Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (4 page)

Work on with TG script. The end is in sight, but is this writing to order – 6lbs assorted jokes, half a hundredweight of nutty characters and 20 yards of filler dialogue – really going to stand up? I’m encouraged when I think of the general level of movie dialogue – but this movie has to be judged by exceptional, not general level.

Write myself to a standstill by four and drive into the West End to see
Apocalypse Now
. Impressive – there is no other word for it – and the action sequences of the war are rivetingly watchable.

But the last half-hour – the meat, one feels, of Coppola/Milius’ message – is a huge con. The action slows, the dialogue and performance become heavy with significance, sluggish with style.

Stop work at one. A couple of phone calls, then drive down to Neal’s Yard for the Grand Unveiling Ceremony of the 14/15 Neal’s Yard sign [designed by Terry G]. On one side red lurid lips and teeth bear the legend ‘Neal’s Yd. Abattoir’ (to correct the present unwholesome imbalance in favour of the wholefooders who have proliferated all over the yard) and on the other side ‘The British Film Industry Ltd’.

When I arrive it is made clear to me that a few choice words will have to be spoken and yours truly is the man to speak them. So we troop down into the yard and there, on this perfect sunny day, I bewilder all those queuing for non-meat lunches at the bakery by giving a few loud, but brief words, then smashing a champagne bottle against the building. ‘God bless her and all who work in her.’ It breaks the second time.

To Terry Gilliam’s at 10.15 for session on the film. TG likes the Ogre and the Old Ladies scene, but I think feels that the Evil Genius is too much on one level of cod hysteria. I agree, but we still have time to go over the characters again and invest them with a few more quirks.

We go to lunch at the Pizza Express and talk over the more serious problem of the ‘content’ of the script – the attitude to the characters, to Kevin’s adventures – the message which gives the depth to a superficial story of chase and adventure. Really I feel the depth is there anyway, it’s a question of how obvious to make it.

Leave for Dr Kieser’s
⁶
surgery, where I have a cut and cover job on one of my front upper teeth – so my dental surgery is in its third decade. At one moment, as he works on the gum and bone, it begins to hurt. ‘Is that pressure or pain you’re feeling?’ asks Kieser urgently. God … how on earth do I tell?

A rush for the tape. Began reassembling and rewriting the section from the Spider Women to the end at ten. Lunch at the desk.

TG arrives about 7.30 and I stumble to the ‘End’ by eight. He will get all this mass of stuck-up, crossed-out, type-and-longhand-jumbled sheets to Alison [Davies, at the office] this weekend. All should be returned by Sunday a.m., so I can then read through and learn the awful truth about this amazingly speedy piece of writing.

I go to bed at midnight with the satisfaction of having completed my self-set task of a TG script in the month of January. It would be marvellous if the script were of a high standard, worked and immeasurably increased the confidence of all working on the project. Or was the rush just at the expense of quality, an exercise in the lowest form of writing to a deadline?

I shall see. For now, I’m just very happy with a job (almost) done.

In the afternoon the sky clouded and heavy rain set in. Took William, Rachel and the Mini down to the Natural History Museum, whilst Tom P and his friend Tom Owen went ‘tracking’ on the Heath. Rachel is doing dinosaurs at school and met one or two of her friends there. The central area was very full, but as soon as we ventured into the further recesses of the building there was plenty of space amongst endless glassily-staring models and half-dissected bodies.

Willy went off on his own to, among other things, the human biology section. He is very keen on biology, having just begun talking about it at school. To her great credit, his teacher started straight in with human reproduction, etc, rather than frogs or bees. So Willy now knows all the practical details of procreation, whereas Tom, who affects to know, still calls sexual intercourse ‘sexual interchange’.

Read papers in the morning. Polls taken in January indicate that more people are expecting World War III to break out now than at any time since Korea. Probably a meaningless statistic, but it makes Python’s next film subject gruesomely relevant. Actually the sabre-rattling of the Americans over Afghanistan has died down a little, but they still frighten me more than the Russians.

