Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [351]
Friday, September 28th
Variety calls Brian variously ‘Swell’, ‘Fat’, ‘Potent’, ‘Brawny’, ‘Loud’, ‘Smash’, ‘Booming’ and ‘Hot’ – and it looks like the biggest-grossing film in the US this last week in September.
Visit Euro Atlantic in mid-afternoon. I meet Mark de Veré Nicholl, Philip McDanell (frighteningly young, like an elder brother of Tom) and others of benign Denis’s rather Kensingtonian staff. The offices and the building in Cadogan Square are clean-limbed, neat, elegant and cool without forcing any effect of dynamism or modernity.
Denis talks first of Jabberwocky, which both he and Calley feel is a small masterpiece. Denis feels bound to ask me why Terry G, after proving his directorial ability so clearly in Jabberwocky, didn’t get to handle Life of Brian. So I try to fill him in on a little Python folklore.
From Denis’ I drive to Shepherd’s Bush to John Jarvis’ cutting rooms, where JC is on the final stages of preparation of the Pythonised travelogue1
which will make up the complete all-Python bill when the Life of Brian opens in London.
John is in his element with the slowly building rant, which he can take to hysteria and beyond like no-one else I know. Suggest a couple of cuts which he seems happy with.
Wednesday, October 3rd
Python’s Life of Brian has made No. 1 on the latest Variety chart. One year to the day since we were packed in a tiny upper room of the Ribat in Monastir, ours is the film most people in America want to see.
Maybe subconsciously this reassuring state of affairs propels me to the end of the second act of my play.
Thursday, October 4th
Out in the evening with Denis O’B, Inge and John Calley, who is in town for a couple of days.
Calley asked a few leading questions of the ‘what next for you?’ variety as we ate in the cosily sumptuous surroundings of Walton’s restaurant. Denis steered him towards the ‘Roger of the Raj’ Ripping Yarn and I told Calley of my fondness for Indian subjects – and the British in India – eccentricity developing there quite splendidly. He seemed very keen for me to do a Ripping Yarn movie, which was nice.
But he was tired and popped into his waiting Rolls after the meal.
Friday, October 3th
Talked to Denis in the morning. He said that John Calley had called him before leaving Heathrow to tell me or any other Python that any recce to India would be paid for by Warner Brothers.
Saturday, October 6th
Drop in on George at Friar Park. He’s about to have his breakfast (onions, egg and peppers (green)). I apologise for arriving too early, but George (half-way into a new beard) assures me that he’s been up a while, and out planting his fritillaries.
He takes the gardening very seriously and has a bulb catalogue, which he refers to now and then in between telling me of the $200 million suit the Beatles are bringing against the management of Beatlemania, a live show in the US using their look-alikes.
He hasn’t heard that Brian is No. 1, but is greatly chuffed at the news and shakes my hand.
‘Now you can all have one of these,’ says George, nodding round at Friar Park.
‘The trouble is,’ I have to say, ‘I’m really happy where I am.’
‘Nonsense, Palin,’ replies the Quiet One, ‘you’ll have a mansion and like it!’
I enjoy George’s company and I think he mine. Despite all his trappings he’s a down-to-earth, easy-to-please character.
Have promised to take Tom and some friends on a pre-eleventh-birthday treat. We drive down to South Ken and visit the Science, Geology and Natural History Museum (which has a worthy ecology exhibition) and then to Wolfe’s in Park Lane for highly expensive hamburgers. The children delight in telling me in large stage whispers how pricey everything is … ‘Cor! Coca-Cola 50p!’ ‘You can get a can in the shops