Good Friday, March 28th, Southwold
Really quite heavy snow in the village this morning. On the nine o’clock news they were talking of ‘treacherous’ conditions on the roads around London. But the sun came out and melted everything in a couple of hours. Helen and I left, in separate cars, at about 12.30. She to Abbotsley with the kids and me in the Mini to Southwold for a couple of days, as Mother had rung during the week to tell me that Father had had a sharp deterioration in his condition last Tuesday
Physically, he is fast becoming a write-off and there’s a temptation to think that death would be a merciful release – but when I see the twinkle in his watery eye when he struggles to make a joke, or the enjoyment he gets from buying and giving two boxes of chocolates to Mother on Easter morning, or his sad ‘Come again, soon’ as I leave, I find the ‘merciful release’ attitude dangerously simple.
Thursday, April 3rd
Today our second film opens in London. An encouragingly good notice in The Guardian this morning. Even though they exhorted the team to stay together, they couldn’t remember our names: ‘Cleese, Idle, Chapman, Graham and Jones’!
Graham and I did a voice-over for Bulmer’s Cider in the morning. After the voice-over I dropped in at Anne’s. It has taken her and Alison1 a week to cope with the complications of tickets, parties, dummy Princess Margarets, etc – all the ramifications of a premiere which none of us really wanted, which EMI got cold feet about, and which Mark Forstater has washed his hands of. Anne, finger in the dyke, is single-handedly avoiding disaster tonight.
A very good Alexander Walker review in the Evening Standard (‘The brightest British comedy in ages’) and Time Out, who’ve also enjoyed it, help to cheer us all up, for these two are influential amongst our London audience. In fact there is no bad review today – but there is an unpleasant little piece in the Daily Mail. Not a review, but a variation on the Python split-up story, which seems as elusive as the Holy Grail to most papers.
In the foyer, the flabby head of EMI Distribution was trying to be jolly, but was obviously quite worried about the Princess Margaret dummy, which he had heard was to be around after all. He was clearly very nervous about how and where and when we were going to spring this royal embarrassment on them.
Up in the circle bar, the head-nodding, the hand-shaking, the across-room smiles had all begun. There were just so many people to talk to there. I talked to John Peel briefly and Brian McNulty, and Ron Hellard, and even my wife. Ten-week old Rachel Mary lay, undisturbed by all this merrymaking, in a corner of the bar.
The film was very well received. Simon A, and André, both of whom were quite severe critics of the showings, both enjoyed the film for the first time tonight.
Afterwards, a party had been laid on in the stalls bar (this entirely due to Anne H and Terry G’s initiative) for all the crew (who had not been invited to the later party at the Marquee).
I was particularly touched when Terry Bedford, who has had a good deal of praise in the reviews for his photography, said ‘You were great.’ I’m so used to being anonymous in Python that it’s nice to know someone noticed.
From the Casino we all moved on to the Marquee Club. A party which I hadn’t been looking forward to, but which turned out to be excellent, full of nice people and everyone in good spirits. The occasion had really been organised and paid for by Charisma – the company which we all love, but which doesn’t actually seem too keen on paying us royalties.
Neil Innes, looking like a Belgian shopkeeper in his Sunday best, is on good form. He and I decide that the time has come to talk to our backers, and we converge on Messrs Page and Plant from Led Zeppelin, who are standing, almost shyly, together. They are great fans of the show – they liked the ‘Bicycle Tour’ particularly – and apparently many pop groups now carry video cassettes of Python, as an obligatory part of their equipment.
Sunday, April 6th
The popular press, News of the World, Daily and Sunday Express, Daily Mail, The People, The Sun, have given us rave reviews. The News of the World even said that the credits on their own were funnier than most comedy films.
Dilys Powell, in the Sunday Times, in a much longer review, was soft, kind and unenthusiastic, and The Observer joined Sounds and the New Musical Express in panning us. But I am generally surprised and greatly relieved by the reactions.
Graham rings to tell me that the Sunday Express is the latest paper to join in the Python-splitting activities, and that I am quoted this time as saying that John Cleese is interested only in the money, etc, etc. There is a long reply by John in which he says it is ‘malicious’ to suggest he’s only interested in money.
