Actor finds a story in night he lost plot
He may have written a script about it, but it would surprise me if he remembered much, because he was totally out of it. Les Dartnell, former taxi driver
For taxi driver Les Dartnell, the punter who flagged him down in Piccadilly in the early hours was just another welcome fare on a slow night back in June 2002.
Welcome, that is, until he started behaving weirdly and demanding to be let out of the cab, barely minutes into the journey.
“I said ‘ That’s fine mate, but we’re in the middle of a road with four lanes of traffic so let me pull over first’,” Dartnell recalled.
“I didn’t have a clue then who this bloke was, but I was happy for him to get out because he was acting very strangely.”
What happened next is the subject of a film, Lost In London, starring Hollywood A-listers Woody Harrelson, Owen Wilson, and country singer Willie Nelson, to be shot on the streets of the capital from 2am today (GMT) and streamed live to more than 500 cinemas in the US and one in London.
Dartnell’s passenger was Harrelson — then a 40-year-old actor whose career was in a slump following his celebrated turn in the TV series
Cheers and the controversial film Natural Born Killers. That evening was, Harrelson says now, “the worst night of my life”, in the course of which he smashed up a taxi, was pursued by police, arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage and detained in a police cell, before fleeing back to the US.
His antics made headlines at the time — but Dartnell is baffled as to how those events could be deemed worthy of preservation in celluloid.
“He may have written a script about it, but it would surprise me if he remembered much, because he was totally out of it.”
Harrelson, a self-confessed anarchist and well-known hellraiser in his day, is making his debut as writer and director, as well as starring in the film. He thinks Lost In London will be a ground-breaking project of the highest artistic integrity.
The film will involve a single 100-minute take using one camera in 14 locations across Central London, complete with chase sequences on foot, in cabs and in police cars.
Others, however, might view it as the ultimate vanity project.
So what did happen on June 7, 2002? According to Harrelson it began with an argument between him and his wife, Laura (played in the film by Spooks star Eleanor Matsuura). He took off to a nightclub, the infamous Chinawhite, which, back then, was in Soho. Later, he hailed a taxi, which is where Dartnell comes in.
“I had picked him up on Regent St and we got as far as Haymarket when he started going crazy, saying he wanted to get out of the cab.
“The next thing I know, he’s kicking the door. Somehow he managed to kick the whole thing open, breaking the lock; then he’s off, running down the street. He turned into Pall Mall and then Carlton House Terrace, and all the time I’m following, dodging these traffic cones he’s throwing at me.
“It was just so pointless because when he’d got into my cab, his agent — or someone who was looking after him at least — told me he was staying in a hotel on Sloane St.
“So when he jumped into another cab and legged it, I called the police and told them where to find him.
“I followed them there, and that was where it really went crazy. There are half-a-dozen police cars coming from all directions. I counted 14 coppers, and he’s still at it, trying to climb some railings,” Dartnell recalls.
“When this WPC finally gets the cuffs on him, she shouts: ‘Look! It’s Woody Harrelson!’ Up until that point everyone, me included, thought he was just some random nutter.”
The actor later said he had lost his temper after Dartnell demanded he pay for damaging an ashtray, something the cabbie disputes.
Harrelson has interpreted the night as fate conspiring to torment him. He says he was desperate to get home, only to find the odds stacked against him, including the British judicial system.
“The only thing stopping him from getting home was him acting like a lunatic,” Dartnell laughs.