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How Monty Python Worked: SYSK Live from LA Podfest · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know Roundhouse stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
0:14
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuff Bryant and Jerry's not here, but we
0:18
Speaker 1: are here, live and beautiful Los Angeles, California for the
0:22
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Podcast Festivals. Very nice. This crowd is massive.
0:43
Speaker 1: Sounds massive. Yeah, you were asking for it too. I
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Speaker 1: find that when you turn and point at microphone and
0:49
Speaker 1: just drive some crazy, they make noise. It's good old trick.
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Speaker 1: Walter Cronkite thought us that it's first person I could
1:00
Speaker 1: think of, the first guy with the microphone that came
1:04
Speaker 1: to mine. So how do you feel, a man? You're
1:07
Speaker 1: feeling good. I'm good and a little sleepy. Uh, but
1:10
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to be honest. I'm supposed to. I
1:12
Speaker 1: feel great in charge, right, I'm a little sleepy. So
1:16
Speaker 1: if I'm not funny, that's why we've got the We
1:20
Speaker 1: we have a thing, took and I have a thing
1:22
Speaker 1: literally now because we've encountered so many of them, of
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Speaker 1: these kind of table cloths that are like pantyhose and
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Speaker 1: to get anywhere in the microphone, right, yeah, but made
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Speaker 1: of like nylons, right, so you have to be like
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Speaker 1: right up on it and it has this weird kind
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Speaker 1: of give, but putting kind of feels a little like sexy.
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Speaker 1: So if we're like sitting here during the show, it's weird.
1:49
Speaker 1: It's it's this thing. I'm all over the place emotionally
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Speaker 1: right now, they're in a tailspin. You're ready, yeah, I'm ready.
1:57
Speaker 1: So um, we're talking today about Monty Python, right, and
2:00
Speaker 1: if you'll you'll go back with us. We're gonna head
2:03
Speaker 1: back to swing in London in nineteen where a group
2:09
Speaker 1: of English boys got together and started a little television
2:13
Speaker 1: show called How to Irritate People? And it was actually
2:16
Speaker 1: a television special and it was hosted by a guy
2:19
Speaker 1: named John Cleese, Yeah, written by a guy named John
2:22
Speaker 1: Cleese and a dude named Graham Chapman and um also
2:26
Speaker 1: starring a guy named Michael Palin. And those were the
2:29
Speaker 1: only three members of what would become Monty Python today.
2:33
Speaker 1: Spoil it already, but it was written by Clice and
2:37
Speaker 1: Chapman and the sort of the goal here was to
2:39
Speaker 1: do a special and to get Americans primed for this
2:42
Speaker 1: thing called British humor and sell it to American audiences,
2:46
Speaker 1: but um, it's sort of failed in that respect. It
2:49
Speaker 1: didn't generate a lot of interest among American Uh, I
2:53
Speaker 1: guess TV executives. Sure, yeah, well it was it was
2:57
Speaker 1: funny ish, you know. Um, it just wasn't It wasn't
3:01
Speaker 1: quite Monty Python. But you could see the seeds in it, right.
3:04
Speaker 1: It was starting to grow from this and about a
3:07
Speaker 1: year later, Um, the BBC went to John Cleese and said, hey,
3:10
Speaker 1: we like what you did with How to Irritate People?
3:12
Speaker 1: Do you want your own show? And cliceaid, sure, I'd
3:15
Speaker 1: love to have a show, but I don't want to
3:17
Speaker 1: be the star. I want to be part of an ensemble.
3:20
Speaker 1: And the BBC said, go put your team together. So uh,
3:24
Speaker 1: he spoken to his wristwatch and said Python assemble. And
3:29
Speaker 1: they all came from different corners of the earth and
3:32
Speaker 1: came together and formed a giant robot with a sword,
3:37
Speaker 1: the first time Monty Python ever came together. That would
3:40
Speaker 1: be amazing. So he said, all right, I have this friend,
3:43
Speaker 1: Graham Chapman. We went to Cambridge together. He's my writing partner.
3:46
Speaker 1: He's definitely in and we just worked with this guy
3:48
Speaker 1: Michael Palin. He's really funny. So he should be in.
