Monty Python at Work by Palin Michael

Author:Palin, Michael [Palin, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780014760
Publisher: Nick Hern Books

1. Our legal adviser at the time. Later manager of Queen.

2. I shared the house with Terry J – and later, our families.

12

Writing the third film: Life of Brian; publication of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book) (November 1976–September 1977)

1976–1977

Monday, November 8th

The Pythons reassemble at 22 Park Square East for the first day of a two-month writing period on our new film. John suggests straight away that at some point during this writing period we all go abroad to the sun for a week or ten days (to ‘really break the back of the film’). This is shelved. As Terry J says, ‘Let’s all see if we like each other at the end of the day.’ But we make plans for the next year – writing until Christmas, rewriting throughout March and filming delayed until September/October 1977. There follows some good chat and exchange of ideas about the story and how to treat it. JC now thinks the film should be called ‘Monty Python’s Life of Christ’.

Wednesday, November 10th

Writing with Terry – some hopeful starts, but nothing great as yet, the most promising being a piece Terry has begun about the Three Wise Men, confused over which star they’re following and being constantly mistaken for the wrong sort of astrologers and having to tell people about their star sign. In the classic Python mould of the humour of frustration; irritation at constantly being diverted by trivia.

Friday, November 12th

Python meeting at Park Square East at ten. All there except TG. Anne sits in (having asked if we didn’t mind). All rather institutional. It falls to Palin to start the ball rolling and read the first new, all-Python material since we wrote the Holy Grail.

Enough good material from everybody to suggest things haven’t changed. In fact, in John and Graham’s case, I think they’ve improved. They wrote the stoning section and an ex-leper and psychopath section – both of which were back on their best form. Very funny.

Anne supplies lunch – prawns and smoked salmon and no booze, except for GC who seems to find a G and T from somewhere. He is on fine form and really elated by his writing week with John.

Wednesday, November 17th

Film writing with Terry. He’s still not producing much – but today we have a good read through and work on with the Three Wise Men.

Thursday, November 18th

A writing meeting of all the team this afternoon. John and Graham had written little and were not as pleased with themselves as before. Eric had done more thinking than writing – whereas Palin and Jones had produced a mighty wodge of at least twenty-five minutes of material. So reading was not made easier by the fact that there was a total imbalance of contributors. Fortunately Terry Gilliam had taken time off from editing [Jabberwocky] at Shepperton to be at the meeting, and his generous and noisy laughter helped a great deal and, by the end, we’d acquitted ourselves quite respectably.

The sketches, or fragments, which work least well at the moment are those which deal directly with the events or characters described in the Gospels.

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