stretched across expectation.
And always endless.
All I'm fucking saying is,
I don't like it when you get queeny.
- It makes me fucking nervous.
- 'Ooh, I don't like it, I don't like it.'
You sound like my father.
He was always frightened of the woman in me.
I suppose only the very young
can get away with drag.
Nothing more revolting than old,
painted poofs.
I don't see how the tone of my voice
gets on your nerves.
I think you need a break, George.
Here you are.
Try to use it constructively.
But what about Paris? Am I still coming?
The man had killed the thing he loved
and so he had to Dyer.
Of course you're coming.
You are the exhibition!
You stupid fucking cunt.
Peter Lacey died in Tangiers.
Slumped across his piano, no doubt,
the full night's row of empty G&T glasses
stained with his fingerprints.
Slices of lemon, like little dead fish.
And they told me this the opening night
of my Tate retrospective.
George is becoming tedious.
He's a tragedy waiting to happen.
It reminds me of my dear friend Peter.
Like George, he was a little bit greedy.
A sort of compulsive joke
which no-one knew was funny.
There was an inevitability.
His shadow always chasing him.
It's like the flaw in the Japanese pot.
That's what makes it so superb.
There's no beauty without the wound.
Lucifer was the most beautiful angel.
That was his fatal flaw.
Too much like their creator, darling.
Mm.
I'd just like to make one picture
that would annihilate all the rest.
A violent fusion - all the past,
all the present,
concentrated into a single, raw,
sliced-open nerve.
The portraiture of your pain.
Oh!
The tenderness is so visible
in every brush stroke.
The paintings of George
are like exquisite love poems.
That's the irony of the George pictures.
You seem to put more into the work
than into the relationship itself.
And, ultimately, you suffer just as much.
And as we know, Isabel,
those who forget the past
are condemned to repeat it.
Cheerio.
Bobby's Girl
The sad thing about old photographs
is that everybody's dead.
Not always.
That's because he likes middle-aged
lorry drivers and I like young boys.
- George, you like me, don't you?
- Yes.
Oi! More champagne!
Cheerio.
Yeah, I like you all.
Because you like me.
You can have whatever you want.
You can have whatever you want, you know?
You want a new suit, it's yours.
Look. Look at this.
Fuck it.
Take it easy, mate.
I'll get the little slag.
I'll show him. He's...
He thinks he knows it all.
His pieces are fucking horrible anyway.
Who'd want that hanging in their front room?
Doesn't even look like the person.
They're just a bunch of shits,
hanging around him like dogs on heat.
They think they're so fucking clever.
No?
All they're trying to do
is get into my knickers behind his back.
A bunch of fucking tarts and poofs
the lot of them.
Here, let's have another bottle.
Hm.
If I cried out, who'd hear me?
Why don't you just go, George?
I've got to get on with this.
I'm going.
I'm going.
Anyway, when you gave me the keys,
it was meant to mean I could live here.
What's past is past.
Oh, you call yesterday the past?
George, I am a painter, this is a studio,
that is a painting.
You are in the way.
But it's a painting of me.
Not that anyone would bloody well notice.
Thank you for the critique, George.
I feel much better now I know where I stand.
After that enlightening discussion,
will you just piss off!
Will I see you later?
- Tomorrow?
- Oh, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Cheerio.
I don't want to go to Paris.
Put yourself in my shoes.
- As if I'd want to.
- You wouldn't like it.
You've no idea, have you? No idea at all.
I don't understand
why you can't get yourself sorted out.
What about this place in Brighton?
I'm told you have quite a little cell...
I hate Brighton, it's so miserable,
the fucking sea just going on and on and on.
Twenty bloody portraits hanging in a space
not graced by an English hand since Turner,
and you don't wanna go.
Sorry. I'm sorry.
Perhaps you should go.
After all, you'll be hanging
in the Grand Palais.
Rather more chic than hanging off some
skyscraper on the wrong side of Manhattan.
There's something about you and falling,
George.
So beautifully consistent.
