Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [297]
Enthusiastically closing the day with some press-ups, feel a muscle go in my back. Curse my luck.
Tuesday, September 19th, Monastir
Called today to be Francis crawling through tunnels on the way to capture Pilate’s wife, but late enough for me to have a swim, breakfast and a read before going in. My pulled muscle, or whatever, was still painful enough in the night to jolt me awake two or three times, but seems no worse this morning.
What finally cures my back is two or three hours of very uncomfortable work in the tunnels.
We filmed on until seven, when the last platoon of Roman soldiers had tramped over our heads. Back at the hotel Graham gave me some back rub – but it all feels much better after the mini outward-bound course.
Graham is rapidly becoming a saint. He’s been treating so many people in the unit – and now he’s stopped drinking he has time to do his medical work properly, and the ability to do it without shaking or dropping whatever he’s about to stick in you. In the evenings Graham does his rounds, with pills and rubs and words of reassurance.
Apart from his medical activities, he’s sharp on his words and, from being a rather disconcerting influence on previous Python epics, he’s now become a model of co-operation and efficiency, and his avuncular presence is calm and reassuring. In fact John today suggested that Graham was reminding him more and more of a vicar.
Wednesday, September 20th, Monastir
Up at six, and on the road to Monastir by six-thirty. My first really testing day – the Pilate Forum speech.
I know that I have to beware of factors such as being overawed by the scale and size of this particular movie. I have to try and forget previous successes or failures. I have to feel light and bright and free of any diversionary anxieties.
Well today, as I drive across the salt and mud flats, with the sun low above the eastern horizon, casting a bright golden glow hard into my eyes, I feel good and prepared and just downright happy to be performing again. So the morning goes well, except that it is possibly the hottest, least windy day yet and out on our rostrum it becomes almost unbearable.
But we cover everything bar John’s close-ups, then bring in the Tunisian crowd, whom we have heard outside the walls of the Ribat learning to shout ‘We want Wodewick!’
They are marvellous and it’s a tremendous confidence boost for the rest of the filming, for at one time the difficulties of teaching Python techniques to a crowd of Tunisians seemed almost insuperable. However, today, Terry J has this mixed bunch of Arab students, peasants, grandmothers, mothers with babes in arms, old men with missing noses, middle-aged men with almost leprous skin, lying on their backs and waggling their feet in the air. They find no trouble in jeering at the posturings of the Roman Empire, and seem to enjoy it immensely.
I talked yesterday with Mahomet, who is one of our Tunisian extras, and was one of the raiders in the tunnel. He belongs to a theatre group in Mahdia, and much of their work is critical of the status quo in Tunisia. ‘Anti-Bourguiba?’ I asked. He shushed me quickly. ‘You can end up in prison saying things like that.’
Mahomet is a Tunisian nationalist of a different sort from Habib Bourguiba, whose likeness adorns the road into the town in twenty-foot-high posters. Mahomet wants Tunisia to be independent on its own terms and by virtue of its own resources. He’s not a pan-Arab, and he certainly does not approve of independence based on dependence on America, Europe or Russia.
We took a late lunch – I managed a swim at the Sidi Mansour pool – and were back at three for more crowd reactions. Terry J won them over with a masterly display