I WAKE UP TO FIND WE ARE PASSING THROUGH OLIVE GROVES. THOUSANDS OF BUSHY GREEN OLIVE TREES LINING THE ROADSIDE INTERRUPTED BY OCCASIONAL PATCHES OF BARE-BRANCHED FRUIT TREES. WE COULD BE TRAVELING southward down the Rhône Valley. I love olive trees. There is something magical about them. I own a few hectares in Provence and they are as tough as any life-form on the planet. You can’t kill them. Twice our property has been burned in fierce forest fires, both times missing the house, but once destroying a little woodland writing shack. Before the fires I had a lovely pine forest, now I have great views; but both times the olive trees survived. Even though they continued to burn and we were pouring water down into their smoking roots as much as three weeks later, they still grew back. In the cold Provençal winters olive wood is the finest to burn. Forget the spitting pine, the pure strong flame of a twisted black olive root will keep you warm for hours.
We are passing through land as flat as the ocean floor. This is estuarine country, with flooded meadows like Balinese paddy fields. Ah, the Paddy fields where the little Irishmen grow…. Flocks of birds thick as clouds of midges rise from the flooded nesting grounds, heading off for the day. Tubular grain elevators, like gigantic batteries, loom out of the mist. We pass our first stand of palm trees. We must be in California. We have left the mountains behind and are heading due south. The plains extend on either side. Still tractors stand in the freshly plowed fields. Stands of skinny almond trees and regiments of walnuts are lined up for inspection. Tall roadside poplars give way to our first vineyards with their arms spread wide over iron supports.
We pull into a truck stop and hit the store amid the bleary-eyed truckers. We are being met by a TV film crew and ’Lish decides the bus needs a wash. I think that’s a good idea, too, so while the bus is inside the truck wash I take a shower. There is something surreal about standing under a shower while the bus is also having a shower. We are finally one.
We pull into San Francisco where we are met by a local morning TV host who films me getting off my tour bus and onto a trolley, where I incite a couple of middle-aged ladies dressed as Santa’s helpers to come visit my show. Nudge nudge, plug plug. Then off to the much-postponed Vanity Fair shoot for the Python “reunion” montage. Apparently VF are a bit pissed off that I mentioned this in my diary. Perhaps it’s the montage bit that gets them. Gosh, if it leaks out that all those air-brushed divas are not actually in the same room together, Western civilization will collapse.
The trouble and strife29 arrived at the hotel just as I was leaving and we almost had a classic comedy moment. Tania was about to step into the “up” elevator as I stepped out of the “down” elevator. Another two seconds and we’d have missed each other completely. Sometimes I think that about our lives. It’s amazing we ever met. I persuade her to come with me to the shoot so I can be the target of her dry comments as they groom me.
“Stay here another night,” I say.
“I can’t,” she says. “I have workmen in.”
Call Sheet
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Project: |
Monty Python |
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Shoot Date: Tuesday, December 9 |
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Location: |
Blue Sky Studio, 2325 3rd Street, Suite |
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434, San Francisco, CA 94107 |
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Call Time: |
Talent @4:00 P.M. |
After all my kvetching the Vanity Fair shoot was a lot of fun. I thought the curse of Python was going to strike again when the limo company called up and said the car they were sending had crashed en route, but they soon found a replacement. The “costume” turned out to be a coffin. It should be a funny spread when it’s done but it was shocking to see the pictures of John Cleese in his coffin. I was very moved. I really must like him, then. Good to find that out before it’s too late to tell him.
It was very sad watching Tania look down at me in my coffin. There is something deeply poignant about seeing your wife looking at you lying there. It’s one of those experiences, like being crucified, that you won’t ever forget. You think, “So this is what it is like. The moment of death will be something like this. This time I’ll get up and walk away but that time….”
“Just remember that the last laugh is on you….”30
Disturbing and prescient. I saw Tania for the first time as a widow, like so many of our friends.
They stuck me in a nightshirt and a dressing gown designed by an incredibly famous and expensive Japanese designer whose name I have already forgotten. I know, I know, I’d make a terrible gay man. I’d like to join their team. They seem to have far more fun. And they dress very nicely…but I think I’m just too old to swap sides. Who wants to read a personal ad: “Sixty-year-old British virgin, no previous experience, one ex-wife, one current, ready to change teams, seeks similar in the Bristol area.” It just doesn’t have the appeal, does it?
The amazingly swift and efficient photographer Art Streiber had been reading my tour diary and opined I must write it at night, since I sound so grumpy, but no, I replied, “I can be very sweet at night. I am naturally grumpy in the mornings.” He decides I should have a guitar with me in my bier, and so a swift call to the unflappable Skip and they fetch my Baby Taylor off the bus. I’m happy to lie there playing “Bright Side”: “Always look on the bright side of death…”31
My tiny baby guitar was given to me by Clint Black to celebrate the birth of his daughter Lily Pearl. He gave me another great Taylor guitar when I wrote a new opening for “The Galaxy Song” and sang it with him on his album D’Electrified.
I liked your President Clinton’s attempt to introduce a slightly gayer army. I like the idea of a much better dressed army that marches to Barbra Streisand records. An Armani army. You could have Queer Eye for the Straight GI.
My wife came to visit me here in San Francisco. I had to run out to Victoria’s Secret and buy lots of sexy lingerie: a thong, a black teddy, and some long black stockings.
It ’ s amazing what I have to put on these days to attract her….
No matter how much I beg her, Tania won’t stay for the show tomorrow night. She is coming to Vegas this weekend. She was a bit bummed that I mentioned her reluctance to come with me on the bus. The reason is she has been having horrendous migraines. I feel chastened. But fortunately not chaste….