Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (57 page)

The idea of ‘Python’s Old Testament’ attracts me more than I’d expected. I feel as though we’ve done the hard bit of the Bible, now we can do the fun bit – special effects, loopy characters, invasion, sacrifice, empire-building and so on. The usual Python territory, in fact. I promise I will mention it to TJ and that we should keep in touch by letter.

Taxi to King’s Cross at half past twelve to travel with Terry J to York, for my first look at Terry’s ‘Chaucer’ talk.
¹⁰⁹
I’m only going as curious travelling companion and am not expected to do anything myself, so it’s almost another holiday excursion for me.

We eat on the train – some power-failure in the buffet results in the bizarre plight of the steward advising us that ‘anything in the fridge will be warm’.

Tell TJ of the ‘Old Testament’ idea. He isn’t as keen as I was. He feels that the ‘Old Testament’ is so much about the Jews and their history that goyim like ourselves are not the best-qualified people to write about it.
He prefers Greek classics as a possible base. We talk about the rest of the year’s work. I feel ‘The Vikings’ should be put in abeyance and I think TJ does too.

Two hundred or more members of the New Chaucer Society assemble to hear Terry. Derek Brewer, Master of Emmanuel, introduces TJ as ‘the twentieth-century embodiment of Geoffrey Chaucer’ and mentions that he and I are currently at work on a Viking musical. This raises tremendous laughter from the assembled academics, who are obviously anticipating some entertainment tonight.

Terry doesn’t disappoint them. With chest bared and hair in disordered profusion, he cracks off at a pace too fast and a pitch too high for most people to immediately comprehend. But for an hour and a half he keeps me completely involved in twenty lines of ‘The Knight’s Tale’. Told, part as performance, with throwaways, jokey slides and well-chosen anachronisms, and part as a detective story, it’s compelling stuff and throughout TJ’s energy and enthusiasm keep it on a superior level of interest to most academic arguments.

In the evening we go round to the Pryces’ in Queen’s Crescent. Jonathan determined to offer us the best, so we have Kir, then a bottle of Cahors they brought back from staying at T Gilliam’s in France, and
then
… a bottle of 1963 port given them by Roger Pratt. Much talk of how to open it. JP goes next door to borrow a decanter from Frank Delaney. ‘Of which sort?’ is Delaney’s admirable reply.

I chatter on, rather enjoying myself, until after twelve. Both Jonathan and Kate look exhausted and Helen has long since stopped listening and is gazing into the decanter stopper.

In the afternoon the fluffy heat turns to darkening skies and occasional rain. Enervating weather, but drag myself into town to buy office files and to take back my running shoes. At Cobra they tell me I suffer from excessive pronation as I run and they prescribe some wonderful and expensive new Nike shoes which come with a small booklet explaining everything they do for the excessively pronating runner.

As I leave the shop clutching the most sophisticated trainers I’ve ever
bought in my life, an assistant comes up to tell me that ‘rumour has it’ John Cleese just visited the Westbourne Grove branch and bought exactly the same pair. Two excessive pronators in one comedy team?

To Friar Park. George greets me, neat and wiry in his white cotton trousers and a ‘Welcome to LA’ T-shirt with a comical graphic of twisted, knotted freeways.

We sit and talk and soon I mention,
have
to mention, what I’ve heard of his reaction to
A Private Function
. He is indeed almost completely negative about it. He hasn’t been able to read more than 11 pages of the script, he doesn’t think it is a story or a world that will appeal to many people. He doesn’t like the pig and also says, in a kindly enough way, that it is the first thing I’ve done when I haven’t made him laugh.

Then we walk out into the gardens, which look wonderful in the still soft, very warm sunshine. He shows me the impressive work of one Keith West – a New Zealand botanical illustrator whom George is using to illustrate another edition of his songs. Beautiful detail and precision, rich colours. Occasionally mistily mystical, but so are many of the songs he’s asked to illustrate. GH says he’s written over 140 songs. ‘Quite a lot, really.’

