Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  One slightly ominous note, though – Nancy says the court hearing is on Friday – and yet we have to leave Thursday night at latest.

  Wednesday morning, December 17th, New York

  Up at 9.30. Walk across to the Stage Delicatessen for breakfast. Eggs, bacon, coffee, bagels, cottage cheese.

  Up to Nancy’s office at Buddah where we meet Rik Hertzberg – good old friend from The New Yorker. We have a good time and give him a lot of in formation, including, for the first time, copies of letters, affidavits and other court material. Pack is not just a good and sympathetic friend – he also, in his New Yorker piece earlier this year [welcoming the Python TV series], has the immeasurable skill of being able to quote our material and still make it sound funny.

  After an hour or so with Rick, we take a cab down Broadway to Sardi’s for lunch with John O’Connor – another Python sympathiser and TV critic of the New York Times. It’s interesting how much greater access we have to TV journalists and writers in New York than in London.

  From Sardi’s the Dynamic Duo, the Fighters for Freedom, find themselves in a rather dingy doorway next to Cartier’s shop in Fifth Avenue, waiting for an elevator up to see the lawyers whom Ina has hired to represent us in our struggle against the American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.

  They’re led by short, blond-haired Robert Osterberg, he must be mid-thirties. A fit, tidy, rather bland sort of man with the eyes and smile, but unfortunately nothing else, of Kirk Douglas.

  He begins by saying that we really ought to be in court on Friday. He says, quite rightly, that if no Pythons are prepared to be in New York to defend their own case, that case is immeasurably weakened. And so on. He’s right of course, but both Terry and I have avoided confronting the awful, stomach-gripping truth that we will actually have to defend our position in a US Federal court. Now that’s almost a certainty and I have to let Helen know that I won’t be back for the Gospel Oak Old Folk’s Party. In addition, TWA have still not found my case, so I’m unshaven and crumpled and tired as well as shit-scared.

  Thursday, December 18th, New York

  Feel much calmer about the whole court bit now. Rang Helen, which was the worst thing I had to get over. It was twenty past eight here and I was in bed in the Navarro, with sunny New York outside – and Helen was in her fog-bound Gospel Oak kitchen with the kids all wanting things. There really couldn’t be much contact. I just had to tell her the facts – very unsatisfactory, but now she knows, I know she’ll get over it and begin to make other plans and I’m sure friends will rally round. So I feel better now. I feel ready for a fight.

  We breakfast at the Grand Central Café. (Good news for Grand Central Station fans – yesterday a demolition and development plan for it was finally quashed.)

  A visit to the lawyers, then all of us in a deadly accusing phalanx – Ina, Osterberg plus one, Terry G and myself – make our way over to ABC TV. A slender, not unattractive thirty-five-storey dark stone and glass block … this is what we’re taking on.

  Up to the twenty-first floor.

  We’re at ABC today because they yesterday relented their earlier decision not to let us see the proposed December 26th compilation – and the lawyers regard this viewing today as a significant concession. ABC’s point is that, if we find that the compilation we see at today’s viewing is acceptable, then the whole case may be dropped.

  We meet, for the first time, the highly plausible and eligible Bob Shanks, who is Head of Night Time and Early Morning Programming at ABC. Intelligent, charming and the man ultimately responsible for our being in New York today. With him is a member of their legal department – a lady in her late thirties, early forties with a long-suffering look in her eyes and a kindly, almost saintly face, as in a sixteenth-century religious painting.

  At this stage it’s smiles, handshakes, genial informality as far as we’re concerned – but for Ina and Bob Osterberg detached cool politeness is the order of the day. At one point early on in the discussion, Bob appears quite irrationally strong with Shanks – and we feel the first hint of a fight … the first punch thrown and missed as Osterberg raises his voice over a point and Shanks charms quietly back, ‘Let’s not shout at each other … let’s just talk about it in a reasonable way.’

  ABC at this point present us with a list of their cuts in the three shows we are about to see. A cursory glance at the list shows that our trip to New York has not been wasted. There are thirty-two proposed cuts. Some ludicrous – ‘damn’ cut out twice, ‘bitch’ as describing a dog cut out, etc, etc.

