However personally satisfying the whole Hollywood Bowl experience had been, the after-effects were to prove traumatic. The Pythons had been promised a fee of $1 million for their Hollywood appearances but some time after the event it was with horror that they learnt their money had been more or less used up elsewhere, not a penny remained. The offer to play the Bowl was on the table prior to O’Brien becoming Python’s manager but, once responsibilities for the group became his, Denis sidelined the show’s original organiser to take personal charge himself. Gilliam observes, ‘Denis started meddling, completely wrongfooted everybody working on it, and wasted money. I said, “That was our money, Denis. Where do you get off just spending it?” And his attitude was he was our manager, that’s what he did, he was looking after our best interests. He tried to be paternalistic all the time, which with Python particularly you cannot do. And I found at that point, this is it, Denis just can’t draw the line between anything. His money was never our money, but our money was always available to be his.’
It was around this time that Gilliam first warned George Harrison that perhaps O’Brien wasn’t the financial genius he seemed. But Harrison shook his head. He had complete faith in his business partner, and even when Eric Idle began voicing similar concerns, he wouldn’t listen. Harrison couldn’t, or didn’t want to, believe it.
One plan for the Pythons to get back the missing money was unorthodox to say the least. ‘We were in Jamaica,’ says Eric Idle, ‘and Denis owed us that million dollars from the Hollywood Bowl and we were writing The Meaning of Life. We had a meeting about what to do about Denis and I came up with a brilliant plan. I said, “We’ll just steal his yacht.” And everybody said, “Yeah, what a great idea, we’ll just go on board, they’re not going to stop us, we’ll get on board, take the yacht and then we’ll have the yacht.” John vetoed it because he’s a lawyer and he said, “This is piracy.” So we were kind of disappointed.’
The Pythons now found themselves in the incredible position of having to release the film of their Hollywood Bowl concert to cinemas in order to get back the money they were owed in the first place. ‘That was the one thing we didn’t want to do,’ states Gilliam. ‘Right from the beginning we said, “No way” — we’ll record the stuff, probably thinking that we would release it on video at some time, or maybe it would go on television, but never as a film. The last thing we wanted was it to be a film, but it was the only way we could actually get any money out of the process. We were very purist about what film was and what television was, particularly Terry Jones and I were always fighting to make our films look like films.’
And unfortunately Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl looks exactly like what it is, a filmed stage show, raw round the edges, with none of the finesse of Life of Brian or Holy Grail. Jones says, ‘I feel it’s a bit dull, the actual filming of it. I think Terry Hughes is a very good director, but for me it was very dully shot. They got these high-definition cameras but they just sort of set them up in three places and shot the scenes as if you were shooting a TV show. I would have shot it more like a pop show, I’d have had it all hand-held. We had a little bit of that but, in my view, not enough. I think the whole feeling of the show would’ve been better if they’d been less keen on just shooting the sketches clean and rather just got in there with the audience and shot from the wings a bit more.’
Still, Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl remains the only celluloid record of a live Python stage show, so in that context must be viewed as some kind of priceless cultural document. Palin’s view is, ‘While being actually quite successful in the sense that it’s enjoyable — there’s some good performances and it’s got a nice bouncy feel to it — it’s still not considered mainstream Python,’ and that probably explains why Hollywood Bowl was never theatrically released in Britain, only in America where it surfaced during the summer of 1982.
That whole fiasco forced the Pythons to stop and radically reassess what they wanted from O’Brien and his position as their manager, although some of the more, shall we say, ‘liberal’ members of the group were either genuinely unaware of the financial shenanigans behind Hollywood Bowl or have simply chosen to erase the entire episode from their memory. Cleese claims, ‘I genuinely don’t remember it. I tend not to remember stuff from business meetings. When I go in the meeting, I listen reasonably carefully and I understand it and I make any decision that is necessary and it’s probably a reasonably sensible decision, but two days later I can’t remember it. It has no interest to me.’ And Palin admits, ‘I’m quite slow on things sort of financial. Providing the show gets done, that’s the main thing. I never felt that we were being spectacularly ripped off.’
