Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [179]
Another gorgeous day of clear, crisp, sharp sunshine. Terry comes up to Julia Street to talk about the Fegg film. We have some nice ideas – Fegg is a brooding and malevolent influence who lives in a corrugated iron extension up against a Gothic castle, near to the world’s prettiest village, where everyone is terribly nice to each other. But the presence of Fegg (whom we see in a sinister, opening build-up sequence letting the air out of someone’s tyres) is too much for them. They advertise for a hero. Scene cuts to a Hostel for Heroes, where unemployed heroes sit around in a sort of collegey atmosphere – occasionally getting jobs.
At the end of our day on Fegg – and with a possible commitment to writing on Fegg until we go to the US – I suddenly feel a touch of panic. Helen, with her usual down-to-earth perspicacity, provoked it by her reaction to the news of the Fegg film. I know she’s right – I am taking on too much. The Fegg film is going to take time and ideas away from what should really be my primary project of the next two years – the BBC series of thirteen. Helen forces me to confront the fact that I am in danger of losing what I am trying to save.
Thursday, January 29th
Very cold again, but sunny. Reading the papers, hearing the news (imperfect form of information though that is), I get the feeling that there is an air of optimism about, a general air of improvement in the state of the country, which has been so battered over the last few years.
The Balcombe Street siege has, touch wood, marked the end of a couple of years of IRA terror, but it was the way in which the siege ended – peacefully, almost sensibly – and the way in which Jenkins1 and the government refused to restore hanging in response to the primitive blood lust emotions of probably the majority of the country – that was the most hopeful outcome of the whole affair.
I rang Terry towards the end of the morning. He, too, had been worried when faced with actually writing the Fegg film, together with all our other commitments. But, later in the call, as we meandered around the area of commitments and involvements, Terry asked again the very basic question – ‘Sod Jimmy Gilbert, Mike … what do you actually want the series to be?’
The almost continuous reflections on this subject over the last couple of weeks, the gut feeling that anything less than the independence I felt on Tomkinson, made me feel somehow, somewhere, dissatisfied, really gave me only one possible answer … ‘Yes … I think I do want it to be the Michael Palin Show’
Once I said this – and I had never said it with quite such conviction before – the debate and discussion was as good as ended. Terry accepted that – reluctantly, obviously, but quite generously and with relief that we were being honest with each other. God knows how it will turn out from here on, but the crucial question has been answered. Yes, I do want my independence, yes I do want the responsibility to be ultimately mine.
Fegg, we decide to shelve for a while. A well-intentioned attempt to please everybody, a project which I am genuinely enthusiastic about, but, thank goodness, this morning realism has prevailed all round.
Friday, January 30th
January draws to a close in bitter cold. Last weekend there was some snow – which was preferable to the bitter, ear-aching, sub-zero winds which blow around London today. But it’s sunny again this morning. I have a meeting at the BBC with Jimmy G and Terry Hughes. Bill Cotton flits through, shakes my hand and says how pleased he was with the reaction to Tomkinson. The official warmth of the BBC’s approval wafts around. I fear and mistrust it. Self-doubt and official disapproval are better for you.
We talk about money. Jimmy would like £4,000 per show guaranteed front money from the US. Tomkinson, according to computer forecasts (the BBC have a computer!), will cost £34,000 per episode in 1977, about double the average LE sit-com episode.
Thursday, February 5th
A Grammy Award Nomination arrives in the post from LA. Matching Tie and Handkerchief has been nominated