Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (11 page)

So full of the joys of spring today that I ring George H and invite myself over for the afternoon.

Have lunch in the garden, scan
The Times
, then leave, taking Tom and Willy and open-roofed Mini. In Henley an hour later. George is mending an electric hedge-cutter which cut through its own flex. As George tinkers
in homely fashion with his garden equipment (‘I
was
an electrical apprentice,’ he assured me. ‘For three weeks.’) the boys and I swam in the buff in his swimming pool, surrounded by lifelike voyeuristic models of monks and nuns.

Then George took us in a flat-bottomed boat around the lake and at one point into water-filled caves. George told me that Crisp
²¹
modelled one of the caves on the Blue Grotto on Capri and we went on to talk about Gracie Fields and how King Farouk [of Egypt] had been a great admirer and had come to Capri to live with her, but all his secret servicemen and bodyguards filled the swimming pool all the time and she eventually had to turn him out.

As we stood on the bridge surveying the lakes and the towers and turrets of the extraordinary house, George told me that he really wanted more space. He doesn’t want to have people anywhere near him. The other weekend he’d rung up Knight, Frank and Rip-Off
²²
, as he calls them in friendly fashion, to enquire about a 1,600-acre farm in Gloucestershire next door to his old friend Steve Winwood. ‘Do you want
all
of it … ?’ the man had enquired incredulously.

Basil Pao
²³
comes round for a sort of farewell meal together before he returns to his native Hong Kong for a long stay – perhaps permanent. I like Basil and feel warmth and trust and friendship easily reciprocated. Basil tells how he was known as ‘Slits’ for five years at his English public school and the reason he was sent to the school was because at the age of twelve he was a heroin runner for the Triads!

He outlines his novel, which is epic and sounds very commercial. Put him into a taxi about 12.45. Sad to see him go, but lots of good intentions to visit.

It’s ten minutes to five in the morning. I’m sitting at my desk in my suite at L’Ermitage Hotel on Burton Way in Los Angeles – Beverly Hills to be strictly accurate.

I try to sleep, but my mouth is dry from the air conditioning, so I get up and pour myself water – drink and settle down to sleep again. But my mind refuses to surrender – I notice the refrigerator as it rumbles suddenly into one of its recharging fits. It’s huge, much bigger than the one we have at home for our family of five, but only contains four bottles at the moment. And I can’t turn it off so I resolve not to worry about that – it’s something I must learn to live with, for Suite 411 at L’Ermitage will be home for the next 15 or 16 nights.

I must also learn to live with the air conditioning, which also boosts itself noisily every 45 minutes or so. And I must learn to live with the occasional hiss of water from an invisible tap somewhere near my head, and the metallic clangs and roar of igniting truck engines from the depot outside my window.

It’s a desolate time to be awake, the middle of the night. Even in America. I suppose I could watch television, but the thought of yielding to a very bad movie is worse than lying there trying to sleep.

Pour myself a glass of Calistoga mineral water – one of the four bottles in my massive refrigerator department. I tidy the room and try and improve my attitude towards it – to try to get to know it a little better.

The almost obligatory reproduction antique furniture of these hotels gives the place a sort of spray-on ‘Europeanism’. It’s called a Hotel de Grande Classe (which is an American phrase, not a French one, neatly translated by Neil Innes as ‘a hotel of big class’) and the place is carefully littered with books of matches and ashtrays. A table before the window has a basket of fruit, courtesy of the management, on it, a bowl of sweets which would set the children’s eyes popping, and a rose in a thin vase, which came up with my breakfast yesterday. There are reproductions of European artworks on the wall – I have the ‘Night Watch’ by Rembrandt behind me as I write.

At 10.30 we all assembled in the lobby of the hotel and gradually trickled in the direction of our rehearsal room for a first look at the script.
Rehearsal room is a vast hangar of a place, ten minutes’ walk from the hotel.

