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EDIT NEWS: Monty Python - Press Coverage 1974 |
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Radio Times, 24th October 1974, page 6:
[Remember the cover to this? Eric Idle holds it up in
"Mr Neutron". Plus, the picture accompanying the piece
is the one of the four Pythons that appears on the cover of
the NFT's 25th anniversary booklet in October 1993:]
NOW FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY SIMILAR
COVER STORY
Pull up your comfy chair! Switch on the telly! Cover the screen with the budgie's night curtain! They're back! The zany, anarchic, subversive etc etc Python returns as anarchic, subversive etc etc as ever, on Thursday. Russell Miller reveals the story of the men behind the madness
Monty Python
Thursday 9.0 pm
BBC2 Colour
This week Monty Python takes to the air with a moving historical study entitled 'The Golden Age Of Ballooning,' interspersed with a party political broadcast on behalf of the Norwegian party.
No one will be watching the show with more interest than the writers and the performers: Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Mike Palin. If previous experience is anything to go by, they will all be laughing immoderately at their own antics, for it is a cornerstone of Python humour that the authors themselves think it is funny. Chapman has been known to fall off his chair while watching it.
I had a hunch that together they would have an effect on each other - Barry Took
The new series is the first without John Cleese, he of the tombstone face. Physically and emotionally exhausted by the strain of silly walks, he wanted more opportunity to work independently. His is the first defection since the team was put together in 1969 at the instigation of BBCtv comedy adviser, Barry Took.
'I had been watching them in two commercial television shows,' Took explained. 'Chapman and Cleese were in At Last, The 1948 Show and Palin, Idle, Jones, and Gilliam's graphics were in Do Not Adjust Your Set. At the time, I felt that television comedy was getting a bit flat-footed and I just had a hunch that by getting them together and giving them their heads they would have an effect on each other.'
In fact, with the exception of Gilliam, it was almost inevitable that, in the end, they should work together. All of them were at Oxford or Cambridge at the same time, along with people like Bill Oddie, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden, later to become better known as The Goodies. It was a vintage period for inventive and creative humour which has overshadowed all undergraduate revue ever since.
Spike showed us there was no need to think in terms of sketches - Terry Jones
While the leading Oxbridge writers/performers were ostensibly studying for their degrees, few of them had any intention of pursuing careers outside entertainment. So this little nucleus of academics and qualified doctors and lawyers drifted quite naturally into the world of television and the theatre, their paths constantly criss-crossing via programmes like The Frost Report, I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and Do Not Adjust Your Set.
A genre had been established, but it was still limited by the strictures of traditional comedy: three-minute sketches, punch lines and quickies. It was Spike Milligan who showed them the way out of the rut.
Terry Jones explains: 'Right at the beginning, while we were still trying to think of a format, Spike did a BBC2 series called Q5. He broke up the rigid forms of comedy and showed us there was no need to think in terms of sketches and punchlines.
'Watching those shows we suddenly realised we had been writing in comedy clichés. What he was doing to comedy was amazing and so from that moment we started breaking out of the traps.'
It took them about two weeks to think of a title. 'Flying circus' came first and Mike Palin suggested it should be called 'Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus.' Gwen Dibley is a pianist who once played in an afternoon concert given by the Shropshire Townswomen's Guild and Mike thought it would be nice if she had her own television show. But then, after much antagonising, someone said: 'What about Python?' and 'Monty' was immediately suggested as the first name.
Python humour has been variously described as insane, surreal, anarchic, subversive, disgusting, violent, anachronistic, sexually-obsessed, offensive and zany. They are more likely to describe it as silly.
'As soon as you start to try and analyse,' says Jones, 'ask why it works, why it doesn't work, you can't do it any more. The only reason for Python is to be funny. I suppose if you have a consistent outlook and point of view, your attitudes must come over even if you are writing nonsense, but there is certainly no conscious effort to put over a message.'
The Python team operates very much as a comedy commune. When they start work on a new series, all of them generate ideas, initially either working alone or in pairs. This material is offered up for consideration at rowdy production meetings, where a great deal is discarded or radically changed and new ideas injected. From these sessions the final scripts emerge.
