Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [348]
To the Navarro for an interview (me and TG) for Chapter One, a publishing magazine. Then at twelve I stand in for Eric in an interview for the Washington Post book column.
We chat for a half-hour, but I take a while to settle, having been far more rattled than I should have been by El’s outburst over our Tom Snyder Tomorrow show interview. Eric, who has become far more obsessed with the interviews than I would have expected from such a press-hater (he’s already looked at our Good Morning America on tape twice), berates me for mentioning the Gay News blasphemy case and the Jorgen Therson Sex Life of Christ in the same breath as Brian.
The Snyder interview was not just about Brian – that got good plugs – it was also about censorship, and that’s why I instanced the two cases. It’s a one o’clock in the morning show, it was a relief to be able to talk about our concerns in some detail – and it now turns out that Eric is in favour of censorship – at least in interviews, which I can’t accept.
Back to the Navarro – this in itself quite an exciting little trip, as The Who’s fans are thick outside the hotel, and word has gotten around that Pythons and George Harrison are also in there. George walks with practised skill, firmly ahead and steadfastly refusing to even see anybody. ‘Pretend they’re invisible, it’s the only way.’
At Terry Gilliam’s apartment, with fine views of the New York canyons below, a party develops. Eric is by now utterly mellow and a quite changed man. He apologises for this morning’s episode and says he has since rung a friend in LA, who thought the Tomorrow interview was very good.
A photographer from the Post has now joined Cindy Stivers, the Post reporter. We pose for photographs outside the restaurant – all lying slumped on the pavement with empty gin bottles. Will we regret it in the morning?
Friday, September 14th, New York
This morning I passed a paper on the newsstand called Home Reporter, with a banner front page: ‘Clergy Ban Python Film’. Inside a massively-misinformed report of the movie (Brian is Christ, of course), being banned in England and how a new group calling themselves Citizens Against Blasphemy are planning a demonstration on Sunday to try and get the film taken off here. Also notice that the New York Post carries a spread of drunken Pythons lying on the sidewalk outside a New York restaurant.
Finish reading TG’s Brazil script. Rather dull characters complicate an otherwise quite striking visual feel. Later in the evening, when we are all taken to Elaine’s by Denis and George, TG and I talk about it. He’s near desperation on the script – knows what needs to be done, but can’t do it himself.
Champagne in my suite with Al Levinson and Claudie, the French lady to whom he has lost his heart. She is indeed lovely – slim, long dark hair framing a small face with lively eyes. She is obviously quite taken aback by the champagne and Plaza style – and when George H comes down to join us for a drink, her smashing eyes widen to 70 mill. George, so nice and so straight, disarms her.
He brings a tape of some Hoagy Carmichael1 songs – one of which he’s thinking of recording – whilst the remains of Hurricane Frederick finally reach Manhattan with a brief but impressive display of lightning and sheeting rain outside.
Sunday, September 16th
By limousine to the 59th Street helicopter terminal, where the Warner Bros chopper awaits to take us to Fisher’s Island.
As we whirl up over the East River and over La Guardia Airport, read the visitors’ book. It’s headed by Frank and Barbara Sinatra.
Below, a perfect day. Hundreds of yachts fill Long Island Sound and we keep at a 120-mph speed and a height of 2,000 feet and maintain course up the mainland shoreline, with a clear view of the Good Life of America below us. Sailing boats, swimming pools, houses on the water – a huge, middle-class commuter belt stretches, unbroken by farmland or parkland, right up the NY and Connecticut coast as far as New London, where we turn and head across the untroubled