3:51
Speaker 1: But he was doing a show called Uh, Do Not
3:54
Speaker 1: Adjust Your Set. It was a kid show and uh
3:57
Speaker 1: Clice was a fan of that and he said, well,
3:59
Speaker 1: that's wonderful. We would love you to come on. He says, well,
4:02
Speaker 1: I had these other guys on the show I really
4:04
Speaker 1: like working with. So if you want me, you have
4:07
Speaker 1: to take this Welshman named Terry Jones, and uh, this
4:10
Speaker 1: other guy named Eric Idle, and this other weird looking
4:14
Speaker 1: American that's this weird looking, weird, weird all around period
4:18
Speaker 1: named Terry Gilliam. And Clice was game. He said, fine,
4:21
Speaker 1: let's just get all of us together. And then there
4:24
Speaker 1: were six so they came together and Terry Gilliam was
4:29
Speaker 1: definitely the odd man out here was from Minnesota. Um.
4:32
Speaker 1: The other five had gone to what's called um Oxbridge,
4:37
Speaker 1: right Oxford and Cambridge, Yeah, um, where they kind of
4:41
Speaker 1: have like a lockdown on TV writing in the UK.
4:44
Speaker 1: So if you went to Cambridge where you went to Oxford,
4:47
Speaker 1: and you want to get into TV writing, especially TV
4:49
Speaker 1: comedy writing, um, that's a pretty good place to start out. Yeah.
4:53
Speaker 1: Like here in America, it's Rutgers right right, yeah, yeah,
5:00
Speaker 1: or San Jose State I can't ever always get those
5:03
Speaker 1: two confused. Um. No, of course it's Harvard, everyone knows that. Um.
5:08
Speaker 1: But yeah, over there it's Cambridge and Oxford. And it
5:11
Speaker 1: turns out if you go to one of those schools,
5:12
Speaker 1: you're probably a pretty smart, clever person, which is a
5:15
Speaker 1: good start if you want to be the world's greatest
5:17
Speaker 1: comedy troup of all time. In Chuck's opinion, is that
5:22
Speaker 1: all right? Say that? I think you can share your
5:24
Speaker 1: opinion on this one. We probably won't get any angry
5:27
Speaker 1: listening mail on that. How could you say that you
5:29
Speaker 1: should help homeless people? How dare you say that? But
5:32
Speaker 1: I do agree, Monty Python is pretty great. You should
5:35
Speaker 1: probably explain that. Yes, we did it. Well. We did
5:39
Speaker 1: an episode on homelessness, and we released it around Thanksgiving
5:44
Speaker 1: or Christmas to really kind of like sticking in people's heart, right. Yeah,
5:48
Speaker 1: our position was that you should help homeless people. Yeah,
5:51
Speaker 1: I mean we took a stance on that. Yeah, and
5:54
Speaker 1: we got probably more angry listener mail than we've gotten
5:57
Speaker 1: for any other episode we've ever released, pretty much about
6:01
Speaker 1: like parting like homeless people can all go to hell?
6:04
Speaker 1: You know, you know you shouldn't be telling people they
6:05
Speaker 1: should give them money or all sorts of stuff. They
6:08
Speaker 1: made decisions. It led to that, right, I think out
6:10
Speaker 1: what's coming to so, but but everyone agrees Monty Python
6:16
Speaker 1: is great. That was the overall point. So they were
6:21
Speaker 1: divided up into sort of naturally divided into writing teams
6:25
Speaker 1: with them. They already had cles and Chapman who had
6:27
Speaker 1: known each other, and Michael Palin and Terry Jones worked together.
6:31
Speaker 1: Eric Idyl was the lone wolf. He wrote by himself,
6:34
Speaker 1: and Terry Gilliam was has always been in his own
6:37
Speaker 1: world doing his animation, so he was sort of in
6:40
Speaker 1: his own space as well. So they were getting primed
6:43
Speaker 1: and ready in the BBC said all right, we'll give
6:45
Speaker 1: you a run of thirteen half hour episodes and um
6:49
Speaker 1: and by the way, I've spent the past two weeks
6:52
Speaker 1: non stop watching Flying Circuits. It's been amazing. It's like
6:56
Speaker 1: when your job is to sit around and watch Monty
6:58
Speaker 1: Python and then come and talk about it live, you're
7:01
Speaker 1: you're doing pretty well in life. So very lucky guy.
7:05
Speaker 1: And UM. So they had to come up with a name,
7:07
Speaker 1: and um Flying Circus was kind of always part of it,
7:11
Speaker 1: and the BBC, as legend goes, supposedly even said, guys,
7:15
Speaker 1: we've already printed, except they said it with a cool accent.
7:18
Speaker 1: Um we printed flying circus already, So you can't change
7:22
Speaker 1: that part. But you need to, you know, if you
7:24
Speaker 1: have a front to that didn't think of it quick
7:27
Speaker 1: and uh, I think Clice said what about a python,
7:31
Speaker 1: like something kind of slimy and weird. So they said python.
