Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (103 page)

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Authors: Michael Palin

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Ken Pile. Fan Photo.

‘Start the day being kissed repeatedly by Jamie on the bathroom floor. Very pleasant form of acting’ July 17 1987

Tom, Will, Helen, Granny and Rachel brave an east coast gale outside Sunset House, Southwold. 1987

With 90 year-old Joyce Carey, friend and muse of Nöel Coward, on the set of
Number 27
‘Apparently her skirt fell down as she stood in the rose garden. “Normally I would have laughed, but this time I was a little cross” ’ June 23 1988

1
Patricia Casey produced Monty Python’s first film
And Now For Something Completely Different
in 1970.
2
Trevor Jones, composer. To avoid confusion with the film composer of the same name he is now known as John Du Prez. Wrote the music for a number of Python songs as well as the film
A Fish Called Wanda
and, with Eric Idle, the musical
Spamalot
.
3
André Jacquemin, long-time Python sound recordist and composer.
4
Roger Pratt, camera operator on
Time Bandits
, later, lighting cameraman on
Brazil
and, more recently, two of the
Harry Potter
films.
5
Jim Franklin directed four of the
Ripping Yarns
.
6
Bernard Kieser, periodontal surgeon extraordinaire, carried on the fight to keep my teeth in my mouth, with increasing success.
7
Wells was President of Warner Brothers, and later, of the Walt Disney Company. He died in a helicopter accident whilst on a heli-skiing trip in 1994.
Jarvis Astaire, businessman and influential sports event promoter. Co-produced the film
Agatha
in 1978.
8
Bob Salmon was André Jacquemin’s accountant and helped to set up Redwood Studios.
9
‘Penis Apology’ was a very long-drawn-out health advisory at the beginning of the film warning the audience that there may be a penis in shot later on. The apology became longer and more complex, including discussions from Bishops for the Church’s view etc. It was never used.
10
S.G. Hulme Beaman created the Toytown stories, some of the earliest children’s books and radio programmes I remember.
11
Lorne Michaels produced the ground-breaking, talent-spinning NBS
Saturday Night Live
show. And still does.
12
Ken Stephinson, BBC Manchester producer who recruited me to present an episode of
Great Railway Journeys
.
13
The Crusaders’ Union was an evangelical Bible Class for boys and girls.
14
Ron Devillier ran Dallas Public Broadcasting station, the first place in America to show a series of Monty Python uncut and in its entirety, back in 1972.
15
Al Levinson, an American I’d met in the seventies, and some of whose writing I’d published. His second marriage was to Claudie, a young Bretonne.
16
Just over a month earlier the SAS had spectacularly stormed the Iranian Embassy in Prince’s Gate, ending a five-day siege by Iranian separatists. Five of the gunmen and one hostage were killed.
17
Alan was one of Graham Chapman’s closest friends. They had met as medical students at Bart’s Hospital.
18
When Helen and I married in 1966 we lived in a flat at 82 Belsize Park Gardens.
19
A
Ripping Yarn
which I at first thought hadn’t worked at all, but has since become one of my favourites, not least for Richard Vernon and Joan Sanderson’s wonderfully played dining room scenes.
20
Abbotsley, a small village near St. Neots in Cambridgeshire, is where Helen’s mother lives.
21
Sir Frank Crisp (1843-1919), a successful and eccentric solicitor, created the gardens, when he bought Friar Park in 1895.
22
The estate agents Knight, Frank & Rutley.
23
Basil, a Hong Kong-born designer and photographer, was introduced to me by Eric Idle in 1978, when he brought him in to work on the
Life of Brian
book.
24
‘Monty Python Live at City Center’. New York, 1976.
25
Michael White, a theatre producer, had courageously put money into
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
. It was produced by John Goldstone, who also later produced
Life of Brian
and
The Meaning of Life
.
26
I had been on the board of Shepperton Studios in South-west London since making
Jabberwocky
there in 1976.
27
Journalist, critic and TV producer.
28
The story of a young rapper/musician (Brinsley Forde) seeking success in the alienated black community of South London. Directed by Franco Rosso and shot by Chris Menges.
29
