Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [150]
The read-through goes well. At the end Frears says the casting was exactly right, and one gets the feeling that all three of us fit Jerome’s characters near enough to require no great feats of acting. Stoppard is pleased too. Rosemary Hill does not express an opinion, but is more concerned with the fact that it’s going to be too long. Stoppard and Frears are clearly opposed to making major cuts at this point – so the discussion drags on in a rather desultory way. I don’t think anything very worthy will ever be decided in BO 55.
Up to the bar, where I met Tim B-T and Graeme Garden (surrounded by beautiful women). They are on Top of the Pops, plugging their latest epic ‘Black Pudding Bertha’ tonight and Graeme has just had a son. They are quite envious about the Three Men in a Boat job.
Thursday, June 12th, Southwold
The weather continues to be dazzling, perfect, clear hot sunshine. Up to Southwold on the 9.30 train to take my parents to see the Holy Grail film which starts today at Norwich. Some twenty or thirty people at the 1.40 showing. I enjoyed watching the film today more than I’ve ever done. It may partly have been due to the fact that I was carrying one and a half pints of Adnams, but I think it was because I was under no strain, rush or pressure, as at previous showings – premieres, etc. I was also able to crystallise and analyse my disappointments in the film – there is a patch where we really do lose touch with the audience, and that’s at the end of the otherwise excellent ‘Wedding’ scene, through the old lady in the ‘Ni’ village, and the second ‘Knights’ which terminate in easily the most embarrassing piece of the film, when the king meets Sir Robin in the forest. But I think the parents enjoyed it, and Daddy laughed quite spontaneously a few times.
A quick trip to the cathedral, then home to Croft Cottage, where we sat in the sunshine and had a cup of tea. Daddy’s chair kept tipping over and once, when he’d taken a bite of rock cake, his teeth came out firmly clamped to the rock cake.
Read Thomas Hardy’s The Trumpet-Major as I rattled home on the 6.30 train from Darsham.
Friday, June 13th
In the afternoon I had a tetanus jab at the BBC because of the suspicious nature of the Berkshire Thames – it rather deromanticised the whole thing – then Tim, Stephen M, Stephen F and I roared up the M4 in Stephen F’s very shabby Cortina, through Reading and up to Goring, where we found the thirty-foot skiff, which we will get to know rather well over the next three or four weeks. We bought some tea, and went for a trial row up the river. We fell uncannily easily into the roles. I rowed, because I like rowing and generally getting things done (being Harris), Tim, in dark reflecting glasses, languidly took the rudder, while Stephen M just generally helped.
Monday, June 16th
The first day’s filming on Three Men in a Boat, Up at 7.00.
A brilliantly sunny morning as I drove to the BBC. It didn’t stay like that and, by the time of our third or fourth shot at a boathouse at Walton, we were indoors, sheltering from the rain. But there were sufficient breaks in the showers for us to maintain a good rate of filming, despite having to get used to the boat, full of gear and Montmorency the dog. It’s bad enough having to do retakes anyway, but to row yourself back for the retakes often adds insult to injury.
Stephen F comes to life and directs briskly, but not at all autocratically. We tend to cover sequences from more than one angle, and Brian Tufano, the most prestigious BBC cameraman, is painstaking over light and composition of shots.
Tom Stoppard is in attendance – very friendly – a rather languid figure in his expensive woollen jacket, loose-fitting camel-coloured slacks and Gucci bag full