Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (52 page)

The children are all at home as ILEA teachers are marching today in support of their employers, and against government plans to get rid of them. All the children are desperate for snow, but it seems we are the only corner of England and Scotland to escape unscathed.

TG tells me that the De Niro scene aged everyone. A minimum of twenty takes on each shot. He was nervous (of his reputation, I suppose) and forgot lines and missed business, and all this after more rehearsal time than any other actor in the film. Pryce tells me that one day De Niro just threw everything down in frustration and stomped off to lunch. I feel rather reassured – clearly geniuses are not immune from the strangely disturbing effects of the film.

Ring Mark Shivas re
Private Function
[as ‘the Pig Film’ is now known]. As far as he’s concerned it’s all going ahead, but at the slightly later time of April 30th (with a week’s rehearsal before). Only problem is a tight budget. DO’B at one point had even questioned the need to go to Yorkshire to film Yorkshire. Ian Holm and Ian Richardson are both being touted.

I feel completely lacking in energy and confused about plans. Not in the right mood to take decisions at all. Pick up the Noël Coward diaries and scan some entries for ’50 and ’51. Camp old theatrical that he was, there is an energy and a delight in his own work which rather encourages me. One has to put out in order to get anything back. Rush, stress, pressure is one side of the coin. Success, recognition, approval and the giving and receiving of pleasure is the other.

I look again at my start on
First Love
yesterday and realise that I can’t simply put a line under it and say – ‘next year maybe’. Strike while the iron’s hot.

Work through until about seven, steadily and quite satisfactorily. Watch Gavin Millar’s ‘Secrets’ – second of the
First Love
tapes Puttnam sent me. Very strong, original, well sustained. A lovely oddity.

Read some of Orwell’s life. I don’t like him very much so far. Must always remember he went to Eton, his best teenage friends were called Jacintha and Prosper and he had a caterpillar called Savonarola.

Ring Mum. She’s had a prolapse and didn’t really want to tell me.
Nothing serious, but it involves going to a gynaecologist in Gorleston … ‘I’ve
never
been to Gorleston,’ she says disapprovingly.

For the first time for nearly ten years we don’t have to take the children to school. Or, to put it more sentimentally, we’ve taken Rachel to school for the last time. As from two weeks ago she now goes off on her own. One thing the children have in common is a desire to get to school as early as possible. Tom is usually away whilst we’re still dressing (‘I’m going now, right?’), Willy, after tormenting Denis, goes at about 8.30, and Rachel is straining at the leash to leave as soon as the road-crossing man arrives, which is just before nine.

Drive to Oxford to give a talk to the Brasenose Arts Society. Have nothing prepared – will have to throw myself at their mercy and encourage questions. Plenty of time to think as I sit in traffic jams on the way out to the M40.

At BNC by 7.30. Met by a small welcoming committee.

I think how nice it would be to talk about my work to this very nice, bright group of six BNC undergraduates – get down to some depth, think more carefully about things, accept more probing criticism, encourage more controversial questions. As it turns out this is not to be, and my talk to the BNC Arts Society is a public performance in front of 290 people packed into the JCR. I’m ready for it and do enjoy it and we do cover quite serious matters – censorship, religious and political convictions, etc. But really they want me to make them laugh.

Their next speaker is William Golding OB, who apparently is donating his Nobel Prize medal to the college.

Take the
First Love
tale on for an hour, then am rudely interrupted by the arrival of a director of SieMatic. He has a black BMW (no harm in that, of course), a sheepskin suede coat, a beer gut and a pushy aggression mixed, uncomfortably, with a chummy and affected sycophancy of the ‘Hello, Michael’ variety. ‘I’m at Michael Palin’s house,’ he says, loudly and pointedly when ringing his office.

He blames all the damage to the kitchen units on John Lewis and proof of the depths of his bovine insensitivity is that he does not bat an eyelid
when he turns to me and says ‘You don’t mind if I get our PR people to come and talk to you, do you? I mean, if we can get some publicity and you’re agreeable … ’. It’s like Cunard ringing me to do a voice-over, the day after my family drowned on the Titanic.

