by David Morgan
Why Do You Think I Have This Outrageous Accent?
GOLDSTONE: I then had to address what would happen to the rest of the world. I took it to Cannes and we had a very good screening there as it turned out; it was encouraging. It helped that the film had opened in America, because they all read Variety and saw that it crossed over enormously. And we began to pick up various territories.
France was kind of interesting. I sold it to a French producer, Gilbert de Goldschmidt, who’d done things like Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and he had a partner, Yves Robert, who was a very well-known French director–writer–actor who had done classic comedies (The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe). They together took it on to do the French version (albeit subtitled), and it’s played ever since, because it really did capture it. It needed that in any foreign language for it to work. Italy picked it up very quickly, but they never got a good translation of it. It was difficult to get the sense of that kind of comedy, so we saw there might be limitations.
GILLIAM: John Goldstone only says positive things! I remember when it was subtitled in French, they got it all wrong, because [in the witch scene] when they start talking about things that float on water, and we have words like “church,” “stone,” heavy things that in no way can float on water, they translated [it as], I think church became “a cricket.” So they actually translated things that did float on water! They clearly missed the point of the joke and assumed that the text they were given was wrong, and they had to translate the objects into floatable things.
GOLDSTONE: The reactions in America to sequences were completely different than the way they were [in the U.K.]. They just laughed at different things and were picking up on different things, but I suppose that’s kind of understandable. People have asked how or why Python traveled in the way it has, because we sell to some strange places, like the Far East. One would be constantly surprised at how many countries have picked it up and made it work where often British comedies haven’t. One of our very early deals was to Thailand, and it worked. So as I say one finds different things happening in different countries; it hits different nerves in local humor.
I think [because] it’s actually about themes; they take rather big themes that are probably more universal than most British films.
PALIN: I still think that’s one of the best designed and directed films about the medieval period that I’ve seen, it really is superb—the buildings we used, and the costumes, the look of the people, the army at the end and all that stuff. This wonderful idea of the anti-Hollywood medieval film was very important to us, where people didn’t all have even teeth, blond hair, horses!
THE U.S. INVASION BEGINS
Cabbage Crates Coming Over the Briny
Prior to the first U.S. broadcasts of Monty Python’s Flying Circus on public television in 1974, awareness of the group in the States had grown steadily among a sort of humor cognoscenti, as well as among college students returning from abroad with Python albums and books in tow; a few early press reports about the BBC series seemed to whet an appetite. And although this cultural invasion was slow compared to Beatlemania of the early sixties, when it did finally arrive, it was greeted with a passion that surprised even the group’s most ardent supporters.
Nancy Lewis, a promoter in the music industry, was the first to actively push Python in America, eventually serving as their U.S. publicist and, ultimately, their personal manager, a relationship which perhaps continues in spirit if not in practice to this day. And to her amazement, she even meets people who still have their coconuts.
LEWIS: I had been living in England back when Flying Circus was first on the air. I remember I saw it listed in the paper and deliberately didn’t watch it because I thought it was a circus, you know, with clowns? I’m an American! What do I know from a circus? And then I started hearing talk about it, and I watched it a few times. I wasn’t one of those who just thought it was great—I enjoyed it, it did make me laugh.
Anyway, I worked in the music business in England, I was back and forth a bit, and then I was based in New York doing publicity for Buddha Records. Tony Stratton-Smith had a label called Charisma in England. I had worked with Strat on some other projects over there, and [in 1972] he called me up and said he wanted to get a distribution deal for his label in America; he had this band Genesis that he really wanted to launch over here. So I set up a meeting with Neil Bogart, the head of Buddha. Strat came over and he brought a stack of his product to Neil and at the very bottom of this stack were these two Python albums which I had not heard, and I went, “Ooh, Monty Python!” We started talking, and Strat said of the series, “I can’t imagine it will ever come over here.” So Tony and I decided we should really try to get it organized; there was a whole series sitting there, and we found out it was sitting at Time-Life Television, who had all the BBC rights.
Was there interest on the part of Time-Life to sell it here?
LEWIS: No, none whatsoever. They said, “Oh, its humor is too English, it’s never going to work in America.” I had the most discouraging meetings with them—would just come out pulling your hair out. And in those days it did cost a lot to convert from PAL to NTSC standard. It was an expensive procedure and they were not willing—at all—to put money in. They had shown some of the episodes and a few PBS stations were quite keen on it, but not enough, and they said, “There’s no market here to justify the cost of converting it.” I had to beg them, I had to take people over to the Time-Life Building to screen episodes.
Buddha put the first album out (Another Monty Python Record), and it was amazing, we started getting response from FM radio stations, from people who had never, ever seen the visual side of Python. It was pretty staggering. So we thought, if it works without the visual side, it can’t be too British to work with the visual side. There’s got to be a market here!
Michael Palin as Gumby, on the NBC late-night variety series, The Midnight Special (1973).
The albums never sold in enormous numbers, but they provided a wonderful base. There was an FM radio station, I think in Boston, that made public service spots saying, “Put Monty Python on television!” We really promoted the Pythons more as a rock band in a funny way, going through radio channels, because that was their audience, rather than going straight to a TV audience. That was my background, too; I suppose it lent itself more to that.
