The first film, about and starring Vladimir Nabokov, was a small gem – mainly because Nabokov himself is such a character. He manages to get away with an opinionated arrogance, partly because he is obviously not taking himself too seriously, but mainly because of his facility with words – which in the film he denies, saying that he failed to inherit his father’s gifts of description and fluency – he has a beautifully dry humour, wonderful pieces of observation, and an overriding good nature which quite make up for his pedantry. I once read many of his books, the film made me want to read more – especially his autobiography Speak, Memory.
Sunday, October 18th, Abbotsley
After breakfast Thomas and I go on a long walk around the village. In the field opposite Manor Farm, the two great carthorses have just been fed. The man who feeds them tells me he has worked the land at Abbotsley since 1926. Then tractors cost £120, now they’re £1,120, but the carthorses’ days are over. What it took a single-farrowed horse-drawn plough to do in a fortnight, a five- or ten-farrowed tractor can now do in a day. He doesn’t seem to have regrets, but he loves the horses – he says that when you had an eager team of horses, they kept at the plough from seven o’clock till three, with no lunch, until they got tired.
Monday, October 19th, Southwold
Left Abbotsley at 11.00 and drove over to Southwold, leaving Helen and Thomas to stay at Church Farm. The Suffolk countryside seems to be at its best in autumn, and the drive was beautiful. We ate lunch together, and then Father and I drove into Southwold and walked along the sea front. It was cool and sunny, and practically deserted – the season seems well-finished. Saw welcome additions to the Southwold scene – two Adnams drays, with big dray-horses. They have only just been introduced – to deal with local deliveries, apparently to save the money on lorries. I must say they add to Southwold’s atmosphere – it’s a town that absorbs progress and innovation in only very limited amounts and this technologically retrogressive step is quite in character.
Tuesday, October 20th, Southwold
During this afternoon the weather turned suddenly and dramatically from the reflective, gentle calm of a sunny autumn morning, to an angry sky, N.W. wind and driving rain. At the harbour, the sea was as high as I’ve seen it, with breakers crashing against the harbour wall. As I write this diary in bed, the wind is still strong outside, but the heavy rain has stopped.
Tonight we ate liver and kidneys, with a bottle of St Estèphe, and watched Monty Python. One of my favourite shows – with the bishop film and the poet-reader, the Gumby announcements and the strange chemist’s sketch. Went to sleep with the comforting sound of the wind buffeting the windows.
Wednesday, October 21st
The Punch1 lunch, to which we had been invited by Miles Kington (a friend of Terry’s at Oxford, and mine as well in London), is a traditional affair. Originally it consisted of the contributors only, who met, once a week, to discuss subjects for the political cartoon. It is carried on now as a meeting-place for journalists, humorists and writers generally, who may be regulars on Punch, or prospective contributors.
We assembled with the other guests for pre-lunch drinks – names I have known so well for so long became faces – Norman Mansbridge, E H Shepherd, the appallingly unfunny David Langdon. I met the editor, William Davis, an economics journalist, probably late thirties, possibly describable as a ‘whizz-kid’. His humour I find very ponderous – he nearly always has a serious political or topical point to put over, and yet, because he is editing Punch, it is given an ill-fitting and tenuous humorous context. When Davis attempts politics and humour, humour loses – unlike Norman Shrapnel of The Guardian or, to a lesser extent, Alan Watkins of the New Statesman, who seem to mix the two well.
We were shown in to lunch. About twenty or twenty-five of us around a large table; on the walls of this dining cum conference room were framed covers of old Punches, photographs of the staff past and present, famous framed cartoons, etc, etc. I sat next to Miles on my right and Vincent Mulchrone on my left. Mulchrone is a well-known feature writer on the Daily Mail. A very amiable man, with a North Country accent (I really expected him to be Irish), he was exceedingly self-effacing and seemed more keen to talk about moving house than his journalistic adventures.
