Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  An incident at Shepperton. I’m being made-up when I hear raised voices in the corridor outside. One of the extras, a short, stocky, barrel-chested man with a nose spread all over his face, is shouting loudly and angrily at Maggie Gilliam. But the shouting is of a particularly vicious, abusive and violent kind. He sounds more than just angry, he sounds dangerous. I intervened and he turns on me. I could see his eyes blazing – he shouted at me to keep out of it. Who did I think I was? Sir fucking Galahad? (Wrong film, but nearly …)

  He was shaking with a barely repressed threat of physical violence, so I found Peter, the second assistant director, and told him to get the man out. He’d reduced Maggie to tears (not an easy task) and I said that I would refuse to go on the set with him. Peter went upstairs and later the extra left.

  It turned out that he was no ordinary extra, but a mate of Peter’s who had been Frank Sinatra’s bodyguard and was no more or less than an East End villain. It’s terrifying the feeling of violence which one man can give off and all because he thought Maggie might clip his moustache! The incident left everyone involved rather shaky.

  Work late again. I’m in the coracle at half past six. Then goodbye to Shepperton – this tatty, crumbling world which I’ve grown rather fond of. I’m pulled across the lake for the last time – across the same waters Huston used in The African Queen, and the same waters George Sanders must have got to know in Sanders of the River. (Did they have to keep stopping for planes landing at London Airport in those days?)

  Tomorrow Wales.

  Tuesday, September 7th, Pembroke

  Bright and sunny as we film in the castle. Harry H and I have two or three scenes together.

  Max Wall arrives tonight. We all eat together. Harry H expresses his admiration for Laurence Olivier – Max his for Enoch Powell.

  Wednesday, September 8th, Old King’s Arms Hotel, Pembroke

  Work until twelve – chasing turnips round the keep – then I’m finished for a while as they start to shoot the joust.

  Later in the afternoon a long, rambling chat with Max. I warm to him and the strange Joan Lee, daughter of Stan Lee of Marvel Comics fame, who drapes herself around him. Max listens courteously, talks effortlessly humorously and intelligently – but he wanders occasionally into obscene asides, or stops and marvels at a word he’s said, or suddenly laughs. He’s such an original – conversations with him are like setting out on a voyage without a map. I think he sat all afternoon in the bar with his Guinness and Joan.

  Thursday, September 9th, Pembroke

  Breakfast with Dave Prowse. His enormous shoulders look as though he has full armour on under his shirt. He’s back to London after this to go back to his lucrative body-building salons at the Dorchester, etc. A nice, amiable, soft, but deep-spoken giant. A man who used to be almost a cripple – he grew so fast – but overcame it spectacularly to become one of the leading body-builders/muscle-toners, etc. He took two stone off Edward Heath and says he gets a lot of politicians at his gym. Dave is to be the figurehead of an £800,000 campaign to teach kids the Green Cross Code [and later became Darth Vader in Star Wars].

  Write p.c.s in the room. Terry Hughes phones with a lovely, heart-lifting piece of news. Iain Cuthbertson wants to play the Scottish doctor in ‘Murder at Moorstones’. This is marvellous. It was a complete stab in the dark – all I wanted was an Iain C type, and never expected that an actor with a TV series of his own [Sutherland’s Law, 1973-76] would be at all interested in this small and rather silly role. But he’s read the script, loves it, and is very pleased that the piece is to be staffed by actors rather than just comics.

  No chance of Simon Callow for RSM in ‘Andes’ – he wanted to, but is totally committed to Joint Stock Theatre Co. But Terry, now in his second week as Head of Variety at the Beeb, is confident of Isabel Dean as the mother in ‘Moorstones’ (I don’t know her, but everyone says she’s great), Frank Middlemass as the father, and Bob Hoskins for the RSM in ‘Andes’.

  After lunch up to the castle. The fierce cold wind is lessening, but everyone looks huddled and besieged. The tents won’t stay up. The horses are more frightened than ever. The peat that’s been spread around the lists is blowing in people’s eyes. The good extras of Pembroke, on their pathetic £5 a day, are working hard and remarkably cheerfully. But I hear that their lunch was actually cut down today, presumably to save money, which is scandalous and, as Elaine1 pointed out, unpleasantly ironic in a film which had more than a bit to say about the oppression of the peasants!

