Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (104 page)

One of the most sought-after script supervisors in the UK. She’d worked with me on Stephen Frears’
Three Men in a Boat
and on
Monty Python and The Holy Grail
.

Best known as the BBC’s Radio Doctor during the Second World War, he became Chairman of the BBC, retiring in 1972. He died in 1989.

In the end he took the part of the Reverend Fitzbanks, Fortescue’s prospective father-in-law.

Howard Brenton’s play, produced by the National Theatre in 1980, contained scenes of simulated anal rape. Mary Whitehouse, the morality campaigner, brought a private prosecution against the production. She later withdrew from the case.

Culross Buildings stood defiantly until the summer of 2008, when they were destroyed for the King’s Cross redevelopment.

Longleat House, an Elizabethan stately home which has been in the same family, the Thynnes, for over four hundred years. The head of the family is the Marquess of Bath.

Most of the ‘Healed Leper’ scene in
Life of Brian
was played in one shot, with camera operator John Stanier, a Steadi-Cam strapped to his body, walking backwards through ‘the streets of Jerusalem’ for some three minutes.

Peter Nichols’ stage play about a British Army theatrical troupe in Malaysia in 1947 would be Denis O’Brien’s next HandMade production, directed by Michael Blakemore and starring John Cleese.

Nigel and Jane Walmsley. Nigel Walmsley was at Oxford with Terry Jones and myself. He went on to run, among other things, Capital Radio, Carlton TV and the television ratings organisation BARB. Jane was a journalist and TV presenter.

At the Watergate hearings in 1973 the hapless Rose Mary Woods, President Nixon’s secretary, claimed she’d ‘pressed the wrong button’ on her tape recorder, accidentally erasing four and a half minutes of what could have been incriminating testimony.

A big-budget movie based on the cartoon strip Little Orphan Annie, starring Albert Finney and Carol Burnett and directed by John Huston.

At the 1982 Academy Awards Welland had famously brandished the Oscar for
Chariots of Fire
and shouted ‘The British Are Coming!’

This scene, in which Fortescue goes to ask for money for his Mission, was shot, rather grandly, at the old Royal Mint on Tower Hill. Sadly, it held up the story and never made the final cut.

Victor Lownes III was the London head of the Playboy organisation and had been the driving force behind Monty Python’s first film
And Now For Something Completely Different
(1970).

Dewi Humphreys, camera operator, went on to become a successful TV director (
Vicar of Dibley
,
Absolutely Fabulous
and many more).

Acheson later won three Oscars for Costume Design:
The Last Emperor
(1987),
Dangerous Liaisons
(1988) and
Restoration
(1995).

With Valerie Whittington in
The Missionary
and Judy Loe in the
Ripping Yarn
‘Curse of the Claw’.

TV producer and colleague of JC’s from Cambridge Footlights.

Lynsey, singer and songwriter, was, for some time, a neighbour of ours.

Iain was a producer and presenter of BBC’s
Film Night
. He was also an author and later worked with John Cleese on the book of
A Fish Called Wanda
and the screenplay of
Fierce Creatures
.

1977 movie about the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. Not a commercial hit but very touching.

Fagan, an Irishman, had twice broken into Buckingham Palace. In July 1982 he got as far as the Queen’s bedroom and talked to her for ten minutes before being apprehended.

Judy is my cousin. Youngest daughter of my father’s sister Katherine.

We filmed there for Python’s German show in 1971.

My cousin Nigel Greenwood, elder brother of Judy, was much respected in the art world as a dealer and gallery owner. He spotted Gilbert and George early and Glen Baxter too. He died in April 2004.

Our colloquial name for Michael White, the celebrated producer and major investor in
Holy Grail
.

1981 film written & directed by David Gladwell from a Doris Lessing book. It starred Julie Christie. Michael Medwin was the producer.

Sizewell ‘B’ was a nuclear power plant planned for the Suffolk coast. It was built between 1988 and 1995.

John Jacobsen, a writer and general fixer, was Norway’s greatest Python fan.

Clive Landa was Managing Director of Shepperton Studios. In view of the amount of work I was doing elsewhere I sent in my letter of resignation on June 2nd after nearly seven years as a director.

It was called
Pinkerton’s Progress
. Set in a school, it was written by Charles and directed by Gareth Gwenlan.

At one point in the interview I told Spike how I’d only seen Peter Sellers once. ‘I passed him in the corridor at Wembley Studios.’ To which Spike replied crisply, ‘Very painful.’

Piquet was the Formula One champion that year, as he was in 1981 and 1987. John Watson, from Northern Ireland, had won the British Grand Prix in 1981.

Felice Fallon, an American writer, became Richard Loncraine’s second wife in September 1985.

Like a number of other film-writing ideas around this time, this was a Jones/Palin screenplay that remained on the drawing board.

Richard ‘Cheech’ Marin and Tommy Chong were an American stand-up comedy duo. Their material drew on hippies, free-love and the drug culture generally.

John, a child actor who played the lead in David Lean’s 1948 film of Oliver Twist, directed many top BBC shows including the first series of
Fawlty Towers
and the first four shows of
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
. He was Head of Comedy at the BBC in the late 1970’s, when the last of the
Ripping Yarns
were made.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger produced, wrote and directed some of the most stylish and inventive British films, including
A Matter of Life and Death
(1946) and
Red Shoes
(1948).