At the end of the meal, as we drank coffee and brandy and smoked cigars, Davis hammered on the table and the traditional scavenging of ideas began. It was very reminiscent of Frost Report conferences four years ago. It was ironic that the man who provided most of the ideas for Punch’s Christmas edition was John Wells – a regular contributor and ex-editor of Private Eye, the magazine which has probably done more harm to Punch’s circulation than any other. Terry and I also suggested quite a number of ideas, as did B.A. ‘Freddie’Young – Punch contributor and theatre critic of the Financial Times. But he was the only one of the ‘older’ generation who seemed to be on the wavelength of most of the suggestions. Others, including Punch’s film critic, Richard Mallett, who must be the only living critic older than the medium he writes about, nodded rather wearily and drank their brandy.
Thursday, October 22nd
Took a taxi to the Playboy Club in Park Lane, for a party to celebrate starting production on the film.
Inside, the Playboy Club is a taste wilderness. The bunny girls are a real affront to style, desire, everything. They stand around in these ugly costumes which press their breasts out and grasp their buttocks – so that they look like Michelin Men. The bare shoulders are quite pleasant, but the costume’s brutal and unsexy and the bunnies seem to have been drained of character, they are either sickly sweet or rather brusquely military.
The evening was not unpleasant – spoke for a while to Dudley Moore, and even Eric Sykes patted me on the arm and said how much he enjoyed the show. I left at 9.00 and by 12.00 I was back in Southwold, having caught the 9.30 train to Ipswich and driven on from there. To go from the Playboy Club to the east Suffolk coast in four hours is as big a change of environment as you’re likely to get in England.
Monday, October 26th
Today we started filming And Now For Something Completely Different. I got up at 7.00, after having woken at intervals during the night. It was pitch dark outside. It brought back memories of The Complete and Utter History fuming – almost exactly two years ago. But instead of having to drive out to a location in my own car, I was picked up in an enormously comfortable black Humber Imperial and driven, in the company of Graham and Terry, to our location in Holloway. It was a school gymnasium where we were filming the ‘Soft Fruit’ sketch, but when we reached the location I felt a sudden, nervous tightening of the stomach, as I saw a line of caravans parked by the side of the road – and opposite them a large white caterer’s lorry and lighting generator.
Terry and I were sharing a caravan. It was very spacious and comfortable, with a dressing room and a kitchen in it. We all sat around the table before filming began, joking about this new luxury, like schoolboys in a new form room.
We were on the set by 8.30, changed and ready to film. The 35mm camera was another impressive sign that this was a film, as were the many people whose sole job seemed to be to look after us, give us calls when we were required, fetch us coffee if we wanted it, and generally keep us sweet. But our mirth was great when we saw a man struggling to stick an ‘Eric Idle’ sign on the back of a picnic chair. Did we really all have chairs with our name on? Yes we really did and, by the end of an eleven and a half hour-day, with only a half-hour break at lunch, I realised that the caravan, the chairs and the ever-helpful production assistants were there to help us work harder, and they were vital. To have a place to relax in after a take, without having to worry about finding out what is happening next, is a luxury we never had on television filming.
The crew seem, without exception, to be kind, friendly and efficient. Ian seems happy and confident; in short, it is a very enjoyable and impressive first day. We have finished the ‘Soft Fruit’ sketch1 – which is about four minutes of film.
&n
bsp; Finally, to sink back into a car and be driven home is a wonderful load off one’s mind.
Saturday, October 31st
We have finished a week’s filming now. In retrospect, Monday was our best day in terms of output, but we filmed at a steady rate throughout the week. On Wednesday we started a week’s location shooting at Black Park – an expanse of pine forest, silver-birch copses, open grassland and beech-covered lakeside, which happens to be just next door to Pinewood Studios. By Friday we had shot the ‘Lumberjack Song’, the ‘How Not to be Seen’ opening and most of the ‘Joke’ film. Morale in the unit is very high.
Tuesday, November 3rd
In the evening Helen and I went down to the Open Space Theatre in Tottenham Court Road, to see The Scaffold show.2 The Open Space is what its name implies, and very little else. We were late and just outside the entrance doors we met [Roger] McGough and Mike McGear dressed in neo-Gestapo uniforms waiting to go on. Brief handshake, but the feeling that we’d cheated by meeting them.
As it turned out the show was about love and sex and permissiveness – a variety of sketches apparently about the danger of a sexual revolution – when sex becomes an order, when permissiveness is not only approved of but essential, but without feeling and without emotion – destroying both the romantic young lover and the mackintosh-clad old man.
