Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [55]
A cautionary visit from John Gledhill in the late afternoon. He brought us the latest figures for the film – which most of us had been conditioned into thinking was one of the box-office successes of the year. But up to about five months of its release, the net take (after Columbia had creamed off their share) was only $227,000. We do not start to make a penny until it has passed $500,000 and even if it took $1 million, we would still only stand to make £2,000 each. So the film, which John G reckoned had made us into world stars, has still only brought us £1,000 each. This had an amazing effect on the Python group. Suddenly everyone wanted to work. Within half an hour we had agreed on a third LP for the Christmas market, another book for next year, and a film script as soon as possible. No talk of holidays this time.
Thursday, September 14th
A week of great activity. In five days we have assembled a third Python LP to be in the shops for Christmas. Over half the 50–60 minutes’ worth of material is new, and, unlike the second LP, everyone has contributed to the writing. Among the new ideas for the record were a ‘B’ side consisting of four concentric tracks, all starting at different places on the first groove, so that the listener could get any one of four different versions of the ‘B’ side; also there was an idea for an extra large record cover, two foot square; a ‘free’ ‘Teach Yourself Heath’ record included in the LP, which would use actual Heath speeches to analyse his voice, and teach people the best way of reproducing it. The title we settled on was ‘A Previous Monty Python Record’.
We met for lunch and a final read-through of material and, at 5.30, André,1 the engineer who is doing our new LP, came round and we spent a couple of hours going through the script for sound effects and music cues. Fred Tomlinson and his singers2 and Neil Innes, ex of the Bonzos, had to be contacted about music – but by 8.00 last night the material was in typeable shape and ready to be sent off to John Gledhill.
I took half an hour off for a run on the Heath – a last futile attempt to prepare my system for the onslaught of German hospitality – and then took Helen out for a meal. She had worked hard looking after six writers and two children during the day, as well as ironing and sorting out my clothes for three weeks in Munich.3 We ate at Abbots in Blenheim Place, St John’s Wood – a small restaurant with a large and interesting menu (red mullet, pigeon, etc), but full of a party of visiting American businessmen, and English people on a ‘smart’ night out. But it did us both good to leave the house for a while, and made it a very happy last evening.
Friday, September 13th, Munich
Apart from Graham feeling a little sorry for himself, the six Pythons all seemed on good form on the plane. At the airport we were thoroughly frisked for weapons and the plane had to delay take-off for half an hour whilst the baggage was searched. All these extra precautions were a result of the shootings of the Israeli athletes and the Palestinian guerrillas at the Munich Olympics last week.
As we expected, this year was more businesslike – we spent the afternoon in costume fittings, and it wasn’t until the evening that we had time to relax. Alfred [Biolek, our German producer] and Ian had fallen out for some reason, which is not a good start, and Ian and Eke1 didn’t join us for a meal. After the meal, the inevitable Why Not? Club [well-known from our previous Munich filming]. It had been enlarged and repainted, and we were treated to some classic examples of the Why Not’s ‘see and be seen’ philosophy.
Edith, the proprietress, looking even more like a model out of a very high-class shop window, was soon working hard to mix a powerful concoction of celebrities. After a while the words ‘Swiss fashion photographer’, ‘model from Berlin’, ‘Austrian TV writer’, all sounded the same, as the music of Gilbert O’Sullivan blasted out, and one mouthed greetings to shadowy faces in the gloom. Highlight of the evening was when Alfred