  There is much discontent amongst the crew – meetings in small groups are constantly being held – and it centres over daily food allowances, which most of the crew feel at £3.50 are mean and unrealistic. Sandy, who looks hunted as anybody approaches, but at least is always available, has made a £4 offer. This has been refused.

  I don’t know where they go from here, but as long as people know that Sandy is getting 15% of the film, and as long as the rushes continue to be as encouraging as they are, the producers are in a losing position. If the film looked bad, and Sandy was manifestly broke, it could be different – but the hard-worked crew are not in a mood to be charitable.

  Friday, September 10th, Pembroke

  Waiting again. Breakfast with Max at half past nine. Read The Guardian, which has only been printed in London once this week. Realise how poor a substitute is the dry, in content, style and format, old Times. Can’t bring myself to buy the Telegraph instead – with its right-wing scare stories – especially as it’s a lot better in amount of news, presentation and general interest than The Times and I might begin to like it.

  Rushes of the knights playing hide and seek are very funny. Terry, as usual now, seems more inclined to bemoan than praise what’s going on. The processes of dealing with the people involved in keeping the film going, with all their different egos and personal ambitions, Terry cannot deal with; people get him down daily

  But all this doesn’t matter too much, because Terry’s greatest contribution – his visual sense – is working well. He still niggles a little at the praise that Simon and Terry B get for shots – which praise, he says, is as much for Hazel’s costumes, Maggie’s make-up, Milly’s designs and hell! says Terry, I choose the shot.

  Saturday, September 11th, Pembroke

  More familiar British weather is returning. Though it dawned blue and cloudless, stormy wind and rain spread throughout the day, buffeting the castle yet again. Tents blew down, the crowd huddled into any available Norman-arched doorway in the castle walls between shots. With cameras wrapped in polythene bags and in between vicious cold squalls of rain that turned umbrellas inside out, the joust scene gradually progressed.

  It was 7.30 in the evening when Bill Weston’s last and most spectacular stunt ended the miserable day and ended our filming in Pembrokeshire. He was pulled backwards off his horse by Derek Bottell – the ‘jerk-off’ specialist!

  The crowd, who had stoically defied the weather – and were really in a state of high excitement which had carried them through it all – swarmed off through the Barbican gateway and across the road to the pub. Here Terry Gilliam bought them drinks for two hours – and later that evening he appeared at the Old King’s Arms, shaven for the first time in a week, and rosy-cheeked, his eyes tired, but glazed, in a very happy, silly mood.

  In the bar until late. I think Max has finally tired of the attentions of his chief acolyte – he muttered something uncharacteristically uncharitable about her being the sort of person who might turn him homosexual!

  Sunday, September 12th, Chepstow

  Wake at nine, surprisingly clear-headed. It’s a grey day. Winter’s in the air suddenly. Buy papers, breakfast, pay fond farewells to the Old King’s Arms, Pembroke. A nice town, a marvellous hotel. Up at the castle the last windswept remains of the pavilion and lists are being packed.

  Go for a three-hour walk by the sea, along Stackpole Quay to Freshwater Bay East Coast Path. A few hours of solitariness, a rather vital release from the gregario
usness of filming. A quick look at Castle Carew – a splendid Gothic ruin, full of different architectural styles, deserted great halls and ivy-covered walls, with crows nesting.

  Depressing arrival at the Two Rivers Hotel, Chepstow. It almost certainly had to be an anti-climax after the Old King’s Arms, but I did not expect the belligerent sullenness of the receptionist, nor the total tackiness of all the decoration. A ‘Fresh-Aire’ machine in the corridor near my room gurgles dyspeptically and discharges a foul and sickly sweet-smelling gas up the passage.

  The evening cheers up with the arrival of Neil I. At the Two Fingers Hotel (as we’ve decided to re-christen it), we end up round a table in the restaurant with Max, Joan Lee, Johnny Cole the props man and wife, making up limericks.

  Thursday, September 16th, Chepstow Castle

  A moment of quite stimulating liberation when I am required to drop my trousers in a shot and reveal my un-knickered bum to all and sundry. As we’re outside the main gates to the castle, quite a little crowd has gathered to watch the filming – about fifty or sixty in addition to the fifty extras in the scene.