It is quite a common statement nowadays that sex kills love, and it is often put forward by the wrong people for the wrong reasons, but I felt a sympathy for McGough’s writing – I don’t particularly like aggressive sexual attitudes, the Danish porno fairs, the Oh! Calcutta celebrations of the sexual act, the ‘frank, outspoken article’ and the ‘frank, outspoken interview’ with the latest ‘sexologist’. But all this seems to me infinitely preferable to repression of sex and illiberal or intolerant attitudes being accepted as ‘morally correct’. The public discussion of sex must, I feel, help more than hinder, encourage rather than depress – and I’m not sure whether McGough would ultimately agree with this.
Saturday, November 7th
Slight scare this evening. After spending the late afternoon painting Thomas’s room, Helen had quite severe contraction pains. We were due to eat out at Paul Collins’ that evening, picking up Simon and Jenny Hawkesworth1 on the way. At 7.45 there was panic. I was finishing the painting, Helen was worrying about imminent childbirth and Simon and Jenny were waiting for us to collect them. However, Helen was reassured by a phone call to Dr Graham Chapman, and we bundled Thomas into the car and arrived at Paul’s house in Barnes about 8.45.
Helen did not have a baby.
Sunday, November 8th
I do seem to play a lot of seedy, unsuccessful and unhygienic little men. After washing my hair and shaving at 7.00 in the morning I am driven to work and immediately my hair is caked down with grease and my face given a week’s growth of beard.
Ken Shabby1 was especially revolting, with an awful open sore just below the nose. But Terry J (who has seen the rushes) is worried that it was shot with too much emphasis on Shabby and not enough wide shots to create the joke – which is the relationship of this ghastly suppurating apparition to the elegant and tasteful surroundings.
Monday, November 9th
We are filming now at the empty, recently sold A1 Dairy in Whetstone High Street. The immediate significance of filming in Whetstone is that, for once, it favours those who live in North London – i.e. G Chapman and myself – who have long since had to leave earlier than anyone else to reach locations in Ealing, Walton-on-Thames and points south. Now we reap an additional benefit of Hampstead living – half an hour extra in bed – and when I am being collected at 7.30 each day, in darkness, the half hour is very welcome.
The dairy premises are so far excellent for our sketches – for they have the same rather dreary atmosphere of failure which characters like Scribbler and Mr Anchovy and the marriage guidance man are born from.
It takes a long time to set up the lights and to lay the track for the first shot. My hair is greased heavily and parted in the middle. It lies clamped to my head like a bathing hat.
Once the first shot is done, progress becomes faster. From the performance point of view, I enjoy the security of being able to do a performance several times and, with the sketch actually done in sections, one is not so worried about remembering words. I enjoyed one take particularly – I felt I was working hard on it and my concentration never dropped.
Thursday, November 12th
Shooting at a pet shop in the Caledonian Road. It’s a grey, wet, messy day and this particular part of the Caledonian Road is a grey, wet, messy part of the world. In the pet shop there is scarcely room to move, but the angel fish and the guppies and the parrots and the kittens and the guinea pigs seem to be unconcerned by the barrage of light – and the continuous discordant voices. The shop is still open as we rehearse. One poor customer is afraid to come in, and stands at the door, asking rather nervously for two pounds of Fido. ‘Two pounds of Fido,’ the cry goes up, and the message is passed by raucous shouts to the lady proprietor.’That’s 15/-,’ she says. ‘15/-,’ everyone starts to shout.
We’re finished by 5.30. Outside the shop is a little boy whose father, he tells us, is coming out of the nick soon.
‘What’ll you do when he comes out?’
‘Kill him.’
‘Why?’
‘I hate him.’
‘Why do you hate him?’
‘He’s a ponce.’
All this cheerfully, as if discussing what kind of fish fingers he likes best. As I walk back to the caravan a battered-looking couple argue viciously in a doorway.
