Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [252]
It’s part of the magical nature of film studios that you should have such wonderful incongruities, like the front of the hotel which will be used for The Shining, rearing up sixty feet or so, but only a couple of hundred yards from Elstree High Street. Moby Dick was filmed 200 yards from the Elstree branch of Woolworths!
Drive back in the sunshine past the huge bulk of the old MGM Borehamwood Studios – chief victim of the ‘70s slump, now a cold-storage firm.
Wednesday, October 26th
Terry J rang about ‘Curse of the Claw’, last of the series. Good reactions from him and those who saw it with him. But I had to tell him that I wasn’t feeling too excited about the general reaction. I think Clive James was not far wrong when he said the series ‘half worked’. In defence, I’d say that it was a pioneer in many ways, and suffered from being formularised or categorised. It was a series, and yet not a series, comedy and yet not comedy.
TJ thinks that it was difficult for people to get their teeth into – there was no continuity to each show apart from opening titles and my own presence, in many different disguises. TJ also felt that I had wasted myself by playing too many dull, central roles.
Sunday, October 30th
I leave home with T Gilliam, Maggie and Amy [TG’s daughter] to go down to lunch at Terry Jones’ before going on to play charity football at Dulwich Hamlet. At lunch Allen Tinkley and wife Diana – who had put on Python in New York. Allen is interested in the new Python movie and has money available from Blake Edwards – whose wife Julie Andrews is, believe it or not a Python freak (she wanted us to co-star with her at the Palladium earlier this year!).
Our team is quite impressive. Peter Purves, of Blue Peter, is in goal and myself, Terry J, Terry G, John Cleese and Graham Chapman – who, as a new variation to his silly behaviour, actually got changed this time, but was substituted as soon as he came out, being carried off on a stretcher before the ball was kicked.
Home by seven. In my work-room this evening must reluctantly write ‘o’ against words target for this last week.
Tuesday, November 1st
Nearly 2,000 words on the typewriter. At ten to four we have a three-hour power-cut. Willy brings me up a candle and I carry on writing in very Dickensian spirit. The children all love the blackout and there are groans of disappointment when the lights come on again.
Saturday, November 12th, Oxford
A letter from Eve Levinson. She’s home and much on the mend, but now a cloud approaches. Some of the admin of her school are trying to take her job away – presumably people who try and kill themselves are unreliable. This sounds hard – but Eve does discuss the possibilities of life without the job. I think she only teaches now for the money.
Helen’s mother rings to say that in last night’s wild winds one of the trees in the garden was uprooted. H decides to take the children up to Abbotsley for the day to see the devastation and help her mother clear up. I stay here to prepare a chat for Brasenose tonight.
I leave for Oxford at four, having read my novel and done one hour’s prep on the talk. A very wild sky – some sunshine and blue patches, blotted out by a huge jet-black cloud. Rain, high wind. But it passes over me and by the time I reach Oxford it’s damp, cold and blustery, but the force of the storm has lessened.
To BNC1 at seven. Am met by at least six rather nervous members of the ‘Events Committee’ in the lodge. Am taken to a room in the Principal’s lodgings for sherry, and meet four other members of the committee – two women, for Brasenose is now co-ed. Sherry is drunk, but the undergraduates don’t talk amongst themselves – they sit, awkwardly, and wait for me to speak.
It is a peculiar feeling to know that you are an impressive, important, well-known figure – when inside you are probably as