As long as we are still laughing at rehearsals then it stays - Ian MacNaughton
Producer Ian MacNaughton (who also Milligan's Q5 series) says: 'As long as we are still laughing during rehearsal then it stays. If we stop laughing, it gets cut.'
Python's compelling visual image owes much to the macabre, Magritte-like animated cartoons contributed by Terry Gilliam, the only non-Oxbridge member of the team. Gilliam, an American, has lived in Britain for seven years. He became involved with Oxbridge surreal comedy after meeting John Cleese.
His first contributions were to Do Not Adjust Your Set and a forgettable series called We Have Ways Of Making You Laugh. They didn't, except for an amazing animated film by Gilliam's linking all Jimmy Young's terrible puns.
Unlike other members of Python, Terry is pessimistic about the future. Success, he feels, is threatening the enthusiasm that they had in the early days.
'It's not quite as much fun as it used to be and that really worries me. What was nice at the beginning - and I think it really communicated - was that we were all really enjoying it. Now it is getting a bit like work. I'm sure everyone feels this, although they may not admit it.'
I think we have avoided the pitfall of comedians of wanting to be loved - Graham Chapman
Graham Chapman certainly doesn't admit it. A qualified doctor, he has never practised except recently when he acted as unit doctor during the filming of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 'Actually,' he admitted, 'all I had to do was dispense contraceptive pills to the girls when they realised we were away five weeks instead of four.'
Despite the growth of the Monty Python industry into films, books and records, as well as television series, he still gets a great deal of pleasure out of being involved.
'I think we have avoided that pitfall of all comedians of wanting to be loved. In a sense we want to avoid popularity. All we are trying to do is to be funny.
'As far as the BBC is concerned I think we have been rather successful. They have given us a tin shed in the car park for a production office. Well, that's fine. If they thought we were better we would probably be lost.' |
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The Times, 1st November 1974:
MONTY PYTHON
BBC 2
Alan Coren
The harshest truth about seasonally recurring comedy shows is that it is not enough for them to be as good as they were. Each time out, they have to get better. Memory, particularly comic memory, is highly selective; after a year, it has forgotten the poor bits, remembered the best. Every successful comedy series has had to face this punishing dilemma, and last night it was Python's turn: the new series will be forced to compete for approval with a single, quintessential Python show which the audience's memory has cobbled together out of a parrot sketch, of course, The Twit of the Year, almost certainly, the Ministry of Silly Walks, Blackmail, The British Film Awards, The Jean-Paul Sartres chez Eux.
Now, nobody could follow that, and I did not expect them to. But that the new Python would fall so far short of the average is something for which I wasn't prepared, and which leaves me with a dark void around the heart this morning, a sense of bewildered and bottomless loss, the way I imagine British Communists felt when the Russians trod, like a Python foot, on Dubeck. Because Python was an ideal and a promise and a hope: Times readers know, by now, my embittered views on the laughless gunk that passes for most television comedy, and the old Flying Circus shone like a good deed in a naughty world. How far that loony candle threw his beams!
This is not to say that the new show still wasn't better than almost any other half-hour of tube-time. But two important changes have taken place to make that praise as faint as it is meant to be: the first is that John Cleese has gone, that rock-founded maypole of manic sanity around which the lesser madmen danced and who was an iron control, both on the screen and behind it, upon the daft extravagances to which the others are prone and which can lead to the ultimate dissipation of a good funny idea; and the second, inextricably linked to the first, is that the new format of a single extended comic situation dooms the material to a thinning-out so drastic that it is bound to rupture, as it did last night, into irritating shards. The essence of a Python situation is that it needs to be brief, concentrated tight: their brilliant imaginative flashes are not there to be sustained.
