Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  In the foyer of the NFT I see a sprinkling of critics, including Dilys Powell and John Coleman of the New Statesman, who gives me a cheery greeting. In the gents someone of familiar face introduces himself – it’s Jonathan Pryce, whom I last met in a playground in North Kensington, where he was filming for Stephen Frears. A nice, rather gentle man, about our age. All three of us (he and I and TG) walk over to the Old Vic for lunch.

  Down in the basement they have a thriving little serve-yourself restaurant with lovingly home-made pies, treacle tarts, salads and a fine selection of white wines. A mixture of folk, too – at one table a clutch of Britain’s top actors – Dorothy Tutin, Derek Jacobi, Alec McCowen, all presumably rehearsing at the National – at the end of our table a couple of businessmen.

  Back to the NFT for Part II of igoo, which lasts from 2.30 until just after 4.30. As always with Bertolucci, the images in the film are clear, cool, sharp and confident – the pictures absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. But that aside, and taking into account some perfectly shot, written and acted moments, I found the whole one big soap opera – complete with unremittingly villainous villains and unremittingly decent good guys (the peasants).

  I felt it was a commercial film – despite its four-hour length. Why else import Burt Lancaster, Sterling Hayden and Robert De Niro into an otherwise convincing north Italian village, filled with real Italian peasants, and dub on a soundtrack that turns it into Peyton Place?

  Tuesday, November 15th

  Up at eight. Work on Shepperton papers in preparation for a meeting with Clive at lunch. Long chat with Graham Ford on the phone – all well, except when I mention my idea of asking Barry Norman’s Film ‘77 bunch if they want to do ‘A Day in the Life of a British Studio’ (i.e. Shepperton).

  Ford doesn’t like Barry Norman, for the same reasons, I think, that Peter Noble doesn’t – they find him too critical of the industry. I think this is his greatest quality – and a vital antidote to the ‘everything in the garden’s lovely’ attitude of Noble. But he conceded that it is a good idea, but maybe next March when we’re all smart and the new signs are up.

  He completely missed my point that when we need them is now – so that we don’t have to pull any wool over anyone’s eyes. We have a full and thriving studio, which is good, but we also have the problems of a studio trying to heave itself out of a depression which was, four years ago, almost fatal. This is the first time I’ve felt seriously at odds with the competent G Ford. I was disappointed at his lack of imagination.

  Wednesday, November 16th

  The weather has settled down, after the frantic activity of the last week it’s raw, cold and dry. The gales seem to have blown themselves out.

  There’s been a flurry of activity this week from Jimmy, Jim Franklin and others to try and ‘firm up’ Ripping Yarns or ‘Palins’, as Jimmy insists on calling them and, after their offers today, the nearest thing I have to a future now looks like stretching until the end of 1979 at least.

  Friday, November 18th

  My hopes of going into writing retreat at Charney Manor – beautiful house, Quaker-run, therefore lots of peace – are dashed. It’s full.1 After much phoning, end up at the Bell Inn, Charlbury.

  A two-hour Shepperton board meeting. I suggest that Film ‘77 be approached. Clive very enthusiastic and the board authorises me to get in touch.

  Saturday, November 19th

  Fine, fresh, very cold day for William’s seventh birthday. Tremendously excited (both Willy and Tom). William is up from a quarter to seven until midday before he even realises he’s only got pyjamas on.

  At two I drive up to Hampstead to open the Red Cross Bazaar (in lieu of Terry J, who’s in Tunisia). A crowd (small) of mostly old ladies, who wouldn’t know me from Adam, huddle against the cold, outside the locked door. ‘Let us in,’ they beseech me. But the Red Cross won’t open their doors until two, so the queue shivers. It’s all rather pitiful.

  I give a short opening exhortation, then everyone gets stuck in at the bargains. At a quarter to three I run an auction, and by three I’m out – profusely thanked and presented with a gun (toy) to take to William for his birthday. I can hardly say ‘a gift from the Red Cross’ as I give him this device for blowing people’s heads off.

