Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) Read Online Free Page B
Author: Michael Palin
minutes.
Some work after breakfast, then round to Eric’s. That’s very cheering – mainly because all of us are happy to be together at the moment and the tapes that André’s prepared of the sketches and songs for the LP assembled by Eric, with a certain amount of gentle bullying over the last two months, are a great boost.
To lunch at a nearby French, where Eric chides Graham for not being totally opposed to nuclear power. Eric deals only in certainties. His views, like his lifestyle at any one time, are very positive.
The talk veers to desultory discussion of bizarre sexual exploits. GC caps all, as he puffs at his pipe and declares that he once had an Indian in an aeroplane. JC is quite skittish too and suggests that perhaps the Pythons should set each other a sexual task. I agree to try and seduce the Queen!
I have a brief script chat with T Gilliam (cheering him up, I hope). Then I drive both of us round to a rendezvous with J Cleese, who was given TG’s script and wants to, or ‘is prepared to’, talk to us about it. John is looking after Cynthia at the moment, on his own as far as I can tell, since Connie’s in New York for 11 days.
Cynthia answers the door. With her long blonde hair, tastefully ribboned back, and her neat school uniform she looks, at nine years old, like an Estée Lauder model. Very New York, somehow. She chats confidently and behaves quite like a young lady 10 or 15 years older than she is, but she’s humorous with it, which keeps her on this side of precociousness.
She comes out to eat with us. No room at the Japanese, so we go on toMama San – a clean, smart, soulless Chinese in Holland Park Avenue. Cynthia won’t really let John get a word in, but after half an hour she settles to sleep beside an unoccupied table and the three of us talk about the script.
JC speaks with a slight, elder statesman of comedy air, as if he really does know how, why and when comedy will work, and we feel a little like naughty boys being told what’s good for us. But this is rather unfair to John. I think he went out of the way to try not to sound too paternal, and he did give us some sound, unselfish advice, much of which will help in the rewrites. But I couldn’t accept his final judgement – that we should postpone the movie on the basis that one day it could be a marvellous film, but if we rush it and go on the present script, it will be just a good-natured mess,
Mind you, JC had a piece of gossip that rather undermined his chances of ‘stopping’ the movie. He’d heard that Sean Connery was interested and Denis O’B has flown to California to see him!
Friday, February 29th
To Gospel Oak School to see Ron Lendon [the headmaster] about Tom’s future.
Ron’s report is glowing. Tom, it seems, is regarded very highly indeed. He is in Verbal Reasoning Group 1 – which is the comprehensive system’s acknowledgement that abilities have to be tested at some point. There is less chance of him going to William Ellis [school in Highgate Road] if he’s Group 1 – the idea is to spread them around the local schools. But Lendon, whose manner is chatty, informal, direct and quite unpatronising, feels that William Ellis is the best place for Tom. His closest friends – Lendon makes much reference to ‘peer’ groups – will be going there, he’s keen on music and Lendon admits that he thinks the academic standards are higher at William E.
An interesting sign of the times is that Tom is one of only three boys amongst 15 in his class who does not come from a broken home.
So we come out greatly heartened and I feel once again the great relief that our children – all of them – will have started out at a school as caring and sympathetic as Gospel Oak.
Work on Python material for a couple of hours, then meet TJ at the Pizza Express in Hampstead. TJ has written something which he cheerfully acknowledges as the ultimate in bad taste – it’s all about peoplethrowing up – very childish, but
Some work after breakfast, then round to Eric’s. That’s very cheering – mainly because all of us are happy to be together at the moment and the tapes that André’s prepared of the sketches and songs for the LP assembled by Eric, with a certain amount of gentle bullying over the last two months, are a great boost.
To lunch at a nearby French, where Eric chides Graham for not being totally opposed to nuclear power. Eric deals only in certainties. His views, like his lifestyle at any one time, are very positive.
The talk veers to desultory discussion of bizarre sexual exploits. GC caps all, as he puffs at his pipe and declares that he once had an Indian in an aeroplane. JC is quite skittish too and suggests that perhaps the Pythons should set each other a sexual task. I agree to try and seduce the Queen!
I have a brief script chat with T Gilliam (cheering him up, I hope). Then I drive both of us round to a rendezvous with J Cleese, who was given TG’s script and wants to, or ‘is prepared to’, talk to us about it. John is looking after Cynthia at the moment, on his own as far as I can tell, since Connie’s in New York for 11 days.
Cynthia answers the door. With her long blonde hair, tastefully ribboned back, and her neat school uniform she looks, at nine years old, like an Estée Lauder model. Very New York, somehow. She chats confidently and behaves quite like a young lady 10 or 15 years older than she is, but she’s humorous with it, which keeps her on this side of precociousness.
She comes out to eat with us. No room at the Japanese, so we go on toMama San – a clean, smart, soulless Chinese in Holland Park Avenue. Cynthia won’t really let John get a word in, but after half an hour she settles to sleep beside an unoccupied table and the three of us talk about the script.
JC speaks with a slight, elder statesman of comedy air, as if he really does know how, why and when comedy will work, and we feel a little like naughty boys being told what’s good for us. But this is rather unfair to John. I think he went out of the way to try not to sound too paternal, and he did give us some sound, unselfish advice, much of which will help in the rewrites. But I couldn’t accept his final judgement – that we should postpone the movie on the basis that one day it could be a marvellous film, but if we rush it and go on the present script, it will be just a good-natured mess,
Mind you, JC had a piece of gossip that rather undermined his chances of ‘stopping’ the movie. He’d heard that Sean Connery was interested and Denis O’B has flown to California to see him!
Friday, February 29th
To Gospel Oak School to see Ron Lendon [the headmaster] about Tom’s future.
Ron’s report is glowing. Tom, it seems, is regarded very highly indeed. He is in Verbal Reasoning Group 1 – which is the comprehensive system’s acknowledgement that abilities have to be tested at some point. There is less chance of him going to William Ellis [school in Highgate Road] if he’s Group 1 – the idea is to spread them around the local schools. But Lendon, whose manner is chatty, informal, direct and quite unpatronising, feels that William Ellis is the best place for Tom. His closest friends – Lendon makes much reference to ‘peer’ groups – will be going there, he’s keen on music and Lendon admits that he thinks the academic standards are higher at William E.
An interesting sign of the times is that Tom is one of only three boys amongst 15 in his class who does not come from a broken home.
So we come out greatly heartened and I feel once again the great relief that our children – all of them – will have started out at a school as caring and sympathetic as Gospel Oak.
Work on Python material for a couple of hours, then meet TJ at the Pizza Express in Hampstead. TJ has written something which he cheerfully acknowledges as the ultimate in bad taste – it’s all about peoplethrowing up – very childish, but
Readers choose
Barbara Parker
Marcia Gruver
Stephen Hunter
Jaclyn Dolamore
Kate Maryon
Lauren Smith
Frederik Pohl
MC Beaton
Megan McDonald
Gene Hackman