  I think that ABC were quite honestly taken aback by our reaction. I just wanted to walk out, but Osterberg advised us to see all the shows, which was obviously good sense.

  Next to me on the couch as I told them that the cuts they suggested were totally unacceptable and, in our opinion, ludicrous, was a young, short-haired, conventionally handsome executive, whose eyes would not look at ours for long, and whose face was flushed with confusion. He turned out to be the head of ABC TV’s Standards and Practices Department and a Vice-President of the Company.

  This was the man whom ABC pay to censor their programmes – the man who had actually decided that the American public wasn’t ready for ‘naughty bits’ – the man who had decided that Eric Idle as Brian Clough dressed as Queen Victoria was a homosexual reference and should therefore be cut. Judging by the list he had compiled one would expect him to be a sort of obsessive religious maniac. A wild eccentric who lived on top of a mountain seeking to preserve himself and his few remaining followers from the final onslaught of the people who say ‘damn’.

  But the deceit is that of course he was himself no more offended by these words than I am. He laughed, as they all laughed, when we talked about cutting a ‘tit’ here and a ‘tit’ there – and yet he will not permit others in his country to have the choice of laughing at those words as well. ‘It’s alright for us, but we’ve got to think about people in the South – in Baton Rouge and Iowa as well.’ Then we tell him that Python has been running in Baton Rouge and Iowa for over a year on PBS, without complaint.

  It all seems so pointless, in this little viewing room in a comfortable office block with a group of people playing idiotic games with each other, but then I remember the power of ABC – the ability to beam a show simultaneously into all the sets in the USA. The papers we have talked to, the radio shows we have talked to, can never hope to reach anything but a small proportion of the audience our mutilated show can reach via ABC.

  Our lawyers play games – their lawyers play games. After viewing all the shows we begin sort of negotiations. This involves a worried lady lawyer for ABC asking us if we would ever consider the possibility of re-editing. Yes, we say, despite the obvious harm the 90-minute format and the commercial breaks will do, we would consider re-editing. Their ears prick up. Our re-editing would be based entirely on artistic and comedic criteria. If in the course of our cutting some of their censored words were lost, then fair enough.

  ‘Are there any cuts which we propose,’ she says, ‘that you would agree with?’ ‘No,’ we say, ‘It’s easier for us to tell you cuts on which we will never negotiate and you can work backwards from there.’We single eight points out of the first twelve on which we are immovable.

  Much to-ing and fro-ing. The lady and the zombie reappear. Yes … there could be some negotiation, but first can we tell them the points in the two other shows which we would be prepared to talk over. Here Osterberg starts to play the impatience game. And quite rightly. He insists, on behalf of his clients, of course, that ABC must first agree to restore all the eight cuts which we regard as non-negotiable. And here they baulk, and the lady lawyer looks more and more desperate, and the zombie walks out and leaves her to us, just as Shanks has earlier ditched him.

  Osterberg orders us to put our coats on and we make our way across the heavy, soft carpet, past the clean, neat white desks, with their clean, neat white telephones, towards the elevators. The lady lawyer implores us to keep talking.
‘I’ve been asked to settle this,’ she pleads, her eyes moistening with what I would say was genuine fear – whether of us or of her superiors I don’t know. Terry G and I smile sheepishly and the elevator doors close.

  Over to the Stage Deli for lunch to restore our sense of proportion. Thank goodness we have each other to compare notes with. I like TG because he is very sane, very realistic, entirely down-to-earth. A couple of waitresses ask us for autographs. They’d loved the Holy Grail.

  Back to the lawyers later. A gruelling and concentrated working-over of our testimony for two hours, followed by further rehearsals and a taste of cross-questioning.

  It was decided that Nancy L should be our first witness in court, followed by myself- through whom Osterberg would bring out all the salient points of our testimony – followed by Terry G, who would weigh in with lavish doses of enthusiasm, conviction and generally play the bruised artist.

