This morning’s newspapers, by coincidence, show that EMI’s half-yearly profits have slumped and yesterday £19 million were wiped off the value of their shares.
Just before lunch my ragged morning is brightened by a phone call from Terry Hughes, who informs me, joyfully, that Ripping Yarns has not been forgotten. It’s won the Press Guild Critics’ Award for Best Comedy Series of the Year. This boost, coming together with the news of the dates of repeats and with the extension of writing caused by the postponement of Python, revives the Yarns, which a week ago I felt were in danger of foundering under my lack of enthusiasm. Now, with such a confirmation of appreciation, shall begin an assault on them with renewed spirit.
Monday, March 6th
In to work-room by 7.20. After breakfast JC rings with comments on the rewritten Brian ending. Generally he finds it an acceptable and much improved replacement, but there are one or two points – like the stammering Gaoler – which he has always disliked, and when he turns the full beam of his intellectual logical judgement upon what strikes us as spontaneously funny, it does wither the material. I predict a stubborn confrontation on that scene. But all else constructive.
I now favour a clear decision to avoid the summer and begin Brian in autumn, but there are difficulties – costumes are hired, sets in Tunisia are apparently not available in the autumn, etc, etc. Meanwhile, wigs are measured, scripts are rewritten and costumes continue being sewn.
Wednesday, March 8th
Gilliam rings for half an hour, proposing a new course of action on the movie – i.e. to cut our budget to a reasonable size by abandoning plans to film in Tunisia, using Britain and finding unusual locations and using a stylised design treatment. The talk turns to castles and salt mines in Wales. ‘Jesus of Shepperton’, I call this plan.
Thursday, March 9th
Nancy rings in the evening. Evidently it’s the first day of spring in New York and she’s in very high spirits. Once again she puts a little pressure on to get me to do Saturday Night Live. Once again I resist, but then Helen shouts from the kitchen that we need the money. On reflection I certainly could do with a break. Promise to ring Nancy after next week’s movie decisions.
The Delfont story is out. A restrained piece in the Evening Standard which could help us.
Friday, March 10th
Eric rings – normal waking hours for him, late for me – at half-past eleven. Mainly to let me know how well Rutles is going to do in the States. He urges me to get over there and, via Saturday Night Live, try and emulate this success. ‘Stop piddling around with the BBC, Mike … get over there … it’s the next step,’ and this sort of talk.
The trouble is that I know that the American ‘success’, in our line of work almost certainly involves a constant compromise with quality and with personal, individual control. If we accept their terms from the start, we will never produce something which, like Python, was truly our own.
Still, I must admit Eric plays the American game well. He has flair, intelligence, skill and style – and is shamelessly good at using them. But I fear he is in danger of becoming the victim of his own image – of believing that the shimmering reflection is the reality.
Sunday, March 12th
In the evening drinks with our next-door neighbours, who are leaving to work in Brunei for ten years. He’s a lawyer, middle-aged and, having missed great attainment, is left with something of a chip on the shoulder – elegantly carried, though. I think Brunei will suit him. He says it is almost fanatically Anglophile – which will make a change from Kentish Town.
Monday, March 13th
At 9.30 Python, less Graham, assembles to contemplate the wreckage of the EMI deal. Surprisingly little vindictive comment or post-mortem gloom – though we all feel that EMI should be pressed as hard as is legally possible to provide some recompense for pulling out of a deal after hands were shaken and firm commitments given verbally and literally.
Meanwhile all potential money sources are to be tapped – and Eric suggests that he and J Goldstone go to New York together and try to rifle the pockets of heavily solvent record companies. Anne is to investigate the legal and commercial likelihood of raising the money by shares from the public (fans, etc). Meanwhile Python (Monty) Pictures is left with a near £70,000 bill to pay for work on Brian so far. It looks as though all our income through Python will have to stay there for at least six months. Times look hard again.
