Steven Berkoff: an exclusive extract from his new memoir Shouting At Night

First trip to Israel

After I had staged Metamorphosis at the Roundhouse in 1969, I made my first journey to the extraordinary nation of Israel. The writer Wolf Mankowitz invited me to join the film production he was shooting there. The film was called Bloomfield, a feeble story of a footballer in Tel Aviv who befriends a small fan. To call it the very worst gauche, slushy, sentimental film ever made would be an understatement. Wolf Mankowitz had seen Metamorphosis and believed that I was the up-and-coming wunderkind, and that I would be useful to help with Israeli casting, shooting a video about the production, and coaching the child, etc. However, nothing seemed to work. And gradually our relationship, which had been so promising, became corroded by all the petty arguments that Mankowitz was having with the Israeli producers, and most of all with the talented Israeli director Uri Zohar, who was a sensational comedian-turned-filmmaker and had a strange habit – familiar, it seems, to many Israelis – of shouting his head off whenever he greeted an ally in the street. It was, apparently, a sign of extreme machismo.

Metamorphosis, in 1969 and the actor as a young man[Missing Credit]

Richard Harris was, bizarrely cast as an Israeli Jew, which would stretch even the most vivid of imaginations. We had all been waiting for his arrival with anticipation, and I was slowly getting used to Israel and the torrid heat in Tel Aviv. Two years earlier, the Six-Day War had left Israel in a triumphant mood and the whole population seemed to be happy, when not shouting. By the strangest coincidence, at the very first party I was invited to, I met the daughter of Max Brod’s personal assistant. Max Brod was the great ally and editor of Franz Kafka’s work and was largely responsible for saving much of it. I felt this was extraordinary, having just performed Metamorphosis at the Roundhouse, that the very first person I met in Israel was so connected with Kafka’s work. She was a charming lady and introduced me to her young architect friend who was seeking to rent out a spare room in her flat, which I took after later being booted out of this bizarre film!

I was growing sicker and sicker of this appalling movie and Richard Harris seemed to take a peculiar dislike to me; I felt as intensely about him, though I did not show it as much. Wolf Mankowitz was finding just about everything in Israel overwhelming to deal with and also took up the habit of shouting, but he did have a very sweet assistant who had a soothing effect on me.

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