7:35
Speaker 1: And then apparently Monty Monty is just like sort of
7:38
Speaker 1: an English like guy in the pub would be Monty
7:41
Speaker 1: just sort of a tired English thing like like Todd
7:44
Speaker 1: here in America. So Monty Python was born. They liked
7:47
Speaker 1: the ring of it. It literally means nothing. There's no
7:50
Speaker 1: significance other than they just thought it sounded cool. Yeah,
7:53
Speaker 1: and they had other other ideas besides um, Monty Python's
7:56
Speaker 1: flying circus. First two they had a horse, a spoon
7:59
Speaker 1: in a bass in It's pretty funny owl stretching time.
8:06
Speaker 1: I love that, the toad elevating moment, bum wackets, buzzard, stubble,
8:13
Speaker 1: and boot. I think I think Monty Python's Flying Circus
8:17
Speaker 1: is the best of the bunch. Well, and then they
8:19
Speaker 1: had a couple of things before Flying Circus, even eat
8:21
Speaker 1: L Moist's flying circus, right, and Will Will Stranglers flying Circus,
8:27
Speaker 1: which that's pretty good too. Yeah, but that sounds too legit,
8:31
Speaker 1: like everyone would be like, who's Will strangling? It Will Strangling, right,
8:35
Speaker 1: But then you know, once you know it is Monty Python,
8:37
Speaker 1: you can't imagine anything else, right. It's like a partial
8:40
Speaker 1: was called I don't know the explainer raters. It's actually
8:47
Speaker 1: not bad. Drop that down. Uh sorry, I got lost
8:56
Speaker 1: with the explain writers. I went to a place. So
8:59
Speaker 1: you're like, so, if you ever want to get confused,
9:03
Speaker 1: research British television because they don't call season seasons, they
9:07
Speaker 1: call him series. Right. So Monty Python had their first
9:10
Speaker 1: series and then the next year they had their second series,
9:12
Speaker 1: and I'm like, what is this person talking about? And
9:15
Speaker 1: then I finally looked it up after like a couple
9:17
Speaker 1: of days. Did you really not know that until recently? Okay? Yeah,
9:21
Speaker 1: And I'm like I knew from anew from context what
9:24
Speaker 1: they were talking about, but it was kind of confusing
9:26
Speaker 1: because by the time they get to the fourth series
9:27
Speaker 1: actually changed the name to just That's what got me sure?
9:32
Speaker 1: So they so they had they actually had four seasons,
9:36
Speaker 1: and the first season it was pretty much what you
9:38
Speaker 1: would expect, right, this is really really brand new, cutting
9:42
Speaker 1: edge stuff. And they actually we're not the first to
9:45
Speaker 1: really kind of experiment with sketch comedy. There was another show,
9:49
Speaker 1: um called Q five that was done by a guy
9:51
Speaker 1: named Spike Milligan who's like this legendary radio surreal comedic genius, right,
9:58
Speaker 1: and um, they they follow on the footsteps of of
10:01
Speaker 1: Q five, which had started just a few years before
10:03
Speaker 1: Flying Circus. But these guys like took it to a
10:05
Speaker 1: whole other level and the BBC had no idea what
10:08
Speaker 1: they had on their hands, so they would shuffle it
10:11
Speaker 1: around late at night. Some some weeks they would just
10:14
Speaker 1: like not show it at all. Some entire regions of
10:17
Speaker 1: the UK didn't receive it. Um, it was just treated
10:20
Speaker 1: pretty pretty poorly. Yeah, and the deal with Q five.
10:23
Speaker 1: You can go watch some of this on YouTube. It's
10:25
Speaker 1: really good. And actually the Pythons were kind of upset
10:27
Speaker 1: because when they saw Q five they're like, well, man,
10:30
Speaker 1: it's it's being done. Like that's what we wanted to do.
