There’s still a ten-minute wait, but the good news is that we do have the satisfaction of being the first train to leave New Haven since early morning. The bad news is we’re squashed into a crowded open coach without lights or heating. There are gloomy predictions that the ride could take up to two hours.
In the end it takes over five hours. During that time we spend nearly an hour in darkness, with no fresh air, at a standstill somewhere in the outer suburbs of New York. The compartments have become fuller and fuller, and we have even suffered the indignity of seeing the Amtrak train – with my freshly opened half-bottle of Inglenook undrunk beside a broad and empty armchair – hurtle past us two hours before our arrival.
What makes it worse is that the train is full of Python devotees, who cannot believe that this crumpled ruin, with a once-fresh Concorde label on his bag, is to be the host of their favourite TV programme of the week.
Finally we reach Grand Central Station – it feels like rounding Cape Horn – but there is one final twist. Before we all split up we find that one of the cases we have been dragging around for the last nine and a half hours does not belong to any of the four of us. And it’s the heaviest.
Wednesday, January 24th, New York
The read-through slowly fills up. There are thirty or forty people packed in the room to get the first inkling of what the show may be like. Belushi, as crumpled and unkempt as Aykroyd, is given ‘Happy Birthday’. He’s 30 today – and has a No. 1 film – Animal House – and No. 1 record to celebrate it. He’s a big, fat boy made good. He eats like a Bunter and grunts and sniffs and emits continuous breathy groans.
The material is plentiful – the result of a three-week lay-off for the writers. There is one quiz game – ‘Name the Bats’ – written by Brian McConachie, which has one of the best receptions of any sketch at a first reading that I’ve ever heard. Myself, Belushi and Gilda can hardly read it. An absolute winner. A masterpiece of absurdity.
At the end of a read that lasts over two hours, Lome declares that he thinks this is some of the best material he’s heard for a show, and hastens to add that he never says things like this on a Wednesday. So everyone goes away pleased, apart from the few whose material died, and possibly Laraine and Jane1 and Gilda, who never have enough material to suit their talents.
Thursday, January 25th, New York
Spend the morning working on the monologue and take it in with me to NBC at a quarter to one.
Bill Murray drops by the dressing room. He’s making a movie (his second since I last told him he should be doing at least as many as Danny and John), in which he plays Hunter Thompson, with Peter Boyle as Thompson’s lawyer, who hasn’t been seen for five or six years. They were the narrators of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – a twentieth-century masterpiece.
He knows Hunter quite well now. A dangerous man, says Bill, in the sense that he loves to live on the brink of excitement and the limits of human stamina and ingenuity. His wit and humour works even better, Bill maintains, because one’s response to it is in part sheer relief that he’s still alive.
Friday, January 26th, New York
Sleep until 8.30 – an eight and a half hour stretch or more, punctuated only by an early morning alarm call which wrenches me awake at six. It’s for a Mr Malone. Wrong number, I protest.’You sure you don’t have a Mr Malone with you?’ Her tone is such that I have for a moment to think very clearly as to whether I might have a Mr Malone with me after all.
To NBC at two.
Reading the sketches there are some real gems – including a long ‘What If Superman Had Been a German’, in which I play Hitler.
We start blocking about three and make slow progress until eleven when we have to stop, with one and a half sketches still untouched. One encouraging thing is that from all around I’m picking up good word, not only on this show, but on the last we did together. Bill Murray, over an hour’s supper break at Charley O’s, still reckons it was the most consistently funny show they did last year.
Bill is very flattering in his serious, downbeat way, which makes cynical Englishmen, unused to accepting praise, worry a little in case they’re being sent up. Still, he’s very surprised that I have had no outside offers after SNL – he thinks I would be a cert for American movies!
I must say, one feels a very poor cousin hearing of all the movies these people are doing. Belushi and Dan A are both in Spielberg’s lg^i and return to LA Sunday to continue shooting.
