I was taken round, with Nancy and the others, to Charley O’s, where a sumptuous cold buffet had been laid on for all concerned with the show. The producer’s son was a frightful pest. He buzzed around the table constantly making alternately fawning and facetious Pythonic references. ‘I mean, wow – oh, I get to shake the hand of Michael Palin, the Michael Palin …’ And so on and so on and so on. Ed Goodgold, who I was talking with, finally lost patience with the boy. He called him over.
‘Hey,’ says Ed, ‘are you Jewish?’
‘Half,’ returns the gawky acolyte quickly.
‘Well, it’s your worse half.’
Monday, April 3rd, New York
At five over to NBC – in the RCA building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. One of the old-fashioned skyscrapers, soaring sixty or seventy storeys above the skating rink in the Plaza, with the flags billowing all around it.
The décor of the foyer is New Deal Inspirational.’Wisdom and Knowledge Shall be the Stability of Thy Times’ is picked out in bold relief above the doors, whilst inside murals – in oils and what looks like gold stucco – mix airliners with naked maidens.
A bewildering variety of lifts, from which I was eventually spilled out at the seventeenth floor.
Magnificent views – the Empire State Building dominating to the southeast and, to the north-east, the twin gothic spires of St Patrick’s cathedral on Fifth Avenue, guarded by sweeping skyscraper blocks on all sides. A classic New York panorama.
Lorne Michaels was not in his office when I arrived. I got to know the room a little first. It was small and individually furnished – not at all like the usual American executive office, more like a rather trendy Oxford don’s room. Along one wall were framed mementoes of Saturday Night Live – the show Lome created and has guided through three years and eighty-seven shows. Pictures of the cast meeting President Ford, numerous jokily inscribed photos from Chevy Chase,1 letters from the White House, Emmy awards. On the facing wall, two wood-framed cabinets full of video cassettes of the shows labelled according to their host – ‘Steve Martin’, ‘Anthony Perkins’, ‘Lily Tomlin’, ‘Richard Pryor’, ‘Eric Idle’, ‘OJ Simpson’, ‘Kris Kristofferson’, ‘Paul Simon’, ‘Art Garfunkel’ and so on.
Lome ambled in. Small, unremarkably dressed, with a bright, intelligent face and disproportionately large head. An attractive, easy confidence as he shook hands. A lack of calculated effusiveness, but no lack of warmth in the welcome. I knew I was going to get along with him and felt suitably relieved.
I felt like a new boy at school with Nancy Lewis chaperoning me, and the sensation increased as Lome took me around the offices and then down to Studio 8H, the legendary RCA studio where Toscanini recorded. Showing me the studio was a shrewd move, which I appreciated later, for from Thursday lunchtime until one o’clock Sunday morning it was home – the hub, centre and focus of the colossal outpouring of nervous energy that creates Saturday Night Live.
There are about fifteen writers who assemble in Lome’s office, five or six of them women. All, bar one – a venerable, white-haired father-figure1 – look younger than me. Mainly scruffy. A rather earnest, college boy look about them.
The meeting is a curiously stilted affair. Lome presides gently, analyses the ideas that come up and shows encouragement for the good and half-good, and firm but diplomatic discouragement for the bad. But no-one sounds energetic. No ideas are put forward with great conviction. It’s as though this first meeting is part of a formula which has to be gone through – the real ideas will form tomorrow.
Lorne invites me to a party to be thrown at the fashionable disco, Studio 54, by Truman Capote and Andy Warhol.
Outside huge arc lamps are directed at the entrance to the club. A crowd, probably hired by Warhol and Capote along with the lamps, clusters around the entrance and I’m ushered quickly through the ropes and into the club.
There’s a broad passageway in, and cameras are pointing at us as we go down it. ‘Smile,’ somebody says. As we push in through double doors, I catch sight of the black-cloaked figure of T. Capote. In the bright light he looks like a mole or a badger, appearing briefly, immaculately … then gone. Inside, the club is like any other heaving mass of bodies. Strobing lights, helpful darkness for those who want it – strategic pools of bright light for those who want it.