Hope remains, though. The Python team will triumph again. They are too talented not to. |
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Observer, 17th November 1974
[The title is cut off after "IN PRAISE OF TH..." Clive
is of course alluding to Series 4, Show 3 - 'Light
Entertainment War' - which had been broadcast
three nights earlier]
By CLIVE JAMES
After two dull episodes, Monty Python (BBC2) was suddenly funny again, thereby ameliorating the viewing week no end. The pressure on the new Cleeseless team to be as good as ever has perhaps been a little fierce, but that's showbiz.
Anyway, the laughs came and everybody relaxed, including BBC2's linkman, who cheerily postluded the show with a burst of the very same scripted heartiness which Michael Palin had just finished satirising. 'Well, ha-ha, depressions lift and gloom disperses next week, ha-ha, with another visit from "Monty Python.' Or perhaps the lads had written the links too, as well as some of the rest of the week's programmes such as Face Your Image (BBC1), starring Lord Longford.
[Then, a long review of Face Your Image with no
further mention of Python.] |
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Financial Times, 20th November 1974
By Chris Dunkley:
Thursday brought episode three in the new Monty Python series and gave the lie to my previous claim that it was collapsing without John Cleese. This was vintage Python complete with a zany court martial and a wonderful scene between three of the glorious Few, two of whom found the "wizard prang" argot of the third completely incomprehensible. For other writers and producers the trouble with Python (at its best) must be that it is so profligate with ideas; in the RAF skit it easily out-did N. F. Simpson in the matter of satirising a particular sort of mannered speech, and in its final sketch with a television company making a series about arterial roads ("Oooh, look - it's a repeat of the Leicester by-pass") it punched a good deal harder than B. S. Johnson who also had a go at some of the idiocies of television.
I suspect that something of a paradox lies at the heart of Python's success: it relies heavily on ridicule, satire and irreverence, but if ever Idle, Palin, Jones, Chapman and Gilliam actually sat down and said "Now - what can we be irreverent about this week, and for goodness sake let's find something new to ridicule and satirise" it would promptly fall apart. It's a gut instinct show. |
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The Sun, 6th December 1974:
WILL PYTHON GET TO GRIPS?
And now for something completely different!
That has been the successful motto of the Monty Python team for five years.
But now, even loyal Python fans are wondering if things got just a little too different, in the latest series which ended last night.
THEME
Regular Python mickey-takers Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Graham Chapman were one key man short, since lofty John Cleese left the show.
So they were already at a big disadvantage when they tried the new idea of giving each programme a different theme.
Did they succeed?
That will be the main question when veteran broadcaster and Python fan William Hardcastle looks back over the show's career in tonight's In Vision (BBC 2, 10.40).
Terry Jones probably will not be joining his zany colleagues in the talk-in. He went into hospital this week for a minor throat operation.
So he gave me his views before the surgeon's knife made talking difficult.
Jones, 31, said: "We expected people would say the show wasn't the same without John Cleese.
"But we like to think all our previous series differed from each other in some respect. I do think it was a mistake to do only six. But this is all the BBC would let us do this time.
"Normally we did 13 in a series. And out of this we expected to get two or three really good shows.
"By spreading the strong shows among the slightly weaker ones, we achieved some sort of balance. This time, there was no room for manoeuvre."
BIZARRE
One of the disappointments of the latest series was that there were so few of the incredible, bizarre cartoons of American animator Terry Gilliam.
Jones, who comes from Colwyn Bay, North Wales, explained: "We were so close to transmission time, it is a wonder we ever got the shows done.
"On top of this, Terry Gilliam and I directed the new film Monty Python And The Holy Grail."
The film, which features John Cleese and the rest of the team, will be in the cinemas in the spring. At about the time the other Pythoneers are due to record seven new shows... still minus Cleese. |
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Melody Maker, 22nd December 1973, pages 36-37
[A piece to promote Matching Tie and Handkerchief,
although it was actually in the Holy Grail pressbook.
Accompanying the piece are individual pictures of all
the Pythons resting]
MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS
Melody Maker Band Breakdown by Chris Welch.
Pictures: Barry Plummer.
Save Monty Python! That was the message being flashed around crisis torn Britain last night. At a showbiz party in Lewisham top Python stars revealed that a new TV series was only "in the offing."
