It sounds like all you want is some encapsulation, the following makes methods __head__ and __body__ "private" - the double underscores are important. I'd suggest reading the Object bits of the python tutorial also.
class HTMLWrapper: def generate(self, ...): ... self.__head__(foo) ... self.__body__(bar) ... def __head__(self, ...): ... def __body__(self, ...): ... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list