Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [170]
Osterberg orders us to put our coats on and we make our way across the heavy, soft carpet, past the clean, neat white desks, with their clean, neat white telephones, towards the elevators. The lady lawyer implores us to keep talking. ‘I’ve been asked to settle this,’ she pleads, her eyes moistening with what I would say was genuine fear – whether of us or of her superiors I don’t know. Terry G and I smile sheepishly and the elevator doors close.
Over to the Stage Deli for lunch to restore our sense of proportion. Thank goodness we have each other to compare notes with. I like TG because he is very sane, very realistic, entirely down-to-earth. A couple of waitresses ask us for autographs. They’d loved the Holy Grail.
Back to the lawyers later. A gruelling and concentrated working-over of our testimony for two hours, followed by further rehearsals and a taste of cross-questioning.
It was decided that Nancy L should be our first witness in court, followed by myself- through whom Osterberg would bring out all the salient points of our testimony – followed by Terry G, who would weigh in with lavish doses of enthusiasm, conviction and generally play the bruised artist.
Ray, Bob Osterberg’s junior, gave me some sample cross-questioning. Although I knew full well it was just a rehearsal, I couldn’t help getting thoroughly riled by his techniques of incredulousness, heavy sarcasm and downright mocking misrepresentation. All – he assured me afterwards – perfectly permissible legal techniques for breaking down witnesses. All I can say is, they worked. I left the office around 11.00 feeling tired, depressed and angry. Totally evaporated was my clear-eyed crusading enthusiasm of yesterday. I realised now that it was to be a sordid struggle played on their terms, not ours.
Friday, December 19th, New York
Woke about 6.00 this morning. Felt well rested and, after a pee, turned over to go to sleep again when it hit me – with a sudden heart-thumping, palm-sweating realisation. In three and a half hours I would be reliving the horrors of the evening before – only this time in court and for real. Across the suite, in the other bedroom, TG had woken at about the same time.
I lay there and tried to accept the extraordinary day ahead philosophically. There was no alternative – we were doing the only right thing. We weren’t having to lie or defend a dishonourable course of action. We just had to remember the purity of our initial indignation and it would all turn out fine – and anyway, by this evening we’d be on a plane back to London.
And yet my mind kept racing over possible fresh arguments, trying to turn and hone fine new phrases – only to suddenly discover weaknesses in my recollection. Surely lawyers didn’t go through this every morning before an important case – they’d go mad.
As I was shaving – my case having been finally delivered to me by TWA in the early hours of Thursday morning – TG appeared, with a towel wrapped round him. He paced the room restlessly, looking quite idiotic in his towel and saying, ‘I’ve got it … the real point is …’Then his eyes would take on a Martin Luther King-like intensity and I would hear phrases like, ‘If just one. Just show me one person whose opinion of Python has suffered as a result of ABC … just one … and that is enough for me.’This was Gilliam’s new line. He seemed on good form, but he and I nevertheless took a good shot of Bourbon before leaving the suite.
I try hard to keep a hold on reality, but it’s difficult as TG and I and Nancy, with our entourage of lawyers, mount the steps of the vast twenty-storey tower of the US Federal Court House in Foley Square.
At first glance the courtroom was softer, warmer and far less intimidating than I expected. As plaintiffs in the case, we were allowed to sit with our lawyers at a vast and solid table in the front of the court, with the judge’s box raised about four or five feet above us, and between him and us the enclosure for the clerks of the court and the court