Asked if the BBC were falling over themselves for a new series, a Python spokesman said: "Nobody has fallen over. In fact there has been a great lack in falling."
Just what are the facts behind this new threat to the nation's standard of living? Are we to suffer a humour shortage, as well as cutbacks in oil, paraffin and essential foodstuffs?
And just who are these men who have kept British workers chuckling during what has been described as The Age Of Gloom? This week the MM turns its voltage reduced spotlight on the team that made common catch phrases of such sayings as: "Can I Do You Now Sir?" and "I Won't Take My Coat Off. I Am Not Stopping." who brought us those song hits "Underneath The Arches" and "Much Binding In The Marsh."
This zany team of ex-University rib-ticklers have established an international reputation during the past ten years.
Their original script writing by men like John Cleese, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman have supplied a vital flow of humour, satire and fantasy all the way from radio's I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again to TV's Frost Report, 1948 Show, and of course... Monty Python's Flugen Zircus [sic].
With the new Monty Python "Bok" on sale and a new album, "Monty Python's Matching Tie & Hankie," due in the shops, they win an ever growing army of fans.
Conscious of the need for basic biographical information, the Python men have supplied illuminating pen portraits that show us just how humble "ragged school" origins can pave the way to success and indeed a measure of stardom.
JOHN CLEESE (B.A.Cantab, Contob & Codpiece). Born 1911 of poor parents in Fishguard, he left school early, at 3.30 pm because of chest trouble.
Fortunately, he had a "note," which he forged, and this of course set him on the road to script writing. His early years were spent cod gutting, the family business, which he bitterly resented and resulted in deep dislike to fish.
It's an episode which he likes to skate over. For a while he became a rebel, left home and led a teenage gang of delinquents breaking into fish shops and gutting the premises.
Realising he was getting nowhere fast the Young Cleese turned to study, and with the aid of a home tutorial course, became a doctor, top civil servant, a barrister, Minister of the Department of Environment and finally a TV personality.
"Believe me, it was wasn't easy," he told a court of inquiry set up to investigate his rise to power and influences. "But basically, I owe it all to the Teach-O Study Course whose founder, incidentally, now owns half of Yorkshire and is being strongly tipped as Iceland's next Prime Minister."
GRAHAM CHAPMAN. Born in 1911 of rich parents in Fishguard, he left the town at an early age as he couldn't stand the violence of the teenage delinquent gangs known as the "Fish Heads."
A quiet, retiring sort of chap nevertheless he forced himself into a gay social whirl., in order to gain confidence and avert bullying.
Having tried the Teach-O Home Tutorial course and failing to become elected to the Icelandic cabinet, he cast the booklets aside with an oath, and instead embarked on a journey around the world to broaden his mind.
He went to New Zealand and found great difficulty in ordering eggs for breakfast owing to the hotel system which discourages guests, and headed for Canada where he chanced upon a touring theatrical group, known as Monty Python's Flying Tent.
Not finding their humour much to his taste, he shipped back to England, met up with a now reformed Cleese (his childhood chum), and together they pieced together a show called Monty Python's Flying Lean-To.
It was an utter flop. But they were to profit by these mistakes.
The Lean-To was sold for a considerable sum to J. Bletchley (Refuse) Ltd.
Later came success (etc) and Chapman became known to millions for his humorous characterisations, as the Laughing Communist and Manwolf, the Child Slayer.
TERRY JONES: A charming chap and the man responsible for some of Python's best wheezes.
His childhood was spent, and after that - there wasn't much to do, except write damn silly scripts for Monty Python's Flying Lean-To, a show which proved such a flop in 1963 when it ran for eight hours at Her Majesty's before the staff of the theatre invoked the act of 1823 prohibiting the "discharge of noxious fumes and the performance of ill-suited comic material in public exhibition halls," thus bringing the cast to a climax and the show to an end.
"Just as well. It was terrible rubbish really," admits Jones, freely. "But we all profit by mistakes. In fact I made some nine hundred guineas selling off unwanted props."
