Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [168]
One slightly ominous note, though – Nancy says the court hearing is on Friday – and yet we have to leave Thursday night at latest.
Wednesday morning, December 17th, New York
Up at 9.30. Walk across to the Stage Delicatessen for breakfast. Eggs, bacon, coffee, bagels, cottage cheese.
Up to Nancy’s office at Buddah where we meet Rik Hertzberg – good old friend from The New Yorker. We have a good time and give him a lot of in formation, including, for the first time, copies of letters, affidavits and other court material. Pack is not just a good and sympathetic friend – he also, in his New Yorker piece earlier this year [welcoming the Python TV series], has the immeasurable skill of being able to quote our material and still make it sound funny.
After an hour or so with Rick, we take a cab down Broadway to Sardi’s for lunch with John O’Connor – another Python sympathiser and TV critic of the New York Times. It’s interesting how much greater access we have to TV journalists and writers in New York than in London.
From Sardi’s the Dynamic Duo, the Fighters for Freedom, find themselves in a rather dingy doorway next to Cartier’s shop in Fifth Avenue, waiting for an elevator up to see the lawyers whom Ina has hired to represent us in our struggle against the American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.
They’re led by short, blond-haired Robert Osterberg, he must be mid-thirties. A fit, tidy, rather bland sort of man with the eyes and smile, but unfortunately nothing else, of Kirk Douglas.
He begins by saying that we really ought to be in court on Friday. He says, quite rightly, that if no Pythons are prepared to be in New York to defend their own case, that case is immeasurably weakened. And so on. He’s right of course, but both Terry and I have avoided confronting the awful, stomach-gripping truth that we will actually have to defend our position in a US Federal court. Now that’s almost a certainty and I have to let Helen know that I won’t be back for the Gospel Oak Old Folk’s Party. In addition, TWA have still not found my case, so I’m unshaven and crumpled and tired as well as shit-scared.
Thursday, December 18th, New York
Feel much calmer about the whole court bit now. Rang Helen, which was the worst thing I had to get over. It was twenty past eight here and I was in bed in the Navarro, with sunny New York outside – and Helen was in her fog-bound Gospel Oak kitchen with the kids all wanting things. There really couldn’t be much contact. I just had to tell her the facts – very unsatisfactory, but now she knows, I know she’ll get over it and begin to make other plans and I’m sure friends will rally round. So I feel better now. I feel ready for a fight.
We breakfast at the Grand Central Café. (Good news for Grand Central Station fans – yesterday a demolition and development plan for it was finally quashed.)
A visit to the lawyers, then all of us in a deadly accusing phalanx – Ina, Osterberg plus one, Terry G and myself – make our way over to ABC TV. A slender, not unattractive thirty-five-storey dark stone and glass block … this is what we’re taking on.
Up to the twenty-first floor.
We’re at ABC today because they yesterday relented their earlier decision not to let us see the proposed December 26th compilation – and the lawyers regard this viewing today as a significant concession. ABC’s point is that, if we find that the compilation we see at today’s viewing is acceptable, then the whole case may be dropped.
We meet, for the first time, the highly plausible and eligible Bob Shanks, who is Head of Night Time and Early Morning Programming at ABC. Intelligent, charming and the man ultimately responsible for our being in New York today. With him is a member of their legal department – a lady in her late thirties, early forties with a long-suffering look in her eyes and a kindly, almost saintly face, as in a sixteenth-century religious painting.
At this stage it’s smiles, handshakes, genial