Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  Harry and I are quite soon into the turkey-eating scene and Terry G says that this is the fastest they’ve worked all week. Yesterday had been particularly frustrating. He had spent 45 minutes with Peter Cellier, who plays the Merchant, trying to overcome his reluctance to pick his nose on screen.

  A long day. One hour’s lunch break – I eat with Harry H in the grim canteen. (Like much of Shepperton Studio Centre, it bears all the tacky indications of an enterprise on its last legs, which was being dismantled by the broker’s men as a reprieve came through.)

  Harry doesn’t enjoy film acting. He finds the dehumanisation of the actor on a film set troubles him. I noticed today that even an actor of his experience seems to harden and tense up on the take – losing a little of the fun he’s had on rehearsal.

  On set from 8.30 until a quarter to seven in the evening – then gratefully and happily into a hot bath to clean off the sweat and grime of the day’s work. This kind of manual acting takes it out of you.

  Monday, August 2nd

  Out on the Oliver lot1 for most of the day, doing stunt work rather than acting. Much lying face-down in the dirt (peat and hay mixture) with Bernard Bresslaw, who is in fine form.

  Encouraging viewing of Friday’s rushes. The painstakingly lit sequences are not as good as the hastily grabbed, hand-held shots of me trying to distract Bernard’s attention in the pub. This sequence was fresh, fast and – to prove the point – got consistent laughs at rushes.

  I learn from the rushes that I must keep my performance up – the naturalistic way of playing (Frears’ influence here) is not sufficient – a touch of silliness is required.

  Tuesday, August 3rd

  Cope with letters in the morning, phone calls, and eventually at lunchtime sign Jabberwocky contract (£6,000 due by end of filming, £1,500 deferred and 2½% of producers gross). A motorcycle messenger in big boots and a rubber suit witnesses this impressive document.

  Robert’s for a glass of BBC Chablis at 6.30. He’s been chairing a discussion programme for the Beeb Foreign Service on philosophy – Stuart Hampshire and Ben Whitaker amongst the participants. Robert jokes about it, but I’m quite impressed. We walk from Robert’s, through the Dickensian back alleys north of Fleet Street, skirting round the Inns of Court and across Waterloo Bridge to the concrete cultural wilderness of the South Bank.

  At the National Theatre (the first time I’ve been inside it) I long for that hustle and bustle you get in St Martin’s Lane and Shaftesbury Avenue. Here the audience is entirely made up of respectable bourgeois folk like ourselves. No coach tours here, no stout elderly ladies out for a giggle or a treat. Just a flood of serious, trendy, culturally aware, white wine bibbers like myself.

  It–s comfortable inside the Lyttelton Theatre, and the sight lines and acoustics require no effort or strain as in many other London theatres. The play Weapons of Happiness by Howard Brenton is not, as they say, ‘my cup of tea’. It belongs to the belligerent, strident, didactic school of theatre, in which dialogue is sacrificed to monologues, characters depressingly clichéd, angry cockney workers, champagne drinking employers, etc. Occasionally some pleasing and quite moving writing, but as a whole I disliked it, as I felt most of the audience did.

  We eat at the Neal Street Restaurant. David Hockney posters on the wall and David Hockney himself at a table.

  Walk back to Fetter Lane discussing possibilities for a new Orr/Hewison/Signford book – a catalogue of ‘All The Things You Ever Wanted’. Busy, by the light of the Daily Mirror building, discussing and enthusing over who would contribute to it, when we discover it’s a quarter to two.

  Thursday, August 5th

  Cast of many at Shepperton today for the flagellants’ procession. Graham Crowden is the leader of the fanatics. He’s a splendid figure, but has trouble remembering his many and strange words. Hugely impressive takes of him and his crowd of grotty followers streaming up the mediaeval streets keep ending with Graham, white beard flowing and hand up-raised like Ivan the Terrible, coming to a sort of paralysed halt with a heartfelt ‘Oh, fuck!’