  Willy’s birthday party is more an exercise in crowd control – nine highly excited nippers, apart from Willy, storm the house and hold us besieged for two hours. William very cleverly avoids most of the shindig – and tucks himself away upstairs to lay out his pressies.

  As quickly as they have come, they’re gone. The hurricane has passed through and Helen and I slowly pick up the pieces.

  Sunday, November 20th

  Chop wood for the fire and clear up in preparation for lunch party. Ron Devillier, of Dallas, Texas, the man who finally got Monty Python onto American TV, is in town, got in touch, and I’ve invited him for lunch with Mary, Ed and Catherine.

  Ron is now the buyer for the entire PBS network and is based in Washington. Big, bearlike, bearded, with a wide, generous, easily smiling face, Ron is immensely and immediately likeable. Though he does wield power and influence, he still comes across as an almost boyish enthusiast.

  Over lunch he tells the true story of Python in the US. In 1972 Ron was in New York. ‘It was raining, and I had nothing to do,’ was how he started the tale. So Ron rang Wyn Godley of Time-Life Sales and asked if there was anything at all left for Ron to view. Wyn looked at his lists and said there was a BBC comedy show called Monty Python, but everyone who’d seen it had rejected it. Ron was a little intrigued, and it was a filthy day, so he went over to see it.

  It was Monty Python’s ‘Montreux’ episode. Ron liked it. Took a copy back to Dallas, looked again and rang Wyn back to ask if there were any more. Wyn returned to the files and found that there were thirteen tapes available. ‘Send ’em all,’ asked Ron, at which Time-Life nearly fell off their seats. But thirteen tapes were duly despatched to Ron’s station in Dallas.

  One day, coming in to the office at six, Ron sat down and viewed all the tapes, finishing at seven that evening. Ron fell in love with them. His only problem then, he said, was to avoid racing to the phone or in ‘any way letting Time-Life know that I thought they were the greatest things I’d ever seen’.

  In the end he controlled his enthusiasm, but still found Time-Life asking $500 each for the right to two showings of each programme. Ron, alone, consulting nobody, wrote out the $6,500 cheque one evening. That was his act of faith – for $6,500 is a great deal to a small station.

  But the fairytale ending is that the shows were such an immediate success in Dallas that, on the first night an uncut Python show was aired in the US. Ron received more pledges of money to the station than the $6,500 he’d paid for the entire series.

  New York got wind of this success and for once the smart East Coast found itself having to follow Texas, but NY paid $2,000 per show. The rest, as they say, is history. One hundred and forty-two stations since bought Python, and Ron is in no doubt that it revolutionised American TV thinking.

  Last week Ron saw three of the Ripping Yarns (‘Olthwaite’, ‘Tomkinson’ and ‘Stalag’) and says he is quite sure they will go in the States. After our Sunday lunch we walk up Parliament Hill and down to Highgate Ponds and Ron asks how the Ripping Yarns are financed and whether or not there is any way in which PBS can invest in them at this stage.

  Usually these negotiations are conducted through dozens of intermediaries – Time-Life, BBC Enterprises, etc – and this is why it’s such a breakthrough to talk directly to Ron – the buyer – and it must be the first time such a deal has been discussed directly between American finance and the creator of the programmes. So who knows, it may turn out to have been a very profitable walk on the Heath!

  Monday, November 21st, Charlbury

  Arrive at 3.15. The hotel is unpretentious. My room is spacious, with a low ceiling and two exposed beams – original, I expect, and that means 1700, when the Bell was built. The wall
paper is bright and tasteful – of the pastoral variety. There are two brass bedsteads and a fine bay overlooking the main street. The table is of the right height and reasonably solid, so I set my typewriter up in the bay. By the time I’m ready to write, it’s getting dark. A quarter to four, the worst time to begin. It’s hard to concentrate, to shut out all the new sensations of this place, but I persevere, hoping I’m not disturbing anyone with my tapping, and by half past six have added 1,000 words to the morning’s total.

  Take a walk around Charlbury – deserted and bitterly cold. My ears ache in the wind. Glad to get back to the warm, cosy hotel. Ring home. Have a Glenmorangie in the bar and a good meal of haddock in a pastie and pheasant and cheese.