MICHAEL PALIN: One of the toughest men in a tough team, he eats broken bottles for breakfast and dines on barbed wire.
For many years he worked in a Hungarian travelling circus, which gave him his love for the show. He was billed as the Great Idiot, as his diet frequently brought on internal bleeding, much to the delight and horror of his thousands of Hungarian fans.
Eventually the blood-stained circus ring proved too disgusting for the Minister for Circuses, and Palin was forced to flee the country.
As the plague of midges swept the land, he smuggled himself out by night express, chuckling grimly.
"As they have sown the seeds of retribution, so shall they reap," he snarled.
He was later blamed for the collapse of Monty Python's Flying Lean-To having contributed many of its bloodiest gags.
TERRY GILLIAM: Personable young American cartoonist. Terry is considered by many to be the real brains behind Python, if not the frontal lobe to the storyboard of Lean-To.
Actually, Terry is the skilled animator who makes John Cleese's legs perform those famed "silly walks" by exposing Cleese's legs at high speeds, snatching away his trousers and jabbing at his ankles with a steel-nib pen. He denies there is any significance in his work. "I just see life and distort it beyond recognition," he explains.
ERIC IDLE: Good-looking, talented, what more attributes could a man want in these uncertain days? "Only a new BBC TV series," he snaps curtly.
Eric was born in McMacnuchshire shortly after the Great War, but as this would make him too old for the swinging seventies, was held in abeyance until a suitable niche could be found in the fabric of society.
So he wasn't released for public inspection until 1947, when he immediately became a much-in-demand script writer for Workers Playtime.
"Great days," he recalls. "I was only six months old at the time, writing for the greats like Rob Wilton, Ted Kavanagh and Harold Berens.
"It was a grind though... up at 5 a.m. and down to the BBC canteen for a glass of milk and a script conference.
"One of our best gags was about the Festival of Britain. 'Foreman trying to stamp out thieving, stops workman with barrow. Later discovers workman has been stealing barrows.' Well, it went down very well in 1951."
JOHN CLEESE
John Cleese is funny because he inspires fear. He represents the interrogator who lurks in the background of all human activity. He is the school doctor who asks through tightly pursed lips: "Why haven't you been taking deep breathing exercises? You should you know..."
He is the driving examiner, coroner and customs officer asking: "Why did you do that? What have you got hidden there?" There are some among us who spend many minutes of each day unconsciously inventing alibis for our shortcomings and failures.
Cleese is the man with gimlet eyes who sees through them, and with a scornful laugh, tosses them aside, like Florence Nightingale removing soiled bandages in the Crimea.
But there is a warmer side to this Gauleiter [?] image. Like the headmaster who announced a half-holiday after caning 500 boys for insubordination, Cleese will offer a silly walk for our amusement, or address a parrot in a comic fashion. All this helps breaks the ice, relaxes the patients and lulls them into a false sense of security for the next onslaught, perhaps a graphic description of an abattoir.
It came as no surprise to hear that the new Python album was a bit of a rushed job.
"Yes we wrote it... hmmm let me see now... oh a few weeks ago. It's all lost in the mists of time. But it took about ten days.
"Terry Gilliam basically made sure the balancing and mixing was right. The Greek music proved a bit loud which was a shame but there's always this rush.
"They give you a deadline then you find the deadline was a week later if you had really found out. I never know whether to say if its good or not. On one occasion I didn't think the record was so good, but everyone said it was marvellous, and the last one I liked very much, and then I heard it again and liked one side but not the other. So it's all a very strange business.
"The problem of recording without an audience is that you don't know if it's working. And you may get hung up on inessentials and finish with something that's technically completely correct but for some strange reason isn't quite funny anymore.
"I've only really played the albums about once each. I very rarely have the spare time to play albums. It's something I don't do. In fact, I tend to read, or watch telly."
What percentage of John's career was devoted to Python works? "It's terribly difficult to assess. You see we haven't done any television now for 18 months. But when you look at what we have done, it's quite a lot of activity.
