Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [287]
It’s not a great surprise when Jim rings a few hours later to say that despite the BBC stretching all its resources (!!) Laurence Evans has turned down the offer, explaining that, ‘He likes a bit of luxury, you know.’
Thursday, June 8th
A patchy day of sun and cloud. Patchy in achievement too. John Le Mesurier evidently likes the ‘Roger of the Raj’ script so much that he’s very happy to do a small part (Runciman). This encourages me, because I know he will be brilliant.
More encouragingly, I find that ‘The Wreck of the Harvey Goldsmith’1 looks in good shape – an abundance of funny material (but an expensive show) and I start a new tale, ‘Dracula at St Dominic’s’.
TJ tells me Diana Quick can’t do Judith in the Life of Brian, as she is committed to the RSC in the autumn. We are seeing a girl called Sue Jones-Davis tomorrow morning.
Friday, June 9th
Regent’s Park bathed in sunshine as I drive down to Park Square West for the Python meeting. Terry J and John Goldstone are present. Eric didn’t think it was worth coming. John is out of the country, evidently playing cricket in Corfu! Gilliam is still in France.
So TJ, myself and a very much slimmed-down Dr Chapman, meet Sue Jones-Davis. A tiny, boyish little Welsh lady with an upturned nose. Dressed in jeans and shirt – no frills. She reads Judith in a delightful Welsh accent. She’s quite a tough and sparky little girl, and has a strong, open face, which should come across well in all the Judith v Brian close-ups. Not a versatile comedy lady like Gwen Taylor, but a good Judith we all think.
John Le Mesurier’s agent rings to say he wants his full Dad’s Army fee for playing the one-day cameo in ‘Roger’. Jim will sort this out, though he’s puzzled and rather cross about it.
Wednesday, June 14th
Have been reading extracts from Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary. How hard she worked at writing. What impossibly high standards she always seemed to set herself.
Sylvia Plath – another lady whose depth of perception and whose shining intelligence seemed to render her always more vulnerable than secure – expressed this in The Bell-Jar: ‘I feel like a race horse in a world without race tracks.’ In Christopher and His Kind, Isherwood expresses a less fraught attitude: ‘Christopher said to himself that only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.’
I’m with Isherwood.
Friday, June 16th
Complete a reading of the Brian script this morning, then drive down to Park Square West.
Keith Moon is unanimously voted into the rep company. John Young, the Historian in Grail, is unanimously voted in as Matthias, the largest single non-Python role in the movie. We can’t agree yet on a Judith.
Eric’s two songs – ‘Otto’ and the ‘Look on the Bright Side’ crucifixion song —are rather coolly received before lunch.
My suggestion of Ken Colley as Jesus is accepted nem con – thus solving quite a long-term problem. And the title is to be Monty Python’s Life of Brian— not ‘Brian of Nazareth’ as GC and I liked, or ‘Monty Python’s Brian’, as TJ suggested.
Thursday, June 22nd
Down to Donovan at lunchtime to surrender my false teeth, which will be ‘reworked and reordered’ for me to collect them tomorrow. Toothless, out into chill London.
Drive to a reception at the National Book League (again), this time for contributors to The Writers’ Book of Recipes, which I had evidently replied to about fifteen months ago. At the cocktail party my letter is included in a hastily-assembled display case – right next to one from Jan Morris.
I sauntered over and was, hopefully rather discreetly, glancing over my letter of 16th March ‘77, when a soft,