Home for a bath and a change of clothes, and then out for the evening to the Warner Rendezvous – a new theatre opening with The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, which was written by Peter Cook, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Kevin Billington, the director. Graham, David and I walked round the back of the crowd into the foyer. It was full of people – not obvious first-nighters, and not an inordinate amount of stars. Peter Cook and Denholm Elliott were standing with their ladies, flashing smiles. As we walked down into the lower foyer, Peter looked up towards us and said in a funny voice, ‘Oh, they’re all here.’
The seats in the cinema were certainly comfortable, and there were little surprises, like Lord George-Brown1 and his wife arriving, which reminded us that it was no ordinary night at the movies, but a premiere – Sparkle! Sparkle!
Rimmer with its built-in topical appeal, very funny moments, good performances, is still a second-rate movie – ephemeral enjoyment which makes no special impression and says nothing new, apart perhaps from one very memorable scene when the Prime Minister goes on a prestige visit to Washington for personal talks, and takes his place at the end of a long corridor full of potentates, including the Pope, who each move up one place as the President sees them.
After the film we went with Graham to a party at Les Ambassadeurs, a club in Park Lane. Lord George-Brown came in and stood with his wife rather gloomily until Graham and Terry went over to talk to them. Terry afterwards said that Lady Brown was very bitter about politics and was bemoaning what it did to people.
Terry Gilliam and I collected some food and talked for a while to Arthur Lowe2 and his wife. Arthur Lowe’s performance was about the best in the film, and it had been rather scandalously cut down. Beside Peter Cook’s wooden smoothness, perhaps Lowe’s performance was too good.
I ended the evening with an ominous feeling of impending drunkenness. I remember walking unsteadily up the stairs from Les Ambassadeurs, to be treated by the doorman to phrases such as the over-solicitous ‘I’ll get your coat, sir’, and the downright abusive ‘Not driving, are we sir?’
Friday, November 13th
After a busy day filming the remains of ‘Upper Class Twit of the Year’ in fine, sunny weather, arrived home with Terry and together we joined the rest of Monty Python at Chez Victor restaurant in Wardour Street at 8.30, for a paid meal – i.e. we had been hired by an ad agency to ha
ve some ideas about a new Guinness commercial.
My first impression was surprise at the number of advertising people present. A representative of the film production company, a director of commercials, an agency man, a product representative and two or three more.
We drank – I carefully, for my stomach was still recovering from Thursday night at Les Ambassadeurs – and, at about 9.00, sat down to our meal. There were various sinister preparations which tended to make me withdraw into silence, e.g. tape recorders and microphones hung around, a type-written sheet with their basic idea for the commercial, and muttered messages between the admen about how best to let us all have our say. Added to which, Messrs Jones and Gilliam led off with ideas of such enthusiastic vehemence that I retreated even more deeply into my shell. After some quiche lorraine and halfway through my liver, I began to lose this feeling of silent panic, and, as the ideas got away from the rather restricting basis which the agency had imposed, I found myself enjoying the whole business much more. Graham C, however, who isn’t particularly talkative or assertive, found it all too much and, with a brief word in my ear, departed at about 10.00.
Thursday, November 19th
At 6.00 I was awakened from a deep and satiated slumber – Helen said she felt stronger contractions, but was unsure whether to ring the hospital. Went to sleep again.
At 6.30 woke to hear Helen expressing dissatisfaction with the telephone – it was out of order and she was trying to ring the hospital; the contractions were stronger than ever.
Thomas was crying and outside the rain was beating down the village in heavy waves. I felt grim – but got up, dressed, went over to Edward and Jayne’s1 and got them out of bed to use their phone. When I got back Helen’s contractions were quite severe – she was in favour of getting an ambulance – but I bundled her and Thomas into the car and set off through the rain for UCH [University College Hospital]. Arrived there at 7.00. No porter in reception, didn’t know where the labour ward was, and Helen was leaning against a trolley in considerable pain. Eventually a porter appeared and all he could do was reprimand me for parking on an ambulance place. Left Helen in the lift with him and went back to the car. Drove Thomas over to Camden Town and left him at Mary’s, then arrived back at the hospital at about 7.45. Fortunately it was a day in which I only had one shot to film. At 8.00 I rang the location, and was able to get out of that one shot so, by incredible coincidence, I had the day off.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 7