A bright young Bradford-born accountant, not long down from Cambridge and recently employed by Denis O’Brien’s company, EuroAtlantic, in Cadogan Square, Knightsbridge.
30
A play which I’d completed at the end of 1979. It was eventually put on in the West End in 1994 with Richard Wilson in the lead. Michael Medwin played the Foot-Man.
31
Bloody Kids
, made for TV in 1979, was directed by Stephen Frears, written by Stephen Poliakoff, produced by Barry Hanson and shot, as was
Babylon
, by Chris Menges.
32
Occasional legal adviser-turned-producer. Later became manager of Queen.
33
Simon Albury. Old friend and William’s godfather.
34
In November 1979, Iranian militants had taken American Embassy staff in Tehran hostage and held them for 444 days, releasing them only after Jimmy Carter’s presidency ended.
35
Popular, accessible Chairman of the British Railways Board from 1976 to 1983, and the only one to have a locomotive named after him. He died in 2002.
36
A commercials director and inventor. I’d tried, without success, to get him to direct some of the
Ripping Yarns
. He in turn had asked me if I’d be in his film of Dennis Potter’s 1976 TV play
Brimstone and Treacle
, to be produced by Ken Trodd. It was filmed in 1982 with Sting in the starring role.
37
Caterer and next-door neighbour for many years.
38
Film version of the comic-strip. Robin Williams was Popeye and Shelley Duvall Olive Oyl. Robert Altman directed. Jules Feiffer wrote the screenplay and Harry Nilsson the songs.
39
One of the first journalists to ‘get’ Monty Python, he was also a vigorous campaigner who, with Terry J, started an environmental magazine called the
Vole
. He gave his interests as ‘soothsaying, shelling peas and embroidery’.
40
Edward Watson Palin was a doctor who lived at Fakenham in Norfolk. I still correspond with a retired policeman who remembers Dr Palin taking tonsils out for free in his kitchen after church on Sundays.
41
One of the most serious in a summer of urban riots took place at Toxteth in Liverpool. A thousand police were injured and many properties destroyed.
42
We never did buy No. 1, but snapped up No. 3 years later!
43
Signford was an off-the-shelf name for a small publishing company I had set up, with Robert Hewison’s help. Its first book was by the artist Chris Orr.
44
Michael Henshaw, my first accountant, had been married to Anne, who had become my manager, and the Pythons’ manager. She had re-married, to Jonathan James, a barrister.
45
Made in 1972, it tells the story of a boy born into poverty in Scotland and his relationship with a German POW. Douglas made only four films, all autobiographical; bleak but brilliantly observed.
46
A once-glamorous hotel for transatlantic liner passengers. Helen is convinced our daughter Rachel was conceived there on the night of my friend Sean Duncan’s wedding in 1974.
47
Killing the man who was trying to defuse it.
48
Chief film critic of the
New York Times
. He died in 2000.
49
Walter Mondale was Jimmy Carter’s Vice-President from 1976 to 1981. Eleanor, a radio presenter, was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2005, but seemed to have successfully fought it.
50
I had been asked by Michael Barnes, director of the Belfast Festival, to go over and give a performance. It was my first one-man show. I was to do more, but only ever at Belfast. The Troubles were at their height.
51
An 11-part adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s book had begun on Granada Television in October, and proved hugely popular. Jeremy Irons was Charles, Anthony Andrews Sebastian and Diana Quick Julia. Charles Sturridge directed.
52
In 1982, Simpson was superseded as head of production at Paramount by Katzenberg. He nevertheless went on to co-produce successes like
Beverly Hills Cop
and
Top Gun
. He lived hard and died of a drug overdose in 1996.
53
Calley, a friend of Denis’s, is one of the most successful producers in the film industry. He headed Warners and was later CEO of Sony Pictures, owners of Columbia.
54
Jonathan Routh introduced and presented the enormously popular
Candid Camera
TV series in the 1960’s. He died in 2008.
55
Prominent and flamboyant entertainment lawyer, whom Python had consulted after Bernard Delfont and EMI had pulled out of
Life of Brian
at the last minute.

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