Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [279]
The ideas fall thick and fast and I suggest that the manager should talk about his other acts, and then possibly end on an act of his own. This fits neatly in with an idea of James Downey, one of the young, new writers, who said he’s always wanted to see someone dancing with ferrets down their trousers. I adapt this to dancing to ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ whilst putting sea-food salad and two cats down my trousers. Great is the nocturnal hilarity. I just hope it wears well in the morning.
Friday, April 7th, New York
There is a lift operator at Nancy Lewis’s apartment building on Central Park South who is genuinely, creatively loopy. The last time I saw him he told me in some detail, with a perfectly straight face, that he is currently making replicas of New York public buildings out of false teeth.’I have a lot of dentists in this block, you see.’
Now I understand why Python can be so successful in the US. And it is prestigious. It is repeated endlessly – currently on Mondays on Channel 13 in New York and five nights a week in Los Angeles, five nights a week in New Orleans, plus numerous other regional showings one hears of, in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, etc, etc.
Such is the respect for Python, that Lome confided to me today that he felt it has adversely affected some of the writing on this week’s show. Some of the newer writers, he feels, have become self-conscious and forsaken their own style and their own instincts in favour of attempts to supply me with Pythonic material.
There is one sketch in particular, which has changed from a lecture on drama and a ‘What’s wrong with this scene from Chekhov?’ idea to a fully-fledged RADA-trained actor escaping from chains, locks, padlocks and a trunk whilst performing The Seagull. All this grew from an observation of mine that the narrator needed brightening up and couldn’t one possibly begin by, say, breaking out of a trunk, before going into a perfectly straight introduction?
Finish blocking around nine. But then there’s wardrobe fittings and yet another dance rehearsal – and it’s nearly eleven by the time I’m relaxing in Lome’s office. Lome is staring up at the order of sketches pinned on cards to one wall of his office – ‘Holmes’, ‘What’s Wrong?’, ‘Nerds’, ‘Cold Opening’, etc, etc. And when we leave for a meal half an hour later writers are still writing in smoky offices.
Dan Aykroyd (Watson), Bill Murray and myself (Holmes) watch an old Basil Rathbone movie in order to check on our voices and performances for tomorrow’s sketch. Then Lome and I go up to the Japanese restaurant.
Lorne says he wants to tell me – before tomorrow night so anything said will not be affected by the show – that he would like to work with me again.
Ideally he would like to set up a Michael Palin show, which would be financed by NBC, but co-produced by Lome and myself, so that we would retain overseas rights. Like the Rutles, in fact.
All this profession of confidence sweeps over me, but almost fails to make contact in reality. I can’t really believe it can be as easy as this. Am I really being offered at least one 90-minute show of my own on NBC? I think that my failure to connect must come across as either diffidence or supreme confidence.
Saturday, April 8th, New York
Shave, select clothes that will be seen across the nation tonight – and I think that’s probably the last time today that I consciously stop and think about the awesome accessibility of TV. The number of homes all over America who will be looking at me, tonight, in these jeans I’m just hauling myself into. The number of friends whom I may never see again, who will see me, after their dinner party, or as they row, or because they can’t sleep. The number of film stars I idolise, sports heroes, ex-Presidents of the World Bank, Watergate conspirators (Dean), authors I’m reading at the moment (Bellow), boxers, test pilots, Mick Jaggers, Senators, Congressmen, criminals, who may be looking at this shirt,