Saturday, January 27th, New York
Walk down to NBC with Nancy. She tells me Eric has arrived on this morning’s Concorde. I find I now wince involuntarily whenever I hear that name (Concorde, not Eric).
My major problem of the afternoon is that the much improved and carefully honed monologue, in which I refer casually to a lack of proper socks (when everything else is perfect) and gradually build it into an obsession, just isn’t working. It raises hardly a laugh (except from Bill Murray – my greatest fan!) and I return to the dressing room in a state of some despondency. How I could do with the security of the cat routine now!
After the meal break, and as the audience are beginning to file in for the dress rehearsal, I tell Lome that I feel that a possible salvation for the monologue would be to lose the cards and do it ad-lib. Lome agrees and I wait for the start of the dress rehearsal with added adrenaline output – knowing that I have to make up four or five minutes of spiel.
The monologue founders at dress rehearsal. I stumble on painfully. The whole of the rest of the show seems to sag too.
Various suggestions for cut-down monologues. Lome says it may be best to be straight, sincere, say we have a fantastically full show and get off after 30 seconds. But someone – I think it may be director Davy Wilson, with his solid, dependable good humour – decides me to go with it.
11.30 – again the wait backstage, the very successful Carter cold opening, then the music builds and Don Pardo’s classic American announcer’s voice builds with stomach wrenching speed up to the climax – ‘Michael Palin!’ And out I come. And I know I’ll survive. They’re listening and I sense they’re not embarrassed. In fact it begins to get a few laughs, I enjoy playing it, and it comes to an end with applause I’m very happy with. Not a great monologue – for it was always a slight idea – but I feel immeasurably happier throughout the show because it had worked – I had saved it.
The show, predictably perhaps, really takes off. Sketches, cut only within the last half-hour, work better than ever, performances are all tweaked up, the live magic works and even during the show, but certainly by the end, word gets around that it’s a good one.
It’s a nice, silly time of one’s life, this hour or so after hosting a successful show. For a while you’re King of the Castle.
The air of unreality continues at the after-show party at i Fifth Avenue, when half-way through our meal a waiter arrives, announces a telephone call for me and leads me off through the kitchens to the back of the restaurant where stand huge, evil-looking basins full of clogged washing-up. I’m told that one of the washing-up staff has always wanted to meet me, and was shown the man, who rather sheepishly turns round and breaks into a grin. It’s Alan Bennett, a friend of the restaurant owner, hands in the sink. He immediately goes into profuse self-deprecation, saying what a fool he’s felt waiting for me for an hour!
Eventually he comes to the table and I ask if he’s going back to London for the press showing of the last of his Frears/London Weekend plays. Alan doesn’t think he is. He likes New York. Stephen wants him to write a play about it, but he just enjoys being here and can’t put his mind to work.
Monday, January 29th, New York
Lunch, organised by PBS, with TV critic Marvin Kitman, an eager, talkative, spongy-faced character, who’s full of bounce and one feels is used to sharp, quick one-liners, which I can never supply very well. But we had a good talk. He noticed a difference between my two shows. In the first one my own contribution resulted, he felt, in two pieces which broke new
ground for the show – one was the cats down the trousers, and the other was the escape from the box during The Seagull.
This time, he felt, the show was within itself and lacked a unique edge. Which I had to agree with. I should have registered my feelings more strongly to Lome perhaps, but I did want to play a character – or at least do something original enough to top the cats.
Kitman told me of George Carlin, American comic, who once did a spot like that on a show and simply came out, said nothing for four minutes, then walked off again. And it worked!
Friday, February 2nd
To Neal’s Yard this morning. Pick my way through piles of uncollected garbage piled up in the passageway from Monmouth Street. At least we’ve had heat and light, but we don’t have any dustmen at the moment.
At six I’m in De Lane Lea’s basement for a preview of Brian.
The audience is three or four times the size of the last showing I attended, the night before I left for New York. And, although the film is shorter, with Shepherds and a large part of the raid removed, I think it’s the size of the audience that makes all the difference. They are much noisier in their appreciation and the end section goes particularly well.