There was a movie, And Now for Something Completely Different, which had been made specifically for the American market as an introductory element of Python. But then one of those ironies: they had decided just to put it out in England, not bother here. Columbia Pictures had it sitting on the back shelf and didn’t know what to do with it. Neil Bogart was very good friends with the head of Columbia Pictures in New York, so Neil talked to him, and we got them to release And Now for Something Completely Different and Buddha would do the promotion for it here. It was a mini-campaign, it wasn’t an Armageddon-type thing, but we did a silly promotional thing on that.
It initially opened in August 1972 at the 68th Street Playhouse. I remember we hired a lot of street performance people, trying to have an atmosphere of craziness there in the street. It was so bizarre. We had five guys in “Charley’s Aunt” drag paraded with sheepish menace under a black banner calling themselves “Hell’s Grannies”; there was a girl in a girl scout outfit with painted freckles hopping around on a pogo stick; a street gymnast; and an organ grinder with his monkey. We bought vast quantities of some type of popcorn snack called “Screaming Yellow Zonkers” and gave them out. We hired a Graumann’s Chinese-type spotlight. Sha Na Na did not arrive in a sanitation truck—I don’t know what happened to them, they were part of the Buddha Group, which is probably why we had them, and probably why they didn’t turn up! Alice Cooper and company did arrive, but they were not in their makeup and costumes.
It sounds quite grim looking back!
We started shipping the print of the film all over the country to various FM radio stations. I think they just gave away tickets: Come
and see this film. Columbia didn’t keep it out very long, they withdrew it. It just wasn’t out there; people read reviews [but] it wasn’t anywhere to be found.
I must have seen And Now for Something Completely Different about 100 times; I knew it backwards and forwards. I thought it was a very effective, very funny movie, because they’d really picked the cream, the most accessible sketches.
I used to send out these memos to all of the Pythons individually. I have to say in those days Eric was the most responsible about getting back and giving me answers. I would send all these memos with questions and things trying to get answers, and we didn’t have e-mail and faxes; a telex machine I had. I have more letters from him with actual answers to questions on how we could do this or that. I think Eric has a more business-approach mind; he’s more single-minded at focusing in on things and going for them. He wasn’t always eager to do things in America at that stage—not considering how he is nowadays—but Eric was by far the most responsive.
Eric is strangely more ambitious than John. I think John agonizes and analyzes, he’s very into analysis. He’s married to a psychiatrist now; what could be better?
Python did one promotional thing before the series was on the air, because they did a stage show tour of Canada, which was the first time I actually met them. (I had been talking on the phone with their manager at that time, a man by the name of John Gledhill in the early days.) I flew up to Toronto, where they greeted me with the news that they were never going to work together again after this tour. That was my greeting! Here I’ve been knocking myself out trying to get them on the air…oh, wonderful! That’s good news!
So after the end of the Canadian tour in 1973, everyone except John came down to San Francisco and to L.A. to do some general promotion, more for the albums at that stage, and Annie Leibovitz did a photo session of them for Rolling Stone in San Francisco in a hotel car park.
And they did an appearance on The Tonight Show, which was one of the grimmest things. Joey Bishop was hosting it. He came out and gave the killer introduction of all time: “This is a comedy group from England and I hear they’re supposed to be funny.” Just about in that tone of enthusiasm. I think they used the Pepperpots and some rather obscure things that were not immediately accessible. And you know the sort of audience you have at The Tonight Show; they sat there wondering what was going on. I mean, had they done “Dead Parrot,” for example, I’m sure they would have got that. But John Cleese was not there.
I do remember standing at the back of the audience, there was just a deadness. It was terrible. I was ready to slash my wrists! What have we done? It was not an auspicious beginning! I often wonder how different it would have been had Johnny Carson introduced them.
How did the Pythons themselves respond? “America isn’t ready for us?”
LEWIS: I don’t know, they were sort of defiant about it—” Hey, well, who cares?” They also did a show called Midnight Special; they taped some inserts for that which were good, and were used for years, as long as the show was on.
In the beginning they weren’t terribly interested in doing things specifically for mass-market America. Group-wise, that was never one of their ambitions. John, of course, with Fawlty Towers, was immediately offered vast amounts of money by NBC to do the series over here. He pointed out to them instead of making twenty-however-many episodes a year, it had taken him a year to write six half-hour shows. So he quite wisely has resold the format rights—several times—and made a lot of money without having to do any work.
IDLE: We were convinced Python wouldn’t go in America. We were so convinced that when they asked to buy the format (!!) for U.S. TV, we turned them down, just to piss them off!
LEWIS: I was trying to talk the Pythons into doing a TV special; a lot of people were approaching us with the idea of doing a special just for America, to sort of test the waters. This was before the series [got] on the air. I think people would have loved them to do something like they did for And Now for Something Completely Different, specifically aimed for American TV and allowing for lots of commercial breaks! I think they would have been delighted to [get] that. Don Mischer, who directed The Great American Dream Machine series and a lot of late-night specials for ABC, various rock things, wanted to do that late-night Friday night spot where they had In Concert. George Schlatter wanted to do a special for NBC, but then he wanted them to go on The Cher Show; they did not. Cat Stevens wanted to do a TV special with them in the U.S.
