Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [193]
Are we or are we not going to do a life of Christ? All feel that we cannot just take the Bible story and parody or Pythonise every well-known event. We have to have a more subtle approach and, in a sense, a more serious approach. We have to be sure of our own attitudes towards Christ, the Scriptures, beliefs in general, and not just skate through being silly.
John provides a key thought with a suggested title – ‘The Gospel According to St Brian’ – and from that stem many improvised ideas about this character who was contemporary with Jesus – a sort of stock Python bank clerk, or tax official, who records everything, but is always too late – things have always happened when he eventually comes on the scene. He’s a bit of a fixer too and typical of St Brian is the scene where he’s on the beach, arranging cheap rentals for a fishing boat, whilst, in the back of shot, behind him, Christ walks across frame on the water. St Brian turns, but it’s too late.
So at the meeting, which breaks up around 1.00, we seem to have quite unanimously cheerfully agreed to do a film, and a Bible story film, and have had enough initial ideas to fill all of us with a sort of enthusiasm which has been missing in Python for at least a couple of years.
Tonight Harry Nilsson joins me on stage for the ‘Lumberjack Song’. He is coked to the eyeballs and full of booze too, but grins benignly and seems to be enjoying himself, when, at the last curtain call, I see him suddenly lurch forward towards the edge of the stage, presumably to fraternise with the cheering audience. As he goes forward, the curtain starts to fall and, before I can pull him back, Harry keels over into the front row and lies helplessly astride the wooden edge of the orchestra pit. The curtain descends, leaving me with this bizarre vision of a drunken Mountie lying on top of the audience!
Thursday, April 29th, New York
Nancy rings at 10.30. A CBS film crew want an interview, walking in the park or something, this lunchtime. Should help to sell a few seats for the weekend. It’s important, of course.
Today Helen and the kids are going back home and here am I, with pathetic lack of resistance, sucked into the publicity machine.
A less productive film meeting at 242 this morning, although we take the Bible story into wider areas, Rome perhaps or even the present day. A silly World War I opening is suggested, which starts with a congregation of English soldiers singing in some chapel. A moving scene. Except in one row at the back there are four Germans singing. Nobody likes to look at them directly, but heads begin to turn.
When I get home, Helen is in the throes of packing.
Took a cab across town and picked up the boys from Yvonne. They’d been up the Empire State Building and had more pressies in their hot little hands. Back to 242 with them. Give Helen a goodbye peck, grab my thermos of tea, which I’ve been taking into the theatre for the vocal cords. So off I go, clutching my thermos like a miner going off t’ pit.
Sunday, May 2nd, New York
Woke with the nightmarish realisation that I had no voice at all. I croak, ooh and aah and try a few of the exercises, but realise with a flush of horror that my voice has disappeared – more suddenly and severely than I ever remember. My reactions – it’s about 11.00 and I’ve slept a good nine hours – vary from urgent panic to reluctant acceptance and then to cautious optimism. I have often heard of doctors who deal with this sort of vocal paralysis with one squirt or one jab. So, I try to ring Nancy. She’s not there. So I try to ring doctors myself. This isn’t much fun as I have to croak gutturally into the phone and it’s difficult to make them hear. Dr Lustgarten, the Park Avenue specialist, is away. His partner, Dr Briggs, will ring me back. Dr Briggs doesn’t ring me back. I have a bath.
My predicament seems like a particularly