Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [30]
We’re finished by 5.30. Outside the shop is a little boy whose father, he tells us, is coming out of the nick soon.
‘What’ll you do when he comes out?’
‘Kill him.’
‘Why?’
‘I hate him.’
‘Why do you hate him?’
‘He’s a ponce.’
All this cheerfully, as if discussing what kind of fish fingers he likes best. As I walk back to the caravan a battered-looking couple argue viciously in a doorway.
Home for a bath and a change of clothes, and then out for the evening to the Warner Rendezvous – a new theatre opening with The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, which was written by Peter Cook, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Kevin Billington, the director. Graham, David and I walked round the back of the crowd into the foyer. It was full of people – not obvious first-nighters, and not an inordinate amount of stars. Peter Cook and Denholm Elliott were standing with their ladies, flashing smiles. As we walked down into the lower foyer, Peter looked up towards us and said in a funny voice, ‘Oh, they’re all here.’
The seats in the cinema were certainly comfortable, and there were little surprises, like Lord George-Brown1 and his wife arriving, which reminded us that it was no ordinary night at the movies, but a premiere – Sparkle! Sparkle!
Rimmer with its built-in topical appeal, very funny moments, good performances, is still a second-rate movie – ephemeral enjoyment which makes no special impression and says nothing new, apart perhaps from one very memorable scene when the Prime Minister goes on a prestige visit to Washington for personal talks, and takes his place at the end of a long corridor full of potentates, including the Pope, who each move up one place as the President sees them.
After the film we went with Graham to a party at Les Ambassadeurs, a club in Park Lane. Lord George-Brown came in and stood with his wife rather gloomily until Graham and Terry went over to talk to them. Terry afterwards said that Lady Brown was very bitter about politics and was bemoaning what it did to people.
Terry Gilliam and I collected some food and talked for a while to Arthur Lowe2 and his wife. Arthur Lowe’s performance was about the best in the film, and it had been rather scandalously cut down. Beside Peter Cook’s wooden smoothness, perhaps Lowe’s performance was too good.
I ended the evening with an ominous feeling of impending drunkenness. I remember walking unsteadily up the stairs from Les Ambassadeurs, to be treated by the doorman to phrases such as the over-solicitous ‘I’ll get your coat, sir’, and the downright abusive ‘Not driving, are we sir?’
Friday, November 13th
After a busy day filming the remains of ‘Upper Class Twit of the Year’ in fine, sunny weather, arrived home with Terry and together we joined the rest of Monty Python at Chez Victor restaurant in Wardour Street at 8.30, for a paid meal – i.e. we had been hired by an ad agency to have some ideas about a new Guinness commercial.
My first impression was surprise at the number of advertising people present. A representative of the film production company, a director of commercials, an agency man, a product representative and two or three more.
We drank – I carefully, for my stomach was still recovering from Thursday night at Les Ambassadeurs – and, at about 9.00, sat down to our meal. There were various sinister preparations which tended to make me withdraw into silence, e.g. tape recorders and microphones hung around, a type-written sheet with their basic idea for the commercial, and muttered messages between the admen about how best to let us all have our say. Added to