Later he takes me up to the studio and rather coyly plays me a song he’s written for a musical about a one-legged tap dancer (the subject came up after he and Ringo went to see
42nd Street
).

About 7.15 I start to go, but GH is buzzing with ideas for a musical. ‘Hawaii … you could use Hawaii, there’s a volcano with an ash cone in the centre bigger than Centre Point.’ He comes to life as it’s time to go. He desperately wants to create or be involved in creation – to, as he puts it, ‘blow all my money on myself for once’.

Today is the fifth anniversary of my decision to try and make running a habit. I don’t celebrate it in great style. I have an either bruised or cracked rib (post wind-surfing), which nudges me painfully as I run. A still-unsettled stomach and rather sore Achilles tendons.

I trot rather gently round my Heath course. The grass is turning brown from lack of rain, the place cries out for a dowsing. Cloud is building up as is a strongish warm wind. The fifth anniversary run is an effort,
but, as ever, having finished I’m rewarded with a glowing feeling of satisfaction.

A phone call from producer Clare Downs. She prefaces a request by saying that David Puttnam had told her I quite wanted to do more serious parts. I must have sounded guarded at this, for she laughs brightly.

What she wants me to do is a short film which Paramount and the NFFC [National Film Finance Corporation] have suddenly produced the money for, with a view to having it made and screened by the end of December to qualify for the awards. It sounds an above-average number, but what really swings my interest is that Phyllis Logan has already agreed to do it. I would be her husband.

The script is sent round. It’s called
The Dress
. It’s quite a meaty role, lots of sexual jealousy and desire and all that, but neatly written and definitely quality. A week’s filming in October. Could fit it in, I suppose.

I’ve come to regard September as the start of the working year. New projects ahead, the pleasant, reviving, drifting summer behind.

In the spirit of such feelings, begin a new ‘country house’ comedy completely from scratch. Quite where it goes I’m not sure. I do like the title ‘The Man Who Averted World War II’.

David Leland shares my double ticket for a preview screening of
Spinal Tap
.

Very skilful, accurate parody of musicians on tour, observed to accentuate the humour, but never at the expense of a controlled authenticity which makes it very satisfying recognition viewing. Christopher Guest and Mike McKean uncannily good as English heavy metal stars.

To dinner afterwards. Twenty-five people squashed up at table. Sit opposite Stephen Frears and beside the producer of
Spinal Tap
, a lovely, bright New York lady, who I would gladly have produce anything I do!

Drive Leland back to Highgate and he gives me the first 40 pages of his new script about Cynthia [Payne] to read. He wants some feedback before he goes on.

Look at The Novel [‘A Bit of A Break’, written in 1977] again. Frustrated by lack of progress on the film, I decide to contact John Curtis at Weidenfeld, who showed interest in reading it five years ago. He is still there and still very interested.

Ring Cleese to fix a lunch, as I am the Python appointed to try and interest him in the proposed meeting about whether we ever make a film again which Eric is trying to set up in mid-October. JC is quite brisk on the phone and with more than usual exasperation explains that he’s just put his neck out, ‘and a man’s waiting upstairs to put it back in again’.

To meet Clare Downs and the director, Eva Sereny, to talk about
The Dress
. They are highly embarrassed about offering me only £2,400 for the work, but this is out of a total budget of £100,000 and, as I say, I’m not doing it for the money. I hope I shan’t disappoint them.

Eva Sereny I like immediately. Hungarian, married to an Italian and based in Rome, ‘but never in the same bed two nights running’ is how she describes her life as a photographer of international repute. This is her first venture as director. She describes the overall sepia look she wants, with the red of the dress standing out.

Up at half past nine. Read the Sundays and come across an interview by George Perry with
Spinal Tap
people. They liked Goons and Monty Python and saw JC and MP as ‘comic geniuses’. This cheers me up, especially after a week in which the comic genius has been particularly elusive, but it nudges me suddenly in a certain positive direction – one, to write something for myself which will make people laugh rather than just smile, and two, to perhaps explore the biography – the ‘life of’, or the documentary.

