Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (39 page)

I decide to call Polier and Knopf in LA direct. The weekend has been by no means the failure Denis suggested. Whilst not looking like a blockbuster, the figures for three days are ‘highly respectable’ (Dan’s quote). They are likely to reach 1.86 million for the weekend, not 1.3. But isn’t this considerably short of the three million estimate? ‘Oh, no, our three million forecast was for the
week
.’

‘This is no hit and run picture,’ is how Dan put it. Still awaiting Columbia’s verdict. They won’t be ecstatic, says David, but there’s a fair chance they’ll get behind it.

A fine, clear morning. Helen says I should stay in bed, but I do enjoy breakfast time with the family. I like to wake up with them.

Cleese rings mid-morning. He asks me if I will write a letter to the Press Council supporting him in his case against the
Sun
, which published an account of the Zulus in Glasgow story quoting JC as saying to the black extras ‘Which one of you bastards did a rain dance?’ JC is very cross at the total inaccuracy and will not let the matter rest. The
Sun
have not been helpful. He wants TJ, myself and Ray Corbett [the first assistant director] to help out as witnesses.

Spent the early part of the morning writing a thank you letter to Antonowsky – something he probably doesn’t receive very often, but I
do
feel that Columbia ran the campaign very competently.

Then drive down to the South Bank for the first film of the London Film Festival –
Scrubbers
.

Scrubbers
turns out to be a well-made film with superb and convincing performances from the girls. Mai Zetterling has succeeded in giving flesh and blood to characters who are normally regarded as ‘beyond society’.

The only problem I had is that the depiction of prison life has been done so often and so well recently in a series of documentaries. So, in
Scrubbers
there were many moments when I felt myself caught up in cliché – the stock psychiatrist, the hard governor, the keys in locks, the clang of doors. But the girls were Mai Zetterling originals, and were the heart and soul of the bleak, gloomy, violent picture.

RL has rung to say that Warren Beatty had called from Hollywood to say how much he had enjoyed the movie (these are the little unexpected bonuses which are as much a part of the satisfaction of making a movie as any grosses).

Out for dinner to Judy Greenwood’s
⁷⁸
in Fulham Road. She lives in a comfortable, homely clutter above her own antique shop with a dog, a daughter and a builder husband called Eddie who has an earring and had just broken his toe. Judy is forthright, easy company – with striking Palin looks.

I defend comprehensive education and the NHS rather limply to Eddie, who has no scruples about buying a better education or buying himself out of pain … And why not? I wonder gloomily – arguing out of form more than conviction.

Write to Al Levinson after reading his short story ‘Nobody’s Fool’ – a piece of real-life drama thinly fictionalised and very revealing and moving. Al
is so near to being a good writer, but just fails, sometimes – as in ‘Millwork’ – by the very tip of his fingernails. So I write back encouragingly, but cannot offer more concrete support – like an unqualified rave or an offer to publish. I still have most of
Travelogs
unsold.

Denis rings at six o’clock. As soon as I hear ‘unfortunately’, I know that
Missionary
has not made a solid commercial showing across the States. New York he hasn’t heard from, but Chicago, even after the TV ads extolling its virtues through the reviews, is 33% down. San Francisco 27% down, Denver 31%. Even Los Angeles – where Denis says all word is that
The Missionary
is a resounding success – is 10% down.

The final overall figures will continue to be ‘mediocre’ and ‘so-so’ until Columbia pull out from ‘between the mountains’. If we had opened only in NYC and LA
The Missionary
would have been hailed as a triumph.
That’s
what irks me tonight.

A day for sitting at home with the Sunday papers and a lot of wine at lunchtime.

But I have agreed to go to the Oxford Children’s Book Fair, and at half past eleven I leave, with somewhat sinking spirits, to drive out along the splashy A40.

At Oxford it’s bitterly cold. I park by the new Law Library. An elderly man in a blue overcoat passes me; on his left breast a string of medals, tinkling softly. Of course, it’s Remembrance Sunday – poppies and war veterans, with the added immediacy of the Falklands War this year.