Then the Complaints Manager of John Lewis appears. Neat, slim and at least having the good grace to look apologetic. Both parties try to shift the blame to each other whilst we stand rather uncomfortably in between. ‘Have you seen any of John Cleese’s training films, Michael? They’re
very
funny …’

TG has come to tell me of his decision to re-shoot the central Jack/Sam scene which I did so badly in November. He has just seen an assembly and it is one of two scenes he thinks don’t work. It’s not entirely my fault. TG says it’s overwritten and much of the info it puts out has been superseded by scenes they’ve shot since. Sam’s character isn’t consistent either. In all he admits it was a very silly scene to shoot first. I’m relieved and pleased that we shall have another stab at it.

Work on ‘Fegg’. In the middle of a sea of odd ideas when someone rings asking to speak to the late Michael Palin. It’s Spike. He says there’s no point in asking for people who are living any more. Then he unfurls a stream of consciousness for about ten minutes – which turns out to be the outline for a play which he and [John] Antrobus are putting together for the autumn.

Set in the last war, in a vast government prune warehouse, scientists convert prunes into gas, Rudolph Hess arrives in Scotland,
The Desert Song
slowly and inexorably takes over the play, etc, etc. He compliments me at the end of these wild ramblings by saying he wants someone of ‘wit and élan’ to play an officer. I think he means me.

Rachel very disappointed that I didn’t get any Valentine cards, so she makes me one at breakfast.

At lunchtime Mr Alberts, Complaints Manager from John Lewis,
arrives with a bottle of Krug champagne and a plastic display bowl of flowers which looks frighteningly like a graveside ornament.

Work on the ‘Vikings’ until TJ arrives mid-morning. We read through what we have after this first week of concentrated film-writing. Very encouraging it is too. TJ has pushed on with the story and written a very macho song called ‘We Don’t Talk About Babies’, which is marvellous. I’ve filled in a few holes and created a nice group of women at a devastated village.

But the best feeling of all is one of genuine and productive partnership. Both of us are contributing good material, but also both of us are enlarging and expanding on each other’s ideas. Five good, forward-looking, confident days (largely because both of us were able to put in full working days without much interruption) and I now feel even more certain that we shall make this film.

To Lee Studios at half past eight. Some of the numbing, negative feelings return. Why didn’t the scene work in the first place? Why am I still so unsure of this character, which I was so enthusiastic to play in the first place? What am I supposed to feel – bringing the crew back onto the scene, having the set rebuilt? Was it mostly my fault? And, worst of all – will it go any better?

On the first couple of opening takes this tension – this wanting to do it exactly how I know I can do it, but having to concentrate too much on moves and props – produces the same tight, unrelaxed performance as I felt myself helplessly giving three months ago to the day. Then, as I get used to the props and the lines, I suddenly hit the note I know is right.

TG too is delighted. One take is perfect. Everything eases up, and I’m raring to go. But of course that take wasn’t
technically
quite right, so we have to go again.

Holly Gilliam
¹⁰⁰
loosens up the atmosphere and is really very good
indeed – both in behaviour and her lines. She makes all our business together seem very natural.

At the studio they are trying to shoot reverses on Holly G, who is not playing very well today. When I arrive only Terry G (operating the camera), Maggie and Holly are on the set. Every now and then TG emerges and stalks up and down rather crossly before returning for ‘one last go’. Then it’s time to shoot all the reverses on Jonathan. I get into costume, but not make-up and spend most of my time trying to avoid being crushed by the dollying camera, whilst Jonathan uses the lens hood as his eyeline anyway.

This is the last day of principal photography and everyone seems to think it very suitable that I should be here on the last day and the first day. We have a merry lunch and I do enjoy myself, but I see what was shot on Tuesday and, though it’s better than the first attempt, I still seem to fit the part of Jack Lint like a round peg in a square hole. An odd experience. I don’t think I’ve ever seen myself so uncertain of who I’m playing.

