Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) Read Free Page B

space amongst endless glassily-staring models and half-dissected bodies.
    Willy went off on his own to, among other things, the human biology section. He is very keen on biology, having just begun talking about it at school. To her great credit, his teacher started straight in with human reproduction, etc, rather than frogs or bees. So Willy now knows all the practical details of procreation, whereas Tom, who affects to know, still calls sexual intercourse ‘sexual interchange’.

Sunday, February 3rd
    Read papers in the morning. Polls taken in January indicate that more people are expecting World War III to break out now than at any time since Korea. Probably a meaningless statistic, but it makes Python’s next film subject gruesomely relevant. Actually the sabre-rattling of the Americans over Afghanistan has died down a little, but they still frighten me more than the Russians.
    Terry G brings round the script of the movie, fresh from Alison the typist, and after supper I begin to read. I finish late – it’s nearly one. My first reaction is that it’s paced wrongly – the individual scenes are in some cases too long themselves, or appear too long when placed next to another, fairly static scene. I missed being gripped by the story, too.
    Lay in bed remembering points and scribbling down. Tomorrow I’ve given a day to Terry G that should be spent on railway research, so that we can talk right through the screenplay.

Monday, February 4th
    Up to Terry’s. The heavens open and it pours for the rest of the day. Against this gloomy background we slog through. TG liked the script more than I did, I think, and is greatly pleased that Irene Lamb, the casting director, for whom TG has much respect, also likes what she has seen so far and feels there will be little problem in getting good actors interested.
    It’s clear that there is one more day of writing needed to flesh out the end, especially the hastily-written character of the bureaucratic Supreme Being. So I’ll have to restructure the week accordingly. Everything else will have to be squeezed.
    Still have no title for the TG epic other than ‘The Film That Dares Not Speak Its Name’.

Tuesday, February 5th
    Talk over scripts for the new Python film with TJ. We read through and apportion who would he responsible for what.
    TJ and I have a game of squash, then a pint of Brakspear’s at the Nag’s Head in Hampstead. TJ, though bemoaning the fact that he hasn’t written anything new for months, is suddenly, and healthily, I think, full of ideas and projects of his own – including the possibility of making a film of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with Douglas Adams.
    Terry goes off to meet Douglas. I drive to a rather swish and un-Pythonlike function at Les Ambassadeurs Club. We are invited here by Warner Brothers Chairman Frank Wells – the man who, TG tells me later, did more than anyone else to try and block the Life of Brian deal. He was tall, fit, with those peculiar American spectacles that make a man’s face look slightly effeminate; mid-forties, or early fifties, with a firm handshake.
    Spread out in the scarlet-panelled, sumptuously-carpeted lower room at the Ambassadeurs was a host of men in grey. An impeccably-manicured host too – hardly a hair put of place on any of them. These were the agents and studio heads and accountants – the businessmen of showbiz.
    A cameraman was in attendance, which always indicates that the gathering is a little more than just a thank you from Warners. I was photographed with Eric and with Frank Wells and Jarvis Astaire. 7 I was pleased to see Sandy [Lieberson] and his missus, because Sandy was at least not wearing a grey suit and Birgit was one of the only women there.
    Gilliam is wonderfully scruffy, I’m pleased to say.
    Leave at 8.15. Avoid getting run over by the sea of chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces and Jags and Mercedes littering Hamilton Place.

Wednesday, February 6th
    Work through the last few scenes of