We kept trying to revive And Now for Something Completely Different, get it out. They did do a rerelease. It got very good reviews, actually, but it was not a mass-market thing at all. It’s depressing, but I’m sure Columbia didn’t make two beans from it.
At one stage we were invited to this party during one of the promotional visits to L.A., I think it was before Holy Grail, and they were at George Schlatter’s house. Jerry Weintraub, who managed John Denver originally back then, said, “I’m prepared to offer these guys a million dollars just to do whatever they want!” He was trying to sell this to me. I said, “Fine, why don’t you just run it past them? They’re playing badminton in the backyard.” And he went out, and it was I think Eric and Terry G., maybe Michael, they never broke stride with their game, they just said, “No, no, not interested.” And in those days a million was a lot of money! And he came back and said, “They’re really not interested!?” Oh, were you surprised? In Hollywood they couldn’t believe that they weren’t just sort of lapping up to everyone and trying to get these deals; they really were not interested in that. It was wonderful—a more Gilliamesque attitude prevailed among the group in those days!
Was it because they were already focusing on their solo work and didn’t want to commit to a group project?
LEWIS: I don’t think [so] at that stage. I think it was more the principle of the thing, to do things only on their own terms. They were happy with what they were creating out of England; they made material to make themselves laugh, for that’s how their material was judged. They didn’t want to come and take over American prime-time television. I think they wanted very much to keep it on their level and keep it a home-grown product; I don’t think it was yet a disassociation with Python. That came later! Although they were all thinking about other projects they were going to do, in separate directions, I think they were all content to work under the Python umbrella at that time. Except John; some elements of working with the group drove him crazy.
There was also a devoted following. Carl Reiner was a great fan. Apparently Julie Andrews had come back from England at one time and given out copies of Python books as Christmas gifts to a lot of people in L.A. before they were here at all. I think Carl Reiner was perhaps one of the people who got them from her. People really did get into it very quickly and fervently. On one of those visits, Carl invited us over to his house for Chinese food, Eric and Michael I think were the only two there, and we just sat around talking. His son and then-daughter-in-law Rob Reiner and Penny Marshall came over, too, just to meet the Python guys. Carl always wanted to do something to help. Nothing actually ever developed, but there were some very nice people who were fans, trying to get involved, just to help in those days. And from some unlikely directions, too. I mean, Julie Andrews seems like an unlikely direction to me; I don’t know her, but Mary Poppins you don’t associate with being a Monty Python fan!
Eventually a deal was done with Greg Garrison, a producer who had done all the old Dean Martin television shows. He was doing a summer replacement series called Dean Martin’s ComedyWorld, which was to feature odd comedy bits from all over the world. He wanted to use Monty Python material. The thing is, he paid Time-Life enough to use the thing, to pay for the conversion [of the entire series] to NTSC. The Pythons were sort of against having segments taken out of the show, and I thought it was definitely worth it. I said, “It’s summer, who cares? And it will pay for [the conversion].” And that’s what happened.
At a Los Angeles press reception, c. 1974, with
Neil Innes (seated).
The group of PBS stations who couldn’t have done it financially [before the conversion], part of the Eastern Educational Network, now could. And it finally launched in the fall of 1974 on TV over here, in Dallas, New York, Buffalo, Scranton, Providence, Pittsburgh, Erie, Washington, D.C., Watertown, N.Y., and Chicago.
CLEESE: When Ron Devillier put it out finally in Dallas—and it always amused us that it started in Dallas of all places—all his pals were ringing him up saying, “Have they burned the station down last night?” or “Did they stone you on your way to work?” And the moment Rob said it was fine, they all started putting it out.
LEWIS: Originally there was a man at PBS, who was the head of local WNET in New York, who’d sworn he’d have Python only over his dead body, he really hated them. Then—somehow—they bought the package as part of the group, it went on and it got good ratings. For the first couple of weeks they outdid Masterpiece Theatre. And the station got 509 calls after the second show, pledging. And then he was so charming when we had a reception, it was wonderful!
TV Guide gave it one of the worst reviews ever. I think it was one done by Cleveland Amory, he really hated it, he didn’t get Python at all. It was nice; I like extreme reactions. I think that was the nice thing, that it invited that; either you loved it or you just thought, “This is the biggest load of rubbish I’ve ever seen in my life!” Nice to have those.
It was very exciting in those early days because we knew it was saleable over here; it was just crazy that it hadn’t been. When they were being written up in Time magazine, all these things, then suddenly Wynn Nathan, the man at Time-Life who is unfortunately no longer with us, went on saying, “We always knew it would work, we finally succeeded in getting them on the air!” And you just go, “Wait a minute—” But in a way I didn’t mind who wanted to rewrite history right then, because you think: “It’s on, and it’s working, and it’s opening doors.” And since then there is so much British comedy that followed Python that worked just wonderfully. Some of it.
