Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [336]
Out into Hollywood Boulevard. There is nothing of the breathtaking beauty of New York about this city. Low, flat, sprawling and laid-back – like a patient on a psychiatrist’s couch.
As Basil the elegant Pao says, people come out here to Hollywood and lease a lifestyle. Here the problem is not how to cope with the difficulties of living, it’s how to cope with the ease of living.
A meeting at 5.30. People wander in about six. Graham arrives in dark suit and tie, in extraordinarily voluble form. It gradually dawns on the assembled gathering that he is ‘speeding’. Whatever he has taken has turned him into a parody of Ian MacNaughton agreeing and disagreeing without discrimination or information, but with enormous enthusiasm. It’s an extraordinary phenomenon and renders the meeting quite useless.
Two limousines arrive to take us to the Bruin Theatre in Westwood where Brian is to be ‘sneak previewed’. At the theatre we find a full house and 1,000 people turned away. Meet the Warner’s executives who are, understandably, grinning pleasurably.
John Calley, our greatest supporter and second in command at Warner’s, turns out to be a very soft-spoken, pleasant-faced, tweed-jacketed 45-50-year-old, more like an English public school headmaster than a Hollywood mogul. In fact, none of the people I’m introduced to from Warner’s are in the least bit mogulish. Not a cigar in sight in the foyer and jeans and soft jackets are the order of the night.
Mike Medavoy – head of Orion Pictures, a chunky redhead with compellingly smiling eyes – takes Terry J out to look at the line (or queue, as we would say in the UK), stretching round the building.
Eric and Graham, meanwhile, are lurking in their limousine, waiting not to get mobbed. They eventually rush out of the limousine, heads down, and race for the door across a, by now, virtually deserted sidewalk.
But inside the theatre are sights and sounds to glad our hearts. A full house – 800 strong – and a tremendous air of anticipation. Cheers and applause as the lights eventually dim.
It’s a marvellous showing. Great laughs and applause on a scale we have not yet seen for Brian. At the end Eric leads the rush out – and gets into the wrong limousine – whilst Terry and I stand on the sidewalk and talk to one or two of the audience and those waiting – who are not of the tear-your-clothes-off fan type and want to talk quite unsensationally about the movie.
Back at the Marmont for a party (with Thai food) in Basil’s room, it’s clear that the viewing was a good one. A few people at the party. Harry Nilsson, looking very white and unhealthy by any standards, especially LA, is a father today.
Later in the evening TJ gets woken in his room by a present from Harry in the shape of a Los Angeles naughty lady.
Sunday, June 3rd, Los Angeles
Out to Graham’s long, low Brentwood residence. Still cloudy and overcast. A meeting arranged for 11.30, but no-one seems to want to get down to anything, application seeming a bit of a crime in this balmy, West Coast atmosphere.
Denis O’Brien, benign as ever, arrives with some lunch – and can hardly contain his excitement over last night. He returns to it with awe and wonder, and even he, who is one of the most level-headed men I’ve met, comes out with such assurances as ‘You know, none of your careers will be the same after last night … the way they were talking in that foyer …’
Eventually we start the meeting and become a little more down to earth discussing what is still wrong with the movie. Warner’s are worried about the stretch from ‘Leper’ to ‘Ben’. There is nothing but agreement for the ‘Otto’ cut. Graham is down from yesterday and more gently avuncular.
We discuss our attitude to censorship, on which there is total agreement within the group that we do not and will not change anything because we’re told to, unless we happen to agree that it isn’t funny anyway. We’re all happy to go to court in defence of the movie.
The day drags on into a party, which Graham has arranged for us. None of us is on best partying form. Timothy Leary, he of the drug