Terry G brings round the script of the movie, fresh from Alison the typist, and after supper I begin to read. I finish late – it’s nearly one. My first reaction is that it’s paced wrongly – the individual scenes are in some cases too long themselves, or appear too long when placed next to another, fairly static scene. I missed being gripped by the story, too.

Lay in bed remembering points and scribbling down. Tomorrow I’ve given a day to Terry G that should be spent on railway research, so that we can talk right through the screenplay.

Up to Terry’s. The heavens open and it pours for the rest of the day. Against this gloomy background we slog through. TG liked the script more than I did, I think, and is greatly pleased that Irene Lamb, the casting director, for whom TG has much respect, also likes what she has seen so far and feels there will be little problem in getting good actors interested.

It’s clear that there is one more day of writing needed to flesh out the end, especially the hastily-written character of the bureaucratic Supreme Being. So I’ll have to restructure the week accordingly. Everything else will have to be squeezed.

Still have no title for the TG epic other than ‘The Film That Dares Not Speak Its Name’.

Talk over scripts for the new Python film with TJ. We read through and apportion who would he responsible for what.

TJ and I have a game of squash, then a pint of Brakspear’s at the Nag’s Head in Hampstead. TJ, though bemoaning the fact that he hasn’t written anything new for months, is suddenly, and healthily, I think, full of ideas and projects of his own – including the possibility of making a film of
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
with Douglas Adams.

Terry goes off to meet Douglas. I drive to a rather swish and un-Pythonlike function at Les Ambassadeurs Club. We are invited here by Warner Brothers Chairman Frank Wells – the man who, TG tells me later, did more than anyone else to try and block the
Life of Brian
deal. He was tall, fit, with those peculiar American spectacles that make a man’s face look slightly effeminate; mid-forties, or early fifties, with a firm handshake.

Spread out in the scarlet-panelled, sumptuously-carpeted lower room at the Ambassadeurs was a host of men in grey. An impeccably-manicured host too – hardly a hair put of place on any of them. These were the agents and studio heads and accountants – the businessmen of showbiz.

A cameraman was in attendance, which always indicates that the gathering is a little more than just a thank you from Warners. I was photographed with Eric and with Frank Wells and Jarvis Astaire.
⁷
I was pleased to see Sandy [Lieberson] and his missus, because Sandy was at least not wearing a grey suit and Birgit was one of the only women there.

Gilliam is wonderfully scruffy, I’m pleased to say.

Leave at 8.15. Avoid getting run over by the sea of chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces and Jags and Mercedes littering Hamilton Place.

Work through the last few scenes of the TG film until after lunch, then drive to Denis O’B’s. Try to be absolutely clear with him that what I want for Redwood is to keep Bob
⁸
and André. Denis worries that Bob is ‘driving
a wedge’ between myself and André. Really he is accusing Bob of all the things that Bob is accusing Denis of doing. Denis will not hear a good word said for Bob – but I’ve made my decision. I’m not prepared to lose André, and if Bob goes, André goes. So Denis talks business and I talk people and that’s that.

Drive back in a rain-sodden rush-hour to Abraxas [sports club in Belsize Park gardens]. Am soundly beaten by Richard [Guedalla, my neighbour] at squash. Makes me very depressed. But recover over a bottle of champagne, which I open to mark my last day on, or delivery of, the TG film script. Read TG the new Supreme Being scenes, which he likes.

Tom arrives back from another disco. Not just ‘slow dancing’ this time, but girls sitting on boys’ laps. Reminds me of Eric’s wonderful song for the
Contractual Obligation
album, ‘Sit On My Face and Tell Me that you Love Me’.

Springlike weather, with daytime temperatures around 50°F, now into its second week. I cycle up to Terry G’s in sunshine. From 9.30 till lunchtime we work through the script – still tentatively, but not very enthusiastically, called ‘The Time Bandits’. Fortunately we both agree on the major area for cuts and every little rewrite helps. TG is very unhappy about the vast amounts of money the crew are demanding – inflated by commercials. It doesn’t help the ‘British’ film industry at all.

