Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [204]
It’s not as much fun as that yet.
On set by 8.30, rehearsing a long scene in the Queen’s Haemorrhoids with Bernard Bresslaw and Harry H Corbett, both of whom get to fling my (only eleven stone two by our scales this morning) body around. Bernard is kind, friendly, soft and cheerful as ever and I learn to my amazement that he’s breaking at ten to go to his brother’s funeral.
Harry and I are quite soon into the turkey-eating scene and Terry G says that this is the fastest they’ve worked all week. Yesterday had been particularly frustrating. He had spent 45 minutes with Peter Cellier, who plays the Merchant, trying to overcome his reluctance to pick his nose on screen.
A long day. One hour’s lunch break – I eat with Harry H in the grim canteen. (Like much of Shepperton Studio Centre, it bears all the tacky indications of an enterprise on its last legs, which was being dismantled by the broker’s men as a reprieve came through.)
Harry doesn’t enjoy film acting. He finds the dehumanisation of the actor on a film set troubles him. I noticed today that even an actor of his experience seems to harden and tense up on the take – losing a little of the fun he’s had on rehearsal.
On set from 8.30 until a quarter to seven in the evening – then gratefully and happily into a hot bath to clean off the sweat and grime of the day’s work. This kind of manual acting takes it out of you.
Monday, August 2nd
Out on the Oliver lot1 for most of the day, doing stunt work rather than acting. Much lying face-down in the dirt (peat and hay mixture) with Bernard Bresslaw, who is in fine form.
Encouraging viewing of Friday’s rushes. The painstakingly lit sequences are not as good as the hastily grabbed, hand-held shots of me trying to distract Bernard’s attention in the pub. This sequence was fresh, fast and – to prove the point – got consistent laughs at rushes.
I learn from the rushes that I must keep my performance up – the naturalistic way of playing (Frears’ influence here) is not sufficient – a touch of silliness is required.
Tuesday, August 3rd
Cope with letters in the morning, phone calls, and eventually at lunchtime sign Jabberwocky contract (£6,000 due by end of filming, £1,500 deferred and 2½% of producers gross). A motorcycle messenger in big boots and a rubber suit witnesses this impressive document.
Robert’s for a glass of BBC Chablis at 6.30. He’s been chairing a discussion programme for the Beeb Foreign Service on philosophy – Stuart Hampshire and Ben Whitaker amongst the participants. Robert jokes about it, but I’m quite impressed. We walk from Robert’s, through the Dickensian back alleys north of Fleet Street, skirting round the Inns of Court and across Waterloo Bridge to the concrete cultural wilderness of the South Bank.
At the National Theatre (the first time I’ve been inside it) I long for that hustle and bustle you get in St Martin’s Lane and Shaftesbury Avenue. Here the audience is entirely made up of respectable bourgeois folk like ourselves. No coach tours here, no stout elderly ladies out for a giggle or a treat. Just a flood of serious, trendy, culturally aware, white wine bibbers like myself.
It–s comfortable inside the Lyttelton Theatre, and the sight lines and acoustics require no effort or strain as in many other London theatres. The play Weapons of Happiness by Howard Brenton is not, as they say, ‘my cup of tea’. It belongs to the belligerent, strident, didactic school of theatre, in which dialogue is sacrificed to monologues, characters depressingly clichéd, angry cockney workers, champagne drinking employers, etc. Occasionally some pleasing and quite moving writing, but as a whole I disliked it, as I felt most of the audience did.
We eat at the Neal Street Restaurant. David Hockney posters on the wall and David Hockney himself at a table.
Walk back to Fetter Lane discussing possibilities for a new Orr/Hewison/Signford book – a catalogue of ‘All The Things You Ever Wanted