In this bleak great shed, full of Fleetwood Mac equipment in boxes with little wheels, we sit and talk through the show. A couple of short songs from the album are to go in – ‘Sit On My Face’ at the start of Part II and Terry’s ‘Never Be Rude to an Arab’ (though Terry does very much want to do his Scottish poem about the otter – this doesn’t impress over-much, though he auditions it courageously). John and Eric are doing ‘Pope and Michelangelo’ instead of ‘Secret Service’ and one of TG’s animations – ‘History of Flight’ – may be cut.

Afternoon spent running words – and making ourselves laugh as we renew acquaintance with the show and material we haven’t done together for over four years. In particular ‘Salvation Fuzz’ – perhaps the most anarchic and unruly and disorderly of all the sketches – gets us going. A very heartening afternoon.

Back to the hotel at five. Sit in the jacuzzi, talk with Neil and Richard Branson of Virgin Records, who is rather pleased with himself having this day sold off Virgin’s loss-making US offshoot. Apparently no-one was interested until he doubled the price, then they came right in.

To rehearsal at 10.30. André is there, and also Mollie Kirkland – the very efficient stage manager, who worked on the City Center
²⁴
show. Both welcome and reassuring faces. Denis O’B looms in, beaming in such a characteristic Denisian way that we have all started doing it. He gives us all a copy of [Peter Nichols’ play]
Privates on Parade
, but is mysterious as to exact reasons why.

Apart from two thoroughly enjoyable run-throughs in our rehearsal cavern, there seems to be little really good news about the shows. Ticket sales are only at 50% so far. The costs are beginning to increase and Roger Hancock is threatening to pull Neil out of the show because of haggling from Denis.

We are all trying to avoid being dragged into all this peripheral activity and are concentrating on tightening, sharpening and adding to the show. And in this we have been successful – our approach and our spirit is much less tense than it was in New York.

After the afternoon rehearsal, out to Universal City to see Paul Simon in concert at the Universal Amphitheatre. It’s a spotless clean place, staffed not by bouncers, heavies, ex-army PT instructors and the general run of London concert toughs, but by endless numbers of bright-eyed college kids with red blazers.

The concert was clean and crisp too. Under a full moon with the almost unreal shadowy line of the Santa Monica Mountains in the background, Paul did his unspectacular but endearing thing, backed by a superb group of top session musicians playing with a disarming lack of big presentation.

The Jesse Dixon Singers came on and quite dwarfed Simon for a while with their polished, pumping Gospel songs. At one point I thought Paul had been literally swallowed up by one of the massive black ladies with whom he was duetting.

We ate, all of us, afterwards, and at two o’clock TJ swam.

Wake at eight-ish … snooze, worry vaguely about voice and the Bowl, then up at nine for a lounge in the jacuzzi under the cloudy morning skies.

I feel time hanging so slowly at the moment.

John said he doubted whether the group could ever agree on anything again and reiterated that he himself no longer enjoyed writing in the group and had never wanted to repeat the 13 weeks of what he considers non-productivity on the script this year. It was history repeating itself. 1972 all over again.

A mood of determined resolution not to be brought down by John’s despondency grows. TG, away from so much of the Python meetings this year, is here, and Graham joins us too and we reaffirm a basic aspect of our work together, which JC and Denis O’B and others sometimes tend to cloud, which is that it’s fun.

To the Hollywood Bowl. Much standing around here and a photo-session distinguished by marked lack of enthusiasm amongst the Pythons. How old will we have to be to finally stop putting our heads through chairs, eating each other’s legs and rolling our eyes? Saw an obviously posed picture of the Three Stooges going through the same ordeal the other day – and they looked about 70.

The air is officially described as ‘unhealthful’ today.

I lunch with Denis O’B. He’s taking all of us away for little chats, but I think it’s a sign of the good health of the group that everyone reports back to the others.

He talks of the ‘family’. This is his concept of the group. A family in which we all do little creative tasks for each other. I know that he is moving around as he says this, prodding away, waiting for the opening to spring out – yet again – ‘
Yellowbeard
’! Yes, here it comes. I give a categoric no again. DO’B retreats.

Actually we have a good and open chat over things and he doesn’t talk high finance and he restrains his bouts of Denisian ‘glee’ to a little outburst about all the Warner executives who are coming to the show. ‘I tell you, Michael … there is so
much
interest …’

Drive myself up to the Bowl. Still the rig has not been finished. Neither of the 20-foot-high eidophor screens are up, but otherwise, with drapes now hung, the acting area is beginning to feel and look quite intimate.

