Monty Python Speaks

by David Morgan

  Didn’t Hugh Greene, a former head of the BBC, say that there were some people who deserved to be offended?

  PALIN: Yes, probably all of us!

  Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

  Perhaps the most curious sidenote to Life of Brian came during the Falklands/Maldives War. On May 4, 1982, the destroyer HMS Sheffield was struck by an Exocet missile. As the ship was sinking, its crew—waiting on deck to be rescued—struck up a rendition of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

  IDLE: I was pleased, since the entire fleet was steaming away from them, as they had been hit by an Exocet missile and they may have had nukes aboard. I felt very proud and moved [that they sang that song]. The RAF pilots in the Gulf War would also sing it before going out on their incredible low-flying sorties. The success of this song has brought me great joy and it seems now to be a classic.

  PALIN: Well, I was really moved in a sense that they sang that rather than “Abide With Me” or “Rule Britannia.” Part of me felt glad that there’s a song there that can rally people in times like that. The reasons I think Eric wrote it, the spirit of the song, is it’s a very British thing—no matter what goes wrong, keep smiling, we’re all cheery. All those aspects of Britishness that we’ve seen in wartime films and on stage, the chirpy Brit coping with life through terrible adverse situations. Eric’s caught the spirit, and these people are just confirming that a song like that actually expresses something which is British which is something they wanted to say. Not, you know, “Praise the Lord, we are at war” or any nationalistic thing like that. And also I think an element of “we’ve fucked up again, we shouldn’t be here in the Falklands.” Maybe it’s just an acceptance of the new face of warfare: “Is this really necessary? Did we really need to come here and be torpedoed for these islands? By a missile invented by one of our close European allies? You know, it’s all very confusing!” I think when all the jingoism is sort of taken away, a lot of those people who went to the Falklands (including some professional soldiers) [had] a deep mistrust of the whole venture.

  Anyway, hearing that they’d sung that song confirmed what a good song it is, in a way. Also, it’s very interesting that Python thrives in closed communities; I’m constantly hearing of soldiers in barracks, or people who do dangerous work—fighter pilots or mountain climbers, whatever—[who] all seem to know the Python films very well. It seems to [relate to] some aspect of coping with adversity, because humor is important.

  JONES: Yes, it was odd, really, that song. I was not particularly keen on the song when Eric came up with it. He wrote it when we were out there in Tunisia. We didn’t really have the end sewn up, and Eric came up with the song and played it. I thought, “This isn’t really that wonderful,” but then it really worked on the film, so it shows you shouldn’t listen to me when it comes to songs!

  FLYING SOLO

  ’Cos Things “Break,” Don’t They?

  The strains that were evident in the group during the shooting of Holy Grail, and the absence of Cleese from the fourth series, reflected the push—pull that each of the Pythons felt when it came to pursuing their own solo careers away from the group (which for some was difficult), and away from public identification as a Python (which was even harder). Indeed, the sobriquet “Python” was not to be shaken lightly, for many of the group’s solo endeavors reveled in the crazed madness (Fawlty Towers), stream-of-consciousness narrative (Time Bandits), blithe surrealism (Ripping Yarns) or anarchy (The Rutles) that were hallmarks of the series. Such comparisons could not be avoided or ignored.

  Though working separately, the Pythons still collaborated in their criticism of each other’s work by reviewing scripts, and formed Prominent Features in the late eighties to produce their own solo projects (i.e., A Fish Called Wanda).

  How hard do you think each of the Pythons was working to evoke an individual style, or was it hard for them to avoid a Python style?

  GOLDSTONE: When the group were very much together and operating as such, any use of the Python name [outside the group] was always a bit sensitive. They were very protective, obviously, because it represented a very definite combination of those six people, and that chemistry produced something unique—it wasn’t something that any individual member of Python ever could replicate in that way.

  It was clear in those earlier films, before the individuals really found their own styles, that one could understand there was certain confusion because there was still something in there that was trying to be Python as well, or could not avoid being Python.

  Jabberwocky, which I worked on, was something that happened in between two Python films, Holy Grail and Life of Brian. It did have strong Python influences and of course Michael Palin playing the lead confused people enough to make them think it was Monty Python’s Jabberwocky, which we obviously got rather upset about. Terry Gilliam wrote it with Charles Alverson. It seemed quite a lot of the jokes were sort of sub-Python in a way; you can see the influence without it being total, and yet it had its own character as well, which was very much to do with Terry’s visuals. But he kept resorting to moments, scenes that have a kind of Python nonsensibility, that kind of worked but didn’t as well as their originals.

  But I would guess that, far greater than anybody’s else’s, Gilliam’s career is the one that’s really developed away from that style into something that is unique. Whatever he puts his hand to (albeit with other writers) has got a great original flair about it.

  Yellowbeard, of course, has got Graham and John; there was always the Python connection. But it’s not good at all; it was a very hit-and-miss piece. It’s kind of representative of Graham in many ways, a rather hit-and-miss kind of career, and person. I mean, sweet and lovely, but he needed very much the support of everybody else (particularly John) in creating what he did. He individually was inspired with some of the ideas that he had, but it needed to be contained.

