Monty Python Speaks Page 13

  The challenge of adapting sketches to print form was especially attractive to Idle, who first suggested the possibility of a book, and who took the job of editor. Monty Python’s Big Red Book (1971), whose cover was blue, was followed by The Brand New Monty Python Bok (1973), whose smudged cover fooled more than one into thinking the dirty fingerprints could be wiped off. (This hardcover “bok” was later reissued as a “papperbok.”)

  The Pythons also adapted to recordings quite well. (After an initial recording with BBC Records of some of their first series material, the group signed with Charisma Records.) In addition to some of their more memorable sketches from the TV show and highlights from their films, there were new effects-driven skits (revealing the sound of a cockroach sneezing magnified 60,000,000x) and musical numbers (“We Love the Yangtse,” “Eric the Half a Bee”). A memorable mix of effects and music was “The Background to History,” a lecture program comprised of historians singing about medieval farming practices overlaid with diving aircraft. Another sketch demonstrated wonderful Python logic by featuring a news broadcast documenting a solar eclipse—not exactly subject matter best suited for an aural medium!

  Conceptually, the most notorious record put out by Python was Matching Tie and Handkerchief (1973), the world’s first three-sided LP (courtesy of a pair of grooves stamped on one side; however the phonograph needle fell determined which “side” you would hear).

  For the most part the records were engineered at Redwood Recording Studios, but not exclusively…

  GILLIAM: Andre Jaquemin, who was the engineer involved with all our stuff, worked in his garden shed, and he had a four-track tape recorder and I had my two-track stereo, and we couldn’t actually stand up all the way in his shed, so we were all crouching, and we were doing the whole thing like that.

  You recorded the album…in the shed?

  GILLIAM: In the shed! A lot of the stuff had been recorded in proper sort of things, but not all of it, we were still recording some of it in the shed and then piecing it all together. That’s the great fun of Python: we were doing television stuff, we were doing records, we were doing books, we were doing stage shows, and we were able to teach ourselves all these jobs. And it was exciting because we didn’t know where it was all leading, it was just good fun, and we were having a wonderful time just being silly, making ourselves laugh.

  And it was strange because we’d been doing Python for so long in a sense before we really took off. When I met the guys who do the animated series South Park at Aspen a year ago, it was a couple of pieces of paper, and now they’ve got sixty animators working with them. That’s what happens in the States: when suddenly something catches on, it balloons so out of control I think you burn out, you get destroyed. You may not get destroyed economically, you may become more famous and richer, but something dies. And with Python it was never like that, because we were just doing thirteen shows at a time. There was never a sense of “Wow, it’s happening, let’s go and capitalize on this!” I think being in England allowed for our own unwillingness to be capitalized upon.

  Talking about Saturday Night Live, as soon as one of the names became big, someone like Chevy Chase, he was popped out, he’s got separate management, he’s got his career. Then John Belushi and Danny Aykroyd pop out, and then Bill Murray, whatever, they’re all divided up very quickly, shared out amongst many financial advisors and agents and lawyers [until] these shells, these organisms cluster around these little bits of talent, separate them from each other, and make millions and millions—and they die. They’re totally neutered now, they’re useless, they’re not serving a function anymore because they’re not outside, they’re not angry, they’re not attacking. At least John Belushi had the grace to get out!

  We just stayed together, plowed on, doing the stuff and not churning it out too fast, and not being greedy, not wanting to rush off and make a fortune. I still think that’s one of the great strengths of the group—that we did that for so long.

  And then as life went on and we started separating and people were paid more money, they seem to get more greedy. That’s what money does, it makes you want more money; it has this addictive quality.

  Comedians should be kept outside of decent society. We’ll scream and shout. I mean we’re still doing rather well; you can’t complain about this [indicates his home in Highgate], but I can!

  FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE BBC

  I’ll Do What I Like Because I’m Six Foot Five and I Eat Punks Like You for Breakfast

  In December 1971, the Pythons began recording their third series of shows for the BBC. The budgets for the programs had risen, which was reflected in more ambitious location filming, including a Pepperpot selling tea and cakes to passing ships in a storm-tossed sea. More importantly, the Pythons reached for ever-further creative limits, taking greater risks in terms of subject matter and narrative development.

  Series highlights included: “Njorl’s Saga,” an Icelandic historical epic hijacked by small-town business interests promoting investment in North Malden; “Argument Clinic,” where Palin is subjected to a variety of abuses (at a cost); “Cheese Shop,” where Cleese’s customer is constantly thwarted from being able to purchase any sort of “cheesy comestibles”; “Dennis Moore,” the misguided highwayman; “Fish Slapping Dance,” a wonderfully nonsensical performance piece in which Palin and Cleese duel with fish; the “Oscar Wilde” sketch, in which Wilde, James McNeill Whistler, and George Bernard Shaw trade bons mots; Salad Days as interpreted by director Sam Peckinpah, of Wild Bunch fame; and “The Cycling Tour,” a half-hour adventure in which a bicyclist touring North Cornwall crosses paths with Soviet agents, Chinese bingo enthusiasts, and a man convinced he is singing star Clodagh Rogers.

  For purely surrealist ideas, there is little to beat the sketch of a city gent (Jones) who makes people laugh uncontrollably just by uttering a word. Let go from his firm because of the debilitating effect he has on his coworkers, he pours out his soul to his manager, even threatening suicide, while his boss is reduced to uncontrollable fits of laughter.

  Despite the high level of quality, there were signs of disharmony both from within the group and from the upper strata of the BBC. Although John Cleese was still writing and performing, he had already indicated to the others that he was looking elsewhere, precipitating greater tensions in the group.

  More germane to the success of the shows at that point, however, was the group’s handling of the BBC’s increased interest in what was being put out. Never an organization to intrude on the Pythons’ creativity before, the BBC’s management were now making their presence felt, resulting in censorship battles behind the scenes which descended at times into a sort of illogic most fitting for Python.

  Palin and Idle filming “The Cycling Tour.”

  CLEESE: I loved the first series and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I very much enjoyed the first half of the second series. I was worried by the time we got to the second half of the second series that we were repeating ourselves, though it didn’t seem to be a worry that bothered the others at all. I didn’t really want to do the third series because I felt it was getting like a sausage machine; I mean we were just turning the handle and shows were coming out the other end, and I didn’t feel any more a sense of excitement or that we were really exploring new territory. And when I said this to the others, that I really wasn’t very keen on doing the third series, they simply didn’t take it seriously. It was as though they felt I was posturing—I don’t know what that effect would be, but the real truth was I felt that we were just repeating ourselves. I agreed rather begrudgingly to do a half-series, six or seven episodes. I didn’t really want to do it but I felt since everyone asked me I would, and then I remember they really just ruthlessly put the pressure on me to do the whole series.

  Did they try to make you feel guilty for wanting to leave the group?

  CLEESE: Yeah, that sort of thing, and they were more or less going ahead rather as though I didn’t have objections. Nobody every
sat down and said, “What’s really bothering you?” or “Why don’t you want to?” I just felt that I wasn’t being heard.

  But my strong feeling in the third series was that we’d really run out of original momentum. Quite by the middle of the second series, when people read out sketches (including those by Graham and myself), I would be able to say, “Well, that sketch was show one of the first series plus a bit of that sketch from the other show for the first series plus a bit of that sketch from the second series.” I could see that they were beginning to derive from the material we had done previously, and in the third series I’m quite clear that there were only two really original bits that Graham and I wrote: one of them was the highwayman, Dennis Moore (which I thought was genuinely original), and the other was “Cheese Shop.” Almost everything else I could point to and say, “This derives from that.” And unless you’re short of money, I don’t see the point of doing that, it isn’t interesting. But the others simply liked the process; you see, I didn’t. Going into the smelly old hall that we used to go to everyday and rehearse week after week after week. I get very easily bored; I need the sense that I’m learning or creating, and if I’m not doing one or the other I tend to get bored.