In all the motor accidents I've seen,
people strewn across the road,
the first thing you think of is
the strange beauty, the vision of it,
before you think of trying to do anything.
It's to do with the unusualness of it.
I once saw a bad car accident
on a large road,
and the bodies were strewn about
with broken glass from the car
and the blood and the various possessions,
and it was, in fact, very beautiful.
I think the beauty in it is terribly elusive,
but it just happened to be the disposition
of the bodies, the way they lay in the blood.
There you are, you see.
There's no logic to grief.
Just the blistered hole in the pit of my gut.
A banal emptiness.
I say it to journalists but I really mean it.
I'm optimistic about nothing.
George's suicide attempts are so adolescent.
Of course it's a cry for attention
but he seems to turn it into a sort of art.
He never really wants to die.
He just does it to find out
if he can hurt me.
I know how much he means to you.
And I know your tastes lead you
onto the beaten track,
but I know George
and I know he'd never really hurt you.
More's the pity.
No, Isabel.
George has other qualities.
I lie there looking at that profile.
The nose, the shy, devious eyes.
The mouth, that skin.
I start doing sort of X-rays in my head.
Yes, dear, but he's not just a photo
you can pin to the wall
then throw to the floor once you're done.
Well, there you are, you see.
He's even bloody here when he's not here!
No, Isabel, George is all right.
It's just that...
he has a hard time keeping up, that's all.
I think he thinks these altered states
make him a teeny-weeny bit more special.
You could say it's his gimmick.
Look, I like George, Francis.
I just think he should see someone
or at least have a holiday.
When I saw him in the French pub
he could hardly stand up.
And between Deakin and two rent boys he was
being divested of quite a sum of money.
Frankly, he looked rather like a corpse.
Isabel, darling, George is a grown man.
My work drains me at the best of times.
No, no. George is perfectly happy.
He's just celebrating
coming to the new show in Paris.
Oh, Francis, you can't be serious. You can't!
The fact is he needs a bloody detox clinic,
or at least psychiatric help.
Why are you doing this?
I've already bought the tickets.
Time is not a healing instrument.
That's all bollocks.
I'd miss her.
I'd miss her sweaty armpits.
Her socks.
I'd miss the stubble dried round
the bathroom sink when I go to shave.
I'd miss the sound of his key
as it turns in the lock.
I'd like just one more night
of cowering under him.
One more night of love,
of true affection.
And a few more days of tenderness.
But, after all, in the end, what's left?
A pile of bones
and a few teeth.
I've had to change to be with you.
I'm always watching myself,
making sure I behave properly.
Yes, we had noticed.
I only know how I feel.
I'm making a real effort.
What am I supposed to do?
Deakin is here to look after you.
Your chaperone.
Keep you out of my hair.
- Yeah, if he can stand up.
- Calm down, George, or take another pill.
I love you, Francis.
Where do you get your slogans from, George?
Off the television?
La ville de Paris a le trs grand plaisir
d'accueillir Monsieur Francis Bacon
ce vernissage qui annonce
l'exposition de son oeuvre Paris.
Monsieur Bacon est le premier peintre anglais
depuis Turner
recevoir l'honneur
de montrer son oeuvre au Grand Palais.
Cette exposition situe Monsieur Bacon
parmi les grands matres
de la peinture contemporaine.
Son oeuvre nous renvoie
notre condition humaine
et nous rvle sa beaut et sa souffrance.
Oh, Francis, the show's really wonderful.
It's marvellous.
I must say, I'm so sorry to hear
about George. Really awful.
Well, dear, one can only laugh or cry. Hm?
Boo-hoo.
She's about as interesting
as a vase of her tulips.
Everything is running down.
The sun is burning out,
the stars are burning out.
It's the only thing in life that's certain -
that it's all running down.
It's all dying.
Cheerio!
Time on my hands
You in my arms
Nothing but love in view
Then if you fall
Once and for all
I'll see my dreams come true
Moments to spare
For someone you care for
One love affair
For two
With time on my hands
And you in my arms
And love in my heart all for you