I end up in the Carlisle Arms with Anne H, John G and Terry G and Julian. Julian is finding it almost impossible to spend any time on his own fine-cutting the movie without constant interruptions from Terry, over small points which Julian now regards as of secondary importance to getting the movie completed on time.
I am appealed to, almost as if they’d tried everything else, to talk to Terry and impress upon him the need to keep away from Julian for the next few days.
Saturday, February 3rd
A clear, bright, sunny morning. My first weekend with the children since Rachel’s fourth birthday on the 13th but I have to spend today at Neal’s Yard, trying to patch up the wretched PR problems between editor and director. Gilliam arrives on his bicycle with a list of points on the film – ‘A Few Hopefully Helpful Hints in the Pursuit of Perfection’, which I take down with me.
I get to the editing rooms by 10.15. Terry is already there and Julian has been in since six!
Terry, Julian and myself sit and work amiably and constructively through the entire film, raising all the points from yesterday’s viewing. Terry G’s as well. TJ is amenable to most of the suggestions and some good cuts are agreed on.
Drive TJ back up to Hampstead at four and as we go he tells me of the difficulties of working with Julian. Terry acknowledges in one breath that Julian is an excellent editor, but at the same time bitterly accuses him of not taking a blind bit of notice of any of TJ’s suggestions. I urge TJ to take a breather from the film – at least for twenty-four hours. He looks as baggy-eyed as Julian is red-eyed.
Tuesday, February 6th
Completed a rewrite on the end of’Whinfrey’ this morning.
Drive into Soho for one o’clock viewing of Brian – mainly for Eric who arrived back from LA last night. He has to leave the country again on Friday – for tax reasons. The showing is a good one and confirms my feeling after last Friday that the movie is consistently funnier than the Grail, but without the high points of visual and verbal felicity such as Trojan Rabbit and Black Knight fights.
Sandy Lieberson is at the viewing. He warns us that it will be ‘X’ rated because of the full-frontal nudity and that’s about all. I feel we must not compromise on the ‘full-frontal’ (what an absurd phrase anyway). It’s a very funny scene, and Graham’s reaction as he appears stark naked at the window, only to find 500 ‘followers’ waiting to worship him, is one of the biggest and best laughs of the film.
Eric looks unhappy. He feels both Haggling and Ex-Leper should go. He is dissuaded from this, at least until they’re dubbed – the general feeling being voiced by Julian, who claims that they are both scenes which people listen to and appreciate rather than roar with laughter at.
Clash over’Brian of Nazareth’ Life of Brian title suggestions. Eric says everyone in America he’s talked to will be very disappointed if it’s not ‘Nazareth’. TJ and I maintain it’s inviting a misleading comparison with Jesus of Nazareth. Eric says we could lose a million dollars or so with a flat title like Life of Brian. Eric’s sharpness makes me sharp in return. A pity, because we need to listen to each other a bit more.
David Leland and Stephanie come round to dinner this evening. We have a chat over the ‘Northern Yarn’ (‘Golden Gordon’) and he gives me a lot of useful casting suggestions for the small but vital parts in it. I persuade – not that it takes much doing – David himself to play the Football Manager. He rather likes the idea of wearing long shorts and old-fashioned boots with the huge toe-caps that curl round like Arab slippers.
Saturday, February 10th
Drive to Soho to get Variety and croissants. The piles of uncollected rubbish are now being blown apart by the wind and central Soho looks like a tip from which buildings emerge.
Gilliam tells of the latest Brian saga. Paramount Pictures are now the most likely distributor, and to further the deal Julian was to be sent over to Hollywood with the cutting copy of the film to show them the latest progress. All was well until it was discovered that Julian, in filling out his visa application form, had felt bound to note that he was a communist. America will not let in communists, so there was great commotion. However, after application to some special US department at Frankfurt, Julian was given permission to go. So the self-confessed communist travelled First Class in a Jumbo and will be staying at the Beverly Wilshire.
