Friday, October 8th
Before night filming, Jimmy Gilbert drops in to see Terry H and me. He’s read ‘The Testing of Eric O’ and is very enthusiastic. According to TH, Jimmy is treating the Ripping Yarns as one of his major projects – which is exhilarating and frightening at the same time. Each episode is costing twice as much as each episode of Python. All the more reason why they must work so well. There can be no excuses.
A long, but mercifully warm and dry night at Pinewood. We get through a great deal, but Don Henderson and I are still quelling a frog riot at three in the morning. Home by five.
Monday, October 11th, King’s House Hotel, Glencoe
Marvellous journey from London, ending up on the West Highland Line – pulling past Loch Lomond and into ever higher remoteness. It’s very wet. Streams are pouring off the slopes like water off the back of a newly-emerged whale.
Our little band – some fifteen strong – disembarks from the Euston sleeper at Bridge of Orchy Station – so small that it takes one or two tries before the driver can get our carriage parallel with the platform.
To the King’s House Hotel – haunt of previous Python filmings. Misty cloud swirls across the tops of the mountains. Have learnt from past experience that it’s no good belting all over the Highlands for just the right mountain. Some of the best are right by the hotel and, because of the enormous benefits of being near our base, we decide to locate Snetterton’s camp about 300 yards from the hotel with the dark, stony, fierce pyramid of Buachaille Etive Mor as our El Misti.
Monday, October 18th
Lunch with Clive Hollick (and Simon A) at his invitation. Clive, whose group, Mills and Allen, own Shepperton Studios, wants me to join the board of Shepperton as a non-executive adviser – representing the users of Shepperton from the artistic side.
He has plans to brighten Shepperton’s image and make it into the most exciting studio to work in in London. Pin-tables and neon lights announcing who’s in today, may be going a bit far – but a bit of showmanship will not be a bad thing for the film industry, which needs any boost of confidence it can get. As I prefer Shepperton to the more oppressive, institutionalised atmosphere of Pinewood, I feel quite amenable.
Monday, October 23th
Woke – in advance of the alarm – at about seven. A dull, heavy, uninspired feeling. One thing I know for sure – I don’t want to work today, or for a long time. But I have two weeks of filming ahead, in which another Ripping Yarn, ‘Murder at Moorstones Manor’, is to be put down. The script has been acclaimed and yet I feel as if it’s the first day of a winter term at school.
A great deal of dialogue to do today, which took me a couple of hours of concentration to get under my belt last night. It takes me a little over 45 minutes of not difficult driving out along the A40 to get to Harefield Grove, a once-stately home near Rickmansworth.
Isabel Dean, who plays the key figure of the mother, is gloomy following the West End opening of Dear Daddy.1 She looks perfect for the part, but seems a little strained and tired and has trouble with her words.
Friday, October 29th
Out to Harefield again. I enjoy these early morning drives now – I happily let Capital Radio, with its inane links and good music, flow over me. It’s a relaxing 45 minutes. There’s now much to look forward to – the week has steadily improved. I seem to have survived a peak of tiredness, which was at its worst on Tuesday morning, but has since receded.
Terry H shows no signs of anything other than totally enjoying himself. Isabel worries on, but could be giving a perfect performance – I’m just not sure until we see it. She’s a much more jolly, funny person than her somewhat anxious exterior might indicate – and is gratifyingly happy to be doing this during the day alongside Dear Daddy in the West End – the play and cast of which she can’t stand.
Wednesday, November 3rd
Evening meal in Chelsea with Iradj B2 and Frank and Franny Reiss.3 Iradj has been selected (by the Shah himself) to start a publishing industry in Iran. No books are made or printed there as yet, so Iradj (and Time-Life whom he works for) would be starting literally from scratch.
I would think it a dangerous job – how much freedom will he have to publish what he wants? But Iradj is a pragmatist, he’ll end up on his feet. One of his problems is an illiteracy rate of 50%, but he maintains there’s a functional illiteracy rate of 75% (people who can read nothing more than simple signs, instructions, etc).