  Lunch with Christopher Logue. A nice, gentle chap, he’s playing a flagellant with heart-warming enthusiasm and enjoyment. I ask him about the Private Eye/Goldsmith case soon to come into court. He says Goldsmith is a nasty piece of work, but there is one, though only one, untruth in all Private Eye’s allegations – when he was said to have attended a meeting he didn’t in fact attend.

  Michael White is down today. Michael looks around at TG’s carefully chosen extras and declares that this must be the ugliest film ever made.

  It’s a long day and the shocking canteen food doesn’t raise any spirits. The chicken at supper tastes, as Crowden puts it, as though it had done panto for two years at Ashton-under-Lyme.

  We night shoot until 12.30 a.m. (the extra half-hour will cost thousands as the unions can claim for an entire extra day) catapulting a blazing fanatic over the walls of the castle. The effect works superbly and everyone trails back to the dressing rooms.

  Home and to bed by two. A nineteen-hour day, I reckon.

  Friday, August 6th

  Only the jolly, down-to-earth good humour of Bryan Pringle and the unquenchable cheerfulness of Bernard Bresslaw make this long day of waiting bearable. Finally, having been on set since eleven, am used at five for a 30-second take. It’s the getting dirty and the cleaning up – a process lasting an hour at least – which is the most wearing and when I get home at 8.30 I’m in the mood for a good meal and a chat.

  Ring Simon Albury and we go to Au Bois St Jean. Simon very interested in Shepperton – my remarks about food, etc, have led, I’m told, to speedy action from Mr Hollick! SA says he may be asked to run the place (i.e. Shepperton), but says it’s all very vague.

  Saturday, August 7th

  The alarm shrills into my hangover at seven. God – only five hours’ sleep behind me and I have to curse my enthusiasm in arranging a horse-riding lesson at Luton at nine this morning!

  In my still-hungover state, I’m fairly relaxed and once I’ve got used to the size of the horse and the unexpectedly long distance from the ground, I get on well. The horse is used to it – it was under Glenda Jackson on Elizabeth R Also ride a mule and a donkey, which cleverly made straight for a metal-roofed cow shed and nearly scalped me.

  Tuesday, August 10th

  Rushes at lunchtime today were very encouraging. Yesterday we had shot the Knight and Dennis departing the city and Dennis arriving back. For once everybody seemed pleased.

  The donkey behaved marvellously this morning and manoeuvred the cheering crowds with great confidence. Better than yesterday when I had to sit on boxes and rock gently, to give the impression I was on a donkey.

  Max Wall, as the King, looks quite marvellous and he and John Le Mes have developed this sad, forgetful, melancholic, vaguely homosexual double-act which suits the crumbling kingdom perfectly.

  Max has a wonderful drawing power. He sits there, curled up like a caterpillar in his vast robes, never complaining about any discomfort, and people are attracted to him like a magnet – especially a willowy young lady photographer from Celebrity magazine, who sits beside him adoringly. Max enjoys this. His conversation is slow, measured, nostalgic, gentle and wise.

  Wednesday, August 11th

  In to Shepperton by two. It’s the scene with the Princess and me driving away after we’ve been married. The Princess makes my nose run every time she kisses me. Gilliam instructs ‘No French kissing … I don’t want to see any tongue work there.’

  Drive into Soho to see Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser- a beautiful, careful, memorable little movie. The subject of the ‘noble savage’ suddenly faced with the world seems to lend itself to film – Truffaut’s L’Enfant Sauvage was another excellent and intelligent movie on this theme.

  Ate a curry at the Gaylord to try and chase away my cold.

  Sunday, August 15th

  Terry Gilliam and the script appear to be losing the battle for survival at
the expense of Terry Bedford and the technicians, who have, fairly ruthlessly, dictated the pace of the shooting so far. Every day now, as the confidence of the camera and lighting department grows, the shooting schedule falls further and further behind.

  Rumour has it that the Rolling Stones are rehearsing here this week – across on Stage A. Will wait to hear more. Last week I got a letter from an hotel on the Cap D’Antibes, written by Ronnie Wood (whom Eric has been gallivanting around with this summer) saying that Eric was too busy to write, but he’d asked Mr Wood to write and tell me that if my letters didn’t become more interesting he’d have to write to one of the Goodies.

