Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years

by Palin, Michael

  My last memory of the children is of Tom, Willy, Rachel (in Helen’s arms), Holly, Catherine, Louise and Helen Guedalla forming a tableau in the back window of the Cadillac. It felt like an archetypal image of the native son off to the big city to find fame and fortune. Except he wouldn’t have left in a Cadillac.

  We went on to Eric’s, and I realised that these vast cars are designed to make the occupants look important, rather than to take on goods and chattels. So, despite being twice as long as any other non-goods vehicle on the road, we still had to go through a minor comedy routine with the cases.

  Graham had by this time taken his hat off, and looked less jaunty. Through growing clouds of pipe smoke he told me, a little apologetically, that he’d only bought the suit because he was going to take a tax year out of the country (and this was the first day).

  Eric has equally positively decided to move out of London, though only as far as the outer commuter countryside – Oxfordshire, possibly – ‘to be near George [Harrison] and near London’. He talks of the country wistfully now, as if drawn to it as the next inevitable step in his development.

  I had nothing to equal such hefty decisions.

  Graham and I talked of Keith Moon, who was to have been in the movie and flying out soon to join us, but who died some time on Thursday night, after a party. Graham, whose abstention from alcohol has increased his appeal a hundred percent – he now sounds like, as well as looks like a very wise old owl – told me that Keith was trying to cut down his Rabelaisian appetite for booze, and had some pills called Heminevrin to help out, but these should be taken under carefully controlled conditions and never with alcohol – for they act to increase the strength of anything you do drink.

  So Keith had just gone too far and, although his whole life was lived constantly up to the limits, this time, like an adventurous schoolboy on a frozen pond, he’d stepped a little too far out. What a waste. But GC reckons both Peter Cook and Ringo’s are also in trouble with booze.

  A long taxi drive from Tunis to Monastir as night fell. Impressions of aridity, emptiness, scrubland stretching away on either side of the road. A camel train tottering, or rather swaying, in that peculiarly restful camel motion, along a dried up river bed.

  The villages we pass through are reminiscent of Ireland or Cyprus – not neat and tidy Best Kept Village candidates as in France, Germany or Britain, but collections of houses built as basically as possible to provide shelter for men, women, children and their animals. No time or money for grass verges or floral clocks here.

  To the Hotel Méridien by eight. It’s large, new and comfortable – as different from those villages as England is from the moon. An international standard of comfort and atmosphere, protecting the Overdeveloped from the Underdeveloped.

  The bed is comfortable and the room has no fewer than three balconies with views out over the sea – which sounds near. Unpack and drift off to sleep about two o’clock. Almost my last memory is of Rachel sitting in my bed this morning and asking ‘Where are you going today, Daddy?’

  ‘Africa, darling.’

  Monday, September 11 th, Hotel Méridien, Monastir, Tunisia

  Looking through the script, it strikes me, not for the first time, that the schedule is very full indeed. A long and ambitious film to be squeezed into the eight-week shoot we have planned. Can’t help but feel that some scenes will be trimmed or cut altogether.

  Lunch on the terrace of the Sidi Mansour Hotel, where TJ, TG and most of the crew are staying. Terry J was struck down by some metabolic demon in the night and is still in a very delicate state. The art director, Roger Christian, is in bed with sunstroke, and Doctor Chapman, with his napkin draped over his head as an improvised sunshield, has already been called upon to dispense from the apothecary’s treasure trove he brought out with him yesterday.

  Graham claims to have seen a hoarding advertising a film about my old school called’The 12 Salopians’. It turns out to be Les Douze Salopes, The Dirty Dozen.1

  In the afternoon we walk around the Ribat – the old fort of Monastir, now a public monument. It’s built of very light, almost golden, local sandstone, and the innumerable dark passageways and steep stone stairs leading to doorways and more stairs and passages is reminiscent of Doune Castle. Terry J shows us as many of the locations as he can before his bowels seize up again and he is rushed away by Graham.