Almost immediately brush up against Mick J and Jerry. Jagger is at his most inelegantly slurry, and warns me against the poofs here. He greets me with congratulations on the film, which I dopily don’t comprehend. He is referring, of course, to the Rutles film. I compliment him on his performance – and he is lost, borne away on the crowd.
The party was ostensibly to watch the 50th Academy Awards Ceremony live from LA and at the same time show off Polaroid’s video-beam technique – by which a TV picture can be projected by means of three light sources onto a flat screen. The lights and cameras on the way in were to demonstrate the new instant film techniques. So we were all being used in a way – either for Capote and Warhol’s ego, or simply Polaroid’s salesmanship.
A glorious mixture of people. On one journey through the crowd I passed Dick Martin and Salvador Dali (not together). The model girl, Brooke Shields, who plays the twelve-year-old whore in Louis Malle’s shortly to open Pretty Baby was sitting beside us.
They bayed at the Academy Awards, especially when Vanessa Redgrave gave her short and rather mis-timed speech about anti-semitism and fascism and they roared with exultation at the three awards for Annie Hall. It was quite exciting in a wasteful way – for in the end the home crowd won. The starched and trim bronzinos of the West Coast, with their showbiz smiles and oozing wealth, were routed by the forces of the East Coast – by the critical, introspective, tasteful Mr Woody Allen. Woody, who was not even at the Hollywood awards, but was playing clarinet in Michael’s Pub in Greenwich Village. As Lome said, ‘Woody always has taste, and not being at the awards demonstrates taste at its highest.’
After the awards everyone headed either to the bar or to dance – ignoring glasses on the dance floor, which were smashed and trodden underfoot. At the bar the epicene bar boys held court. They pulled off their tight black T-shirts and swayed and swished and showed off. It was hard and aggressive and not at all friendly. The place was filling up and there was a growing compulsion to decadence – as if it was expected of the audience here to be outrageous, ego-manic, wild and uncontrolled. I found it horribly depressing – almost a nightmare, and was relieved when we left just before one.
Tuesday, April 4th, New York
Woke, frightened, after about two and a half hours’ solid sleep. Lay there – aware I had been losing sleep at the rate of four hours a night over the last five days and wondering how it would affect the rest of the week.
At five in the afternoon round to NBC, to the well-worn sprawl of offices – like a very liberal arts college, with Professor Michaels presiding. Unlike England, where writing is largely a domestic industry, here in the States they assemble in a suite of offices and start to tap out ideas.
Around ten, Lome and Jean Doumanian – the assistant producer – wander down and across Broadway to eat at Wally’s. Another unpretentious restaurant, which seems to be Italian despite the name. We join a table of Lome’s friends (he seems to have friends everywhere he goes), comprising Paul Simon, Shelley Duvall,1 David Geffen,2 Diana Ross, her escort – a handsome, but taciturn young Nordic chap – and a lady called Diana Von Furstenberg,3who’s just seen and ‘adored’ Pretty Baby. She looks like Cher’s grandmother, but is clearly something of a NY society lady.
The talk turns to the Oscars. Paul and Shelley were in Annie Hall, so are obviously pleased. There is much talk of John Travolta, the newest and most instant Hollywood star on the strength of one movie – Saturday Night Fever. All except Paul Simon are unqualified in their praise of him – or rather of what he represents – instant, assured, powerful glamour. Lome, who talks easily, volubly, and on the whole wisely, reckons Saturday Night Fever is the movie of the �
��70s – the same way as Easy Rider was the movie of the ‘60s. Some truth. Paul’s bemoans the passing of the ‘60s. He regards the ‘70s as dull and derivative – in the ‘60s everything was fresher. I agree with him that issues seemed clearer, sharper then.
Wednesday, April 5th, New York
The phone wakens me at ten past eight. ‘Where’s Eric Idle?’ enquires a girlish voice – and it’s some while before I can assure her that I don’t know. ‘Did I wake you?’ the voice turns on me provocatively. ‘Yes …’ ‘Well, I hope you can go back to sleep, because I never can after I wake up …’ I put the phone down. Aw hell, four hours.
Over to the restaurant somewhat heavily named ‘Sea-Food of the Aegean’, where we are dining with Bob Osterberg and Ray Brodie – our lawyers in the Python versus ABC case. Osterberg is straight, Ray Brodie the gushing enthusiast. Very good to see them and pay back some of our thanks.