He hadn’t changed from the slightly patronising, but totally engaging, aristocratic Persian layabout he was when I shared a room with him in Germany for ten weeks in the summer of’63. I feel Iradj is one of those people who is now as old as he will ever get. Also one of those people who will keep recurring at odd intervals and in odd places throughout one’s life.
Monday, November 8th
Half a year and a few days after we last played Python Live at City Center in New York, the Pythons re-assemble at 22 Park Square East for the first day of a two-month writing period on our new film. A fine, sunny day, a good day to take resolutions and make plans.
John suggests straightaway that at some point during this writing period we all go abroad to the sun for a week or ten days (to ‘really break the back of the film’). This is shelved. As Terry J says, ‘Let’s all see if we like each other at the end of the day.’ But we make plans for the next year – writing until Christmas, re-writing throughout March and filming delayed until September/October 1977. There follows some good chat and exchange of ideas about the story and how to treat it. JC now thinks the film should be called ‘Monty Python’s Life of Christ’.
At lunchtime, TG leaves to complete filming of the Jabberwocky monster in Pembroke. We all go off to Auntie’s restaurant. A bottle of champagne (that’s all) among us to celebrate the reunion. They all want to know about Jabberwocky. The worse news the better, I sense! John’s passed his driving test and now has a car of his own – ‘A very old Rolls-Royce,’ he tells me, unable to stifle a trace of embarrassment.
Wednesday, November 10th
Writing with Terry – some hopeful starts, but nothing great as yet, the most promising being a piece Terry has begun about the Three Wise Men, confused over which star they’re following and being constantly mistaken for the wrong sort of astrologers and having to tell people about their star sign. In the classic Python mould of the humour of frustration; irritation at constantly being diverted by trivia.
Friday, November 12th
Python meeting at Park Square East at ten. All there except TG. Anne sits in (having asked if we didn’t mind). All rather institutional. It falls to Palin to start the ball rolling and read the first new, all-Python material since we wrote the Holy Grail.
Enough good material from everybody to suggest things haven’t changed. In fact, in John and Graham’s case, I think they’ve improved. They wrote the stoning section and an ex-leper and psychopath section – both of which were back on their best form. Very funny.
Anne supplies lunch – prawns and smoked salmon and no booze, except for GC who seems to find a G and T from somewhere. He is on fine form and really elated by his writing week with John. By contrast, I feel our week has not produced strong material. I’m suffering from slight, post-filming loss of energy. Terry J is too preoccupied with domestic and philanthropic problems.
Sunday, November 14th
Today I am going with TJ to the BBC to see a rough cut of’Across the Andes’.
It didn’t strike me as as funny as it should be, but he liked a lot of the shooting and the acting. Terry J’s main worry was my part. I think I’m not at my best with sub-Cleesian public school aggressives – and Snetterton is a middleman figure, not extraordinary in himself. TJ feels that the prominence of Snetterton should be built up more – putting him squarely and confidently as the centrepiece of the film. Then at least he would become less of an irritating attempt at someone being irritating.
Wednesday, November lyth
Film writing with Terry.
He’s still not producing much – what with helping his brother Nigel move, etc – but today we have a good read-through and work on with the Three Wise Men. Squash together at five. Two games all.
Drive over to Kingston for dinner with Nigel Pegram and April O.1
Nigel as dapperly charming as ever; someone it’s very difficult not to like. April was telling me quite extraordinarily Pythonesque stories of her neighbours. She has a woman who came in and asked April if she would go and sniff her house! She meant it literally too – she was worried about some smell in the house and people were coming round. Also of a neighbour who knows King Olaf of Norway, who is apparently a compulsive farter. This is well known and hosts are now prepared for it and cover up for him in all kinds of ingenious ways.