Nearly all the grimy façades of my day have been cleaned, resurfaced and repointed. Oxford seems generally more opulent. The Randolph Hotel, where the Book Fair is taking place, full of well-heeled diners.

Up to the Ballroom. My presence is announced over a forbidding PA system and I’m given a chair, a table and a pile of books to sit beside. By four o’clock I’ve sold about ten copies of the book [
Small Harry and the Toothache Pills
]. David Ross [from Methuen] and the organiser from Blackwell’s Children’s Shop seem very pleased, though my presence seemed to me something of a waste of time.

Nice, silly evening at home, all of us playing a game after supper and being noisy. Then, after the children go to bed mercifully early, H and I sit by the first fire of the winter.

Called Polier and Knopf at one o’clock and their news rather took the stuffing out of this gentle, easy day.
Missionary
is down 25-30% everywhere, including the NY and LA areas, in its second weekend. The take for the weekend was 1.4 million, as opposed to 1.86 the first weekend.

The ‘good news’, as Knopf puts it, is that Columbia are still supporting the movie with TV (in NYC) and press in the big cities. It’s doing well in Toronto and Vancouver. Not holding up on Broadway/Times Square, where they have now sussed that it’s not a sex movie! All the quality areas of cities are still reporting good figures – but David says rather ominously that the picture ‘may not be long for this world’.

S Albury rings. He would like to do an Eric Olthwaite series for Granada, with someone like Charles Sturridge directing and himself producing. Everything about the idea, apart from being Eric Olthwaite for a year, appeals to me.

Twelve years ago, when William was born, I was in the middle of shooting my first film
And Now For Something Completely Different
. Today my seventh film,
The Missionary
, is at No. 2 in the list of Top Grossing Films in the US.

The appearance of
The Missionary
above
ET
and the rest (for one glorious week!) was the high point of this crowded day.

Went down to the Python office and signed things and saw Lena, Steve’s Swedish book-keeper, celebrate her last day at the office. Apparently she’s always leaving packets of tampons around, so they presented her with a smart little case with a special plaque on it engraved with her name and the word ‘Tampons’ in very large letters.

Then, via shops, home to prepare for William’s ambitious disco party, which is to be held tonight at No. 2.

The party runs from seven until half past ten. About 18 invited. The boys arrive earlier than the girls, but the girls, when they do appear, virtually take over the music and dancing. Some of them, in black berets with short skirts and black fishnet stockings, look about 23. The boys look
younger, less self-assured, and spend most of the early party throwing and squirting things up the far end of the room. My heart sinks for a while. The girls talk, all at once and at the top of their voices, about clothes.

But gradually everyone thaws out. By the end I actually have a few boys dancing with the girls (they’ve been scared stiff of them for most of the evening). We have a joke-telling competition which is quite successful, and at 10.15 most of them seem unhappy to leave. Several of the girls give me a kiss for working the disco as they disappear into the night. Nobody smoked and nobody drank (probably their last year of innocence).

Halfway through the evening David Knopf returns my call. The third weekend is much as expected. Sadly no miracles have been performed.
The Missionary
has slipped 32%, below a million dollars for the weekend, and may lose up to 100 prints, which Knopf is not too unhappy about, though he is trying to persuade Columbia to keep as many prints working over the big Thanksgiving holiday weekend as possible.

‘What do they feel about
The Missionary
?’ I ask David, full of innocent curiosity. ‘They’ve forgotten it,’ returns David with admirable bluntness.

Writing a speech for tonight’s Young Publishers’ meeting. Meeting takes place at the Cora Hotel in Tavistock Place, a stone’s throw from Gandhi’s statue. Not that anyone would want to throw stones at Gandhi’s statue.