  But even with Terry Jones—I mean, there are moments in all his films that use a certain style of comedy. I remember there were moments in Erik the Viking that still [contained] an element of Python, and Wind in the Willows a lot less—a lot, lot less.

  PALIN: I think we were all very sensitive during the period of post-Python of things being called Python that weren’t Python. We’d get very angry, and there’d be late-night phone calls—Graham especially, they always came late at night—so they’d say, “Bloody John’s Golden Skits of Muriel Volestrangler, it says it’s from Python, I mean, this is shocking, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yes, yes, we’re all very shocked.”

  But in the end I think everything has in an odd way helped everything else.

  The Wind in the Willows is an interesting case in point where the producer wanted to get all the Pythons into it, to put all their names on it. And we all played because we love Terry, but what I worry about is Python fans going and seeing John’s only in one scene and I just play the Sun, and there’s no Terry Gilliam animation. There’s a superb performance by Eric and a very boisterous performance by Terry, so it’s got that much, but I was worried at that time that they were trying to sell it as the next Python film. But I think we’ve always been more worried about it, more concerned about it, than the audience.

  It was something which was in our minds much more than in the people’s minds. But nowadays everything merges a little bit, and it’s very hard to say to die-hard fans, “Well, you shouldn’t really be lumping this with Python.” It’s not for us to be pedantic about how they should approach it.

  How are reactions when you venture into a different medium, such as your novel, Hemingway’s Chair?

  PALIN: I’ve not really found it a great problem. I think people are quite generous. Especially in the States, people have taken this quite seriously. And I think the fact that it is something which is quite different from Python—I’m not trying to write a “Python novel.” One of the few reviews that didn’t like it was the Cleveland Plain Dealer; the heading was “Not Many Laughs Here for Python Fan
s.” Which was I suppose a bit of a lumber, but that’s very rare. I mean, all the others gently reminded you the author’s a Python but that [the book is] something rather different. And once you’ve done that, then I think the next one will be slightly easier. Because when people write about you they talk about the last thing you’ve done rather than the next thing.

  Working on your own, away from the group, do you have a preference between writing and acting?

  IDLE: I am sick to death of being in movies and avoid them usually. They are boring and by and large overrated. I like to stay home and create—writing, songs, musicals, books. Filming as an actor is ninety-eight percent drudgery, followed by two percent flattery. I am too old to be interested in sixteen-hour days stuck in a trailer park. I do enjoy acting, but I detest waiting.

  While Cleese’s partnership in Video Arts (which produced entertaining training films for businessmen) proved a financial boon, Cleese’s greatest public success—and likely the greatest solo success of any Python—came via Fawlty Towers, a brilliant exercise in barely contained anger masquerading as situation comedy, first broadcast in 1975 and 1979. Inspired by a notoriously bad hotel experience in Torquay during location shooting for Python, Cleese and his then-wife Connie Booth (an American actress who also appeared in bit parts in Python, such as the “witch” in Holy Grail) wrote twelve half-hours of sharp, inventive comedy following the travails of hotel manager Basil Fawlty and his long-suffering staff. Cleese’s ability to fill such an overpowering role made Fawlty an indelible character, though Basil’s penchant for invective (and a rather opportune silly walk) harked back to some of the actor’s Python roles.

  In fact, the series made such an impression that for many it was difficult to see some of Cleese’s later performances (in Clockwise or Privates on Parade) as anything other than variations on Basil Fawlty. It wasn’t until his own A Fish Called Wanda (1988), in which he portrayed a barrister breaking free from his stifled existence by having an affair with a mobster’s moll, that Cleese’s ability at playing a softer, romantic comedic character was recognized.

  CLEESE: I never had any doubts in my own mind that I had a reasonably wide range both as a writer and as a performer. And I was always a bit surprised that people seemed to have an assumption that there was one thing that I did (which always was what I was currently doing). My own tastes in humor are catholic; it doesn’t matter whether it’s farce or high comedy or satire or vaudeville, or quite subtle writing like James Thurber or S. J. Perelman—provided it’s good, it makes me laugh.

  So with this very catholic taste with what I enjoy, I always felt that I had a similar kind of range; it’s just that certain circumstances have given me a chance to work in one area rather than another.

  You were the first to really pull away from Python. Do you think that was inevitable?

  CLEESE: I think as the series began to get acknowledged as being very good and funny and original, what happened is that some of the huddling together for warmth became unnecessary when the sun came out. I think this sometimes happens with groups; when they become more successful, ironically, people begin to feel more independent, a little more confident, and so that’s the moment when you begin to see more individualistic ways of thinking taking over in the group. With pop groups it’s often after they become very successful when people begin to pull outwards, to pull against each other more. And I would say that happened with us.

  My point of view, by the way, is that on the first series we got on very, very well. And we were still getting on very well at the beginning of the second series. By the time we got to the third series, it really wasn’t very much fun—I thought we were very derivative, and I had the Graham problem. I suspect the others also didn’t enjoy the third series as much as the first two, but it wasn’t as bad for them because they didn’t have a “Graham problem.”