I rang Connie after supper. She sounded quite emotional and said John was very upset, though mainly it seemed with the Express reporter who had rung and put words into his mouth, rather than with my alleged ‘attacks’ on him. John himself rang later and, if it’s any satisfaction to the Sunday Express, we had the fullest and friendliest chat we’ve had for ages.
Friday, April 11th
An old-fashioned pub-crawl. Down to Cambridge Circus on the 24 bus, walk along Old Compton Street, past the cinema with its huge and quite grabbing adornment of posters, turn down Dean Street at 5.45 and into the York Minster. Eric, whose suggestion this little jaunt was, rolls along about 6.00, and we split a half bottle of champagne.
From the York Minster we move on up Dean Street to the Nellie Dean, where we find Tony Stratton-Smith, ebullient and highly excited by the first week’s figures. Grail is No. 3 in London this week, and has grossed nearly £19,000.
I really must try and cut down on this wining and dining, but it’s all part of the unnerving transitional world Python is in. Terry G and I admit we spend far more time than is healthy talking, analysing, discussing every aspect of the group and the group’s dynamic, but, as Terry says, it’s becoming like a drug. We need our daily fix of Python. I know as I sink, heavy-stomached into my bed, that Terry G will ring me over the weekend, and tell me how he thinks Eric’s becoming very positive again … and if we can only get rid of Graham … goodnight Vienna … At least we still laugh about it all.
One thing is different this time – whereas before Python in ‘69 we were only a moderately saleable commodity as a group, and quite unsaleable as individuals, now we have a high reputation and a good name as both. The film’s success in the last couple of weeks has helped to prolong Python’s life and greatly increase its prestige.
Wednesday, April 17th
This afternoon, I go to the BBC to see Jimmy Gilbert. I have already decided to turn down, on grounds of dangerous lack of time, JG’s offer of the six now defunct Python slots next autumn. This didn’t seem to deter him. He clearly just wants me to do a show – he isn’t really concerned about subject matter and he has a director, Terry Hughes, who wants to work with me.
Terry Hughes, neat, almost over-amiable, smiling, regular-featured – he looks like an advert for suits – has been anxious to do a show with me for two years, and now clearly feels that he has priority over others when JG wants to get a show together around me.
Terry and I talk – me fencing a little to try and find TH’s attitudes. He says he wants to do a show which is exciting and experimental. He drops his voice and says, wearily, ‘Anything after two and a half years of Two Ronnies.
So … OK, I say, I would be happy with JG’s plan to commission one show, which will be the first of a series if it works. Whereas this sort of caution would have driven us mad in Python, or Do Not Adjust, now it suit’s me fine.
With Monty Python and the Holy Grail set to open in New York, we set off across the Atlantic for the second time in a month.
Thursday, April 24th, New York
Eric has been in NY since last Saturday, Terry G since Sunday and Terry J since Tuesday night – and today Graham and I have to leave hot and sunny London to join them. We take off around 12.30.
No-one could be found to meet us, so we took a cab from Kennedy. Sadly we seem to hav
e exchanged fine weather for foul. It was grey, glowering and raining as we joined the traffic jams on Van Wyck Expressway and East River Drive. Both of us hungry, so we revived ourselves with large and delicious club sandwiches and beers at the St Moritz Hotel. As we walked back to the Navarro, two girls, one Oriental and spotty, the other American and fat, accosted us. ‘Oh, it’s you … Oh! We’ve just been talking to the two Terrys and they were so nice, but Eric just walked past us!’
Friday, April 25th, New York
I was up at 6.00 and in the lobby of the Navarro at 6.30. Met John Goldstone and Eric I there and was driven in a huge, greedy limousine to the ABC A.M. America studios. We (the Pythons) were to co-host this nationally networked ABC TV morning show – and it runs for two hours.
At 7.00 the show began, hosted by a lady called Stephanie something or other, an attractive redhead, with a cool, head-of-school-like assurance, but she was playing along well with us. Eric kept holding up cards on which he’d scribbled things like ‘Norman Mailer – Ring Your Mother’. Once or twice before an item of serious news – e.g. the fall of Saigon – Stephanie would ask us to refrain from being too silly, but generally we were allowed a loose rein.