Thursday, November 18th
A writing meeting of all the team this afternoon. John and Graham had written little and were not as pleased with themselves as before. Eric had done more thinking than writing – whereas Palin and Jones had produced a mighty wodge of at least 25 minutes of material. So reading was not made easier by the fact that there was a total imbalance of contributors. Fortunately Terry Gilliam had taken time off from editing at Shepperton to be at the meeting and his generous and noisy laughter helped a great deal and, by the end, we’d acquitted ourselves quite respectably
The sketches, or fragments, which work least well at the moment are those which deal directly with the events or characters described in the Gospels. I wrote a sketch about Lazarus going to the doctors with ‘post-death depression’, which, as I read it, sounded as pat and neat and predictable as a bad university revue sketch. The same fate befell John and G’s sketch about Joseph trying to tell his mates how his son Jesus was conceived. The way the material is developing it looks as though the peripheral world is the most rewarding, with Jesus unseen and largely unheard, though occasionally in the background.
John and Graham are troubled by the lack of a storyline. At the moment, after only about seven or eight days’ writing, I feel it’s the least of our worries and that we should carry on writing and stockpiling funny material to be fitted into a storyline later. ‘But we only have another thirty-two and a half days’ writing, little plum,’ says John, consulting his diary.
Friday, November 19th
In the same week as I describe in Melody Maker the pain and joys of filming Jabberwocky on a rubbish tip at Shepperton, I find myself filming Jabberwocky on a rubbish tip at … Shepperton.
Nearly four months after my first shot, I’m being made up as Dennis again, with the blood, the dirt and the fringe – only this time we can’t afford a makeup girl on set, so I have to go up to South Hill Park to see Maggie, who makes me up before breakfast.
At Shepperton we find a haggard and unshaven cameraman – played by Julian Doyle. The three of us make our way to the rubbish tip. Julian, by this time, has found some ends of film to use up. We retrieve a chair from the tip, which Terry G stands on. I climb under my shield and drag myself across the dirt patch while Julian squirts smoke around us. A lonely, surreal little scene, which Film ’76 should have captured.
Sunday, November 21st
A new thing in Hampstead trendiness, a croissant delivery service. A long-haired young man with brightly-painted Citroen Dyane out in Oak Village at nine o’clock, distributing croissants to the discerning – like a sort of super-sophisticated Meals on Wheels.
Take Tom and Willy swimming at midday, then over to Carlton Hill, St John’s Wood, where I’ve been summoned to meet Ronnie Wood – once of the Faces, now of the Stones and, perhaps, apart from Paul Simon, the closest and most genuine of Eric’s friends in the pop aristocracy.
Whilst Tom and Willy play records on the juke-box in Eric’s kitchen and generally complain about being there at all, I explore the house. Rather like a seaside farce, there’s a lady called Charlotte in the sauna, and on the top floor, next to Eric’s work-room, with its ‘Bible’ commentaries on the desk, an Australian girl called Shirley is staying.
‘Woody’ arrives in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, neatly dressed, dark-haired and with such a tan it looks like make-up, but of course it isn’t, he lives in Malibu. I thank him for his letters and assorted scribbles during the summer. Eric opens a bottle of Dom Perignon (a gift from Dark Horse Records for writing and directing a couple of promo films for George’s album 33⅓ in the summer) then we walk in the crisp November sunshine round to the Clifton Arms. It’s full of people and smoke and Woody solicitously finds a kids’ room at the back. He’s a nice, unaffected, friendly man – very warm.
He describes Stones business meetings – they have even more than Python – with Keith Richards, who sounds very eccentric, lying prostrate and apparently dead for much of the meeting, apart from the occasional devastating one-liner. Charlie Watts remains very silent until suddenly, out of the blue, coming up with an idea about plastic record covers.
His position as a relatively new member of the Stones is considered differently by the Stones and their ‘businessmen’. As he puts it, the band are all very democratic, split everything equally, ‘but as soon as the businessmen come in it all changes.’
In the early evening Al Levinson comes round, in a mellow haze of cigar smoke. It seems that my favourable comments on Millwork really encouraged him and he’s now writing fast and furiously on a new ‘Fish’1 novel, ‘Fish Full Circle’.