  Realise I feel less embarrassed than they do, and really quite enjoy the experience of flashing a naughty part of the body in a public place – and getting paid, rather than arrested for it. Can see the exhilaration of’streaking’ – a sort of heady feeling of freedom comes over me as I point my bum for the third time at a twin-set and pearl-bedecked lady standing not ten yards away!

  Saturday, September 18th, Chepstow Castle

  Yesterday was the last day of principal photography – contracts for most of the crew ended at 5.30 on Friday evening. But everyone is aware of how incomplete the film is – it’s more than days, it’s at least two weeks away from completion. So today work goes on, but without Terry Bedford, Jenny, Simon, Mick the Loader and other familiar faces.

  I miss them, though I know Terry G and Julian don’t. They’ve been longing for this day. Longing to be rid of ‘The Circus’ as they call them.

  Roger Pratt1 is still there – doughty, reliable, straight and reassuring (not a ‘Circus’ man, I’m told). Julian and Terry G do most everything else, leaping around with the unbounded delight of those from whom a great weight has been lifted.

  Terry operates like he so much wanted to do. Julian can organise in his direct and unsophisticated way, which never worked with a full crew.

  I feel at last drained and physically exhausted. I want to go home. Just for a couple of days, that’s all I need. Away from dirt, discomfort, cameras and castles. I want to stop being stared at for a day or two.

  I begin to harbour murderous thoughts towards the vacuous tourists who cling to the unit like leeches, ordering their spotty, whiny little kids to stand beside me and have their photo taken. ‘Could you sign these for two little girls who are friends of the lady who works Thursdays only in the shop next to the one I work in?’ ‘When are you doing more Pythons?’ ‘What is this?’ ‘Who are you?’ It’s all becoming a big nightmare from which I want to wake up and scream ‘Fuck off!’ from the battlements of Chepstow Castle.

  At a quarter to six I run up the stairs as Gilliam films me, for the last time. It’s over. Throw my potato the length of the Outer Bailey – and by 6.30 I’m heading for London in my Mini, with a huge and generous sunset behind me – a final farewell from Wales, for which, despite today, I shall only have the happiest of memories.

  Home around 8.30 (praise the M4). Willie, naked, runs down the stairs to open the door for me. Cuddles all round. Even Rachel hasn’t gone to sleep and she welcomes me with a soft, broad grin which warms me no end.

  Tuesday, September 21st

  All day at the BBC working on pre-production for Ripping Yarns.

  Casting continues to provide surprises. Denholm Elliott has agreed to play Gregory in ‘Andes’. Terry H keeps telling me not to underestimate the scripts when I show stunned incredulity at the involvement of an actor of D Elliott’s legendarity

  Wednesday, September 22nd

  Pouring rain (still rare enough to be remarkable) as I drive out to Shepperton, after a BBC wig and costume fitting, to see the final Welsh rushes and an assembly of the film so far.

  The opening castle stuff works surprisingly badly – even Max doesn’t come across as positively as he should – and the chiaroscuro lighting effects, and some quite wretched minor performances, make the whole thing irritatingly difficult to follow. Moment of depression – it’s misfired. But it perks up and lightens and brightens and, by the end (when the editor has skilfully put on some wedding music), the film, despite its ‘Scene Missing’ caption cards and its lack of effects, has grabbed people enough to elicit spontaneous applause. John G and Sandy are very happy. Happier than I ever saw producers on the Grail.

  I’m happy too. Deep down, and confiding this only to the diary, I’m pretty pleased with myself— like I never was on Grail. There are only a few moments where I let my performance slip. I was trying hard on Jabberwocky to make up for what I felt were unrelaxed performances on the Grail. God, it’s been a long time since I’ve really enjoyed my performance.

  Friday, September 24th, Southwold

  Up to Southwold – left London in pouring rain.

  Saw Father in hospital. Sitting hunched, huddled and silent with three others. He’s draped in a cellophane sheet under his dressing gown like a chicken in a supermarket. He seems pleased to see me and gets a few words out in the 45 minutes we’re there – something about having a picture of myself (walking) in my old school tie. The sooner he gets out of Southwold and to Blythburgh, where he will be made to walk and work a lot more, the better.