10:33
Speaker 1: We wanted to take comedy and give people something unexpected
10:37
Speaker 1: and turn it on its ear and subvert it and
10:40
Speaker 1: basically be weird and so I went and looked up
10:42
Speaker 1: a little bit of Q five and the one skit
10:45
Speaker 1: that I saw was literally like fifteen seconds long, but
10:48
Speaker 1: it gives you a really good idea of what Spike
10:50
Speaker 1: Milligan was doing. And it just opens on a shot
10:53
Speaker 1: of a man with a a Mona Lisa paint by numbers,
10:57
Speaker 1: so half of it is finished, half of it has
10:59
Speaker 1: the big areas with the little numbers in there, and
11:02
Speaker 1: I think, well, that's that's funny, that's the joke. And
11:05
Speaker 1: so you know, the guy goes to paint and he
11:08
Speaker 1: puts on the canvas. He paints another white section and
11:11
Speaker 1: writes a number. I was like, it got me. I
11:15
Speaker 1: was like, man, I didn't see it coming. So that's
11:19
Speaker 1: what Spike Milligan was doing. And that's what Python was
11:21
Speaker 1: kind of shooting for, was just to do something that
11:23
Speaker 1: people hadn't seen. Yeah, So even though they were not
11:27
Speaker 1: being treated well, there wasn't a lot of marketing or
11:30
Speaker 1: pr or whatever behind it. Um it's still kind of
11:33
Speaker 1: developed a bit of a cult following, like word of
11:36
Speaker 1: mouth following UM among I would guess people taking acid
11:41
Speaker 1: in the sixties in London, you know, yeah, it was
11:43
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, it was in color, which was kind
11:45
Speaker 1: of a different thing. That a deal. Yeah, especially when
11:48
Speaker 1: you think about Terry Gilliams animations. You know, like to
11:52
Speaker 1: see that in black and white, it's still be great,
11:53
Speaker 1: but to see it in color late at night on
11:55
Speaker 1: acid must have been something else. Sure. Uh so if
11:59
Speaker 1: he watched Flying Circus, I mean, did anyone ever watch
12:02
Speaker 1: these episodes at all? They're all on YouTube. I encourage you,
12:07
Speaker 1: Like they have all fifty I think episodes on YouTube. Uh,
12:13
Speaker 1: and it's it's really amazing, Like when you when you
12:15
Speaker 1: watch it, you see the seeds of everything from like
12:18
Speaker 1: Mr Show, uh too, Tenacious D, Two Kids in the Hall, Uh,
12:22
Speaker 1: Like Children's Hospital would not be a TV show if
12:25
Speaker 1: it wasn't for Monty Python and Flying Circus, like this
12:28
Speaker 1: sort of absurdist silliness. Uh. Sometimes they'd make a statement,
12:32
Speaker 1: sometimes it was physical comedy, sometimes it was clever wordplay.
12:37
Speaker 1: It was really all over the map with what they
12:39
Speaker 1: were doing. Um and as we'll see, they really kind
12:44
Speaker 1: of permeated pop culture, as everybody knows. But like a
12:48
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff was just like a one off thing,
12:50
Speaker 1: like the Spanish Inquisition. Everybody knows the Spanish Inquisition right now,
12:55
Speaker 1: and Expects the Spanish Inquisition um and they were on
12:59
Speaker 1: one episode that just took place on one episode in
13:02
Speaker 1: season two, and yet it's like basically one of the
13:05
Speaker 1: backbones of like comedy pop culture. And and that's a
13:08
Speaker 1: really good point about um Monty Python, that they were
13:13
Speaker 1: just packing episodes with great idea after a great idea
13:17
Speaker 1: and like basically zero filler. And that was definitely part
13:20
Speaker 1: of one of the reasons why they were the seeds
13:23
Speaker 1: that grew all of these other things too. Yeah, and
13:25
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why they're often called the Beatles
13:28
Speaker 1: of comedy because they weren't together that long, but their
13:31
Speaker 1: ratio of like great material to stuff and you know,
13:34
Speaker 1: you watch I guess like Saturday Night Live is probably
13:37
Speaker 1: the standard in the United States for years, and half
13:41
Speaker 1: of those sketches each week aren't great. You know, Like,
13:44
Speaker 1: let's be honest, that's what sketch comedy is. It's like
13:47
Speaker 1: a risk. You're throwing it out there. Sometimes it works,
13:49
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. But when you look at Flying Circus
13:52
Speaker 1: and like the Beatles, like their ratio of great, great
13:55
Speaker 1: stuff to things that didn't quite work was just astounding.
13:58
Speaker 1: It was amazing. Yea. So one of the other hallmarks
14:04
Speaker 1: of Monty pytheline is that they played almost every character
14:07
Speaker 1: amongst themselves. Terry Gilliam played the fewest characters because most
14:11
Speaker 1: of the time he was um off doing animations that
14:15
Speaker 1: ended up proving like really important to to every episode
14:19
Speaker 1: and then the show overall. Um So he usually played
14:23
Speaker 1: the least, but he also played like the some of
14:25
Speaker 1: the most memorable ones, usually the just the dirtiest ones,
14:28
Speaker 1: like the character in the back. You're like, what's wrong
14:31
Speaker 1: with that guy? That was Terry Gillian. Yeah, And he
14:34
Speaker 1: felt very much like out of his world. He was
14:36
Speaker 1: in all of the other guys. You know, he knew
14:39
Speaker 1: he was like, you know, I'm nowhere near you, dude,
14:40
Speaker 1: So I'll do my weird animations. And if you need
14:43
Speaker 1: like a crazy leper in an episode, I'm your guy.