Yet Steve Abbott, whose job it was to look after Python’s financial interests, is adamant that it was the muck-up over Hollywood Bowl that precipitated the eventual split between Python and O’Brien. ‘There’s no question that Denis, as Python’s manager but without consulting them, made arrangements for the financing, making and selling of the film and didn’t let the Pythons know. That was it in terms of the group and Denis, the trust was never there again. The Hollywood Bowl was at the end of September 1980 and we’d all gone by May 1981, so over that winter the writing was on the wall. So, without their knowledge, Denis had invested money that was otherwise due to Python in that film and, in order to get back what was theirs in the first place, they had to release the Hollywood Bowl movie to unlock what was their money.’
Then something else happened, surreal in the extreme and fairly indicative of the fragile relations that now existed between the two camps. Idle says, ‘I had warned George Harrison about something. I don’t know why I got this inkling but I warned him about Denis and he got wind of the fact that I’d said something about him and he became furious. I think the worry for Denis was that I was such good friends with George that he might listen. Anyway, Denis went nuts and came up to where I was living and fired me from Monty Python, which was hilarious. I laughed and laughed. It was like, “Yeah, fuck off.” So I was out of HandMade, suddenly I was not a member, not represented by Denis and blacklisted.’
The news of Idle’s dismissal quickly filtered back to London where it was greeted first with disbelief and then utter dismay. Abbott remembers, ‘I came to work one Monday morning and everyone was looking like there’d been a death in the family. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Denis has terminated Eric.” Those are the exact words I was greeted with that Monday morning, and obviously it affected me since Eric was my client within the organisation. The board members of EuroAtlantic gave me this news. I said, “What do you mean?” “Oh, they had a big row and Denis has fired Eric.” I said, “Just a minute, we’re the management company, he’s the client.” I now know this kind of thing happens; in Hollywood, lawyers and agents get rid of their clients if they’re not making enough money, but for me this was a concept that I just couldn’t get my head round. I said, “It isn’t for Denis to terminate Eric. Eric can fire us but we can’t fire Eric, he isn’t our employee, he isn’t working for us.” They patched it up... within a month Eric had come back, but it was never the same again. That was very, very odd. It speaks volumes as to how Denis wanted to operate as a manager. If he had phoned me up that day and said I’m thinking of terminating Eric, I’d have just laughed in his face... the words “tail” and “dog” leap to mind here.’
By this time, Abbott was deeply suspicious of the way O’Brien conducted himself in his professional and business dealings and how he’d surrounded himself with a network of loyal staff who acted almost as a barrier that could be difficult to penetrate. ‘I used to go mad at the office because Denis would swan in and it was like, “Yes... no,” and I would say to the other professionals there, “Just a minute, we’ve got to discuss this,” and they’d be like, “No, we’ll take these papers up and get Denis to OK them and sign them,” and I’d say, “Look, I know about these things, I can answer any questions, let me go and discuss it.” This kind of thing was always
going on. Certainly the people that were there before me were always incredibly deferential and protective of Denis. He had close confidants and very loyal people around him and Denis trusted them all to protect him, to put a ring around him.’
These were professional concerns, but from a personal standpoint Abbott found the HandMade office a genial and fun working environment. ‘There were kind of rituals on Thursday when George Harrison’s staff got paid; there was always a communal lunch at the pub. And on everybody’s birthday, there was no question, a little party was always laid on. People would really make an effort, it didn’t matter how busy you were, if a deal had to be closed or whatever, people would get together. The staff were very happy. The only thing that made me unhappy or people who ended up leaving were professional worries rather than levels of comfort there or money, as they paid well, very generous Christmas bonuses. It was a very good atmosphere, people were genuinely friendly.’