Then half an hour of still pictures for continuity on the show and at 3.15 ready for the read-through. This takes place in the Green Room on the ninth floor (this is to become one of the landmarks of the building over the next few days). Bowls of salad, coffee and beers are provided and the room is crammed with twenty or thirty people.
My feelings after the read-through were that I was reading an awful lot of narrator/link man parts and would have preferred to have done more characters.
The writers sensed and appreciated this and went off to rewrite, whilst myself, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray1 – grim-faced and unshaven – and Garrett Morris – the neat, chirpy black member of the cast – began first rehearsal for our Chilites dance routine. Sometimes I find it hard to figure out quite how Lome’s mind works. He loves the Chilites’ song ‘Have You Seen Her’ – a hit of eight years ago – and wants to see it on the show. However, since that time two of the Chilites have been imprisoned and one is dead. Lome still has the lead singer – Eugene Record – and hopes that the rest of us, in Afro wigs, will be able to recreate the Chilites behind him. I’m sceptical, dear diary.
Decline Lome’s invitation to dine with Paul at Wally’s and am just heading east to the Essex House when Laraine1 and a group of the writers ask me to eat with them. Well, I am hungry, and it’s good to take any opportunity to get to know them better, so I find myself up on W91st at Marvin Gardens – huge but cheap plate of turkey salad and a couple of bottles of wine with Laraine, Bill Murray, Al Franken,2 Brian Doyle-Murray3 and others.
In the cab on the way back Al F says how easy people are finding it with me – which I take as a compliment – and fall into bed, tired but grateful, just after one.
Thursday, April 6th, New York
To NBC and Studio 8H, for the first day of’blocking’ the sketches.
I have to do a series of visual promos between four o’clock and five o’clock, which go smoothly and in their small way give the studio crew confidence in me. We work on with blocking, rehearsing our Chilites number, which is fast becoming my bête noire of the week – it’s musically quite complicated.
That night I eat with Lome at Charly O’s. He’s inquisitive, but not prying. We talk about marriages, kids, relationships. His marriage (to one of the present writers) lasted ten years. He thinks kids would have saved it. He’s a Canadian, won his spurs with CBC, trained for the law, but never practised, wrote for the ‘Laugh-In’, etc. He’s a very effective, rather stylish leader of men and, though his own ego is clearly a thing of pleasure to him, he does give as well as take. I like him more and more.
It’s at two in the morning that myself, Lome, writers Al Franken and Tom Davis, stumble eventually onto what is to become the shape of the opening monologue – my own proving-piece. I am to play my manager and come on and apologise for Michael not having arrived.
The ideas fall thick and fast and I suggest that the manager should talk about his other acts, and then possibly end on an act of his own. This fits neatly in with an idea of James Downey, one of the young, new writers, who said he’s always wanted to see someone dancing with ferrets down their trousers. I adapt this to dancing to ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ whilst putting sea-food salad and two cats down my trousers. Great is the nocturnal hilarity. I just hope it wears well in the morning.
Friday, April 7th, New York
There is a lift operator at Nancy Lewis’s apartment building on Central Park South who is genuinely, creatively loopy. The last time I saw him he told me in some detail, with a perfectly straight face, that he is currently making replicas of New York public buildings out of false teeth.’I have a lot of dentists in this block, you see.’
Now I understand why Python can be so successful in the US. And it is prestigious. It is repeated endlessly – currently on Mondays on Channel 13 in New York and five nights a week in Los Angeles, five nights a week in New Orleans, plus numerous other regional showings one hears of, in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, etc, etc.
Such is the respect for Python, that Lome confided to me today that he felt it has adversely affected some of the writing on this week’s show. Some of the newer writers, he feels, have become self-conscious and forsaken their own style and their own instincts in favour of attempts to supply me with Pythonic material.
There is one sketch in particular, which has changed from a lecture on drama and a ‘What’s wrong with this scene from Chekhov?’ idea to a fully-fledged RADA-trained actor escaping from chains, locks, padlocks and a trunk whilst performing The Seagull. All this grew from an observation of mine that the narrator needed brightening up and couldn’t one possibly begin by, say, breaking out of a trunk, before going into a perfectly straight introduction?
