Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (9 page)

Afterwards a fairly horrendous experience in the second rain scene, when Shelley and I are down to our mediaeval underwear. The elements
of the developing shot are so various that it takes six takes before we have a satisfactory conclusion. And on each one we have hoses directed on us for about a minute and a half.

Shelley seems much more tolerant of the ordeal than any actress has a right to be. But, as she says in the car on the way home, it’s better than having to cry every day for seven months with Kubrick! Nicholson had to take a six-month break after the movie [
The Shining
] was finished to get himself straight again.

Drive to Pentonville Road, where, on the hill from which the great Victorian painting of St Pancras was made, I find myself in the BUPA medical centre for a screening. No particular reason, I just thought I should have a complete medical check-up and where better than under the personal eye of one of the BUPA centre’s leading lights – Alan Bailey.
¹⁷

Alan reassures me on one point: that Parkinson’s Disease isn’t hereditary. Then he examines me, pokes, prods and fingers my genitals, after which we have a talk about houses, education, the possible break-up of ILEA [Inner London Education Authority], and he offers me a drink from his metal cupboard full of Scotch and other drugs. I have a beer and meet the doctor who is, as Alan cheerfully informs me, ‘in charge of the clap clinic here’.

The clap man is neat, less of a character, and we talk about beta-blockers – pills which reduce the heartbeat. He thinks them a quite brilliant advance, and yet could talk only of the dangers of their misuse.

Alan is quite keen to show off the body scanner in the basement and the instant computer details of each patient. So far, all the results of my tests show no danger areas. I’m four pounds lighter than I was when I came seven years ago at eleven stone seven, and I’m five foot eleven inches – which is news to me and means I’m officially taller than I thought I was! Sight and hearing are 100% apart from one frequency of hearing – that of telephone bells and gunshots!

I have something of a record in the make-up line today – four layers – my own tightly-cropped hair, a bald bladder on top of that, a wig stuck onto the sides of that and, to top the lot, a toupee. The make-up takes a couple of hours, but Elaine [Carew, my make-up artist] and I now get on so well that I hardly notice the time passing. I can’t blame anyone but myself for any inconvenience either, as I wrote it.

Katherine Helmond, of
Soap
fame, who is Ruth Gordon’s replacement, is on the set for fittings, etc, together with Peter Vaughan, who plays her Ogre husband. She’s delightful, Vaughan strong and quite quiet with his foxy little eyes and mouth easily cracking into a smile.

Shelley and I work all day on an impressive set of the ‘Titanic’. Final shot is uncomfortable and involves me losing my toupee and causing a lot of damage. They like it on the third take and we wrap at 7.30.

A stormy night as a depression, pushed by cold north winds, crosses over us. The blind flaps and bangs and it’s as cold as November. Up at seven and drive through the rain to the studios [at Wembley] by eight.

Into mediaeval outfit this time. A steady morning’s work on the coach interiors (Shelley and I sitting in a coach resting on inner tubes of lorry tyres – four men waving trees above our heads).

In the afternoon, as we prepare to shoot the dwarves dropping on Patsy [one of the two star-crossed lovers, played by Shelley] and myself, the director hurtles through the air towards us, strikes Shelley sharply on the left temple and knocks her almost senseless. Gilliam spends the next half-hour comforting a very shaken Shelley. Turns out he was demonstrating to one of the dwarves how safe it was to fall.

I work in my dressing room, waiting for the final call. Rain and wind outside. Quite cosy. Stodgy food and assistant director constantly coming round to ask if there’s anything I want. Stardom means eating too much. After eight, Neville Thompson, the associate producer, arrives in my ‘suite’ to tell me that they will not be getting around to Shelley and myself this evening. The shot has been cancelled, as this was Shelley’s last day on the picture.

To Park Square West by ten for a Python meeting. Eric is already there, playing the piano. I’ve no idea how today’s meeting is going to turn out – all I know is that John has told Terry G that he’s never felt less like writing Python and yet officially we have this month set aside for just such an enterprise …

Terry J arrives next, looking mournful – with reason, for he has his arm in a sling. Apparently he threw himself on the ground at a charity cricket match last Sunday and has a hairline fracture of a bone called the humerus.