Tuesday, March 14th
Nancy had rung several times to try and force me into a decision on Saturday Night Live. Finally I agreed to host the April 8th show. Nancy sounded overjoyed.
At half past ten drove round to Eric’s to watch a couple of Saturday Night tapes and talk to him about his experiences of the show. He didn’t make a great deal of sense.’They love Python, be yourself. Enjoy being King of New York for a week.’
Wednesday, March 13th
Lay in bed around eight and decided that if this was to be a fragmented ‘sorting-out’ week, I should try and clear the decks of tasks and duties which lie in the back of my mind – such as visiting Shepperton.
The place is overflowing with work. Portakabins are being hired to accommodate everyone – it looks like a Yukon town at the height of the gold rush. Odd Job and Pink Panther are shooting. Alien, needing three stages, is building. Thief of Baghdad is in pre-production too.
Chat to Ford for a while, then walk over to the canteen. It causes me great personal distress that in my year on the board of directors I’ve been unable to make any discernible improvement in the catering at the studio. It sounds a small point, but the service and the surroundings are appalling by any standards, and this can only reflect badly on Shepperton’s reputation. I have pushed and pushed for some improvements, but, although everybody agrees the situation is grim, nothing seems to get done.
The catering manager reigns supreme, reaping the benefits of this Shepperton boom which he did nothing to create. When I finally reached the dining room I found I had walked into a hornet’s nest. I was greeted with shouts, not altogether of a friendly nature, from a long table consisting of Graham Chapman, David Jason, Bernard McKenna, Diana Quick and a very doleful looking man who was introduced to me as the Odd Job publicity man. They had been waiting for half an hour for their food to arrive, and had to be back in the studio, on the floor, in another 20 minutes. I felt rather like Lee J Cobb confronting the mob in On the Waterfront. They were right and all I represented was the inadequate Shepperton organisation.
Walked back with Graham C, who was fed and placated by that time. He looks tired, but that’s to be expected. He’s full of optimism about the rushes and, I gather from talking to people on the set, is doing well in his first sober acting role – probably in fifteen years.
As I got home, Terry J rang. I’d still not recovered from trouble-shooting at Shepperton and had had nothing to eat all day, so was not at my best when Terry asked if we could talk about acting in the three Ripping Yarns which we are about to write. Arranged to meet him for lunch tomorrow.
Then all the world and his dog either rang or turned up. Terry Gilliam and I had a long chat. I feel that he must get on with his next movie, because I think he’s the only person I know who could make a better movie than Close Encounters.
Thursday, March 16th
Must spend some time this week re-appraising the financial situation. The hopes raised and dashed by EMI leave me with a financial squeeze on. Might have to turn to commercials. The trouble is I have to spend another £10,000 on Redwood’s new mixer very soon and £10,000 at least on our second house and the Python cash has stopped coming in.
To Pizza Express in Hampstead, where almost two years ago Terry and I were going through the difficult motions of rethinking our working relationship. The problem had to be faced again today, but was settled instantly and amicably. Since yesterday evening I had had enough time to decide that I must, as before, follow my instincts – and I told Terry, accordingly, that I felt it better not to change the
structure of the Yarns at this stage. TJ, I think, was sad in one way, but much more relieved in another – and he says he can now plan to think of other projects whilst I’m away filming.
Friday, March 17th
In the evening we go to dinner with Anne Henshaw.1 Meet there Basil Bunting, a 78-year-old with twinkling, kindly eyes and a well-worn beard.
He’s evidently a poet and writer, in London for the publication of a new collection by Oxford University Press.
In the Second World War he was in military intelligence and travelled a lot – in Persia, North Africa and the Russian borders. Most of his work consisted of’getting people drunk’. He used to give scotch whisky to Russians, whilst he himself drank scotch-looking cold tea. A marvellous man, with such richness of experience.