  Ray, Bob Osterberg’s junior, gave me some sample cross-questioning. Although I knew full well it was just a rehearsal, I couldn’t help getting thoroughly riled by his techniques of incredulousness, heavy sarcasm and downright mocking misrepresentation. All – he assured me afterwards – perfectly permissible legal techniques for breaking down witnesses. All I can say is, they worked. I left the office around 11.00 feeling tired, depressed and angry. Totally evaporated was my clear-eyed crusading enthusiasm of yesterday. I realised now that it was to be a sordid struggle played on their terms, not ours.

  Friday, December 19th, New York

  Woke about 6.00 this morning. Felt well rested and, after a pee, turned over to go to sleep again when it hit me – with a sudden heart-thumping, palm-sweating realisation. In three and a half hours I would be reliving the horrors of the evening before – only this time in court and for real. Across the suite, in the other bedroom, TG had woken at about the same time.

  I lay there and tried to accept the extraordinary day ahead philosophically. There was no alternative – we were doing the only right thing. We weren’t having to lie or defend a dishonourable course of action. We just had to remember the purity of our initial indignation and it would all turn out fine – and anyway, by this evening we’d be on a plane back to London.

  And yet my mind kept racing over possible fresh arguments, trying to turn and hone fine new phrases – only to suddenly discover weaknesses in my recollection. Surely lawyers didn’t go through this every morning before an important case – they’d go mad.

  As I was shaving – my case having been finally delivered to me by TWA in the early hours of Thursday morning – TG appeared, with a towel wrapped round him. He paced the room restlessly, looking quite idiotic in his towel and saying, ‘I’ve got it … the real point is …’Then his eyes would take on a Martin Luther King-like intensity and I would hear phrases like, ‘If just one. Just show me one person whose opinion of Python has suffered as a result of ABC … just one … and that is enough for me.’This was Gilliam’s new line. He seemed on good form, but he and I nevertheless took a good shot of Bourbon before leaving the suite.

  I try hard to keep a hold on reality, but it’s difficult as TG and I and Nancy, with our entourage of lawyers, mount the steps of the vast twenty-storey tower of the US Federal Court House in Foley Square.

  At first glance the courtroom was softer, warmer and far less intimidating than I expected. As plaintiffs in the case, we were allowed to sit with our lawyers at a vast and solid table in the front of the court, with the judge’s box raised about four or five feet above us, and between him and us the enclosure for the clerks of the court and the court recorders. On our left the jury box, empty of course. Behind the jury box a line of tall windows brightened the court. Immediately behind us the ABC lawyers’ table and then, at the back, about a dozen rows of wooden benches for spectators.

  The hearing began with the entry of the judge behind a clerk of the court, who was not the old and wrinkled be-robed gent I had expected, but a young, casually-dressed, Brooklyn-accented, probably Jewish, 20-25-year-old girl. She looked like the archetypal Python fan, and it’s some indication of how surprisingly and pleasantly informal it all was, that I very nearly corpsed when she stood and made some odd opening ritual about ‘Hear ye … Hear ye … Yeah verily …’ and other strange nonsense. I was reminded perversely of The Exorcist, in which another perfectly ordinary all-American girl is made to say strange things and speak with strange voices.

  The judge, Morris Lasker, was not robed either. I wondered whether or not he had seen the Python show which went out in New York on PBS last night, which contained a sketch about a judges’ beauty contest!

  Nancy testified first – speaking softly and looking composed, but endearingly vulnerable. The judge was correspondingly gentle with her. He was a honey-voiced, sensible, straightforward sort of fellow, anxious it seemed to avoid long legal discussions. As he said, he had read and studied the legal side of the case – today he wanted to hear witnesses. After Nancy, there was a short break for no apparent reason, then I gave testimony.

  It was quite comfortable in the witness box – there was a chair, which I hadn’t expected, and I was on the same level as the judge, which helped to put me at ease. As with Nancy, he was kindly throughout my evidence and cross-examination, repeatedly overruling ABC lawyer Clarence Fried’s objections. I was not grilled particularly hard by Mr Fried. He had a face like an old, wrinkled prune, and kept pursing his lips in a sort of twitch. He wasn’t anywhere near as aggressive or sardonic or incredulous as I had anticipated from the cross-questioning rehearsal last night.