O’Brien had another, more pertinent reason for feeling particularly aggrieved with Eric Idle, namely, the actor’s veto of a recent business plan. ‘Denis had this huge deal with a company and he wanted to sell the world rights to Python,’ reveals Idle, ‘and we were all going to get shares in this company. Well, if we’d done that he would have had control of the Python income. Everybody said “Yes” and I said “No”. We always had this veto and I said “No”. I just thought it’s wrong to do this, it’s a bad mistake businesswise. And so I went away and he couldn’t get through what he wanted and then when I came back everybody had also changed their minds, which is often what happened in Python, and it was slung out. So Denis had a bit of a grievance with me. Then everybody just in their own way felt that Denis was going out of control.’
Among the first to reach such a conclusion was John Cleese. Famously into analysis, the reading and measuring of people’s characters, he understood to a large degree, perhaps more than any other Python, just what made O’Brien tick. ‘I always rather liked Denis but I realised that he tended to operate in a way that was, I thought, technically a little bit paranoid. It was as though you were either family or you weren’t family. And if you were family he would do an enormous amount for you, but he wouldn’t tell you much about what he was doing for you, he wanted to be Dad and he wanted to present you with good news and lovely surprises so you would say, “Oh Denis, that’s wonderful.” But you weren’t really allowed to ask what he was up to or how it was done.
‘Denis is basically a money man and he would come to us with offers. He would say, “This company will pay you so much money to do this,” and we’d say, “Yes, Denis, that’s wonderful but it’s just not something we want to do.” We were literally a group that were unmanageable, in the sense that we didn’t really want to be managed. And I think after a time he found us frustrating. And we became increasingly worried as we began to realise that we really couldn’t get much information and suddenly we were being asked to sign forms and bits of paper and we would say, “Well, what is this company?” and he’d tell us the name of the company.’ However, when the Pythons questioned him about who the directors of these companies were, they cannot recall ever being given an answer. ‘And we’re not the fastest or smartest bunch of people businesswise,’ continues Cleese, ‘but we began to realise fairly soon that this simply wasn’t a satisfactory arrangement.’
The others, too, were finding O’Brien’s methods, particularly when it came to money and his employment of tax shelters, a mite disturbing. Jones confides, ‘I enjoyed Denis’s sort of high finance input, he injected a feeling of excitement into things, into what we were doing. The only thing that alarmed one, he’d be doing all these incredibly complicated routes where the money was going and it would all be scribbled down on a piece of paper and then thrown away, he said so there’d be no trail kind of thing. And I had this slight feeling of being a little bit at sea. These weren’t simple at all, when it came to Denis’s finances, they were wonderfully convoluted and “tax-effective” I think is the word. So there was this feeling of not being in control of one’s own destiny.’
It was all a little too mystifying. Idle remembers, ‘Denis had all these labyrinths of companies overseas in Guernsey and places like that.’ Again Idle cannot remember ever being told who the directors of these companies were. ‘We wanted to be above board and with Denis... his response was always “Trust me”.’
Well, that trust was rapidly diminishing, a view shared by Python accountant Steve Abbott who was privy to the complicated money strategies employed by O’Brien that included all sorts of antics that, although fairly prevalent in the industry, hovered around the line that made it legal. ‘After working there for a while, I started seeing more and more of the picture and I didn’t want any part of it. It reached such a silly stage. For me, this was an issue, my feelings were pretty strongly known. To this day, I’ve got information in my head that could nail a lot of people.’
Of particular concern was O’Brien’s complex latticework of companies. Although shareholders in EuroAtlantic, the very fact that the Pythons were being kept in the dark about so many of the money decisions was really starting to hit home. ‘We began to get worried about how our money was going to be used and invested,’ says Palin. ‘Basically, it was very complicated and involved these offshore companies and none of us really understood it. I think we just looked at it and said, “We don’t want it this way.” It came down to a lack of confidence in EuroAtlantic.’