  To the Café de la Plage at Coq Egyptien – known to all as the Coq. This is local, not international, and lacks air-conditioning and imitation leather carte des vins and other trappings of international hotel life. Instead it has peeling, pink-painted walls, decorated with rather shrine-like devotional pictures.

  Fish were brought round on a tray and we selected those we wanted. As usual with any group of eight foreigners in an ethnic stronghold like the Coq, we probably made the waiter’s life unbearably complicated, but he was tolerant about the whole thing.

  Wednesday, September 13th, Monastir

  The Méridien has an atmosphere of almost eerie spaciousness. Lights are lit around empty swimming pools. Wide new tiled corridors, discreetly lit and elegantly dotted with well-chosen chairs and sofas, lead into empty hallways where immaculately turned-out staff can be found at doors and behind desks. It’s a perfect relaxation from the Sidi Mansour, though, and I enjoy an hour’s guilt-free read of a Kingsley Amis (The Green Man).

  A phone call from John Goldstone and Terry J to see if I could exert pressure on John to agree to shooting the stoning sequence on Saturday. Tim Hampton had suggested we start two days early as all the crew were here and ready to go, and it would give us an invaluable extra day in the packed schedule.

  John stuck to an awkward stance – that we could indeed do the day, but he wasn’t going to endanger a ‘major’ comedy scene like the stoning on a first day. Some sense there. But, as we rehearsed it today, it seemed not only easier to shoot than perhaps we’d feared but, even at this stage, very funny. I don’t think delay will help it. Anyway, I told Goldstone to ring John himself.

  At dinner John told me of the call and expounded what he called The Cleese Theory of Convenience. I think, roughly precised, it means that everyone will do only what’s most convenient for them – and if you want things done your way you must not appear too agreeable or easy to please, or you will be the victim of other people’s desire for convenience.

  John and I consumed a bottle and a half of a fine, big Tunisian red wine, then back in John’s room – seemingly full of underpants and duty-free bottles of spirits – we took a slightly woozy, but thorough, look at the Pilate scenes.

  Thursday, September 14th, Monastir

  Woken at 8.15 by Terry Gilliam who, with a construction team waiting, was anxious to have the latest on whether JC was prepared to do the stoning scene – for stones and rocks have to be made today. Able to reassure him that John was only pursuing the Cleese Theory of Convenience.

  After rehearsals we go up to the Ribat for a photo-call for a Variety ad to herald the start of shooting. Nostalgia time. John was dressed in his Pacamac as Praline,1 complete with dead parrot. Terry had drag on and a huge lipstick smudge across his lower face. Graham C was in his Colonel’s outfit – which hangs off him now he’s lost weight! Eric was in spangly jacket and I was in knotted handkerchief. And here we were photographed against mosques and palm trees. The past catching up with the present.

  Saturday, September 16th, Monastir

  The first day of filming.

  Woke early, listening for JC rising early in the room above. He was called for seven, after a decision reached last week that we should start early and have as much time off as possible in the heat of the middle of the day. We have to finish before six, when we lose the light.

  Went for a swim in the hotel pool – which was cool and invigorating – and shaved close (I have to play a woman today) with great care, packed an (Indian) bag full of script, towel, swimming trunks, black notebook and 1930 Macmillan edition of Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (part
of my cultural survival kit) and drove in my little grey Renault 5 along the road across the salt flats, past Monastir Airport, past Bourguiba’s summer palace, through the plywood triumphal arches, taking great care to avoid bicycles, wandering old men and dozens of women, bottle-shaped in their white chadors. Finally turned sharply left in the direction of the bright, white, elegantly simple and unadorned lines of the Ribat – and its false sister building (built by Zeffirelli for Jesus of Nazareth), which stands rather impertinently beside it.

  A take has just begun, and John Young, dressed in loin cloth, is being dragged to the stoning yard beneath the outer walls of the Ribat by a wonderfully-dressed, swirling crowd. It’s an impressive, exciting, authentic Biblical crowd – and more than anything today gave me a sharp boost of confidence. This film really could be impressive.

  A crowd of ladies in beards has been assembled from a nucleus of our rep company, Tunisian actresses, Tunisian non-actresses and several people from Manchester who are on holiday.

