Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [169]
ABC at this point present us with a list of their cuts in the three shows we are about to see. A cursory glance at the list shows that our trip to New York has not been wasted. There are thirty-two proposed cuts. Some ludicrous – ‘damn’ cut out twice, ‘bitch’ as describing a dog cut out, etc, etc.
I think that ABC were quite honestly taken aback by our reaction. I just wanted to walk out, but Osterberg advised us to see all the shows, which was obviously good sense.
Next to me on the couch as I told them that the cuts they suggested were totally unacceptable and, in our opinion, ludicrous, was a young, short-haired, conventionally handsome executive, whose eyes would not look at ours for long, and whose face was flushed with confusion. He turned out to be the head of ABC TV’s Standards and Practices Department and a Vice-President of the Company.
This was the man whom ABC pay to censor their programmes – the man who had actually decided that the American public wasn’t ready for ‘naughty bits’ – the man who had decided that Eric Idle as Brian Clough dressed as Queen Victoria was a homosexual reference and should therefore be cut. Judging by the list he had compiled one would expect him to be a sort of obsessive religious maniac. A wild eccentric who lived on top of a mountain seeking to preserve himself and his few remaining followers from the final onslaught of the people who say ‘damn’.
But the deceit is that of course he was himself no more offended by these words than I am. He laughed, as they all laughed, when we talked about cutting a ‘tit’ here and a ‘tit’ there – and yet he will not permit others in his country to have the choice of laughing at those words as well. ‘It’s alright for us, but we’ve got to think about people in the South – in Baton Rouge and Iowa as well.’ Then we tell him that Python has been running in Baton Rouge and Iowa for over a year on PBS, without complaint.
It all seems so pointless, in this little viewing room in a comfortable office block with a group of people playing idiotic games with each other, but then I remember the power of ABC – the ability to beam a show simultaneously into all the sets in the USA. The papers we have talked to, the radio shows we have talked to, can never hope to reach anything but a small proportion of the audience our mutilated show can reach via ABC.
Our lawyers play games – their lawyers play games. After viewing all the shows we begin sort of negotiations. This involves a worried lady lawyer for ABC asking us if we would ever consider the possibility of re-editing. Yes, we say, despite the obvious harm the 90-minute format and the commercial breaks will do, we would consider re-editing. Their ears prick up. Our re-editing would be based entirely on artistic and comedic criteria. If in the course of our cutting some of their censored words were lost, then fair enough.
‘Are there any cuts which we propose,’ she says, ‘that you would agree with?’ ‘No,’ we say, ‘It’s easier for us to tell you cuts on which we will never negotiate and you can work backwards from there.’We single eight points out of the first twelve on which we are immovable.
Much to-ing and fro-ing. The lady and the zombie reappear. Yes … there could be some negotiation, but first can we tell them the points in the two other shows which we would be prepared to talk over. Here Osterberg starts to play the impatience game. And quite rightly. He insists, on behalf of his clients, of course, that ABC must first agree to restore all the eight cuts which we regard as non-negotiable. And here they baulk, and the lady lawyer looks more and more desperate, and the