  Thursday, August 19th

  The day drags on – the unions are asked to work until eight. Much muttering and sounding. They seem to agree, but no-one can have asked the electricians, who, at seven, pull the plugs out and that’s it for the day.

  Home to see the last hour of Sunset Across the Bay – Frears/Bennett/Tufano teleplay. Wish I’d seen the lot. Terrific playing from Harry Markham.

  How I would love to work on something with Alan Bennett – I really admire and enjoy his writing and performing. It’s spare and honest. His world and his characters unglamorous, but delicately drawn and wonderfully believable. He portrays lack of confidence with confident assurance. A craftsman too – he works with care and deliberation on the simplest of lines and his scripts are like softer and gentler Pinter – with the same good ear that Pinter has for human small talk.

  Friday, August 20th

  Eric rings and comes round for lunch – or with lunch, I should say. Bearded, tanned, in a white cotton boiler suit and a gorgeous perfume. Helen is rather rude about Eric’s smell and says it stinks the kitchen out. Eric is very patient with her! We open a bottle of Jules Laurier sparkling blanc de blancs and eat up kipper pâté, cold beef and salads which Eric has brought from Au Bois St Jean. Spend afternoon chatting outside.

  Eric tells me about his summer with the Rolling Stones, or Ronnie Wood, mainly. He likes Ronnie – he’s good company and a laugh – but is more guarded about Jagger (very sharp business mind) and Keith (pleasant, but so doped-up Eric reckons he has only a year to live).

  Eric is going over to New York in early October to appear on and co-host Saturday Night Live – the Chevy Chase late-night programme that’s swept the US and which Pythons have, as a group, quite regularly turned down.

  As Helen says, Eric ‘doesn’t lack confidence’, but I feel that he’s still lacking something. He is very anxious to get back to Python writing and performing, as if he feels that the fast France/New York world which he’s recently joined and in which friendship tends to be based on how many LPs you’ve had in the charts, does not offer the feet-on-the-ground atmosphere of the Python group.

  But, as always, EI is entertaining and amusing and it’s a lovely way to lose an afternoon off!

  Saturday, August 21st

  In the evening Helen’s cooking again, this time for Terry G and Maggie. They arrive – TG looking unusually gaunt and unshaven, pale-faced and completely without his little bulging stomach. He has some quite impressive news. Apparently Terry Bedford is no longer on the picture.

  Yesterday, while I had been pleasantly reminiscing in the sunshine with Eric and sparkling white, Gilliam and Terry B had almost come to blows on the set, after a morning when only two shots had been done. A shouting match had developed and, whilst Max Wall sat patiently in a pool of water (for it was the scene in which John Le Mes wakes him up by throwing a pail of water over him), Terry B had walked off.

  The producers rallied (Goldstone being especially calm and level-headed, according to TG) and began the search for an alternative cameraman. Sandy rang Nic Roeg, who was quite prepared to do it himself, but couldn’t, so suggested young whizz-kid Tony Richmond. Richmond couldn’t take over for a week, but suggested John Wilcox. John Wilcox, a veteran of 60, was checked out and found to have the highest recommendations.

  So tonight we have a new cameraman. To me it seems indecently sudden, but on this film, as it is totally his brainchild, TG must be the boss. He’s a thick-skinned fellow and very harsh words must have been spoken to wound him like this.

  We talked a little about Python and the next movie. TG said he reckoned the film was TJ’s to direct – he’d far rather be directing another film of his own. He has an idea for using the Port Talbot industrial complex as the basis for a science fiction film which, as he says, he’ll ‘write with anyone’.

  Monday, August 23rd

  Terry Bedford is still the cameraman. Julian [Doyle, editor] tells me that he rang around on Sunday and placated everyone and told them that the good of the film was the co-operation of all the elements in it. Julian persuaded Terry B to ring Gilliam – because he knew Gilliam wouldn’t ring Terry B.

  It’s hot, hot, hot still. The Prime Minister’s having an emergency Cabinet meeting about the drought.