  At present he’s not steady enough to be at home – so sits in this strange silent world, of grunts and occasional indecipherable ramblings from the other patients – one of whom, Percy, tries to push himself out of his chair and, as he does so, pees all over the floor. Silence. No nurses rushing to him, he cheerfully sits down again.

  Monday, September 27th

  This morning back at familiar Shepperton. A short scene with Harry H (full of doubts again, but I’ve grown very fond of this strange, self-critical, introspective extrovert). Then a strange and uncomfortable series of shots of me being flung around on the end of Bernard Bresslaw’s legs and picked up and hurled out of the Queen’s Haemorrhoids – a harness of quite unbelievable awkwardness for this shot – and finally into the rain-soaked woods in the back lot for a scene of wood-gathering, when I’m surprised by Terry Gilliam (playing Patsy from the Holy Grail again). Much crouching and being savagely attacked.

  Terry is very sick today and keeps having to retreat to the bushes to throw up. But he battles bravely on. How he will shape up to the week, I don’t know. It’s going to be hard and they’re already behind. I must finish Sunday – I start Ripping Yarns on Monday – but it’ll be a hell of a push.

  Tuesday, September 28th

  No Jabberwocking for me today, but my last day off, apart from Sundays, until late October. Letters, visit Anne Henshaw. She has her head down in the labyrinthine affairs of Python as usual. She reports that the sooner we start writing the Python film the better for some in the group – she says Graham especially seems to be at a loose end and drinking more, with several of his projects, TV series and his film of Bernard McKenna’s script, having collapsed.

  Shopping in the King’s Road – have to give brief run-down on Python plans in almost every shop – the assistants all seem to recognise me and want to talk.

  To BBC to meet Don Henderson – T Hughes’ selection for the RSM in ‘Across the Andes’. I’m in trepidation for this is a major role and I don’t even know the guy.

  Fears allayed – he looks good – with a rather fierce, red face and a good sense of humour. He’s easy company and seems to understand the role well. Still no Dora – as Michèle Dotrice turned down the role (the first artist to turn down a Ripping Yarns role this time around!).

  Out to dinner in the evening with Robin S-H and Barbara.1 By a strange st
roke of coincidence a Peruvian is present. I tell him about ‘Across the Andes by Frog’ – and to my amazement he tells me that the biggest frogs in the world live in Lake Titicaca, Peru, and that the frog is a common motif in old Peruvian carvings!

  Thursday, September 30th

  At Shepperton – on waste ground behind the Oliver set – our little unit struggles through the day. Terry G is even more terrier-like than usual – leaping around with the camera, building sets and taking time off only to curse some particular piece of inefficiency.

  I just grin and bear it. Much walking with banner and pack after a morning spent under the belly of a horse being prodded by bandits.

  Away on H Stage they are on the first day of shooting Julia.1 There are 300 extras in beautiful ‘20s costumes and a huge ocean liner set to go with it. Meanwhile, on the rubbish tip, Jabberwocky works on!

  Monday, October 4th

  Slept well, and was at Pinewood for the first day of’Across the Andes’ shoot, feeling quite fresh. In the village our cameraman Peter Hall was directing a lighting rig the size and scale of which made Jabberwocky look like home movies, a track was being laid, flags being nailed up, statues erected. A feature film atmosphere of bustle and preparation.

  Terry H and I stood in the square – me in my Snetterton shorts and helmet – and surveyed it. Terry must have read my thoughts. ‘D’you ever feel responsible for all this?’ he asked with a half-smile.

  Denholm seemed to relish his part as the seedy Vice-Consul. An actor of enormous experience – he was one of my childhood heroes in The Cruel Sea – and greatly respected and in constant demand. But here he was doing his first part after three months off in Spain, and he’d chosen to do a Ripping Yarn because he loved the script and because, as he explained in his effortlessly classic English upper-class accent, it was nice to do some comedy. He’d been offered some life of Marx thing, he told me with an unhappy frown, and was soon off to do ‘some bloody Brecht’ for the BBC, which didn’t seem to make him much happier either.2