John arrives – he’s growing his Shakespearian beard back again, I think. He claims it went down very well with the ladies and shaving it off (which he did for the
Time Bandits
) only revealed what a tiny mouth he has. I advise John to have his mouth widened. He says he is considering another hair transplant.

We talk briefly about Python’s general biz. Denis’s call for a business meeting and a meeting to discuss his exciting new proposals for a distribution network of our own are met with almost universal lack of interest. ‘Tell him we went off to sleep,’ John advises Anne when she is desperately asking what reaction she should relay to DO’B about his proposals.

Then to lunch at Odin’s. Cliff Richard at the next table looks permanently off the beach at Barbados. Apart from Eric, the Pythons are white, apart from TJ who’s grey. After a long wait, and some white wine, I lead off perhaps provocatively by asking who wants to write the new Python film this month. Then it all comes out.

JC wants a month of leisurely talk and discussion and does not want to face the ‘slog’ of nine-to-five writing. I suggest that we don’t yet have a very clear and positive area or identity for the subject matter of the film and that we should only write when we are really ‘hungry’ to write. But it’s Graham who quite blandly drops the real bombshell – he’s working for the next few days on a
Yellowbeard
rewrite and then he hopes to film it in Australia during the winter. This straight pinch from previously discussed Python plans is a real stunner and the well-controlled indignation of Eric and Terry J rises to the surface.

I have the increasing feeling that we are going through a period similar to the post-
Grail
days in ’75, ’76, when individual Pythons want to stretch their legs. Terry G led the field with
Time Bandits
, I’ve done the
Yarns
and
the ‘Railway’ documentary. So I’m not too worried about proving myself.

I don’t know about Eric, but he was clearly amazed when John suggested we didn’t meet together till next Wednesday. At Eric’s surprise JC dropped all pretences – he hung his head in his hands and became cross. ‘I’m tired … I’ve done six weeks of … ’ and so on.

This lunch and the discussions were all part of the painful process of preserving Python. We don’t fit into any easy patterns, we ask each other to make enormous compromises, adjustments and U-turns, but we do produce the best comedy in the country.

Not much rest at home, for at 6.30 I’m collected by Graham in his Mercedes and we drive one and a half hours out to Associated Book Publishers in Andover for a sales-force-meet-authors binge. It all seems quite a tiresome waste of time, except that Christopher Isherwood is there, which saves the evening for me. He’s 76 and looks fit and neat. His skin is weathered like an elephant’s leg, in contrast to the softer, tanned brown of his friend Don Bachardy. Bachardy has bright eyes and looks terribly healthy. He’s almost a carbon copy of Isherwood. Isherwood talks to Graham about a supermarket they both share in Brentwood, Los Angeles.

Isherwood talks fluently – like a man used to talking and being listened to (GC tells me his voice has become quite ‘stentorian’ since doing lecture tours). I would love to spend more time with him and Don – they seem such a bright, lively pair in this drab and colourless sales conference world.

To Gospel Oak School for the Infant Concert. Rachel is a sheep. She wears her clean, Persil-white T-shirt and petticoat and a cardboard mask which makes it difficult for her to see, and the sheep bang into each other. Rachel’s class less imaginative than the others, but her rather morose teacher did wear black fishnet tights.

Hurry through the rain to 2 Park Square West and a Python meeting. Eric and Denis are already there. I’m wearing a ‘Leica’ disposable jacket and hood which I acquired [whilst filming] at the Rainhill Trials at the end of May. Eric says I look like a red sperm.

All Pythons present except, of course, Gilliam. Denis has greatly looked forward to this meeting, for this is the first time he has aired his latest proposal to the group as a whole. The proposal is that Python should become involved in the setting-up of an independent UK film distribution company – HandMade Films.