  John C is a little stiff in his early performances, but loosens up as he realises it’s going to be rather good. John Young is wonderful. As JC says, though, at the end of the day, considering this is the first day of principal photography on a ‘major motion picture’, there’s no sense of occasion, we just get on with it. Terry J hops about in a businesslike way, and doesn’t exude any of the egomania of the Great Director. Peter Biziou1 and John Stanier (camera operator on Midnight Express) are equally efficient and unflamboyant.

  Then later in the afternoon the camera breaks down. Could this become a traditional feature of Python first days?

  I change and, while a huge stone is being dropped on John Cleese, go into the Ribat and work over my words for the Pilate scene on Wednesday. Then I sit in the rather calming air-conditioned comfort of the caravan and learn some of the Shepherds scene.

  In the evening back to the Méridien to change, then out to eat at the Coq with Terry J, Peter and Cristina [Peter’s partner] and Gwen [Taylor] and Andrew McLachlan.2 Drink rather a lot of wine and end up plunging into the sea starkers at midnight. A small but lecherous crowd of Tunisians gathers to watch and, as we walk away, a young boy offers us 40 dinars for an English girl who happens to be the girlfriend of Garth Marshall, our sound recordist. Then later offers me the services of a young man ‘only just down the road’.

  Sunday, September 17th, Monastir

  Breakfast out on my balcony. Early light cloud disperses by mid-morning. Write various postcards and ring Helen and talk to the kids. Of course I miss them, but because of the holiday in France and the fact that this was all planned so long ago, I think we’re all adjusted to being apart, so it’s just good to hear them – not at all painful – apart from Willy, whose chief topic of conversation is that he’s just been hit on the head by Rachel.

  A walk up the beach and a swim before lunch. Then afterwards feet up and an hour’s read of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Hardy travels well. His stories especially suit Tunisia, a country with still much of the slow pace and time for social intercourse that Hardy regretfully saw passing in Dorset.

  In the evening, two friends of Eric and Tania – Anjelica Huston and Nona Summers – arrived from London, bringing Sunday papers, which we grabbed from them avidly. Wine up on the balcony in Eric’s suite and briks (local speciality – a crispy pancake enclosing usually egg and tuna – a sort of Tunisian equivalent of the hamburger).

  Monday, September 18th, Monastir

  Woke early – around seven – but snoozed fitfully until 8.30, having, in wonderful solitude, read Tess, and tried some Pilate oratory for Wednesday. I can really bellow here, and am happily screaming something like ‘This man wanks as high as any in Wome’, when, out of the emptiness, a young Arab on a bicycle appears. He cycles, slowly, warily, past me for a moment, then, after he’s put in a suitable distance, he takes one last look and cycles off like a man possessed.

  Enthusiastically closing the day with some press-ups, feel a muscle go in my back. Curse my luck.

  Tuesday, September 19th, Monastir

  Called today to be Francis crawling through tunnels on the way to capture Pilate’s wife, but late enough for me to have a swim, breakfast and a read before going in. My pulled muscle, or whatever, was still painful enough in the night to jolt me awake two or three times, but seems no worse this morning.

  What finally cures my back is two or three hours of very uncomfortable work in the tunnels.

  We filmed on until seven, when the last platoon of Roman soldiers had tramped over our heads. Back at the hotel Graham gave me some back rub – but it all feels much better after the mini outward-bound course.

  Graham is rapidly becoming a saint. He’s been treating so many people in the unit – and now he’s stopped drinking he has time to do his medical work properly, and the ability to do it without shaking or dropping whatever he’s about to stick in you. In the evenings Graham does his rounds, with pills and rubs and words of reassurance.

  Apart from his medical activities, he’s sharp on his words and, from being a rather disconcerting influence on previous Python epics, he’s now become a model of co-operation and efficiency, and his avuncular presence is calm and reassuring. In fact John today suggested that Graham was reminding him more and more of a vicar.

  Wednesday, September 20th, Monastir

  Up at six, and on the road to Monastir by six-thirty. My first really testing day – the Pilate Forum speech.