Sydney (later Sir Sydney) Samuelson started one of the most successful film service companies in the UK. He also was one of the leading lights behind the founding of BAFTA.

Julian Hough was a strange, tormented and talented actor who appeared in one of the
Ripping Yarns
and who had hugely impressed Terry Jones and myself when he appeared with Patrick Barlow in the
Messiah
, the first production of the eccentric and funny National Theatre of Brent.

Urbane, experienced theatrical agent and friend of Denis O’Brien.

Paul’s basic premise was that Hitler had survived the war and was living in a place called The Thousand Year Ranch in Paraguay. He contacts some American agencies to see if they might arrange a tour of the USA when he would tell his story and atone for everything. The only person who’ll even consider taking him on is a New York agent desperately down on his luck. He is, of course, Jewish. Hitler becomes his client and the story rolls on – Hitler becoming a huge hit on US television. No surprise then that, in real life, no American studio was interested.

This was a generic title for a series of films on a theme. Not to be confused with the US TV series of the same name.

Bert Fegg’s Nasty Book for Boys and Girls
was written by Terry J and myself and originally published in 1974. We had plans for an edition with new material.

Terry had rewritten the scene we’d shot on the first day’s filming in November 1983 and among the changes had written in his daughter Holly, three at the time, to make nasty Jack Lint seem more of a family man.

Beverley Cross, a writer and librettist, married Maggie Smith in 1975.

Richard Ovey, first cousin on my mother’s side, inherited the family estate at Hernes where both my mother and her sister and Richard’s father, Dick, were brought up.

The strike of 1984-5 was prompted by the threat of job losses and pit closures. Arthur Scargill’s NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) confronted Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government for almost a year.

Tony Haygarth played the farmer, Preston was the name of his son. Tony Pierce-Roberts was director of photography and Derek Suter was the clapper/loader.

It had been difficult to find the location for the scene in which Gilbert Chilvers is confronted by the local business mafia at a urinal. Then one morning in Betty’s Tea Rooms in Ilkley, Alan B appeared, full of excitement. ‘We’ve found a toilet’, he enthused, ‘near Paddington Station, and it’ll take ten!’ Only as heads turned and the noise level dropped did we realise what this must have sounded like to the middle-aged, respectable, and largely female clientele at Betty’s.

Lester directed, among other things, the Beatles’ films
Hard Day’s Night
and
Help
. McDougall, a gritty Scots playwright who wrote for BBC’s
Play For Today
and was always on the verge of delivering a screenplay for HandMade.

Jones and Palin’s
Bert Fegg’s Encyclopeadia (sic) of All World Knowledge
was one of their top titles for the autumn of 1984.

El Sur
(
The South
), by Spanish director Victor Erice, was released in 1983.

Terry, fascinated by Chaucer since university days, had written the book
Chaucer’s Knight
, published in 1980.

New York-born poet, playwright and novelist. He wrote a memoir of his friendship with Marilyn Monroe, and from 1979 to his death in 1995 held the title of Poet Laureate of Brooklyn.

Romaine founded the very successful chain of ‘Screen’ cinemas in and around London.

In fact, Reagan won every state except for DC and Minnesota, the home state of his Democratic challenger Walter Mondale. Reagan took 58.8% of the total vote, Mondale 40.6%.

Secrets
, originally broadcast in August 1973 as Jones and Palin’s contribution to a Mark Shivas/Richard Broke BBC series called
Black and Blue
, now began a second life as a possible movie, spurred on by Sam Goldwyn Jr. It becomes, variously, ‘Consuming Passions’, ‘The Chocolate Film’, ‘Chocolates’ and ‘The Chocolate Project’. And eventually it does become a movie,
Consuming Passions
, 1988, directed by Giles Foster.

Konstantin Chernenko was the President of the USSR until his death in March 1985 when Gorbachev succeeded him.

Actor, (
Goodbye Columbus
, 1969) producer and director.
The Money Pit
was eventually made with Tom Hanks, Shelley Long and Alexander Godunov in the lead roles and released in 1986.

Our family name for Mahendra ‘Mash’ Patel, who ran, and still runs, our local newsagents. He has a wonderful temperament and apparently limitless reserves of patience and tolerance.

She was leaving for what had become annual skiing excursions with friends from her badminton class. This one was to Val d’Isère.

The match, between Juventus and Liverpool, took place at Heysel Stadium in Brussels. Thirty-six Juventus supporters died when Liverpool fans charged at them and a wall collapsed. The game went ahead, Juventus winning 1-0. English clubs were banned from all European football competitions for the next five years.

Towser and Harry were their two dogs. Harry was named after Graham and David’s great friend, musician Harry Nilsson.

John as Mr Mousebender: ‘Good morning, I was sitting in the public library in Thurmond Street just now, skimming through
Rogue Herries
by Horace (sic) Walpole, when I came over all peckish.’

These were the two most powerful men in the railway unions. Jimmy Knapp was General Secretary of the NUR (National Union of Railwaymen) and Ray Buckton was General Secretary of ASLEF (Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen).

Two weeks earlier, Michael Heseltine, the Defence Secretary, walked out of the Cabinet after his plan to save Westland, the British helicopter company, by merging it with European companies was overruled by Thatcher. She questioned the MOD’s independence and insisted Westland be merged with the American company Sikorsky.

The Bill to approve its construction had just been given a third reading. It became law in July.

In 2003 the ‘man called Blair’ became Sir Ian Blair and two years later Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He resigned in 2008.