  “The Cycling Tour” was the first Python show to be comprised of one long extended skit. How did that develop?

  PALIN: I really don’t know quite why something like “The Cycling Tour” was as long as it was. There had been germs of that in some of the early sketches: for instance, the tennis-playing blancmange and the Podgorny family. What would happen is you have nice characters who then could crop up during the program, so suddenly more and more seemed to revolve around these two characters. And I suppose that “The Cycling Tour” was a supreme example of stretching characters right out through a program, which we then touch on all sorts of things—China, for one—so Mr. Pither (who was the bicycle man) became almost like a linking device that took over the show. Linking devices were usually quite short; it’d be a colonel who’d come on and say, “Right, stop that, very silly.” But with Mr. Pither, he would appear at various moments during the show [and] these mentions would be much longer, they’d be little adventures in themselves. I’m not quite sure how that particularly happened; it might have been that Terry and myself had had a good writing week that week and John and Graham hadn’t got the stuff; sometimes that happened. You go, “This is show 9, you haven’t got anything? Well, if we do the whole bicycle tour that’s almost the [whole] show.”

  And then of course “Mr. Neutron,” that came in the series which John didn’t write much on. By that time Terry Jones and myself were getting more keen on longer narrative, I suppose because “The Cycling Tour” had worked well, but [also] because when you invent good characters it’s a pity to lose them. Let’s keep them going and weave the story around them rather than weave them around lots of sketches.

  I understand why it happened; we were interested in the narrative for the films, because we took a conscious decision that films can’t just be sketches—there’s got to be some story, otherwise people would get bored stiff of just sketches. Certainly after fifty minutes you start to lose them; you’ve got to have characters that go through. That’s a very conscious decision, which is why the Knights of the Round Table was something we thought to be an excellent vehicle.

  Filming “Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days.”

  The BBC Would Like to Apologize to Everyone in the World for the Last Item

  It seemed only a matter of time before the brazen Pythons would find themselves butting heads with the more conservative elements of the BBC. In the early seventies the BBC was facing a more spirited organized public outcry (from politicians and from self-appointed moral guardians like Mary Whitehouse, who formed the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association) against a seeming loosening of responsibility in the broadcast media. Eager to deflect criticism and to protect itself from the yoke of an outside overseer authority, the corporation began to take greater interest in programming before it was broadcast, engendering a more divisive atmosphere with creatives.

  But while the spirit of pushing barriers of popularly accepted limits on good taste was a hallmark of the Pythons’ work, the bureaucracy of the BBC that sought to reinforce those limits only demonstrated why constricting societal attitudes were such an evergreen target for the group’s humor. As Robert Hewison noted in his definitive account of the group’s censorship battles, Monty Python: The Case Against, “Six angry, arrogant Pythons were usually a match for the BBC.” Indeed, engaging in internal censorship battles would merely toughen their skin for their future, more public confrontations against the moral police attacking their film, Life of Brian.

  MACNAUGHTON: One time Duncan Wood said, “Do come down. I want you to see an episode you’ve just done in my office.” We sat and watched it, and it was quite funny, I thought. It stopped, and Duncan said, “How do you get away with this?” I said, “I don’t know, but listen to the audience in this studio, they seem to like it!” And it was that attitude—I wonder how the hell they get away with it?—which I think was a bit silly, quite honestly. They should have been happy to have an audience roaring with laughter!

  CLEESE: You can always inject a bit of energy into something by introducing anger, shouting, bad language, or something shocking. Young comedians know this, and that is why very frequently they seem to be thrashing around, because if the material isn’t very good you have two alternatives: one is you die, and the other is you thrash around—and on the whole, thrashing around is less humiliating.