Down to Redwood Studios, where Eric, TJ and myself record ‘Shopping Sketch’ and ‘All Things Dull and Ugly’, plus one or two other snippets for the album.

From Redwood round to Anne J’s to take in some more Python scripts from last autumn’s writing session to be typed up in preparation for Wednesday’s meeting. What is rapidly becoming apparent about
Brian
is that Denis’s forecast of earnings from it in 1980 was drastically over-optimistic. The £250,000 figure he mentioned in November now looks likely to be nearer £40,000.

Although the distributor’s gross in the US was over nine million dollars, over four million was spent on publicity and advertising – and this was where Warners were weakest. Their posters and their slogans were constantly changed and we never approved any of them – now they present a bill for this fiasco which is equal to the entire production budget
of the film. It is a scandal, but there seems to be nothing Denis can do. They won’t even supply him with figures.

The upshot is that not only will there be not a penny profit from America from a movie which was one of the top 40 grossers of the year in the US, but the earnings will hardly cover half the production cost. So the chance of making any more money – beyond our £72,000 fee for writing and acting – depends on the rest of the world. Fortunately the UK is looking very strong, Australia is holding up well and France and Germany remain to be seen.

Python enters the 80’s! Pick up Eric on the way to JC’s. Arrive at 10.30. Everyone there and chortling over the latest and looniest batch of selected press cuttings about
Brian
. It’s noted that Swansea has banned the film totally. Four hundred people in Watford are petitioning because the local council have recommended the film be an ‘X’.

Coffees are poured and we settle round JC’s ex-prison table, which now seems to be Python’s favourite writing venue. Our ages are checked around the table. I’m still the youngest. No-one wants to spend time on business, we all want to write and make each other laugh, but business has to be done, so it’s decided that we will make a clean sweep of it today. So Anne stays with us and Denis is summoned at three.

The disillusion with Hollywood and all things to do with Warners and
Brian
lead us into thinking how nice it would be to do a small-budget film just for the fun of it – keeping our own control and making money in the way
Grail
, with its modest budget, did, and
Brian
, with its Hollywood campaign, didn’t. Denis is anxious to set up all sorts of production and syndication deals in the US, and he’s talked to CBS about two Python TV specials, for which we would be paid 700,000 dollars each.

No-one wants to do specials for the US, but there is still the German material. Suddenly it all gels. We will use the German material, plus some old sketches, plus anything we wrote in October/November and reshoot as a quick, cheap movie. The mood of the group is unanimous. Fuck Hollywood. Fuck CBS. Let’s do something we enjoy in the way we want to do it – and so economically that no-one gets their fingers burned if a Hollywood major
does
turn it down.

DO’B seems unable to respond at our level and talks business jargon for a while. I like Denis, and I think he likes us, but he is only in the early
stages of finding out what everyone who’s ever dealt with Python has eventually found out – that there is no logic or consistency or even realism behind much of our behaviour. No patterns can be imposed on the group from outside. Or at least they can, but they never stick; they crack up and the internal resolutions of Python are the only ones that last.

From international film business to the waiting room of the Mornington Foot Clinic. Mr Owen uses a ‘coagulator’ on my corn today. I have to have injections around my little toe, which are rather painful, then a sharp, electrified needle burns up the capillaries. All this counterpointed by Mr Owen’s extraordinary views about the evils of the world and socialism in particular. I’m getting worried – I think that he is a character I’ve invented.

Spent much of the weekend, unsuccessfully, trying to finish
Smiley’s People
. Also trying to find time to organise the house, spend time with the children and other worthy hopes doomed to failure!

Rachel pottered around me with her Junior Doctor’s Kit, taking my blood, giving me blood, thrusting toy thermometers in my mouth, whilst I tried, hopelessly, to assimilate the mass of opinions, facts, thoughts, figures and ramblings which make up the insidiously attractive substitute for experience that is the Sunday papers.