Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [326]
Of course life imitated art. At one point a van drew up exactly where our van was due to draw up – and Alan exactly re-enacted the script when he dashed across the road and shouted at the van driver to move on. At times it seemed quite farcical – a man detailed to stop any traffic impeding the progress of our van ended up stopping our van as well.
Then an hour and a half with an affable, weather-beaten jack-of-all-trades called Reg Potterton, who interviews me for one and a half hours for a Python Playboy interview. I like him, but an accident-prone day continues when he finds that he’s recorded my interview over Terry Jones’s!
Finally back home at six. Plenty of letters and phone calls and words to learn for a more gruelling filming day tomorrow – when we start at 8.30, on interior scenes, with actors I don’t really know. A baptism of fire for all of us.
Saturday, March 3rd
The first problem of the day is to sort the set out – make suggestions about the look of the office without hurting the designer’s feelings too much. There isn’t much to do – a few adjustments – replacements of old maps for the recent ones of Europe which the props buyer has inexplicably provided with a great lack of historical sense.
More formidable a task is to tone down the performance of two of the actors – Jack May and Gerald Sim – who are delivering caricatures.
I watch the scene play through, rather anxiously, and constantly have to step in to adjust the actors’ performances. I’ve given up doing this through the director as it just wastes time, and Alan seems very happy for me to talk to them whenever I want.
We complete the scene in mid-afternoon, but the weather is grey and dull beyond the windows and we shall not get the full value of our priceless, unchanged London skyline in the background.
Sunday, March 4th
Quick Sunday lunch, then on to a packed Penzance-via-Bristol train at Paddington. Work on the script – incorporating adjustments suggested by Terry at our meeting on Friday lunchtime.
Maria Aitken1 and Edward Hardwicke (Otway and Girton) are the only other members of the unit on the train, which reaches Penzance a little after a quarter past nine. The Queen’s Hotel, predictably and with some relish, greet us with the news that we can’t eat there.
Maria is very complimentary about the script and says her husband (Nigel Davenport) laughed aloud whilst reading it, which is, she tells me, a rare thing. All this helps as I feel rather defensive about ‘Whinfrey’.
Monday, March 5th, Penzance
Our luck is in. Awake to fine, almost cloudless skies. The location – around Cape Cornwall – is superb, and can be seen and used today to real advantage. An excellent first day – spent clambering up precipitous cliff sides and in and out of caves wearing dressing gown and pyjamas. Weather remains immaculate, though the wind is so strong I have to have my trilby hat stuck onto my head with double-sided tape.
Wednesday, March 7th, Penzance
The gods are with us. The sea on this side of the peninsula is millpond calm, Penzance quiet and settled once again in its own particular brand of out-of-season silence.
By a combination of eliminating our second cliff location today, good weather, and pushing a reluctant cameraman into an hour’s extra shooting, we catch up all we lost yesterday. The sun is bright again – and the cliffs are well displayed. The wind has shifted to the north and is obligingly whipping up the sea below us and crashing it against the cliffs to spectacular effect.
Sunday, March 11th
Eric writes from the Chateau Marmont, thanking me for the Life of Brian book material and brimming over with facts and figures about the vast numbers of copies we’ll be selling of this book we know nothing about. He’s also floating the idea of an LA stage show in September.
Monday, March 12th
Supposedly a day off before completing ‘Whinfrey’ on the