  The ambience of the hotel is restful, pleasant and unhurried.

  Asleep by 11.30.

  Tuesday, November 22nd, Charlbury

  Up a little after eight o’clock. A thoroughly refreshing eight hour kip behind me. Pull back the heavy salmon-pink curtains in my little bay and am confronted with clear blue skies and a sun shining brightly on the grey stone cottages across the street.

  Bath and breakfast (the breakfast menu is dangerously appetising, and bigger than the dinner menu in the evening). Choose smoked haddock and half a grapefruit. Then a short walk down by the church and back to the Bell to begin work.

  Start slowly – still the unfamiliar distractions, which I hope I will get used to – cleaning ladies talking noisily just outside the door, the bus which stops almost outside my window – the everyday life of Charlbury. But I don’t think I would have found a place with much less everyday life, and the hotel grows more congenial every extra hour I spend here. Coffee is brought to me, unbidden, at eleven.

  I drive into Burford for an hour’s lunch break. Go to a quiet Wadworths pub, where I am recognised and get a free half of bitter in exchange for some signatures.

  Back to the Bell. Put my typewriter down, as it were, at 6.30. A thoroughly satisfactory eight-hour writing day. Four thousand words completed (half a normal week’s target in one day). Greatly enthused, I take a walk in the bleak and chilly darkness down to the bridge to look at the Evenlode.

  Thursday, November 24th, Charlbury

  Discovery, at lunchtime, of the thatched village of Great Tew, tucked away in the steep fold of a valley, about ten miles north of here. Complete with tiny, mullioned-windowed village pub, the Falkland Arms. A front room, with a roaring fire. A crusty old gent, a real relic of the past, held forth, and in the middle of all this – as if I hadn’t had a surfeit of images of traditional English life – it began to snow.

  An icy cold afternoon, though, which made my warm bay window vantage point in the Bell all the more attractive. It must have soothed my mind into a productive state, for today I became deeply absorbed in a confrontation of Avery with Annie and Sarah – really absorbed – and I finished just before seven with 5,000 words done – 15,000 since I have been at the hotel.

  Friday, November 25th, Charlbury

  I lunched in the bar of the Bell for the first time – an agreeable stone-flagged floor, beams and a big open fireplace. It pleased me to think that nearly a third (for that is the extent of my achievement this week) of the book was written directly above this room.

  Wednesday, November 30th

  Just after three o’clock, the novel comes quietly to a halt. It’s finished and quite acceptably so.

  I christen the book ‘A Bit of a Break’, but I don’t know if that will stick.

  Thursday, December 1st

  Began reading the novel through a little before ten and finished at a quarter to seven in the evening. I reckon about eight hours’ solid reading. I made notes – generally about passages which were too dense, complicated or repetitive. What the book needs, basically, is clarification. The beginning is quite jolly, the middle is soggy and tends to lose its way, and the end moves fast to quite a neat conclusion.

  Friday, December 2nd

  Finished the novel just in time, for this morning we have the first meeting of the Pythons to begin the lead-up to the movie which starts, all being well, in April.

  John Goldstone addresses us first. John, now firmly established as producer of the next movie, wishes us to help him out in raising the loot. So far the four million dollars has not been forthcoming. John virtually rules out private investors, and Michael White says there is no way he can lay his hands on the money we require – about eight times as much as we were asking for on the Holy Grail. So we are looking for a friendly American major to finance the film and take distribution, etc, etc.

  John G says Warner’s have all read it and loved it (which I can’t believe), but a bit of Python flag waving would not go amiss. To this end he suggests an interview with Variety, Hollywood Reporter and other magazines which land softly on air-conditioned office desks in Burbank.

  Eric is appalled by the idea. (I’ll grant Eric that – his attitude to the press is one of the few that has remained consistent over the last five years!) He suggests putting an ad in Variety aimed at showing American producers what an extraordinary world-wide force Python is. John suggests a byline – ‘You were late for World War One, late for World War Two … Don’t be late for …’

  The next leading question is where we should rewrite in January. For Eric and John, writing in England is out of the question. John likes to edge all his comments with a geriatric appeal – ‘I don’t know about you others, but I’m nearly 40 and I need more … (money, sunshine, sleep, reading, etc, etc)’.