Some things he wouldn’t tell me, claiming they were still classified under the Official Secrets Act, but he was closely involved in diplomatic activity at the end of the Second War, when he wrote very strong recommendations to President Truman – ‘not a very intelligent man … but …’ – concerning the Russian threat to the West – in purely military terms. He thinks that much of his information formed the basis of Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in Fulton, Missouri – and he says that’s the only period of his life when he felt his actions could in any way have affected the course of world events. He reckons that the war could have been over three or four weeks earlier if the Allies hadn’t agreed to stop their advance in order to let the Russians take Berlin.
Fascinating.
Sunday, March 26th,
Anne rings on Easter morning, no less – with a problem I could well do without. Eric is back, full of Rutles success in the US. He’s probably going to edit All You Need is Cash film into a 70-minute version for the cinema, and is strongly urging us to put his 40-minute compilation of the Python Bavaria material out, as a second feature. It would keep Python’s name in the American eye whilst we are refinancing Brian and would, given the success of Rutles, be a sure money-earner.
Apparently the two Terrys and John will hardly consider the idea at all.
Monday, March 27th
Watch the tape of the Rutles film, which went out earlier in the evening. A smoothly made piece. Elaborate, ingenious, fun. It’s interesting to compare what two Pythons have done with half a million and three-quarters of a million pounds respectively – Gilliam created Jabberwocky and Eric imitated the Beatles.
Wednesday, March 29th
Ring Neil I and congratulate him on Rutles – his music and performance both eminent. Then I ring Eric and get Tania, who is cheerful, but suggests that Eric is not in an expansive or chatty mood – and it’s his birthday.
Decide to forsake my evening of work at home and go round to cheer him up. Take a couple of bottles of champagne and an old book on cricket (complete with the tantalising chapter – ‘Making a Young Wicket-Keeper’).
We all ended up having a good drink, chat and so on. Eric was rather low earlier, I think because he felt he had tried to do something with the German film and been sat on by the rest of us without even a chance to explain it at a meeting. But I didn’t really need to tell him how jealous the Pythons are of each other’s material. How ruthlessly and subjectively biased they are against anything which any individual in the group tries to do – and that’s probably at the root of their/our unwillingness to throw 40 minutes of Python in with the Rutles. I personally think Eric was a little slow not to anticipate this reaction, but then he’s not really living in the real world at the moment.
Phone calls from the States pour in for him.
Thursday, March 30th
The next two days I must pack in nine hundred and one things before leaving for the US Saturday morning. Nancy has booked me on Concorde – so I will arrive in NYC two hours earlier than I left London. I don’t really approve – but it’s got to be worth the experience. Once.
Drive down through sunny London to collect our Broadcasting Press Guild Award. The new Press Centre in Shoe Lane is depressingly smart – and several of the journalists there complain about this shiny-smooth monster which has replaced the smoky dens where journalists used to meet.
A rather small and touchingly simple ceremony. Present are Tom Stoppard and Peter Barkworth – collecting awards for Professional Foul.
Talked to Peter Barkworth. He remembered my sister Angela from the days they worked together in Sheffield.1 ‘Trim girl …’ He’s also a diarist and writes for an hour every morning. Of Professional Foul, in which he was first-rate, he said ‘I was so depressed – I woke up one morning and said “It’s not me … I can’t do it … I’ll never be a Stoppard actor”.’ He talks in a clipped, but unselfconsciously theatrical style. Like Noel Coward without the ‘my dears’. A very likeable man.
Derek Jacobi was there to collect an award for I Claudius. He left early for Henry IV rehearsals. ‘I must dash off and be deposed,’ quipped he.
Saturday, April 1st, New York
Concorde check-in smooth, no waiting, your very own special escalator and colour scheme, whilst the boarding room – normally that featureless little box where passengers gather and gaze silently past each other, very often in a state of delay – is, for Concorde, a well-equipped lounge, with phones. Glasses of champagne have to be warded off, so liberal are they with the freebies on this hugely expensive flight. (Concorde return to NYC – £920. Freddie Laker Skytrain return to NYC – around £90.)