Finish blocking around nine. But then there’s wardrobe fittings and yet another dance rehearsal – and it’s nearly eleven by the time I’m relaxing in Lome’s office. Lome is staring up at the order of sketches pinned on cards to one wall of his office – ‘Holmes’, ‘What’s Wrong?’, ‘Nerds’, ‘Cold Opening’, etc, etc. And when we leave for a meal half an hour later writers are still writing in smoky offices.
Dan Aykroyd (Watson), Bill Murray and myself (Holmes) watch an old Basil Rathbone movie in order to check on our voices and performances for tomorrow’s sketch. Then Lome and I go up to the Japanese restaurant.
Lorne says he wants to tell me – before tomorrow night so anything said will not be affected by the show – that he would like to work with me again.
Ideally he would like to set up a Michael Palin show, which would be financed by NBC, but co-produced by Lome and myself, so that we would retain overseas rights. Like the Rutles, in fact.
All this profession of confidence sweeps over me, but almost fails to make contact in reality. I can’t really believe it can be as easy as this. Am I really being offered at least one 90-minute show of my own on NBC? I think that my failure to connect must come across as either diffidence or supreme confidence.
Saturday, April 8th, New York
Shave, select clothes that will be seen across the nation tonight – and I think that’s probably the last time today that I consciously stop and think about the awesome accessibility of TV. The number of homes all over America who will be looking at me, tonight, in these jeans I’m just hauling myself into. The number of friends whom I may never see again, who will see me, after their dinner party, or as they row, or because they can’t sleep. The number of film stars I idolise, sports heroes, ex-Presidents of the World Bank, Watergate conspirators (Dean), authors I’m reading at the moment (Bellow), boxers, test pilots, Mick Jaggers, Senators, Congressmen, criminals, who may be looking at this shirt, or these white sneakers, before this day is out, is a thought too colossal to comprehend.
So I don’t. I get going. My philosophy of the day is that this is a cabaret. And the words are all on cards.
To the studio around lunchtime. Almost the first person I see is John Belushi – he is a regular member of the team and probably the best-known now Chevy Chase has left. He has flown in overnight from LA, where he has been working on a movie, and he returns to
morrow.
The Chilites dance routine does not please Lome and is cut just before the dress rehearsal. ‘You’ll thank me in years to come,’ says Lome. I’m thanking him now.
My main worry centres around a Sherlock Holmes sketch which is not just a rather long one joke item, but which requires a certain amount of playing and elaborate use of cue-cards. I find it hard and unrewarding work. Lome said yesterday that it’s a sketch which will not work until the show. Brave words.
We still have sketches unblocked when the audience come in for a full-house dress rehearsal at 7.30. For the first time today I feel nervous.
At eight we roll – the cold opening – an encouragingly funny retrospective look at the Academy Awards with Vanessa Redgrave (Jane Curtin) introducing a splendid Yasser Arafat from Belushi. Then titles – my name in lights on an electric billboard in Times Square (oh, Lome the showman), the cast and then the rich, trusty tones of announcer Don Pardo – ‘Your host for tonight … Michael Palin.’
This is the moment of truth. For the next five or six minutes it’s just me. The monologue goes averagely. The show speeds on – no major boobs, but a poor audience. However, I appreciated the psychological boost of a full-audience dress rehearsal. Most of the terrors are gone now. From now on there’s no time to think.
First there is a meeting of technical staff in Lome’s office. Briskly, but unhastily, Lome runs through the show. Two sketches disappear altogether. ‘Holmes’ is still there and didn’t go too well at dress. Lome remains confident. Writers are sent scurrying off to rewrite material. By 10.15 a smart, new, typed running order is issued. Decisions on material that have taken three days of the week are reversed or replaced by other decisions in the space of 30 minutes.
Then to the dressing room – and Nancy and Al Lev and telegrams from Terry and Eric – ‘Please Stay In America’ – and into the wonderful, baggy, shiny grey suit with the specially protective cat lining in front. It could be a Python recording. I feel strangely and completely at home as 11.30 nears.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 62