Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [178]
Thursday, January 22nd
Tomorrow I must be on the ball, for even more important discussions, this time about the professional future, must be raised with Terry as a result of a couple of calls from Jimmy Gilbert who has once again emphasised that he would like the Tomkinson series to be a Michael Palin series, written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones and starring Michael Palin.
Friday, January 23rd
Today, upstairs in Terry’s work-room, I told him of Jimmy’s attitude. TJ looked hurt – but there was a good, healthy fighting spirit there too. TJ feels that Tomkinson may well have been originally my project, but it worked as a team project and Terry is now very angry that the BBC want to break the team by institutionalising a hierarchy into our working relationship – i.e. The Michael Palin Show.
We talked ourselves round in circles. I couldn’t honestly say that I was prepared for TJ to take an entirely equal part in the acting, because this would involve me in a tussle with Jimmy over something I didn’t feel was in my own best interests. We break off for lunch with Jill Foster at Salami’s in Fulham Road.
It certainly seems that 1976 is all-change year. After almost ten years together, Terry and I are exploring and altering our relationship and Jill Foster and Fraser and Dunlop are doing the same. In short, Jill is leaving. She felt stifled at F & D, so now she wants to set up on her own.
We think we’ll stay with Jill, despite the various problems that have cropped up over our Python activities. She’s a good agent for us in many ways – a good talker, not renowned as vicious or hard in the business, but always seems to deliver an efficient, worthy, if not startling, deal.
After lunch we drive down to Terry’s, talking again about the series. A peripatetic day, in fact, both literally and metaphorically. We decide to meet Jimmy together, but he can’t make it until Monday. So I leave about 5.00 – with Terry still reeling slightly under a blow, which he hadn’t after all expected. It’s a rotten situation and rotten to see someone you like and whose friendship is so valuable being given a hard time. But it’s all got to be said and to be gone through.
Monday, January 26th
Another meeting about the Jones/Palin relationship. This time at the BBC. Meet TJ for a coffee first and he, as I had expected, had taken stock of the situation over the weekend and come to an optimistic conclusion. He would write the series with me and then go off and make a film for children (a project he’s had his thoughts on before) whilst I was filming. He seemed very happy.
However, once in Jimmy’s office, TJ took a rather less accommodating line (quite rightly for, as he said afterwards, there was no point in the meeting if he didn’t try to change JG’s mind with a forceful view of his own).
I didn’t do a lot of talking – I let Terry say all he wanted to say and Jimmy say what he wanted to say. JG was excellent I thought. He held to his position, but was sympathetic to all Terry said so, at the end of one and a half hour’s meeting we were all still friends – and Jimmy adjourned us for a week to think about it. TJ did seem to be less angry than impatient with Jimmy and we went off for a lunch at Tethers.
I’m trying to avoid an utterly basic dissection of our relationship, because I think it’s a relationship that obeys no strict rules, it works without introspection – it’s an extrovert relationship based on writing and often performing jokes together. It’s instinctive and I don’t want to damage it by over-examination. I want (for such is my half-cowardly nature!) to solve this re-adjustment crisis without tears.
Tuesday, January 27th
Spoke to Terry, mid-morning. Rather than pursuing the Children’s Film Foundation, TJ has instead revived that most hardy perennial – the Fegg film. He has rung John Goldstone, who reckons that ‘The Nastiest Film in the World’ has distinct possibilities!
Wednesday, January 28th