They shared a bottle of wine and started a friendship. Dan was also a stage designer who worked for ITV in London on the glamorous cabaret show Chelsea at Nine. Perhaps this appealed to Freeman. In any event, the friendship lasted over the years. Dan married Jean, an Anglo-Brazilian ballet dancer, and John and Catherine became godparents to their son. Much later the Snyders moved to the University of California campus at Davis, near Sacramento, where he taught in the dramatic arts department. In 1984 the Freemans, John and Judith, were in California so they called in to see them. They went for a walk together by the lawns, streams and trees on the rural, car-free, campus. ‘This looks a good place to retire to,’ said John. ‘So why don’t you come and teach here?’ replied Dan, who was always on the lookout to attract international figures to what was then, in university terms, something of a backwater.1 Randy Siverson was then chair of the political science department: I got a phone call from the vice-chancellor for academic affairs telling me there was an unusual opportunity to be pursued and he wanted me to come over and have a talk about it.
What do You think about A Very Private Celebrity (2015)?