  The most difficult bit was having to describe sketches to the court which had been cut and make them sound funny.

  One of the ABC-mutilated sketches which I had to describe to the court actually involved a fictional courtroom, in which an army deserter is being tried before a judge who is constantly interrupting with highly detailed queries. At one point the judge is particularly persistent about a pair of’special’ gaiters worn by the deserter.

  What made the gaiters ‘special’ asks the judge?

  ‘They were given him as a token of thanks by the regiment,’ replies the prosecutor.

  The judge asks why.

  ‘Because, m’lud, he made them happy. In little ways.’

  ‘In which little ways did he make them happy?’ persists the judge.

  At this point a bizarre situation became truly surreal as the prosecutor in the real court interrupted me and addressed the judge, in the real court. The following exchange is from the official transcripts:

  ‘Mr Fried:Your honor, this is very amusing and interesting, but I think it is off the track.

  ‘The Court [Judge Lasker]: Mr Palin is trying to tell me what the original was like so he can tell me what the effect of the excision will be. Overruled. Go ahead. I am not sitting here just because I am amused, although I am amused.’

  Terry Gilliam testified after me. From where I was he sounded very straight, honest and direct. A real all-American boy.

  Then, despite attempts from ABC’s lawyer to put it off, the really damning evidence was produced. A colour TV was wheeled in and the judge, and as many as could squeeze in around him, took their places in the jury box to watch two tapes. The first was Show 3 of the fourth series of Monty Python – as it was shown on the BBC. A good show, with the ‘Court Martial’, ‘Gorn’ and ‘RAF Banter’ sketches in it. It went down well. The court recorder chuckled a great deal, as did the judge and the people operating the TV recorder. Definitely a success. Then was shown the ABC version of the same show.

  The ABC version contained long gaps of blank screen where the commercials would go. Three such major breaks in the course of half an hour. The effect on the audience was obvious. It was the end of a very good morning for us.

  After lunch Fried began to call his witnesses. A Mr Burns of ABC’s Contracts Department spoke laboriously and with infinite, finely tuned dullness about the possible loss of money caused if the show was cancelled.

&nbs
p; Shanks was next. He turned on a bravura display of ingratiating smugness. Oh, he’d been a writer in his time, he grinned. He knew the problems … god-dammit, he wouldn’t like to lose a line of his own material … but … (Could this be the same man who was quite prepared to authorise the excision of 22 minutes out of 90 minutes of Python material? Talk of not wanting to lose a line – we were losing one line in every four!)

  Fried bored the pants off everyone with heavy-jowled witnesses from Time-Life who all looked as if they were concealing mass-murders. But a jarring note was struck at the end of the day when a lady at ABC testified that Ina Lee Meibach had rung her on December 10th and had told her that we were not only going to sue ABC, but we were going to drag their names through the mud and squeeze every last ounce of publicity from their predicament. For the first time in the entire proceedings we suddenly felt bad. We were found to be using distasteful, though doubtless common, tactics, and I think it reflects a serious weakness on Ina’s part. She is sometimes too tough – she takes firmness to the point of vindictiveness.

  At 5.00, as it darkened out in Foley Square, the judge finally withdrew. He re-appeared a half-hour or so later and delivered an impressively fluent summing-up which began by raising our hopes at the plaintiffs’ table.

  He found that ABC’s cuts were very major and destroyed an important element of Python’s appeal. He found our material was irreparably damaged. My heart leapt. ‘But,’ he went on to say that he could not grant the injunction for two reasons. One was that the BBC owned the copyright of the tapes sold to ABC, so the BBC should really have been in court too. He was disturbed by the delay in our proceeding against ABC, and had to take into account the amount of damage to ABC by our proceeding against them less than one week from the transmission date. So … ABC were off the hook. We’d tilted at windmills and lost.

  ‘But …’ Lasker, with a fine sense of timing, had one more twist for us … because of the nature of the damage to us, he would look very favourably on any disclaimer the Pythons would like to put in front of the show when it went out on December 26th. There he finished – and our hopes were raised again. A disclaimer could be as strong and effective as a total ban on the show. Everyone would see us blame ABC openly.