Lunch with Cleesie. He’s waiting for me at Odin’s with an incipient growth of beard. ‘I hate saying I’m growing it for a film, in case people
think I’m an actor,’ he says, quite sincerely. He’s playing an English sheriff in a Lawrence Kasdan film to be shot in Arizona. ‘Two weeks’ work, Mikey … in a
lovely
part of America …’

He is very anxious to hear about everything I’m doing, but claims to be well ahead of me in days off this year. When I tell him I’ve had an unproductive week, he proffers some advice – that, in the same way, he says, that the creation of Basil Fawlty had been a bringing-out of Fawlty-esque frustrations in John himself, so I should try and create a character which brings something out of me, something which I feel very strongly about.

I broach Python, as prelim to asking John to October meetings, but there is nothing there.

Worried about my stools. The currently fashionable indication of good health is that your stools float. Mine sink like so many Titanics.

Screen International
reveals that British cinema attendance has plummeted – like my stools – yet again this year. It comes home to me that there is no longer a commercial prospect in making films that will only be understood in my own country. Video deals and early TV sales could, I suppose, save a very small budget. But no room for anything ambitious. Depressing. And renders me even less consumed with energy for a new
Missionary
.

Watch the first of the
Great River Journeys
. Very good stuff from Michael Wood on the journey up the Congo to the interior of Africa. Helen worried about his theme of utter solitude and man against Africa, knowing there was a six- to eight-man production crew, but I suspend disbelief.

[On my way back from a literary festival in Ilkley.] Geoffrey Boycott boards the train at Wakefield. Sunburnt face with hardly a line, he sits, chewing and reading his paper, with an enviable Zen-like detachment. He wears a lightweight pale brown windcheater with the legend ‘Pierre Cardin’ prominently displayed.

I am honestly too nervous to go up and introduce myself. I’m like a schoolboy again and, as a schoolboy, I always had to rely on those braver
than myself to break the ice in a situation like this. At the point when I’ve almost plucked up courage and am right beside him, a passing middle-aged lady suddenly pulls up beside me and stares – ‘Michael
Palin
!’ The moment is lost.

It’s 18 months since I sat down to write a
Missionary
follow-up.

The film script has become like a mountain. I can’t yet find the best way up. Have tried three or four paths, but none lead to the top. And behind all that is my ever-returning doubt as to whether the mountain is worth climbing at all.

A run on a splashy Heath. The black paint flung across Kenwood House has now been there since Monday. ‘Support the Miners’ and ‘No Pit Closures’ scrawled across the pristine south façade. It’s an ugly sight. Dispiriting in every way.

Steve tells me the good news – that as from this month
Jabberwocky
is in profit. After eight years my percentage is suddenly worth something – £1.20 to be precise. But I also have an unexpected bonus of £1,500 which I evidently deferred at the time.

TG arrives hot from the
Brazil
cutting rooms. ‘How can I spend so much time there without the film getting any better?’

At ten o’clock a taxi takes me to Alwyne Road, a pretty, shady little backwater in Canonbury. No. 33 is to be the location for our house in
The Dress
. It’s about to be sold, or just has been, for over £300,000. Full of conspicuous luxury – jacuzzi, double bath, sauna, electrically opening bedroom curtains and so on. The small garden borders the canal. It’s a very harmonious little area, not a house or a leaf out of place.

Enjoy this morning’s rehearsal. Phyllis and I try the final scene for the first time. We’ve discussed with Eva whether this encounter should be sexual passion or more tenderness. Decide that the latter should predominate. This morning we try an embrace or two. Eva seems very happy with the result.

A bathroom mirror shot and I’m shocked at how puffy and grey-eyed I look. Only five weeks ago I was in peak of post-Sardinia condition, now I look as if I haven’t slept for weeks. Perhaps it’s the cold. Phyllis and I in bed beside an open window, half-naked. Outside the skies darken and the heavens open. Very heavy rain and flashes of lightning and splitting cracks of thunder. Then a long wait for Phyllis to change make-up.