  Tuesday, August 24th

  Chasing up and down corridors. A bit of sub-Errol Flynn work. Anti-swash-buckling. To be actually living these childhood dreams and fantasies – and getting paid handsomely for them – I have to pinch myself mentally to be sure it’s happening. Fifteen years ago Graham [Stuart-Harris] and I were lapping up all the films, good or bad, that hit Sheffield, and now here I am making the bloody things.

  Eric (complete with specially printed T-shirt ‘Jabberwocky – The New Python Movie’) and Susie the wet-lipped Aussie model, came to see us on set. Eric brought me a signed advance copy of the book which he says has already had massive re-orders, The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book (containing three pages by M Palin!), to be released next month. It’s a lavish production job – a combination of the Goodies and Python book designs over the last four years, but fused and improved.

  I feel that it pre-empts more Python books – a particular area of comic book design has been capped by the Rutland book – and if the Python ‘periodical’ which is being heavily sold to us by Eric, is to be the work of these same designers, I fear it will look unoriginal – and that Python, far from creating a bandwagon, will appear to be climbing on one.

  Sit in the sun and read more of The Final Days,1 chase up a few more corridors.

  Thursday, August 26th

  At the location by eight and on my donkey to take advantage of early-morning shafts of sunlight through the pine trees.

  After about 10.30, the sandy hollow, a dry dust bowl at the bottom of it and ringed picturesquely by pine trees, becomes like some gladiatorial arena. The school kids and the various hangers-on of the film unit – press, producers’ friends, etc, sit up in the shade of the trees, looking down on the little group around the camera who work away, exposed in the sandy arena to the increasingly hot sun. Every now and then actors troop back after their takes to rest in the shade, or a clapper boy or production assistant walks down with cold drinks.

  Warren Mitchell loses his temper briefly, but ill-advisedly, with John, one of the hard-working props boys, who accidentally treads on Warren’s hand. A ripple of tension. Warren is a hard worker and an extrovert. He leads a full and busy life and talks about it a great deal.

  But it’s a long, hot day and we’re still shooting at seven in the evening, when I lose my temper during a shot in which I have to run away from camera carrying a large, unwieldy pack. I do all that’s required, but behind me I can hear someone yelling and shrieking. I can’t think what I’m doing wrong and I can’t hear what it is they’re shouting. Finally turn and stop and bitterly throw my pack down. The crew are grinning back there in the distance, but I still don’t know what the hell I was being shouted at for. It turned out it was only TG doing some off-camera atmosphere noises. He did that this morning, when he was trying to help my reactions by giving me an off-camera impression of raping and pillaging. The result was so extraordinary I just broke up.

  Home about 8.30. Wash away the day’s grot. Then Helen, in keeping with the drought spirit that has gripped the land, waters the flowers with my bathwater.
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  Long phone call home to find out the latest on Father, who yesterday fell quite severely. The doctor says it’s time for him to go into hospital permanently, but a geriatric specialist visited him today and pronounced him much fitter than he’d expected. The specialist says my ma should not do so much for him – and should let him spend all day dressing if he needs to. Mother needed calming down after this theoretically very humane, but practically rather callous verdict.

  Friday, August 27th

  Feel confident and eager to work on these opening scenes. Presence of Paul Curran, who’s playing my father, increases this spirit of enjoyment. We complete our early part of the scene quickly, then Warren appears and we work on the main body of the scene. It goes well and feels lively. Warren says he enjoys working with Paul and myself – I think because we adapt to his rather naturalistic way of playing. He says he throws some actors who complain that their sense of’timing’ – W makes it sound like a dirty word – goes if there is any improvisation at all.

  But the irrepressible Mitchell ego, which has been bristling over the last couple of days, suddenly and quite abruptly bursts out. A BBC Film ’76 camera crew hover and start to film us rehearsing.

  Warren: ‘Who are these people?’

  Mumbled lack of response from everyone.

  Warren, louder:’No, come on, who are these people? What are they doing?’

  By now he’s got the embarrassed attention of most of the unit. He refuses to be filmed rehearsing. He, quite reasonably, if rather loudly, points out that no-one asked him if he would mind. Barry Norman1 is seen scowling in the background and after a hurried discussion they very huffily leave.

  Wednesday, September 1st