A full room – maybe 70 or 80 present. Behind the table are, left to right, Geoffrey Strachan, Sue Townsend, whose
Secret Life of Adrian Mole
has made her Methuen’s newest best-seller, a very nice girl from the SPCK who is chairing the meeting, myself and Nigel Rees.

Tonight’s theme is Humorous Publishing. Geoffrey is serious and efficiently informative. Sue Townsend is endearingly and honestly confused. ‘I can’t talk, that’s why I write,’ was the way she began her speech. Nigel Rees was smooth and seemingly nerveless, as befits a BBC radio personality.

I spoke last and the speech made people laugh very well for the first five minutes, then slightly less so as I warmed to the theme of ‘Geoffrey Strachan – The Man Whose Life Was Changed by Humorous Publishing’.

A productive hour of question and answer. One lady who asked the
quite reasonable question as to whether or not men preferred Python was told very sharply by another woman in the audience that the question was quite irrelevant! At the Spaghetti House in Sicilian Avenue I sat next to Sue Townsend, who I thought would be the most fun. She lives in Leicester and is quite happy about it. Especially as she is within stone-throwing distance of the house in which Joe Orton was born. Not that anyone … (That’s enough – ed.).

To Cambridge Gate for a financial discussion with Steve and Anne. For over an hour they briefed me on the appalling problems of trying to give some of my money away – in this case five percentage points of my
Missionary
royalties to be divided amongst the crew. Because I was not the company which hired the crew in the first place I’m almost totally unable to make any agreement to reward them in a way in which I shall not be severely fiscally penalised. Infuriating and frustrating.

Up, earlier than I would have wished, to take Willy to William Ellis to play rugby. He says he’s doing it to be the first Palin to actually play in a W Ellis school match (Tom was often selected but always avoided playing). As I left him outside the school gates on Highgate Hill at a quarter to nine on this very cold, foggy morning, I could only feel sorry for him.

Drove down to Old Compton Street. Snatched a quick look at
Variety
before driving off and saw, to my surprise and pleasure, that
Missionary
is No. 3 in the US in its second week and holding quite respectably at over 6,000 dollars per screen.

Time Bandits
is No. 4 on re-issue, so yours truly is the proud author of two films out of the American top four. If only I could feel that it meant something.

Missionary
showing at the London Film Festival. The performance is sold out. I’m taking both grannies, as well as Angela, Veryan, Camilla and
friend Deirdre from Strathblane (scene of Python’s ‘Zulu’ episode) and Marcus.

A good feeling to see everyone hurrying out of the cold night into the QEH to see my film. 1,250 people inside and throughout there is regular laughter and prolonged applause at the end. Fulsome praise from Geoffrey Strachan and family and Barry Took and family and others who I don’t know. Mother bears up really well, revelling in the pleasure of not just meeting Barry Took, but hearing such praise of her son from him.

Neville had reservations, when we all went for a meal afterwards, of the production-value-swamps-the-comedy nature. He felt I could have made it funnier and more robust if I’d been let off the hook. Terry J, who loves much of it, had similar reservations and told me to stop playing such dull characters!

The weather has settled over the weekend into a stable coolness. Last night it was two degrees below freezing. Leave home at 9.45 with Granny and reach Croft Cottage two and a half hours later. Suffolk is beautiful today in the bright, crystal-clear sunlight. Walk up the road past the sugar-beet collectors at work in the fields.

Cheered up by news from David Knopf that
The Missionary
take was up 15% at Thanksgiving weekend. The picture has now gathered in six and a half million dollars, but the best news of all is that Columbia now consider it ‘playable’. (Paul Mazursky’s
The Tempest
was evidently
not
playable.)

Dinner at Odin’s with Marvin Antonowsky. Marvin still thinks a selective release would have worked better, but he admits that you can prove almost anything with hindsight.

He says emphatically that it has established me as a performer and advises me to get an agent for the US. I told him that my primary interest was in writing a movie -‘That’s fine,’ chomps Marvin, drooling walnut and lettuce salad. ‘Next time write it present day and not too British.’