Read Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) for Free Online Page A

him. He was called Jeffrey Katzenberg, was 29 years old and admitted that he was paid a lot because it was a very high-risk job – the turnover of Hollywood execs is spectacularly fast. His bluffer, less devious, funnier friend was also younger than TG or I and was called David.
    They joked heavily as we arrived. Probably to cover their embarrassment at the fact that an hour earlier Paramount HQ had telexed Denis O’B to say that if he stalls on the next Python deal (which he has) then they will stall on the Time Bandits . So Paramount in LA are playing Denis’s game.
    But these two were at pains to deny any close association with their colleagues. These two were interested purely in talent and were keen to know more about the Time Bandits . They particularly wanted to be reassured about the dwarves (I mean, just how odd would they look?).

Wednesday, March 26th
    At my desk at 9.30 to confront the formidable task of rewriting two scenes for the Time Bandits before leaving for the Python promotion in Paris at 3.30. But the muse is helpful and by one I have rewritten the ‘Future’ and, even more satisfactorily, I hope, the ‘Titanic’ scene.
    Leave for the airport at a quarter past three. Onto an airbus for Paris. Packed solid – must be two or three hundred people. Read my book onthe Greeks by HDFKitto. Most inspirational. In the air only briefly, but on the plane for over an hour.
    Python Sacré Graal is in its 71st week of its third reissue in Paris! So clearly there is a cult here, and it’s based on only one movie.
    A rather dreadful evening at a Sofitel in the 15th Arrondissement. Up to a bleak room on the 16th floor of this French Holiday Inn, where we ate. No-one knew why we were here, or who all the guests were, but it turned out to be some sort of special viewing for Avis, who are renting us the cars for the three days.
    Python spirit was high, despite this debacle, though, and much enjoyment was derived from trying to find how many things on the table we could assemble around John before he noticed. Huge numbers of plates, glasses, bread baskets and even an ornamental bowl of flowers were discreetly manoeuvred in front of him, but he never noticed.

Thursdays, March 27th: Paris
    Interviews – for Le Figaro , La Revue de Cinéma and finally a cartoonist called Gottlib, who has a Gumby fascination and gets me to enunciate clearly and slowly the exact words for ‘Gumby Flower Arranging’ into a small tape recorder. The more seriously I try to oblige, the more ridiculous the situation becomes. Eric doesn’t help by constantly cracking up and, when I finally make it through to the moment of flower arranging the doors of the room open to reveal an enormous bunch of flowers being carried through. The interviews draw to a close by seven. Terry J and I go off to eat at La Coupole. I have ears and tail – and TJ is most impressed. We talk, for the first time, about the Time Bandits script, which TJ has half-read. He wasn’t impressed with it until the Greek scene!

Saturday, March 29th: Paris and London
    Woken from a very deep sleep in the Hotel Lotti by the soft clinking of a breakfast tray. It’s half past seven. Pull myself out of bed and wander across to meet the breakfast, wearing only my underpants, when I’m suddenly aware of the nervous, twitching, apologetic presence of the Very Naughty Valet in my room.
    Terry had warned me that there was a man who very lasciviously enquired whether he wanted his shoes cleaned, and here he was, in my room, having caught me with literally everything, apart from my pants,down! He wasn’t at all phased by my appearance, but came on in and started to arrange my chair for breakfast in a most epicene manner.
    Finally I fled to the bathroom and made loud and hopefully quite unromantic sounds of ablution until I knew he’d gone. Then I crept out again and got to grips with two fried eggs, coffee out of a swimming pool cup and croissants which were pale imitations of