  Eric suggests Barbados – which sounds lovely – but both the Terrys look miserable. Graham, as usual, says nothing. I question whether we would actually do any work in Barbados. It’s a long way to go to do a little. This consideration doesn’t seem to weigh heavily on John or Eric, nor does Terry’s appeal for more time at home – ‘Bring the family,’ orders Eric, and Terry rather meekly accepts. It was decided in JC and El’s favour, as you might expect.

  We then went on to order a bollocking for Methuen for their pusillanimous handling of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (book), but the cover of the Instant Record Collection was greatly approved of. Thank you, Terry Gilliam (though I don’t think anyone got around to saying that).

  The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations have been on to us – they would like to include some Python lines in their new edition. This iconolatry is greeted with such suggestions as ‘That is my theory and what it is too’, ‘What’s ten quid to the bloody Midland Bank’, and ‘His hobbies are strangling animals, golf and masturbating’.

  Wednesday, December 7th, Sheffield

  To Gospel Oak School at 2.30 for William’s Christmas Concert. This year he’s a Roman centurion. Less lively and spontaneous than shows in the past – the heavy hand of religion?

  To St Pancras and the Sheffield train. Meet up with Terry J – we’re off to spend an evening at the Crucible Studio, where David Leland’s Season of New Plays is in its last week. Sit on the spindly plastic seats in the buffet car, which would appear to be deliberately designed to stop people idling their time away in the buffet for reasons of comfort. But, warming ourselves with scotches, TJ and I manage to last the whole two and a half hour journey on these nasty little things.

  Chat about Python. TJ is fond of pointing out that we have all become harder, tougher individuals as a result of Python – though I think he regrets the loss of the team spirit. He thinks he’s softened. He no longer holds views – or perhaps he no longer propagates views – with the same intensity. He’s determined to play the film easily.

  See two plays. The second, an Irish play called Says I, Says He, by one Ron Hutchinson, excellently performed. I am very receptive to a bit of the Irish – the prose is full, flowery and flowing and the language constantly rich. Makes English seem very dry. It’s about gunmen in the end, of course. The wastefulness of the Irish is utterly depressing. At least they go down talking well.

  After the plays, a kebab and retsina and several jugs of red wine with David and a d
irector from the Royal Court called Stuart Burge, and a lady from a theatre in Amsterdam which specialises in putting on new foreign plays. NB – where is somewhere like that in London?

  Thursday, December 8th

  Back to London on the Master Cutler – 7.20 from the Midland station. Meet Stuart Burge and friend and join them at breakfast.

  He is late fifties, of the old establishment who were once angry young men. Tells a good story of how he brought over a young Greenwich Village folk singer for a BBC TV play many years ago. The guy was obviously high when it came to the read-through at some North Acton boys’ club – though at that time people didn’t really understand non-alcoholic highs. Anyway, the folk singer was Bob Dylan and he sang ‘Blowing in the Wind’ in this BBC play, for probably the first time ever outside of the Village. The BBC have since destroyed this momentous tape.

  This evening to Gospel Oak again for Tom’s concert. A very loose adaptation of’Cinderella’, complete with skateboard sequence. Tom amazed me with the supreme confidence of his performances – whether in the chorus singing ‘Consider Yourself’ with real enjoyment and wholehearted participation, or giving a very passable impression of Elvis in a pop group, or his tour de force – a rather arch version of ’You Are My Sunshine’ – he was certainly not the retiring Tom I expected to see.

  Afterwards so many people came up – sharing my astonishment, but saying how good he was – that I felt very proud, and happy for Tom, too. He likes acting, he says now. If he ever does tread the boards, I think his career will date from December 8th 1977!

  Friday, December 9th

  Sunny, but still very cold. The novel lies at one end of the desk, untouched. A piece of good news – Redwood has won two awards at the Campaign Magazine Radio Commercials do last night. Only Molinaire, among London studios, took more awards. André deservedly chuffed. It sets a very effective seal on a first year’s operation that’s not even finished yet.