"There's a book, which was a lot of work, the British tour, the Canadian tour, a long television special for Germany which took a lot of time, one or two records, some cabaret and Lincoln festival... you see if people don't see us on television, they think we're not operating.
"But with the various things, books, oh and of course we've written a film script, it's amazing what there is to do.
"We have also done special films people have commissioned - a rather good one for Harmony hair spray sales representatives, which Terry directed and was quite successful. And we did another one for Birdseye.
"There's an awful lot of Python activity, but people seem to think we're not working.
"I have to find time to do my personal things, and the only way to do that is to work every ruddy day. It's exhausting and not a satisfactory arrangement.
"We've done quite a few industrial films y'know, showing salesmen how to deal with complaints, or if you are a service engineer how to deal with people who are angry.
"Lloyd's bank have used several of our films to help cashiers. We use humour in these training films and try to make them as entertaining as possible.
"I've been doing some 'I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again' for radio but that takes no time at all. Bill Oddie and Graham [sic] Garden do it all. The reason we haven't done any for years is that nobody has enough time, and you can make three times as much writing for television."
Hasn't Monty Python become something of an industry?
"Oh do you think so? I don't think that's true. We're all writers, you see, and we're rather amused by its success. The fact that the book is so popular, we've just done another 75,000 in hard back.
"You say that to anybody who knows about book publishing and their jaws literally sag. And we all think it's extraordinary. It's obvious people don't want to read novels or factual books, but something you can read in dribs and drabs.
"It's something to do with the fact that people are busy and life is hectic. People just don't sit down for an evening to read."
MICHAEL PALIN
Script writer Michael Palin, king of smarmy introduction and famed for his appearances with a knotted handkerchief and gum boots, is like all of the Python team, a cheerful, merry fellow. And when it comes to money and work, he shares their candour.
Asked why another Python LP he explains with a smile: "It was just an attempt to get er... a bit of Christmas loot! We thought - what can we do. Let's do half as a pantomime or something.
"There's sixty per-cent original material and some TV things which have turned out to be classics, and which have never been on a record before. And there's a bit of filth about Oscar Wilde.
"It comes as a set with the book. Filth for Christmas. That was censored a bit by the BBC - that particular sketch."
Do the Beeb give Python a hard time with censorship? "Well, I don't know what to say about that...
"You'll have to edit this one, because I've just obscured the last two minutes," interrupted Cleese, sliding towards the MM taperecorder.
To return to the question - how much censorship did Python suffer? Said Michael: "The thing is, we've been asked to do another series, but it will be slightly different, because John will have less of a part in it.
"He doesn't want to do as much TV. The BBC haven't exactly leapt at the idea, and at the moment it's still under negotiation.
"We've got to be careful not to tread on toes. But I wouldn't say they have totally taken to Python. We cause them trouble by just being here at all.
"I was surprised because Python didn't really relax the BBC's attitude toward comedy, which at one time I thought it would.
"To start with they were understandably a bit cautious about doing it. What is this? We don't know, but we'll let you have a go. And after one and a half series and people were beginning to listen in, the BBC had an established show, and it was no longer a cult show.
"Yet they didn't go on from that - they didn't relax anymore. By the end of the third series, one felt one didn't quite know where one stood!
"So they aren't falling over themselves for a new series. Not one person has fallen. A total lack of falling over. But then, I think it's a case of us having to do something, to persuade them."
Said Eric Idle: "You know they are repeating the series? Yes, they are repeating it at 11.30 on Sunday nights on BBC2. It's as close as you can get to not being on at all."
"That's back to normal," said Palin. "When it first started, it used to creep out around 10.45 pm. But the third series got about ten million, when it was on at 10.15pm which is the best time."
"But there are so many kids who enjoy our show. Most of the people who write us letters are not 19-20, but 12-13, people who a lot of grown-ups would rather didn't enjoy the show - but they do."
Was it getting a bit of a drain on the last series, to keep up the pace? "I don't think so - was there a strain? No, we enjoyed it."