14:47
Speaker 1: I'm the leper um. Michael Palin is probably my favorite,
14:52
Speaker 1: but that's kind of like low hanging fruit to say
14:54
Speaker 1: Michael Palin's your favorite Python because he was pretty much
14:58
Speaker 1: everyone agrees that he was probably the best after on
15:00
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah, he was. He was probably the most
15:02
Speaker 1: broad and accessible comedian with like raw comedic talents and well,
15:08
Speaker 1: who did I say last week, Graham Chapman, what's your favorite? Yeah,
15:12
Speaker 1: I think I've changed my mind. And when you watch
15:14
Speaker 1: enough Monty Python, and I think that's kind of the
15:17
Speaker 1: point that you're going to get through this whole thing.
15:19
Speaker 1: There's an all star like in every episode, in every sketch,
15:23
Speaker 1: and you kind of end up changing your mind a lot.
15:25
Speaker 1: But I'm on Eric Idol right now, big yeah, yeah,
15:29
Speaker 1: he's people like yeah, man, he was good. Uh still
15:35
Speaker 1: is so. Um. They're very famous for playing, like you said,
15:38
Speaker 1: all the characters playing the women. Uh. Some of the
15:40
Speaker 1: best laughs you will get watching Flying Circus or when
15:43
Speaker 1: Terry Jones plays like the great correctly English ladies like
15:47
Speaker 1: Brian's mom. Yeah yeah, Life of Brian. Did you finally
15:50
Speaker 1: watch it? I did. I watched it again this morning.
15:53
Speaker 1: I woke up at like seven thirty and watch Life
15:55
Speaker 1: of Brian. Right, I can pay for this, Yeah, I
16:01
Speaker 1: didn't have that moment. Actually ordered room service was wonderful.
16:07
Speaker 1: So they all kind of fell into their specialties a
16:09
Speaker 1: bit though, like Terry Jones would um, he could play
16:12
Speaker 1: like the middle class gentleman and the great you know,
16:14
Speaker 1: like old English bag lady type. Uh. Cleese and Chapman
16:17
Speaker 1: were the tallest. John Cleese was six five, Graham Chapman
16:20
Speaker 1: was six too, So they often played like authority figures
16:23
Speaker 1: or barristers or policeman or you know, sort of the toughs.
16:27
Speaker 1: They're a little more imposing. Palin could do anything he
16:30
Speaker 1: wanted at any time. He was probably the most versatile.
16:33
Speaker 1: And then Eric Idol he did the feminine ladies really well.
16:36
Speaker 1: And um, salesman, he was good at salesman. Yeah, he
16:40
Speaker 1: was for me that when it comes to like word play,
16:42
Speaker 1: he was kind of the best. But they all had
16:45
Speaker 1: their strengths. And and who was it Gilliam that said
16:47
Speaker 1: they were like a molecule. Yeah, they fit together like
16:50
Speaker 1: a molecule, like if you if you take anyone and
16:54
Speaker 1: and as we'll see, actually the couple have been taken
16:57
Speaker 1: from the group here there over time. Um, it's just
17:01
Speaker 1: not the same. It's it just doesn't quite work. And
17:04
Speaker 1: it's not because there was a star or a leader.
17:07
Speaker 1: And that's probably one of the strengths of Monty Python
17:09
Speaker 1: is there wasn't a star or a leader. It was
17:11
Speaker 1: just this random assemblage of guys, including an animator like
17:15
Speaker 1: who would have guessed, like, yes, we we've got to
17:17
Speaker 1: have the animator to um that came together to formed
17:21
Speaker 1: this thing that had never been seen before and really
17:23
Speaker 1: hasn't been seen since. Yeah, so it um it ran.
17:27
Speaker 1: The Flying Circus ran for four seasons only. Uh Clice
17:31
Speaker 1: left after season three, and like we said, the fourth
17:34
Speaker 1: season was just called Monty Python. I think it only
17:36
Speaker 1: had about half a dozen episodes. And for Python fans,
17:40
Speaker 1: everyone kind of says, like, yeah, that fourth season, you
17:42
Speaker 1: take clease away. It's just not the same. But it
17:44
Speaker 1: didn't hit in America until later thanks to syndication, and
17:49
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four, Uh in Dallas, Texas, of all places,
17:53
Speaker 1: on K E p A Is anyone from Dallas, No
18:00
Speaker 1: say K E p A beat away with it? Uh,
18:04
Speaker 1: That's where debuted in the United States, and then it
18:06
Speaker 1: got picked up all over the country here and there.