  I know that I have to beware of factors such as being overawed by the scale and size of this particular movie. I have to try and forget previous successes or failures. I have to feel light and bright and free of any diversionary anxieties.

  Well today, as I drive across the salt and mud flats, with the sun low above the eastern horizon, casting a bright golden glow hard into my eyes, I feel good and prepared and just downright happy to be performing again. So the morning goes well, except that it is possibly the hottest, least windy day yet and out on our rostrum it becomes almost unbearable.

  But we cover everything bar John’s close-ups, then bring in the Tunisian crowd, whom we have heard outside the walls of the Ribat learning to shout ‘We want Wodewick!’

  They are marvellous and it’s a tremendous confidence boost for the rest of the filming, for at one time the difficulties of teaching Python techniques to a crowd of Tunisians seemed almost insuperable. However, today, Terry J has this mixed bunch of Arab students, peasants, grandmothers, mothers with babes in arms, old men with missing noses, middle-aged men with almost leprous skin, lying on their backs and waggling their feet in the air. They find no trouble in jeering at the posturings of the Roman Empire, and seem to enjoy it immensely.

  I talked yesterday with Mahomet, who is one of our Tunisian extras, and was one of the raiders in the tunnel. He belongs to a theatre group in Mahdia, and much of their work is critical of the status quo in Tunisia. ‘Anti-Bourguiba?’ I asked. He shushed me quickly. ‘You can end up in prison saying things like that.’

  Mahomet is a Tunisian nationalist of a different sort from Habib Bourguiba, whose likeness adorns the road into the town in twenty-foot-high posters. Mahomet wants Tunisia to be independent on its own terms and by virtue of its own resources. He’s not a pan-Arab, and he certainly does not approve of independence based on dependence on America, Europe or Russia.

  We took a late lunch – I managed a swim at the Sidi Mansour pool – and were back at three for more crowd reactions. Terry J won them over with a masterly display of co-suffering. He ran and jumped and grinned and lay on his back for them, and I could feel a great Celtic-Tunisian bond being formed.

  In an excess of zeal tonight I crack the top of my dental plate whilst cleaning it.

  Worlds collide, restoration drama meets John Belushi, Saturday Night Live, April 8th, 1978.

  ‘The Chilites dance routine does not please Lome and is cut just before dress rehearsal. “You’ll thank me in years to come,” says Lome. I’m thanking him now’ Garrett Morris (
left), Bill Murray, myself and Dan Aykroyd. (April 8th, 1978)

  ‘An awful, monumentally awful moment’. Dancing with five cats down my trousers, Saturday Night Live, New York. (April 8th, 1978)

  Eric and Carey, me and Rachel, Life of Brian, Tunisia, 1978.

  ‘Tom decided he would like to appear in the afternoon’s filming … It was one of the less comfortable scenes but graced by the presence of the visiting George Harrison. So at least he can say he’d been in a scene with Pythons and Beatles.’ (The Life of Brian, October 22nd, 1978)

  Holidays at Roques. Helen and me, Tom, Anthea, Ian Davidson and Edward Burd.

  Happy family. The Coach House, Sag Harbor, NY, 1979.

  My childhood friend Graham Stuart-Harris.

  ‘1979 comes in cold Very cold.’ On the pond at Abbotsley.

  ‘I have to open a fete at William Ellis School … I smile and sparkle and fail to hit anything with seven balls.’ (May 19th, 1979)

  Mary and Edward Burd, Roques.

  Saturday Night Live. Lorne Michaels hypnotises me before the show.

  ‘Mikoto comes to cook us a Japanese meal. The preparation is a painstaking and delicate business – as indeed is communication with Mikoto.’ (June 12th, 1979)

  Al Levinson, my American friend, with Rachel, Sag Harbor, NY, July, 1979.

  ‘They give us grapefruit segments, beef in a brown and unexciting sauce… and a trifle which looked like the remains of an unsuccessful heart-swap operation.’ With Donald Carroll (left), Jilly Cooper, Steve Race and Katharine Whitehorn at a Yorkshire Post literary lunch. (October 25th, 1979)