"It was a strain for John Cleese - he went on holiday," said Eric. "He needed a course of steroids."
There wasn't any strain," said Palin, "but you might have detected that it got a bit ruder. We didn't feel drained and in fact I feel drained at not having to produce it each week.
"Once you sit down and start churning it out, it comes fairly quickly. When we sit around and think of the significance of it all and what should we do next , it must be the greatest show ever - that's when you get the draining experience."
"Writing is easy, and pleasant," said Eric. "Especially in the wet, when being hit by a large fish."
"Go away!" said Mike. "You're not doing the interview. I always found that people either said of Python: 'Oh, I can't stand it, it's really rubbish and disgusting.' Other people said it was fantastic."
TERRY JONES
Affable Terry Jones has been script writing for about seven years with Michael Palin and together thy worked with Eric Idle on such shows as Do Not Adjust Your Set, and before that for David Frost and Marty Feldman.
At present he is engaged with the rest of Python on their forthcoming cinema movie, as yet untitled, when will be about the Search for the Holy Grail.
"We wrote the script about a year ago," says Terry, "then we did a second draft, which was drastically revised. It's about the Knights of the Round Table. It will be a costume drama - yes we'll all be in costumes of the period, except in the nude scenes, when we'll wear period nude costumes.
"The film will be made by our own production company, Python (Monty) Films Ltd. We're doing it all ourselves this time and raising the money ourselves. We also have our own production company which acts as a central servicing body.
"We hope to start filming in the Spring, around April or May. We've completed all the writing, just last week, but of course, it's far too long and will have to be edited.
"It's difficult to say if we've learnt anything from the TV series when it comes to film making. A lot of things seem slower on a bigger screen, but of course that may be due to voltage reductions!
"The film will certainly be different from anything Monty Python has done before. I don't know how well it will go down, because people may say there is not so much variety. We usually do many different sketches but this will have one central theme.
"We do work pretty tightly anyway. We work everything out beforehand and not much improvisation goes on once we get on the set.
"You see the budget for the TV series was relatively
[End of page missing here]
...a few surprises.
"Yes, indeed. Have you noticed the double tracks? We originally tried to do four tracks together on the 'Previous' album then we tried to do all three.
"We wanted simultaneous grooves, but it didn't work - they kept running into each other, and eventually you'd get a breakthrough effect, and you'd get all the tracks at once.
"When we tried it before, we had the disc cutters in London in despair. Apparently the new cutting machines are too sophisticated, and they needed an old Scully machine, which has a manually operated pitch.
"EMI thought they had an old one in the attic, but eventually George Peckham cut it for us."
But what of the future of Python? Will this great institution stay together, or will they be struck down by official negligence, rumblings of discontent or boiling internal strife and feuding?
"Oh, I think we're falling apart all right. The rot is definitely setting in. Back-biting squabbles!...
"No - it would be a shame if we didn't stay together. There is a balancing factor of internal criticism within the group which helps really.
"In a way there is a limitation in us working as a group in that it is
[Page cuts off here]
RECORDS
"Monty Python's Flying Circus" (BBC).
"Another Monty Python Record" (Charisma).
"Monty Python's Previous Record" (Charisma).
"The Monty Python Matching Tie And Handkerchief" (Charisma).
BOOKS
"Monty Python's Big Red Book" (Methuen).
"Brand New Monty Python 'Bok'" (Methuen).
EQUIPMENT
Half a dozen stuffed parrots.
A cage.
One box of wigs.
Plastic flowers.
Breakable flowers.
A moped.
Plimsolls for all.
A large pair of tights - the most grotesque in the world.
42 moustaches.
Five dead ducks.
One nine foot polystyrene hammer.
A sewing machine.
Back projection unit and screens.
Eric Idle.
An audience.
300 naked road managers.
Chauffeurs with large physiques who take them to places they do not want to go.
Roger or Brian Ferry, the singing stage manager.
A pantomime horse.
A pantomime camel.
Several false heads.
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© 1973 various authors | |
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