Word comes through that Concorde will leave late as the automatically extending jetty has stuck, four feet from the aeroplane. They apologise for the delay, but when we do board we will board up a mobile ramp, which will be drawn up to the catering hatch entrance.
It transpires that Concorde is too high for the ramp, and the only way to lower it is to fill the nose – the famous Concorde droop-snout – with as many British Airways employees as possible. This wonderfully manic piece of improvisation still doesn’t quite work, for I’m half-way up the ramp, about to make my inelegant way into this beautiful, pencil-slim plane through the catering door, we are all shooed back – as the plane (by now filled up with many passengers) had sunk below the top of the steps. It was nearly midday when the last of us completed this ignominious boarding. Before take-off the captain, clearly very grumpy, urged us to write to British Airports Authority and complain!
Due to a combination of the free champagne and mean toilet space, several passengers, myself included, are queuing for a pee when the sound barrier is finally breached. Fifty-eight thousand feet and the digital counter hovering at 1.99 – with free Dom Perignon and a five-course meal to look forward to – is as heady and exhilarating a feeling as I’ve experienced.
The American coastline arrives with the last sips of Napoleon brandy, and we are down at Kennedy by 9.50 US time, having left Heathrow just after midday.
I ring Al and Eve and am soon in a cab round to their small, welcoming little flat in Gramercy Park. I think I’m still suffering a post-Concorde high and gabble on unrestrainedly.
Sunday, April 2nd, New York
Nancy and I go over to an ABC TV studio at the Elysée Theater, off Seventh Avenue – within spitting distance of City Center – where I am to make a brief appearance in a show being recorded for one of the several new cable TV outfits springing up. It’s called Home Box Office, and the show is a special featuring comedy teams, or partnerships. They’re showing a Python clip and want me to introduce it.
I suddenly find myself on the bill alongside hosts Rowan and Martin and such great and famous names as Sid Caesar – whose Show of Shows was one of the most influential American comedy programmes of all time. Meeting this rather shy, thin, drawn man who appears not to have aged, I think I probably poleaxed him with my effusiveness.
Rowan and Martin and everyone there seem very honoured to have me around. Dan Rowan – very smooth, on and off the camera – remembered his favourite Python line – the line in the ‘Proust Competition’ about giving the prize to the girl with the biggest tit
s.
Throughout the evening, the staff are overbearingly and unreasonably bossy. I am required to be at the ready, dressed and in the wings half an hour before the recording starts and once the recording does start I am to wait in the wings – not in my dressing room – despite the fact that I am not on for two hours.
The audience assembles, the live band starts to play and suddenly I’m part of an evening of American music hall, exchanging nervous back-stage pleasantries with the likes of The Flying Volantes.
In a makeshift dressing room, Senor Wences, a small, lined, balding little man, who was busy making up his left hand in preparation for his celebrated – and brilliant – ventriloquist act.
I was, apart from The Flying Volantes, easily the youngest person in the show – and I was, after much draughty waiting, finally announced by Dan Rowan, and ran out to spontaneous applause – cued up on the ‘applause’ signs which flashed above the audience.
My little piece went well, but not as surely and confidently as at the run-through. They didn’t have the Python film clip (‘Soft Fruit’) to show, so I was left with some egg on my face after the announcement. All I could think of to do was eat the postcard which I was using as a prop. This at least had the effect of corpsing Rowan and Martin as they walked on later.
As it transpired, the evening belonged to the Ritz Brothers, two sharp old men who I’m afraid I had to admit I’d never heard of, but who evidently were legends in American showbiz for 50 years. Films, theatre … etc … they danced nostalgically and everyone loved them.
So, in the final line-up, as the audience were herded into endless applause, I found myself in the same jeans I’d worn since yesterday morning, shaking hands with these great men of American showbiz as this special drew to a close.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 61