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Broadcast, B2 supplement, 6th July 2001, page 4-5
[Under a large production diary by the director
of Terry Jones' 'Hidden History']
CRAFT CLASSICS
Monty Python's Flying Circus producer and director Ian MacNaughton on cult comedy
In 1969 producer Barry Took collected five unknown guys from Oxford and Cambridge and suggested that the BBC contract them. He clearly saw potential in their ideas. The BBC agreed and I was asked to produce as the actors liked Spike Milligan's Q5, which I had done. They were actually worried that Milligan had done what they wanted to do first.
We were given 13 programmes for the first series, which was fortunate as it took awhile to get off the ground. We had no money for music so we had to get something 'out of copyright' and record it. We found an old piece for brass band called Liberty Bell, which suited animator Terry Gilliam.
They used to write in pairs � Michael Palin and Terry Jones as one group and then John Cleese and Graham Chapman together. Eric Idle wrote by himself. Then at meetings they would read each other's stuff and everyone would come up with ad-libs. There were many ideas spawned during the meetings, they all became hybrids. We wanted to be funny � not satirical � and to make people laugh. We did not want something that went on for four minutes then had the tag at the end, we wanted to get laughs from the first minute.
We were allowed three minutes' filming per programme � the rest was animation or shot in front of a studio audience. We never added a single laugh.
The first seven episodes were a qualified success, with ratings starting at around 2.5 million before hitting 4 million to 5 million by the end. The BBC was pretty happy. The ratings were particularly good when you consider the show went out at different times each week � late Friday on BBC 2 and sometimes early on Saturday morning.
There were no great technical challenges but Terry Gilliam's animation was pretty special. We had none of the digital computerised stuff of today, we used the BBC animation camera, which we had to hire at £8 an hour. We also had to pay for lights, costumes, extras etc. My budget was about £3,000 per episode, and the actors/writers had to be paid out of that. Having five comedians working together in harmony had seldom been done before. They were good comic actors, and I have always believed that a good sketch is drama with laughs and should be shot properly.
We tried anything and everything. We filmed in interesting and different locations, such as Scotland, Bradford, and the Channel Islands, we wanted to get away from the usual. Crucially, it was made before the whole political correctness thing, which I think has helped to destroy half the comedy in English � everyone is so frightened about what they can say now. |
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