After a late afternoon shoot for Stocker’s Copper (1972), we had to wait for nightfall. Also sitting on a hillside in Cornwall were the male-voice choirs that the film’s director Jack Gold had involved in swelling the numbers of extras playing the Cornish clay-workers who were on strike for an extra penny a week, some of them the children and grandchildren of the original clay-workers. Unbidden and of their own accord, they started singing. No one moved, suppers stayed untouched. The beautiful, rich sound of the singing held us for a good quarter of an hour. None have forgotten this moment when time stood still, a fitting tribute and a great sign of love and respect for the best director ever.