Buy Leopoldo Alas’s
La Regenta
, which I’ve decided will be my post-Orwell literary experience. It’s much bigger than I thought.

Crick’s book has won me round to a great liking for Orwell – not of everything he says or the way he says it, and I’m sure I too would find the Old Shag he smoked as unpleasant as everyone else, but he thrust himself into things with an uncompromising relish for life and sustained himself with a strange mixture of anger and admiration about how this country was run and organised with which I constantly felt sympathetic. He was on the right side.

Sexagesima. Now there’s a film title for you. Begins at seven when Helen wakes up and leaps out of bed with unusual celerity. Her alarm has been set too late and the cab is due in 15 minutes. Make the pre-skiing cup of tea and Willy, Rachel and I kiss her goodbye and wave the cab off into a dull, wet, cold morning.

William and Rachel play together, Tom finishes his homework – writing a ballad with rather a lot of help from Dad – and we end up playing Totopoly. I cook scrambled eggs which are rather hard and they all laugh. But they go to bed without any sign at all of missing Mum.

TJ here by eleven. The preparations for the ‘Erik’ voyage and the start of the voyage itself are rather superficial and sound to me too like
Yellowbeard
. We’ve lost the contact with the reality of life in Viking times from which our early material was drawn.

TJ reads his bio-rhythms on my calculator and finds that he is going through a bad period for intellectual effort! He then goes into a mental decline for the rest of the day, constantly wandering off for a pee or some decaffeinated coffee. But we assemble the first half-hour’s material and send it off to Alison to type.

I then have to drive into town to see two films [up for awards] at BAFTA –
Another Time, Another Place
for Phyllis Logan and
Sophie’s Choice
for Kevin Kline.

Ben Kingsley and Don Sharp – two of my co-jurors – are there. Ben Kingsley makes rather dramatic gestures such as ‘Kevin Kline!’ followed by a sharp blow with his fist to his balding forehead – which I think is meant to convey a superlative. I think power has made him mad, but he’s quite affable.

After breakfast TJ rings. He thinks we should talk as he is not sure where to take the story on. So clean up here and drive down to Camberwell.

We have reached a sticky stage. Terry’s ‘What’s it all about … really?’ stage. It is very important because, although I would go on writing funny scenes and characters till the cows come home, TJ cannot write until he really knows what the story and the leading characters are about.

To Lower Regent Street for a party given by the Hogarth Press to launch a new range of imprints. Meet Miles Kington, Tariq Ali – who I haven’t talked to since Oxford, he says his eleven-year-old daughter is a terrific fan of mine! – and a man called Ian Hislop asks Tariq to introduce him to me. He’s a round, small man with a squidgy, reassuring face. He’s assistant editor of the
Eye
, writer for the new puppet show,
Spitting Image
,
and I recently read and liked his
Listener
column. He says
Spitting Image
found it difficult to make a Maggie Thatcher doll unattractive enough, as she is such a wretchedly fine-looking woman!

Drive to Greenpeace HQ in a nondescript industrial street in Islington for a presentation ceremony. TJ and I have both donated £1,000 to help Greenpeace pay the fine they incurred whilst monitoring the nuclear pollution from Sellafield/Windscale. Spike Milligan was to have presented us with the framed certificates of shares in the Greenpeace boat, but Pamela Stephenson stands in for him – ‘Spike told me to apologise, but he’s got radiation sickness and shouldn’t touch anybody.’

Bruce Kent of CND is there. He says the food is much better than at his office. It’s all vegetarian. Outside there’s a photo-call and one of the photographers calls out to Monsignor Kent ‘Could you put your arm round Pamela, please?’ Kent, to his credit, twinkles back at them but refuses to go along with the suggestion.

Change (Clark Kent-like) into my dinner jacket in the Python office and taxi to King’s Cross and join a long and winding queue for the 3.30 Newcastle train. I’m in Durham, about 20 minutes late, to second the motion that ‘This is the Age of the Train’ [at a university debate].