Denis rides all interruptions as he slowly and impressively reveals his plans. But he is not a good judge of people – and of English people especially – and instead of being received with wide-eyed gratitude, his proposals are subjected to a barrage of strong scepticism.

Eric wants to know how much it all will cost us and then queries whether or not we need it, as it will mean yet another source of interminable business meetings. John C queries Denis’s assumption that there will be eight ‘Python-based’ films at least in the next five years. He certainly isn’t going to do one, and neither is Eric. Also the assumption that
Time Bandits
and
Yellowbeard
will each make at least £650,000 in the UK is received without conviction.

Denis’s worst enemy is his own ingenuous enthusiasm in the face of five very complex, quite sophisticated minds, four at least of which distrust one thing more than anything else – uncritical enthusiasm. So it’s left undecided.

Denis rather rapidly runs through the rest of the agenda, but he’s lost us. The more he enthuses over terms, deals, percentages, controls, etc, the more John turns his mind to doing anagrams on his agenda (he had a good one for Michael Palin – i.e. Phallic Man).

To lunch at Odin’s. Terry suggests the group should spend three days in Cherbourg, writing. John thinks we should do a film about the Iliad. Denis looks bewildered.

Children are prepared for school – with the right clothes, shoes, music, forms for teachers, etc. At ten to nine Sam Jarvis arrives to work on painting the outside of the house and settles first of all for his cup of tea. Letters are sorted, diaries written and banks visited on the way to Cleese’s for a Python session.

Only John is there at the appointed time. He’s thumbing through his address book for someone to take to dinner … ‘Come on, Michael, you must know some ravishing creature … ’ and so on. He grins happily when I half-jest about the demise of Python. Eric is still unwell, TG’s off
… ‘I think we should disband this rapidly-crumbling comedy group for at least a year.’ John grins …

At seven leave for Tom’s orchestral concert at Gospel Oak. Tom plays a clarinet solo, piano solo and a duet with Holly [Jones] and is one of the two or three stars of the show. I feel very proud, especially as his clarinet piece is quite difficult. Both Helen and I dreadfully nervous in the audience.

After breakfast and Sunday papers, I retire to workroom (most reluctantly) to prepare for tonight’s Save the Whales concert. Various tiresome little props and costume details to sort out, but Anne H is a great help and locates such things as Gumby glasses and the like. I write a new piece – a short monologue about Saving the Plankton.

I complete my plankton piece, gather props and cossies into a big suitcase and, in a state of numbed resignation, set off under grey skies for the Venue in Victoria. I forget Gumby flowers, vase and mallet and have to drive all the way back from Regent’s Park.

The Venue is a cabaret-type theatre, with audience at tables eating and drinking, so they don’t seem to mind us starting nearly an hour late. From then on I begin to enjoy it. All the lethargy of a Sunday disappears and is replaced by the sharpness of performing adrenaline. ‘Plankton’ goes especially well and is received all the better for being obviously specially-written material.

Second half the audience are in very good form. ‘Save the leopards!’ someone shouts as I come on in my leopard-skin coat as the spangly compère of ‘Shouting’. I reassure the audience that it
is
artificial, whereupon the rejoinder comes smartly back ‘Save the artificial leopards!’

Home with huge feeling of relief and satisfaction – a 100% different from the way I felt on leaving seven hours ago. Am I a manic depressive?

Anne rings early to say that Python has been offered four days at the Hollywood Bowl at the end of September. Two weeks in LA in late September, all together, would, I feel, do our writing chances and the group’s general commitment to working together so much good that we should decide to go ahead with it as soon as possible.

TJ comes up after lunch. It’s actually too hot to work upstairs at No. 4 – sticky, with bright, shining sun unremitting – so we decamp to No. 2, to the leaky double bedroom. TJ rather content here. Says it reminds him of Belsize Park!
¹⁸
There complete ‘Sperm Song’.

In the evening (we work on until 6.30), I ring John C to find him very disappointed with his writing progress. He claims not to have been really well since last Friday and says that he and GC have not written much and he doesn’t like the family idea and could we not postpone the entire film for six months?