Many of these companies had been in operation for some years prior to the formation of HandMade and were invariably situated in tax-efficient areas of the globe like Guernsey, Luxembourg, Holland and Panama. Abbott suggests, ‘The biggest mistake Denis possibly made with me is that, as a treat, several members of the office, myself included, were invited out to Guernsey for lots of board meetings of these off-shore companies and suddenly, I’m not daft, suddenly — Wow! I think that was probably not long before I left.’
The Guernsey office was small — tiny, in fact — with a permanent staff of just two. Brian Shingles recalls, ‘Everyone knew about the Guernsey office, but what its function was, who knows? Nobody really questioned it because it seemed the whole set-up was geared to look after George’s affairs, make HandMade films and do whatever else was necessary, so it didn’t seem so strange. Lots of companies go offshore, but how labyrinthine it was, no one realised.’
Someone Ray Cooper has described as ‘one of the most influential women in film in England and Europe’ began her career in that office in Guernsey. Her name was Wendy Palmer, a New Zealander not long in London with a degree in marketing and finance who was doing temp accounting work when an agency sent her along to HandMade.
‘The funny thing was,’ Palmer says, ‘because the parent company was called EuroAtlantic, the temp agency had thought they were an oil company, so I’d gone along to Cadogan Square thinking I was going to work for an oil company and there I was working for a movie company.’ Her first impressions of O’Brien were of a charming and smooth individual, very professional and business-like. ‘But extremely small feet for a very tall man, which I always found quite disconcerting.’
Palmer’s job was to look at all the films, particularly the big ones that were earning a lot of money — Life of Brian and Time Bandits — and to evaluate the royalty statements and chase up the payments. ‘And it was extraordinary because no one had really been doing it and in the first month I brought in like a million-and-a-half dollars. Then they offered me a permanent job as an accountant and I was like, “Thank you but no thank you, that’s not really what I’m intending to do.” And they said, “Well, what are you intending to do?” and I said, “Well, marketing is my thing,” and they said, “Oh, that’s all right, stick around, do a bit more of the royalty accounting and then we’re going to need somebody doing marketing for us and then you can do it.” And that was basically it; I was 22, and it was kind of like all my dreams come true. I loved film but I never thought I’d be able ever to work in it, and they virt
ually plucked me off the street and gave me a career. And what an amazing thing to happen.’
After a six-month stint in London, Palmer was siphoned off to the Guernsey office in mid-’82. ‘I was there for 15 months, too long, I couldn’t stand it after a bit. It was just me and a PA. That office had been going for some time because of the various Dutch tax structures and the offshore management. And there were all the Peter Sellers files still around.’
Going on to establish herself as one of the leading female figures in the British film industry, it was here where Wendy Palmer learnt her trade, sat in that tiny office in Guernsey just reading the files, soaking everything up, like an actor learning his craft in Rep. Crucially, too, she is numbered among a select band of witnesses who have an intimate knowledge of just what went on out there. ‘It was totally labyrinthine. There were companies after companies. No one ever got the whole picture, that was how Denis managed it, so that even those people that were very directly involved in those structures, the lawyers and the accountants, they only ever got bits of the picture, they never really got the whole thing. You couldn’t even see whether it was black, white or grey, it was really impossible to untangle. It was clever the way he kept everybody just with little bits of it... not stupid, Denis. But they did save a lot of tax, especially on those Python movies because they were so successful, they did save huge amounts of tax. He saved George a lot of tax, too, because all George’s tax structure was out of there. But I never got a sense that it was really illegal; there might have been things that happened that were borderline, and maybe it was worse than that, it probably did get very grey at points, but a lot of companies run those offshore things. It was about tax efficiency as much as anything. I think that especially the creative people around HandMade were more fascinated by it than they really needed to be; it was not any reinventing of the wheel or anything illegal, it was just complex, labyrinthine and tax efficient.’
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