John Milius was casting in Spain and although he'd got all the principles of course, there were several smaller parts that he was hoping to cast locally and I went into the office one day and he said, ’You can play Sir Joseph’, and I said, ’What do you mean?’ ‘Yes’, he said ’You'd be just right for Sir Joseph’. Well, Sir Joseph is the British Vice Consul in Tangier in 1904 and I was cast for the role. I said, ’Well I've got no... I, you know, I have got no experience of filmmaking’... ’Don't worry, don't worry, it'll be fine, it'll be fine’, and so right at the beginning of the picture there are several scenes of this band of brigands – Sean Connery's band – rampaging through and destroying various villages and this... these scenes are inter-cut with the European quarter of Tangier, which is very tranquil and peaceful and there's this beautiful garden, a lovely house, and Candice Bergen – Mrs Pedecaris – who's going to be kidnapped, is sitting at table with the British Vice Consul in Tangier talking about the wine and the servants while her two children play in the garden, and I'm cast as the British Vice Consul. So my big day comes, you see, and as it happened Anne, my wife, and my daughter Jo, were there on the day we shot the scene, and we were down in Almaria and it was very hot and I had to wear a white suit, which was about half an inch thick — it was terribly hot — with a waistcoat, an Eton tie, a gold watch and chain and a shoulder holster in which I have a Browning pistol – automatic pistol. And the sequence is that I'm sitting there with... with Candy talking about the wine and so on and the wait... waiter comes up with a bottle of wine, and at that moment this band of brigands bursts through a rose garden trellis and come charging towards us, across a pond with some ducks on it, at which point... this is in rehearsal, at which point I have to get up, draw my pistol, shout: ’Brigands!’, move to a mark, take aim and fire when the first horseman is half way across the duck pond, at which point he would take a... a fall, you see.