Wednesday, November 24th
A good, workmanlike Python meeting. John and G have a good idea for a Brian storyline and their two new pieces, though short, are not just on the point, but very funny – writing ‘Go Home Romans’ on the wall is going to be a little classic. I wish I’d thought of such a neat idea.
From 22 Park Square East we all (except Gilliam) pile into John’s Rolls and purr down to Audley St, Mayfair, for a viewing of selected Biblical epics, which we feel we ought to see. We nearly run over Elton John in North Audley Street and muse on what a strange headline it would make – ‘Elton Run Over by Pythons’.
The viewing theatre at Hemdale is very comfortable, which is just as well as the films – Barabbas, King of Kings, The Greatest Story Ever Told and Ben Hur (we see bits of each) – are extremely heavy and turgid. Best performances and best writing always centre on the baddies – Herod, Pilate, etc – and the nearer you get to Jesus the more oppressive becomes the cloying tone of reverence. Everyone talks slower and slower and Jesus generally comes out of it all as the world’s dullest man, with about as much charisma as a bollard.
We had a few good ideas during the viewing (midst much silly giggling and laughter). I suggested we should have four Wise Men – the fourth one being continually shut up by the others, who always refer to themselves as the Three Wise Men. ‘Four’. ‘Ssh!’
Tuesday, November 30th, Southwold
Depressing visit to the hospital in Southwold. Daddy looking thinner than before. His staring, largely immovable eyes register my appearance briefly, but cannot manage much more. His speech in fits and starts. Sometimes he doesn’t make sense at all. Much talk of ties and headmasters.
Look out towards the church, the beautiful Southwold Church he loved so much and the grey November afternoon closing around it. A pretty melancholy realisation that my father will never be at home again.
It was ten years ago to the day that they moved to Southwold from Sheffield. Then he was full of hope and excitement and relief that a drab and unhappy salaried life was past, and he was back where he always wanted to be, amongst old churches, choirs and organ music.
Thursday, December 2nd, Oxford
Arrive at Oxford to speak in a debate only to find there is a strike of hotel workers at the Randolph so, rather than cross the picket lines, I make for the nearest hostelry in Broad Street and sort out the seven or so foolscap pages of my speech into some order, over a pint of Burton Ale.
The debate starts at 8.15 with the usual nonsense about elections and re-elections, spiced up a bit this year by the hawk-nosed grace of Benazir Bhutto – daughter
of Pakistan’s Premier and next year’s President. She looks incongruous amongst the Tory rowdies who make up the Union establishment and bay most unpleasantly at some poor man who stands up to protest against ‘the scandal and malpractice within this Union’. I long to hear what the scandal is, but the hounds of reaction stalk him out of the hall. I feel embarrassed being in my DJ up at the front with these idiots.
About ten, I’m eventually called upon to speak. A warm and rather surprising round of applause. The speech goes well. Some good laughs and for some reason, after a bad joke half-way through, I pour the water glass provided over my head. Even bigger laughs, but it makes the ink on my script run and the pages stick together and the last part of the speech is less successful.
The whole thing ends, much to my relief, about 11.30. Talk to three or four undergraduates who are trying to set up a magazine called ‘Passing Wind’ in Oxford next year. They all seem rather earnest and sit me down in a big armchair and treat me far too like a guru. I hope they aren’t short on humour. One of their interview questions was (quite seriously) whether there was any relationship between Neil Innes and Eric Idle.
Monday, December 6th
Clive Hollick rings in the evening to say that Shepperton Studios did make a profit last year (£40,000) and have clinched the Superman deal. They want the stages for fifty-two weeks next year. Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman will be there, so it seems a good time to accept their offer of a directorship.
Wednesday, December 8th
A Python writing meeting in the afternoon. Quite substantial chunks of material from everyone – including a neat and funny bit by Eric with a magnificent creation – a Jewish Hitler called Otto the Nazarene, who wants more Lebensraum for the Jews.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 48