  Fawlty Towers was the polar opposite of Python, in that it was in a situation comedy format and was character-driven. Was it a conscious decision of yours to make your first solo project entirely unlike what Python had been doing?

  CLEESE: The interesting thing is there’s an assumption in your question that I was in some way thinking of this new project in terms of Python. And I don’t think I was. The only thing I assumed was that it would not be as successful as Python; I always thought that if we got half the Python audience I would be perfectly happy. But when Connie and I sat down to write Fawlty Towers, we didn’t start saying, “Well, what do we do that would be different from Python?”

  I was wondering whether we should be trying to do that man—woman stuff that Mike Nichols and Elaine May had done, and John Bird and John Fortune and Eleanor Bron had been doing in England, and after five minutes we simply decided that was not what we should be aiming at. And then I said, “What about something in that hotel?” Connie had stayed in the hotel, too—she was filming with Python on that occasion—so she’d experienced the hotel with me, which was a great help. And we simply thought about that for ten minutes and said, “Let’s do that.” But we were never consciously distancing ourselves from Python.

  You made a pointed public exploration of psychotherapy in your books cowritten with your therapist, Robin Skynner (Families and How to Survive Them and Life and How To Survive It). Did your therapy (and the break from Python which developed somewhat parallel to that) represent a need to move from a group identity to a need to establish a solo career?

  CLEESE: Well, I still would say that A Fish Called Wanda, that group—Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael, and myself—was a kind of a group, and I used them in the writing stage far more than writers usually use actors; they were helping me to write their own parts.

  I believe that most people for most of their lives are on automatic, that habit is for us so strong that we underestimate how it’s running our lives. Now sometimes that habit is acquired because of unconscious forces and to the extent we’re not aware of what forces are running us in the first place we’re even less aware of how the habits can be broken. And I think that the effect of my therapy was to break an enormous number of emotional and behavioral habits. Once I’d done that, I confronted the fact that on most days I would rather read a book and go to an art gallery and have lunch with a friend than I would sit and work. That’s the way I am.

  I still find it very difficult because an awful lot of people need me to make things happen. Next week I’m doing an interview with the BBC for a program about sitcoms. The last thing in the world I want to do is to sit down and talk about Fawlty Towers; I’ve talked about it all my life—well, for the last twenty years—but they’re doing a series on British sitcoms and it would look very strange if I’m not there to talk about it. So my life gets filled up with an enormous amount of that stuff, and I’m still not able to find the time to do what I really want to do. But work in itself hardly attracts me at all. I had a cup of coffee with Steve Martin yesterday; he and I agreed that it’s only people, the thought of working with someone, that draws us toward working.

  I don’t get much out of work now, but I went to a conference two weeks ago on The Confessions of St. Augustine and I got an enormous amount out of that. So I’m not terribly interested in work.

  Also, I feel very out of tune with the audience. I go and see something like Pulp Fiction and, frankly, it appalls me. Most of it is dialogue tricks which had been explored by Harold Pinter thirty-five years ago; the structure did not strike me as being as clever as it did everyone else; and the content seemed to me (and to an awful lot of my generation) as the product of a sick mind. And I don’t understand the kind of humor where quoting from other movies is considered important. It seems to me exactly the opposite of what the point of a movie is, which is to involve people; all that business about quoting has an alienating effect. So an awful lot of what people do in the movies now, I am completely out of touch with. So from the point of view of content, yes, I could imagine a movie would come along that would interest me, but being funny for its own sake now is
never enough to get me out of my house to do those extremely long hours, which are very tiring and often under uncomfortable circumstances, to produce something which the odds are heavily stacked against it working in the first place.

  The thing about movies is, it’s 240 years out of your life if nothing goes wrong. It takes you over completely, there are so many decisions to be made. I was talking to a very old friend of mine who’s produced a number of movies, and I asked her, “Did you enjoy the last one?” And she said, “You know, I’ve come to the conclusion you don’t really enjoy producing. It’s so demanding.” Terry Gilliam wants to make movies more than anything else, and I think if you said to Terry, “Do you enjoy making movies?” I think he’d laugh in your face. I got a note from him recently when he was in the editing stage of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, saying, “I am living in hell.” Sometimes it all goes right, probably about one time in ten. And on Wanda, it all went right.

  Did professional jealousy ever enter into the group, and was that an impetus for any of the Pythons to move on?

  CLEESE: I came to the conclusion that there was a lot of competition between us, and the way that we handled it was never to talk about it. There was an unspoken convention, a funny kind of tradition, by which we would never ask about each other’s projects or talk about them. It was as though that once we were together as the Python group, we would only talk about Python business. And I didn’t think it was terribly healthy. I remember that I quite deliberately started to ask people about things they were doing outside the group. And given a straight question people would respond, and I think that people got a little more comfortable after a time talking about things outside of the group, and I know that at one point I did that quite deliberately, but there was real sibling rivalry—we were just like siblings. And it wasn’t particularly unpleasant, but it was there. And the way it was handled was not to talk about whatever people were doing.