18:08
Speaker 1: I remember on Georgia on GPTV when I was a kid,
18:12
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, ten eleven years old, and
18:14
Speaker 1: I was exposed to British comedy by watching Binny Hill
18:17
Speaker 1: in Flying Circus, and then later on I got into
18:20
Speaker 1: other things like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder and all that
18:23
Speaker 1: good stuff. But um, yeah, it was all of a sudden,
18:26
Speaker 1: Americans caught on, and so they said, well, we should
18:29
Speaker 1: make movies then and Americans caught on, you said, nineteen seventy, right, Yeah,
18:33
Speaker 1: that was the last year that they had a TV show.
18:36
Speaker 1: They've been trying to like crack the American market for
18:39
Speaker 1: years and it just wasn't happening, and they've basically given
18:42
Speaker 1: up hope. And then once it started to catch on
18:44
Speaker 1: an American they already had a pretty good cult following
18:47
Speaker 1: in the UK. Um. Once that American component came in,
18:50
Speaker 1: they were like, yeah, we should, we should keep doing this.
18:53
Speaker 1: Let's try a movie. They already had one movie under
18:55
Speaker 1: their belt. Um, it was called it in Now for
18:57
Speaker 1: something completely different, right, yeah, it was. It was a weird.
19:00
Speaker 1: What they did was they took um literally took sketches
19:03
Speaker 1: that they had already done in front of the live
19:05
Speaker 1: studio audience for Flying Circus. They recreated those sketches on
19:09
Speaker 1: a studio stage. Um, and it was a sketch movie.
19:12
Speaker 1: It was like Kentucky Fried movie or something like that.
19:15
Speaker 1: And um, you know, it didn't work so great. I
19:18
Speaker 1: think their best movies were the ones where they actually
19:21
Speaker 1: had a story to the thing. Um, well, we'll get
19:24
Speaker 1: to the movies. Everyone knows what they are. Sure it
19:26
Speaker 1: didn't do very well. No, it wasn't a huge hit.
19:28
Speaker 1: And it was made again for America. Would be like, hey, America, Condie,
19:32
Speaker 1: just check this out. So it was yet another reason
19:34
Speaker 1: they'd kind of given up on America. But so America
19:37
Speaker 1: comes into the full and they're like, yes, let's try
19:39
Speaker 1: to make a movie. Yeah, And Clice had left, but
19:42
Speaker 1: he was obviously in the movie, so he didn't leave bitterly.
19:45
Speaker 1: He said that he was um go and read his
19:47
Speaker 1: quote here. He said that he wanted to be a
19:49
Speaker 1: part of the group, but he didn't want to be
19:51
Speaker 1: married to them because that's what I felt like. I
19:53
Speaker 1: began to lose any kind of control over my life
19:56
Speaker 1: and I was not forceful enough and saying no. And
19:59
Speaker 1: he also had a couple of things he wasn't wild
20:00
Speaker 1: about in the show, and he felt like he wasn't
20:03
Speaker 1: being listened to. So he ended up leaving, but was
20:06
Speaker 1: still like friends with the guys and wanted to do
20:08
Speaker 1: the movies for sure. Sure. He also um said that
20:11
Speaker 1: he was the one who had to work with Graham
20:14
Speaker 1: Chapman during um Graham Chapman's alcoholic phase. He said that, Um,
20:19
Speaker 1: he was writing with Graham Chapman. Um, who I didn't
20:22
Speaker 1: know this. He was um uh, he was gay and
20:25
Speaker 1: he was out and this is like nineteen sixty nine,
20:27
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies hadn't been very long before that the
20:30
Speaker 1: UK had chemically castrated Alan touring for being gay and
20:34
Speaker 1: this guy is out and and for gay rights. Even
20:37
Speaker 1: actually Graham Chapman that was part of this philosophy. He
20:40
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, let's let's put it right
20:42
Speaker 1: in their faces and see what they think about it. Yeah, exactly. Um.
20:46
Speaker 1: So Clice is like he Graham Chapman was. He had
20:50
Speaker 1: a huge, huge problem with alcohol. Um uh during the
20:54
Speaker 1: time that they were making Monty pipeine and and Clice
20:56
Speaker 1: was the one who had to work with them because
20:58
Speaker 1: they were buds from the king Ambridge days. Um. And
21:01
Speaker 1: he said that, combined with the group not listening to
21:04
Speaker 1: him and feeling like they were, it was taking over
21:07
Speaker 1: his life. He's like, come out. So after the third
21:09
Speaker 1: season Clice left, but that was about the time when um,
21:14
Speaker 1: they decided that they were going to go try to
21:16
Speaker 1: make um the Holy Grail, that's right on the Holy Grail. Yeah.
