Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [175]
A very cordial Python meeting at Park Square East to discuss the content of our stage show in New York. Once again proved that Python works well as a group when discussing the creation of sketches and jokes – the reason, after all, why we originally got together. Python group at its worst discussing business, contracts, hiring and firing personnel, and other areas which we are better at making fun of than taking seriously.
Today, ‘Blackmail’ was added to the list, John having said that, although he may be sounding rather selfish, he wanted to cut down the number of sketches he appeared in, and he felt that I was very light in number of appearances. So ‘Michael Miles’ out and ‘Blackmail’ in. Graham protested briefly, but the general consensus was that ‘Cocktail Bar’ should go, along with the ‘Bruces’ and the ‘Pepperpots’ in a big purge of the generally accepted weak middle of the first half. In went ‘Salvation Fuzz’ (entirely new to stage), ‘Crunchy Frog’ (ditto) – with Graham taking John’s role as Inspector Praline – and an amalgamation of court sketches to replace ‘Silly Elections’ as a closer.
Judging by today’s meeting, it really seems that Python has emerged remarkably healthily from the mire of the last two years. There’s a much friendlier, looser, more open feeling amongst the members of the group now. I wonder if it will weather the month’s hard work on the New York stage show, and if it will produce an equally friendly and relaxed working atmosphere for September and October, when we get together to write the third Python film.
Strong, violent, gusting gales tonight. Up to 105mph in Cambridgeshire and many people killed (twenty-four).
Saturday, January 3rd
A busy, socialising weekend. Liz Garden rang on Saturday morning to ask if they could come over and fly Sally’s new kite on Parliament Hill. I warned her about me and kites – that the two should never meet – but, despite warnings, Graeme, Sally, Tom, Willy and I braved a finger-numbing wind on the lower slopes of Parliament Hill. Bill Oddie had given Sally the kite, as he is now apparently a very serious kiter – a ‘Formula One’ kite flyer, as Graeme calls him.
True to form, I rip part of the thin cellophane fabric before the kite’s even been flown. Several desperate attempts to get it in the air – it twists, wheels, turns like a bucking stallion at a rodeo, before plunging, inevitably, into the ground. After half an hour, when we think we have at last mastered the ballistics problem, Willy treads well-intentionally on one of the struts and the kite is finally written off.
Off to Le Routier at Camden Lock for lunch.
Very different from our local Queen’s Crescent Market – the stallholders are your traditional cockneys there – here at Camden Lock the stalls are run by the New Wave of stallholders – young, middle-class, usually feminine, emphasis on the arts and crafts and inter-stall talk about recent Fassbinder movies. Also appalling tat – they will clearly sell anything – as evidenced by several copies of the 1971 AA Book.
Sunday January 4th
A couple of reviews in the Sundays. Philip Purser very favourable in the Sunday Telegraph – ‘the languid trio was beautifully cast’ – while Peter Lennon in the Sunday Times gave a brief and rather churlish dismissal of the whole piece, saying that Frears allowed his actors to settle ‘for a relentlessly arch air which quickly grew tedious’ and the Three Men ‘suffered from an inability to sound at ease delivering lines which read agreeably enough in quaint, old-fashioned essay, but needed more drastic transformation by Tom Stoppard to work as dialogue’. So raps on the knuckles all round. Against all my better feelings I was goaded into a short burst of bitter anger by the Sunday Times review. But it passed and rational thought returned.
Took boys to swim at the Holiday Inn for an hour, then Terry with Alison and Sally arrived