TG and I consoled ourselves with a Variety clipping which shows that Jabberwocky has out-earned Rocky and Looking for Mr Goodbar, in Spain!
Wednesday, February 14th
Terry tells me the latest on the American viewing of Brian, which Graham rang him so gloomily about at the weekend. It transpires that Graham had attended, not the viewing in LA, but a later, less well-attended overflow viewing. He had arrived late and the sound had been very bad. But GC still feels that ‘an alien force’ (his words) has been at work on the editing and he is flying back to England at the weekend with his thoughts and criticisms.
I don’t think anyone is going to listen very sympathetically. John C thinks that Graham is being an old woman and anyway he’s too busy putting Fawlty Towers together to attend any meetings. T Gilliam will not, on principle, attend any meetings unless we’re all there. So the prospects for Chapman’s Flying Visit don’t look too hopeful.
A meeting at the Lamb with John Gorman and Chris Tarrant to discuss what TJ and I are expected to do on the ATV Saturday morning program Tiswas, which we are guesting on in a couple of days. Everything’s left delightfully vague, but they’re expecting two or three sketches from us, so it won’t be a complete doddle.
Take Helen to the ICA to see Victoria Wood’s play Talent, which was originally directed by David Leland for the Crucible – and two or three of the actors in it have been highly recommended by David for parts in the Yarns. I’m impressed by the cast, but also by the earthy, untheatrical directness of the play. It’s not profound, but a very funny, well-observed slice of life …
And obviously a cult success – Michael Codron and Humphrey Barclay are in a packed audience of 200 or so. Talk to Humphrey afterwards. He tells me he lives at the bottom of Derek Jacobi’s garden, and gives a naughty smile.
Saturday, February 17th
Coffee at the Monmouth Coffee House, then across to the Bijou Theatre for another viewing of Brian. Sit next to Graham, who looks trim and healthy. Altogether a new, meek Graham. Then I remember he has got us here for a viewing no-one particularly wants (and John Cleese and Terry Gilliam have refused to attend anyway).
Afterwards, at a meeting at John Goldstone’s office, Eric, Terry J, myself and Graham have a rather efficient, direct and radical appraisal of the movie. I now feel that the Ex-Leper sketch, funny though it ought to be, isn’t getting the right reaction, and is structurally holding up progress of the story at that early stage in the mov
ie. Eric has always felt that and he feels Otto should go for the same reason. There is still a split on the title of the movie, however, between Life of Brian (John, Terry J and myself) and ‘Brian of Nazareth’ (the others).
Graham’s fears about the pace of the film, of the ‘alien force’ in the editing, are all rather predictably more bark than bite and, apart from a couple of fairly tiny points, he makes no fight over the present look of the movie. If I were really uncharitable, I might think that this whole ‘Graham Is Unhappy With The Film’ scare of the past week was GC’s way of getting a free ticket over to the UK to see his home again. But I’m not uncharitable.
Monday, February 19th, Penzance
Woke, seconds before production assistant John Adams’ alarm shattered the peace of the Longboat Hotel at six. Easily caught the 6.31, and I was almost sorry to leave the attractive, atmospheric chunkiness of Penzance Station, after a whirlwind scouting of locations for ‘Whinfrey’.
At Plymouth, two hours later, the train filled to the brim with eager southwestern businessmen. We ate breakfast and I read the treatment of Terry Gilliam’s new film, Brazil.
Marvellous effects and stupendous graphic ideas in TG’s story – but with such stunning sets and surroundings the story needs to be very straight and simple or utterly fantastic. It isn’t comfortably either.
Arrive at Paddington at half past twelve. No let-up for location hunters and Alan [our director] insists that we take a cab over to the Turf Club to see one of our London locations for’Whinfrey’.
The club is in Carlton House Terrace and we meet our designer, Gerry Scott,’ outside. The suave and elegantly pin-striped club secretary is thrown into frightful confusion by our arrival. He looks us up and down and then very reluctantly lets us in.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 72