21:20
Speaker 1: Uh anyone ever seen that little movie. I think joke
21:27
Speaker 1: for joke, like Blazing Saddles and Holy Grail are in
21:31
Speaker 1: like an eternal race to see, like a pound for
21:34
Speaker 1: pound with the funniest movie of all times in my opinion.
21:38
Speaker 1: So you like Holy Grail more than Life of Brian. Yeah,
21:41
Speaker 1: same here. I mean I love Life of Brian, but
21:44
Speaker 1: just the sheer amount of laughs and jokes and Holy
21:46
Speaker 1: Grail is astounding. It's astounding. So they had a tiny
21:50
Speaker 1: little budget for Holy Grail. They you know, didn't have
21:53
Speaker 1: money being thrown their way. And uh, Terry Jones and
21:56
Speaker 1: Terry Gilliam co directed, which is a little weird, and
21:59
Speaker 1: Terry owns later would say that I think like a
22:01
Speaker 1: kind of annoyed Gilliam. So we ended up alternating days
22:05
Speaker 1: like Monday, Terry Jones would direct Tuesday, Terry Gilliam would direct,
22:09
Speaker 1: sort of a weird way to go about things as terrible,
22:11
Speaker 1: terrible way, but direct the movement. Uh. And they filmed
22:14
Speaker 1: in Scotland, and uh it was just a problematic shoot
22:17
Speaker 1: to the weather in Scotland. If you've ever been there
22:20
Speaker 1: is uh, it's just like it is here. It's wonderful. Um,
22:24
Speaker 1: it was very much a hardship shooting in Scotland. Uh,
22:27
Speaker 1: they had a bunch of problems with the budget. They
22:29
Speaker 1: didn't have what they needed, no, but but that led
22:32
Speaker 1: to some pretty awesome jokes. Yeah, go ahead. So the
22:37
Speaker 1: idea of um King Arthur riding around on an invisible
22:40
Speaker 1: horse while his his squire follows him clapping together coconuts,
22:45
Speaker 1: that was because they didn't have any money for horses
22:47
Speaker 1: for the movie, so they were forced to come up
22:49
Speaker 1: with this awesome joke, which I mean, it's funny when
22:52
Speaker 1: you first see it, and then it's funny when you're
22:54
Speaker 1: like sitting there eating spaghetti two days later and you
22:57
Speaker 1: like think about how nuts that would be in real life,
23:01
Speaker 1: you know. But that came out of these budget constraints
23:04
Speaker 1: that they had. Uh. They were also had trouble kind
23:07
Speaker 1: of you know, raising money and I think finishing funds.
23:10
Speaker 1: So there they had some very famous bands invest in
23:14
Speaker 1: the movie. George Harrison had always been a champion. He
23:17
Speaker 1: later would invest He actually he created a production company
23:20
Speaker 1: to make Life of Brian but Um for Holy Grail,
23:24
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin, Pink Fleet, Right, led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd in
23:30
Speaker 1: Genesis all invested twenty thousand. But why is Genesis getting
23:34
Speaker 1: a laugh? This is like Peter Gabriel, Genesis's not invisible touch. Hey, hey, hey,
23:41
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with Phil Collins Genesis. Man, nothing wrong. Sorry,
23:48
Speaker 1: I can have you thrown out. I'm up fine stage.
23:53
Speaker 1: I knew you were gonna say that. I was like,
23:55
Speaker 1: I bet I've offended Josh with that. It's it's I
23:58
Speaker 1: think he gets a bad rap. Unfairly sure he does. Well,
24:01
Speaker 1: they were He's not like Sammy Hagar. Well, you want
24:04
Speaker 1: to know something funny, My wife Emily loves Van Hagar
24:07
Speaker 1: more than David Lee, rothan Haleen and she's proud of it.
24:11
Speaker 1: She's like, oh, man, put on that song right now.
24:15
Speaker 1: There's some my world issues and like the world's not
24:18
Speaker 1: right and uh yeah. And I was like, or we
24:21
Speaker 1: could I hear Janet Varney laughing in the background. That's
24:27
Speaker 1: laugh in the world. Uh yeah. So anyway, Van Hagar
24:30
Speaker 1: and oh never mind starring Phil Collins. I think that's
24:35
Speaker 1: where we left off. That's right. It was Phil Collins
24:38
Speaker 1: who got everybody else to invest probably, so that's a
24:43
Speaker 1: made up fact. Uh. In the movie, Michael Palin plays
24:49
Speaker 1: the most roles. Uh. He twel He plays twelve different characters.
