Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [144]
Missed the Statue of Liberty ferry, walked back up Broadway, bought two plastic statues of Laurel and Hardy in a tatty street market on Canal Street, so by the time I reached Gallagher’s Bar to see Earl Wilson I was over half an hour late and it was raining.
The place was almost empty but, at a table in the corner, surrounded by photos of jockeys, horses, etc, Graham, Terry J, who had nobly sat in for me, Sue from the public relations agency and the small, neat, elderly and very bemused-looking E Wilson. He seemed to suffer from an unfortunate impediment for a reporter – he couldn’t hear a word. Added to this, GC was being quite irresponsible and saying very strange things. Sue, a PR lady and not a bright soul, just tried to look happy as he shouted for the fourth time in the ear of this hapless columnist, ‘Penis!’
From Gallagher’s we took a cab to the offices of Don Rugoff and Cinema 5, the man and the outfit who are distributing our film in the US. He looks a fair shambles. Around 45-ish, thick glasses, a strong face, made permanently grumpy by his habit of pushing his chin into his neck and turning the sides of his mouth down. The rest of his body was mostly stomach, a huge pointed paunch which he pushes in front of him, like some antenna casing. Rugoff’s voice, like his general physical presence, is rough and untidy. I liked him a lot.
We excused ourselves about 6.00, and walked back to our suite at the Navarro, where Nancy, or somebody, had organised a cheese and wine party for our friends. I suddenly realised I had had only two hours sleep in the last 36, and Italian white wine wasn’t likely to revive me. But the party was quite well attended. All sorts of strange people began arriving, including Martin Scorsese, director of Mean Streets and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More, the ubiquitous Jo Durden-Smith1 and several Rolling Stone staffers. Ed Goodgold,2 whose company is always good fun, maintains Python has done and will do a lot for the Gentiles in America, who’ve been until now totally swamped by Jewish comedians and Jewish comedy – Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Harvey Kurtzman, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, etc, etc.
Sunday, April 27th, New York
We were to be at Cinema II on Third Avenue at 11.00 a.m. to welcome the first crowds and to give out coconuts as people came out. The phone rang and woke me about 9.40. It was John Goldstone. Could we get down to the cinema as quickly as possible; there had been people queuing since 5.30 a.m. and Rugoff had already opened the film, with a special extra 9.30 performance. Time only for a delicious American grapefruit and a quick coffee and into the limousine.
When we reached the cinema there were, indeed, your actual crowds. People queuing right round the block. There was only one way into the cinema and that was through the main entrance – so through the crowds we went.
Once in the cinema we were taken to a kind of broom cupboard below stairs, where we felt like prisoners. There was coffee and doughnuts. Rugoff told us we couldn’t go out of the theatre, or let ourselves be seen at a window (!) for fear of inciting riots on Third Avenue. ‘We’ve only got one patrolman,’ he kept muttering morosely. I think he hoped and expected that there would be riots, but we know our audience quite well – they want to be silly, they want to chat, they want to shake hands, they want you to sign the plaster on their broken arms, but generally speaking they don’t want to tear us limb from limb.
But they did fill the cinema all day long and Rugoff was able to claim at the end of the day a house record take of ten and a half thousand