  David Attenborough, a man I much admire, said to me after the first series of Python, the best advice I ever had: “Use shock sparingly.” If you start using it too much, then it becomes the norm, and it isn’t shocking anymore, and then you just seem to be thrashing around. The great thing is to use it very, very sparingly, like that wonderful conversation in Life of Brian, with all that stuff about, “Tell us, Master, tell us!” Brian says, “I’m not the savior!” Somebody says, “Only the savior would deny his own divinity.” So he says, “All right, I am the savior!” They all go, “Ahh, he is the savior!” And he says, “Now, fuck off!” That’s a wonderful use of real shock; we weren’t using bad language before that so it really hits you.

  We did one show where Michael, running in at the end dressed up in the “Spanish Inquisition,” was saying, “Oh, bugger,” when the end title went up. Michael Mills said afterwards that there was no way that he could ever have agreed to that in the script stage, but when he saw it on screen it was so funny he knew no one would complain.

  And in the particular case of the “Undertaker” sketch (“I think we’ve got an eater!”), yes, there was on that one occasion a deliberate attempt to play with the idea of how shocking it would be. It was the thirteenth show of the second series, we’d been churning stuff out for seven months, and I think Graham and I had a feeling it was “end of term.” We thought it would be fine to end the series on something fairly shocking, and I’m very grateful that the BBC let us do it.

  JONES: Huw Wheldon, who was in control of BBC1, and David Attenborough, who was in control of BBC2 in the late sixties, were both very enlightened men. I remember their saying that the BBC was very much an anarchic organization in a way, in that there was very little bureaucracy, very little personnel management. This tiny office was the personnel management, which now I think is a whole building!

  In those days, the producers were the top dogs, and there were producer/directors; they decided what was going to go on the air and they took responsibility for it. I remember Weldon saying the BBC takes great pride in not censoring itself; the producers are responsible, and the producers are all very carefully selected people who were tenured BBC staff. They would discuss projects with their heads of department, and they’d say, “I want to do this,” and they generally would be given a go-ahead. They then would make the shows and the heads of departments would deliberately not look at shows before they went out. They would se
e the shows when they were aired, and then there would be a weekly departmental meeting and the shows would be discussed at the meeting, and if somebody objected to something that had gone out, then the producer would be asked to account for himself and would be carpeted or something. But it was all post, there was no censorship at all.

  This changed.

  We started seeing it changing in Python. When the first and second series went out, nobody ever looked at the shows or anything until they went out. In the last episode we had the “Undertaker” sketch, which was a gross breach of good taste! Ian didn’t want to do it at all; we bamboozled him and persuaded him that if we had the audience revolting against the thing, then that would be all right, and he agreed to do it like that. Which is a bit of a pity; it ruined the sketch, really, because we had to do this shouting through the sketch (“Let’s have something decent!”). And I think Ian really got carpeted for that. And then [for] the next series, they wanted to look at the shows before they went out.

  Filming “Wife Swapping.”

  MACNAUGHTON: I think we’d finished the last three of the third series. I was called in to the boss’s office and told that these three episodes could not go out, could never go out. And I said, “Why not?” And he said, “Well, there are things in there we don’t like. For instance, the ‘Prince of Wales and Oscar Wilde’ sketch: in the middle of that somebody said, Your majesty is like a dose of the clap. We don’t like any of that stuff, we don’t want any of that in.” They made about eighteen points that they wanted to cut, and they said, “We’ll reedit the three programs and you’ll maybe get one or two [shows] out of it.”

  JONES: That was when we got the list of things we had to take out [which became known as “Thirty-two Points of Worry”]. One of them was in the “Summarized Marcel Proust Competition,” somebody saying his hobbies were “strangling animals, golf, and masturbating.” And we had to cut out “masturbating”! Very bizarre. I remember going to Duncan Wood—he was then Head of Comedy—and I said, “Duncan, what’s wrong with masturbating? I masturbate. You masturbate, don’t you, Duncan?” And Duncan goes, “Oh, uh, uh…!” Anyways, it had to come out.