Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [308]
Among the few compensations is a wonderful view over the hills of Matmata.
Saturday, November 4th, Gabès
Wake up to grey skies again. The weather is being really unkind these days.
Drive out to the location at Matmata with sinking spirits. Prospects for a return to England on the 13th look in jeopardy as the rain comes down and we wait for half an hour as the water pours across the road so fast no-one dares venture across. One loony tries to get across in a Peugeot taxi, skids in the mud and bounces off one of our Renault 5s.
Sitting in one of the caravans waiting for us to be called, the talk turns to discussion of tomorrow’s rest day. Roy Rodhouse, chief electrician, maintains this film has been a doddle – and anyone who’s feeling the pressure ought to try ‘a day or two with bloody David Lean – then they’ll know what slave-driving is’.
Charles Knode reckons it’s been the hardest picture he’s worked on – mainly because he feels his work isn’t used. For instance this week he’s been up early to dress seventy-five extras each day, and the most they’ve eventually used is six of them.
There’s no consensus of discontent, but from the attitudes of everyone I reckon the most disruptive element in any operation like this is lack of diplomacy – and that means regular attention to every department to make sure they’re given time to air their grievances and lashings of appreciation. In a big unit like this there doesn’t seem to be time to look after everyone like that.
Monday, November 6th, Gabès
Out to Matmata for the last time. Still cloudy, but dry. Much running about, sometimes carrying Terry aloft, sometimes followed by 150 Arabs.
One long chasing shot has to be done all over again after one extra, wearing leather shoes, Terylene socks and smoking a cigarette, stops and looks straight into the lens, before being attacked with angry howls by Habib, Hammeda and the massed Anglo-Tunisian assistant directors.
Friday, November 10th, Carthage
Carthage is a comfy, bourgeois suburb – the Beverly Hills of Tunisia – and there is no centre of the old town and precious little on display to show for the years when people from this shore dominated the Mediterranean. The Roman Empire has been put away, as it were, and the Punic is under the ground.
John dropped in for breakfast. We looked through Three Wise Men together – the steady, unrelenting rain gave us the thought of doing a play about an English holiday called ‘It’s Clearing Up’.
John Goldstone and Tim are of the opinion that we should aim to leave on Monday whatever happens – and that the amphitheatre close-ups and the Three Wise Men can be shot in London. The weather forecast offers no cause for hope.
At three we travel down to the location beside the sea, where amidst the bulky ruins of a Roman baths we are to shoot the Three Wise Men.
The roof of the stable drips occasionally as a welcome reminder that it could have been raining on Jesus’ birthday. The costumes are excruciatingly hard to bear. My headdress is like having a sixty-pound haversack on one’s skull, and both Graham and I have immense trouble with long, swirling trains – as we make an impressive exit, Graham’s train catches on the door, rips down the middle and pulls the door off its hinges.
Saturday, November 11th, Carthage
At the amphitheatre at eight.
The consistent sunshine keeps us moving steadily forward, and my last shot of the movie (witnessed by the British Ambassador, who appears mid-afternoon in the ruins of Carthage and is observed by T Gilliam tapping tentatively on solid rock to ascertain whether it’s false or not) is myself as one of the Revs ‘flitting’ through the streets. Then John, Eric and myself are finished.
Succumb to the temptation of the cool, calm sea and take what is probably my last Tunisian dip. A chill, fresh edge to the