We work on until midnight, then back to the hotel for a small party given for us by Martin Scorsese, who has a ‘condominium’ above us at the hotel. Delightful food, cooked by his chef, Dan; Dom Perignon and Korbel champagne, and Scorsese, who speaks so fast that at a recent film festival he had to have someone to repeat his English to the translator, before the translator even began.

Tells stories of
Raging Bull
, which is the picture he’s just done with De Niro – who at one point had to put on 60 lbs.

Drive down to Musso and Franks for a pre-show meal. TJ declares sensationally that this is the first time he’s ever eaten before a show. I remind him of last night. ‘Oh … yes … apart from last night.’

Back at the Bowl, five thousand paying customers. Denis has had to drop the lowest price from ten dollars to seven to try and fill up the extra seats. So there are about five and a half thousand folk out there for opening night.

The show goes well. The audience is reassuringly noisy, familiar, ecstatic as they hear their favourite sketches announced – and it’s
as if we had never been away. A continuation of the best of our City Center shows. Thanks to the radio mikes my voice holds up.

Afterwards an extraordinary clutch of people in the hospitality room. I’m grabbed, buttonholed, introduced, re-introduced, in a swirl of faces and briefly held handshakes and abruptly-ending conversations. There’s: ‘I’m Joseph Kendall’s nephew … ’ ‘I’m Micky Dolenz’s ex-wife … ’ ‘We made the T-shirts you got in 1978 … ’ ‘Do you remember me … ?’ ‘Great show … Could you sign this for the guy in the wheelchair?’

Finally we free ourselves of the throng and into the big, black-windowed Batcar, signing as we go, then smoothly speed off to a party, given for us by Steve Martin in Beverly Hills. His house turns out to be an art gallery. Every wall is white, furniture is minimal. The rooms are doorless and quite severe in shape and design. There’s a soft pile carpet and it’s all quiet and rather lean and hungry. In fact just like its owner.

Martin is very courteous and straight and loves the show. He isn’t trying to be funny and we don’t have to respond by trying to be funny. But his girlfriend does have a tiny – as Terry J described it – ‘sanforized’ poodle called Rocco, which pees with both legs in the air.

This is the comedy high spot of the evening.

Have booked back four days earlier than I’d expected – on the Tuesday night flight. Back in London on the first day of October – all being well. Helen tells me Rachel cried herself to sleep after talking on the phone to me last Sunday, and asked for a photo of me to put beside her bed!

I don’t think I will go to Hugh Hefner’s tonight. Graham says it’s like getting into Fort Knox, but there’s no gold when you get in …

GC’s book
Autobiography of a Liar
[in fact it was called
A Liar’s Autobiography
] has been one of the features of this trip. Coming out at the same time as Roger Wilmut’s ‘History of Python’ – which is straight and competent and almost depressingly like an early obituary – GC’s is a sharp, funny, chaotic, wild, touching and extraordinary book. Written in great style, very lively, it’s already got TJ very angry about misrepresentation and JC greatly relieved, for some reason, that it doesn’t say unpleasant things about him.

Feel very much sharper and better prepared for the show tonight. Probably to do with being less tired. It was a good audience once again.
Afterwards one of the scene boys said how much nicer we were to work for than pop groups!

Drive up to Hollywood Boulevard to buy toys, clothes, T-shirts, etc as presents. Everything’s there, including the names of stars like Sir Cedric Hardwicke embedded in the sidewalk outside a shop selling erotic lingerie. A sign reads ‘It’s not expensive to look chic, but it’s chic to look expensive’. Another LA motto.

Anne reckons our total BO take over the four nights will be 350,000 dollars – the total possible being 450,000. Not a crashing success, but we’ll cover costs. Any revenue will come from the TV sales, which Denis says will only fetch 300,000 dollars. There are, however, the invisible earnings that it’s impossible to quantify – record sales, movie re-run attendances, and just keeping the Python name up front there.