Eric and I did the first hour of the show, then Graham added to our number and TG and TJ joined at 8.30. Terry G made a rude drawing of a man with slobbering tongue and staring, lust-filled eyes and held it alongside Stephanie’s head as she signed off and, as the credits rolled, they actually exhorted us to wreck the studio.
No-one seemed to feel it was incongruous that we should be part of a programme which included the latest bulletins on the end of America’s longest war, or serious interviews about Reagan’s chances in 1976.
We ended up in the Plaza Hotel for breakfast, and drank orange juice and champagne out of the largest, widest glasses I’ve ever seen. Typical of America, always confusing quantity and quality – to the eternal detriment of the latter.
At 12.00 we rolled up outside a modestly fashionable ‘brownstone’ with a recently-restored front, on one of the streets somewhere in the East 60ths. This is the studio of Richard Avedon – by all accounts One of the World’s Leading Photographers and He has chosen to photograph no less than us. Python is to be immortalised in the pages of Vogue.
Avedon turns out to be a slight, wiry, dark-skinned, bespectacled man, who could be between 25 and 55. Full of vitality and easy charm.
We are dazed from our efforts in NY and our early appearance on ABC and he must have found us a lifeless lot as he made us coffee. But after ten or 15 minutes of uninspired ideas, he leapt on the suggestion, made by Graham and Terry J, that we should be photographed in the nude. The idea sounded no worse and a lot better than putting on silly costumes or funny faces, so it was resolved. We would keep our shoes and socks on, though, and I would wear my hat.
Avedon – remarkably spry for one who has, by his own account, just worked a 15-hour, non-stop session – took us into his studio, a simple, square room, white-walled, about twenty feet high. Apart from camera equipment, simple lights and photos of Marilyn Monroe and a huge blow-up of A’s photo of the Chicago Seven, the place was quite austere.
Soon the Python group were a little naked gaggle and Avedon was busy arranging us in a parody of the sort of beautiful person photo where all is revealed, but nothing is shown. So our little tadgers had to be carefully hidden behind the knee of the man in front, and so on, and every now and then Avedon would look through the viewfinder of his Rolleiflex and shout things like ‘Balls! … balls Graham, balls.’
After a few more exhortations like this, GC was heard to mutter, ‘Are you sure he’s the world-famous photographer?’
We dressed, muttering jokily amongst ourselves about how ashamed, how very ashamed, we were of what we had done. The elfin Avedon, busy as ever, talked to us as he scribbled some letter. I couldn’t help noticing that the one he was writing began ‘Dear Princess Margaret.’
As we walked out into the sunlit street, I felt slightly high and rather relieved, as though I’d been for an exotic medical check-up.
Took a few hours to myself this afternoon. I decided to take a trip out to the Statue of Liberty, as Tom had specially asked me to get some pictures of it. I travelled down by Subway, which is one of NY’s finest features – like its telephones. It’s noisy, dirty and literally every coach is covered in aerosol drawings – or just simply people’s names (crisis of identity of many people in the States, suggested the New York Times reporter today – alienation of the individual, etc, etc). But these noisy, dirty Subways are faster, more frequent and more efficient than the London Underground, and I’m very endeared to their ear-shattering clatters and their functional stations thick with the smell of fresh-cooked doughnuts. It’s a refreshing break from the carefully tailored world of limousines and hotel suites.
Missed the Statue of Liberty ferry, walked back up Broadway, bought two plastic statues of Laurel and Hardy in a tatty street market on Canal Street, so by the time I reached Gallagher’s Bar to see Earl Wilson I was over half an hour late and it was raining.
The place was almost empty but, at a table in the corner, surrounded by photos of jockeys, horses, etc, Graham, Terry J, who had nobly sat in for me, Sue from the public relations agency and the small, neat, elderly and very bemused-looking E Wilson. He seemed to suffer from an unfortunate impediment for a reporter – he couldn’t hear a word. Added to this, GC was being quite irresponsible and saying very strange things. Sue, a PR lady and not a bright soul, just tried to look happy as he shouted for the fourth time in the ear of this hapless columnist, ‘Penis!’
