Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [71]
Friday, March 23rd
It has been a glorious week of sunny weather. We have been working for three days on the Python film script with maximum productivity. Ideas have been pouring out, and we have had very concentrated, but quite tiring writing sessions. Today at Terry’s we sat outside in the sunshine to write, and for the first day this year I caught the sun. Al fresco lunch with wine and a Chapman salad. John busy writing biographies for the press – ‘Despite what Michael thinks, he is not good company.’
Thursday, March 29th
At 5.30 we met Mark Shivas at the BBC and went to meet James Cellan Jones, who is to be the director of Secrets, our play for the ‘Black and Blue’ series. We took bets on what he would be like as we drove along the A40. I envisaged him as a rather burly, stocky man, with a loud voice. I was right, except I may have over-emphasised the loudness of his voice, and I didn’t know that he’d have no socks on. He may be brilliant, but I didn’t feel an awful lot of sympathy for our play, nor an awful lot of knowledge of it and, when Terry asked about writers attending editing, he closed up like a shell. But as we will be on the Monty Python tour when it’s rehearsed, filmed and recorded, there is little we can do, so we might as well leave him the play, and see what comes out the other end. I can see embarrassment and disillusionment somewhere along the line, I’m sure.
Friday, March 30th
Mark Shivas rang early to apologise for what he called J C-Jones’ ‘scratchy’ behaviour towards us. Had we not thought he was being like a prima donna? I said it hadn’t worried us, but there were one or two points when we felt that he had the wrong end of the stick, and Shivas promised to talk to him. I feel Shivas is on our side rather than his, but this is probably the feeling he gives everyone, which is why he’s such a good producer.
Monday, April 16th
Our seventh wedding anniversary, and fourth year of the diary. Over to B&C Records to talk about promotional work for the tour. On the steps of B&C met the beaming and effusive Tony Stratton-Smith – one of those few people who cheers me up whenever I see him. He was especially full of himself today for he has, almost single-handedly, secured Python’s first TV foothold in the US – a deal with the Eastern Educational Network to put out the shows, uncut and unabridged. It’s not a lucrative deal, but it’s a great breakthrough. Tony now has to get two sponsors for the show and has high hopes of Apple, the Beatles’ company – George H is very interested.1
Back home to write some programme copy for the stage tour. Helen had a good suggestion yesterday. All its pages will be on one big sheet, which can be folded up into a programme, or kept as a poster. Good Python thinking.
Easter Monday, April 23rd
The first official day of the ‘First Farewell Tour’, but Terry G, Terry J and myself have been working hard on it for about two weeks, collecting the film, writing and creating the programme, making slides, organising the sound tape with André. The much looked forward to holiday, which Helen and I were to take last week, evaporated under intense pressure of work. We left for Abbotsley at lunchtime on Good Friday. Took some champagne to celebrate Helen’s mother’s election to the new county council2 as an Independent.
Rehearsals started at 9.30 at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park. It’s a mammoth 3,500-seater theatre, with wildly flamboyant interior. The huge ceiling is studded with twinkling stars and above the proscenium and along the side walls are passageways, alcoves, balconies, in Spanish-Oriental style, with lights in as if for the start of a massive Shakespearean production. It’s a magnificent folly – and it seems an obvious target for developers. However, it continues in being as a rock concert theatre – probably helped