Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [152]
Wednesday, June 25th, Streatley
Danny La Rue1 has been in residence, or in evidence, at the Swan this week; he is Chairman of the hotel, a fact which must account for the occasional groups of middle-aged ladies who are to be found standing on the bridge and gaping down at it. Danny gravitated rather surely towards Tim, but, in the bar after the meal, he was clearly anxious to talk to any of us. He talked mainly about the wonderful tour he’d just finished and how he’d broken all box-office records at Scarborough, only two or three nights ago. He really exudes star and showbiz. His talk is self-boosting, he has a small entourage, including one very beautiful young man, who hover about him. I have occasionally seen his eyes flick around the bar with a sort of panic, when he has no-one to talk to.
None of us have, of course, been anything less than charming to him, however. No-one has so much as hinted that his hotel must be one of the most beautiful and worst-run in England.
Friday, June 27th, Streatley
The weather looked like breaking this morning; grey clouds piled up, but no rain. Spent most of the morning reading James Cameron’s An Indian Summer, basking in the near perfect balance of his intelligence, humour and sensitivity.
I read in the Mini parked by the side of a lane at Bushey Lock, on the Upper Reaches beyond Abingdon, where Stephen M and Harry Markham were doing a scene. Harry Markham was in Stephen F’s highly praised Sunset Across the Bay and he’s one of Stephen’s favourite actors. He’s only on the film one day, but he comes down with his wife, Edna – they’re a very dear, down-to-earth Northern couple, a great antidote to Hampstead. I asked them about their hobby, which turns out to be walking along canals. They recently walked the Liverpool—Leeds canal.
‘Oh, how lovely,’ I gushed.
‘Oh, bits of it are very dangerous, you know,’ replies Harry very seriously.
Edna is equally serious.’There was a gang of youths came up to us just outside Liverpool … they started fingering his windcheater …’
A pleasant lunchtime drink at the Trout at Bushey Lock – an out-of-the-way pub, with very friendly clientele. I learn a little more about Tim, who used to be rather quiet for the first few days, but has gradually opened up and become more garrulous and at times quite ebullient. He told me today that his father was a naval chaplain, who died when he was 12, and from then on he was brought up by women. There’s a soft, very English quality about Tim which is quite at odds with the Rocky Horror/Lou Adler LP side.1
Tuesday, July 1st, Streatley
Stephen F doesn’t really like days when there are a lot of extras. The awful depression he affects on such days, when shots take a long time to set up and then someone hasn’t understood and walks slap across shot at the vital moment, is, I think, quite deep-seated.
Annie Z2 says that Stephen totally lives the film while he’s working. He’s one of life’s restless pacers, she says. Some mornings he starts pacing about six o’clock.
Anyway, the first of July has a richly comic ending. ‘Tucker’ Leach, one of the Props boys, a cheerful stammerer, who is no intellectual giant, plays his second role of the day – as a passenger on board a steamship that nearly runs us down (again!). After complicated positions have been worked out, the shot finally gets under way. It’s a good take – which actually ends on my line as the steamboat swishes past:’I say, any chance of a tow?’ No sooner have I said the line, than Tucker yells back, loud and clear and deliciously in shot, ‘No way!’
Wednesday, July 2nd, Streatley
The morning’s hot again, and I’m settling down to a cup of coffee and a read of the Palin Show script, before sending it off to Terry Hughes. But Stephen F finds me and, motioning vaguely to the terrace in front of the hotel, invites me to bring my coffee along and join everyone.