From Gallagher’s we took a cab to the offices of Don Rugoff and Cinema 5, the man and the outfit who are distributing our film in the US. He looks a fair shambles. Around 45-ish, thick glasses, a strong face, made permanently grumpy by his habit of pushing his chin into his neck and turning the sides of his mouth down. The rest of his body was mostly stomach, a huge pointed paunch which he pushes in front of him, like some antenna casing. Rugoff’s voice, like his general physical presence, is rough and untidy. I liked him a lot.
We excused ourselves about 6.00, and walked back to our suite at the Navarro, where Nancy, or somebody, had organised a cheese and wine party for our friends. I suddenly realised I had had only two hours sleep in the last 36, and Italian white wine wasn’t likely to revive me. But the party was quite well attended. All sorts of strange people began arriving, including Martin Scorsese, director of Mean Streets and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More, the ubiquitous Jo Durden-Smith1 and several Rolling Stone staffers. Ed Goodgold,2 whose company is always good fun, maintains Python has done and will do a lot for the Gentiles in America, who’ve been until now totally swamped by Jewish comedians and Jewish comedy – Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Harvey Kurtzman, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, etc, etc.
Sunday, April 27th, New York
We were to be at Cinema II on Third Avenue at 11.00 a.m. to welcome the first crowds and to give out coconuts as people came out. The phone rang and woke me about 9.40. It was John Goldstone. Could we get down to the cinema as quickly as possible; there had been people queuing since 5.30 a.m. and Rugoff had already opened the film, with a special extra 9.30 performance. Time only for a delicious American grapefruit and a quick coffee and into the limousine.
When we reached the cinema there were, indeed, your actual crowds. People queuing right round the block. There was only one way into the cinema and that was through the main entrance – so through the crowds we went.
Once in the cinema we were taken to a kind of broom cupboard below stairs, where we felt like prisoners. There was coffee and doughnuts. Rugoff told us we couldn’t go out of the theatre, or let ourselves be seen at a window (!) for fear of inciting riots on Third Avenue. ‘We’ve only got one patrolman,’ he kept muttering morosely. I think he hoped and expected that there would be riots, but we know our audience quite well – they want to be silly, they want to chat, they want to shake hands, they want you to sign the pla
ster on their broken arms, but generally speaking they don’t want to tear us limb from limb.
But they did fill the cinema all day long and Rugoff was able to claim at the end of the day a house record take of ten and a half thousand dollars. He even had photographers taking pictures of the crowds (which he was later to use in a very good double page Variety ad).
Plant and Page from Led Zeppelin came to the 8.00 performance, which brightened things up a little. We greet each other like old friends now. Suddenly someone shouted ‘Led Zeppelin!’ as we talked and, as the chant grew, we moved discreetly away – for they can cause riots.
Monday, April 28th, New York
To see Clive Davis at Arista. He smiled benignly round at us all. Chided us for doing a nude spread in Vogue, but not Playboy, which is where the market is. The Matching Tie album has been out a week and a bit and already he’s getting a good demand for it, he says. He even gets us to talk to eighteen countrywide reps, who are at this moment all connected up on a conference line. So we say ‘hello’ to disembodied voices in LA and Chicago and Davis encourages them to ‘break records, to sell records’.
The whole tenor of our discussion today is that of an enlightened headmaster to his star pupils. He’s giving us a lot of rope, but he still firmly holds the end.
To a sound studio to record some radio commercials for Don Rugoff. Terry and I manage to write and record three 30-second commercials before Rugoff finally turns up. I’ve noticed the look in people’s eyes when he’s around. He seems so harmless and yet he must have a reputation, for there is a look of anticipated fear and anxiety which flashes across people’s faces in his presence. I’ve seen it with Sue, the PR lady, and I saw it again today in the eyes of the girl who was organising this voice-over session. Rugoff grumpily accused people of not doing their job properly. He introduced an air of tension and then accused everyone of not being relaxed. He asked me to do it more upbeat, which was completely wrong, and had to change his mind afterwards. The only light in this hour of greyness was when we played him the three commercials we’d done – and he liked them all. He actually smiled. So everyone relaxes and is happy and Rugoff wins hands down because he is a lovable bastard.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 32