Dokumentarfilmurin um og við Francis Bacon, sum Melvyn Bragg gjørdi er mettur at vera eitt dokumentariskt meistaraverk, men í grundini vóru báðir tveir, bæði listamaðurin og interviewarin ikki heilt edrúir, tá upptøkurnar vóru gjørdar. Melvyn Bragg greiðir soleiðis frá: "I'd known Francis for more than 20 years. It's too long a story but eventually he agreed to do a film and he went totally flat-out. We met at nine in the morning in his studio...After filming in the studio we went around the corner to the Italian restaurant in which Francis took his meal of the day. He had insisted we all drink the Bollinger he had lined up beside the sink and at the restaurant we drank rough red wine. I had been on the wagon for a few weeks in Cumbria working on a novel. This was an alcoholic waterfall. After the restaurant cleared, Francis and I pretended to have lunch and did the interview. We ate nothing but we drank on. We got very drunk. It showed. We slurred. Once or twice we all but stopped... We went on to Charlie Chester's gambling club next to some blurred drinking hellhole. At some time or other I found my way home, my liver leaping up to my ribs like a salmon... I saw what we had done a few days later. We were not entirely a pretty sight and there was plenty to laugh at but what Francis said was true to the devil in him and I kept it in. Still today art students like to say 'Cheerio Francis, cheerio Melvyn' and lift an imaginary glass of rough red."
(KP)