24:52
Speaker 1: He played Sir Galahad played the soldier who argues about swallows.
24:57
Speaker 1: Remember that great scene. He plays Dennis the Peasant. He
25:01
Speaker 1: plays a mud villager singing camel at night, the right
25:05
Speaker 1: head of the Three Headed Night, Uh, the King of
25:07
Speaker 1: the Swamp Castle, a wedding guest at the Swamp Castle,
25:10
Speaker 1: Brother Maynard's assistants Brother Maynard Uh. He was the main
25:15
Speaker 1: knight who says me and he played one of the
25:19
Speaker 1: French taunting knights. Uh. Terry Gilliam played the I'm sorry.
25:24
Speaker 1: Graham Chapman actually played the fewest because he was King Arthur,
25:27
Speaker 1: and as in Life of Brian, they didn't want to
25:29
Speaker 1: overuse him as the league character, so he played King Arthur,
25:32
Speaker 1: the voice of God, the Hiccup, and guard in the
25:35
Speaker 1: middle head of the Three Headed Night. So that's Holy
26:02
Speaker 1: Grail their next movie from then from this point forward,
26:05
Speaker 1: Holy Grail is just like a hit, right everybody exactly. UM.
26:11
Speaker 1: So they're like, okay, we'll go off and do our
26:14
Speaker 1: own things because one of the one of the things
26:16
Speaker 1: that characterized these guys as individuals was they always had
26:19
Speaker 1: their own work and it didn't necessarily have anything to
26:23
Speaker 1: do with comedy. Like Eric Idel. All he does is
26:26
Speaker 1: comedic acting. But he's got his own stuff too. Um.
26:29
Speaker 1: Michael Palin got into making travel documentaries for the BBC.
26:34
Speaker 1: That was his thing. Um. Terry Jones opened a brewery,
26:38
Speaker 1: Penrose Brewery and Hertfordshire, which I'm saying how it's spelled
26:44
Speaker 1: so in in the UK it's it's probably like um
26:48
Speaker 1: chatting Ham or something that's so uh. And then John
26:54
Speaker 1: Kleete strangely formed a company that created UM training videos
26:59
Speaker 1: for for BIS. This well, not funny ones from what
27:02
Speaker 1: I understand either was he in those I don't know.
27:06
Speaker 1: I don't know way if he was in those that
27:07
Speaker 1: they weren't funny, even if he was trying to be,
27:10
Speaker 1: He's like, please stop laughing. Well, I'd love to see.
27:13
Speaker 1: This is very serious. It's about industrial safety, the emergency
27:17
Speaker 1: exits all behind and across like. Well, he was kind
27:21
Speaker 1: of deadpan like that. That was sort of his thing.
27:23
Speaker 1: Whether he liked it or not, he was funny. Uh.
27:26
Speaker 1: And of course that's much later their second I guess,
27:29
Speaker 1: their third movie. Their second narrative film in nine was
27:32
Speaker 1: the Life of Brian, which I watched this morning. Uh.
27:35
Speaker 1: To me, Terry Jones kind of steals that movie is
27:38
Speaker 1: Brian's mother. Every scene he is in he just walks
27:41
Speaker 1: away with uh. And that movie came about from a
27:45
Speaker 1: press conference from Holy Grail. People were asking like, what's
27:48
Speaker 1: your next thing gonna be? What's your next movie? And
27:50
Speaker 1: as a joke, Eric Idle said, Jesus Christ lust for
27:53
Speaker 1: Glory and that sort of got the seeds started that
27:57
Speaker 1: they should maybe go to biblical times since they medieval times.
28:01
Speaker 1: So when they started writing this movie, Um Jesus actually
28:06
Speaker 1: became a smaller and smaller and smaller figure character I
28:09
Speaker 1: should say, in the movie Um, and it became about Brian,
28:13
Speaker 1: this guy who's mistaken for the Messiah the same time.
28:16
Speaker 1: He's born on the same day as Jesus Um. But
28:19
Speaker 1: he's most decidedly not the Messiah. You haven't seen. It's
28:22
Speaker 1: definitely worth seeing. It's still hilarious. Is just Holy Gray
28:25
Speaker 1: old life of Brian in my opinion, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
28:30
Speaker 1: he's he's Yeah, something more to be said about it.
28:37
Speaker 1: So because it was about Um Jesus, even though it
28:41
Speaker 1: wasn't at all about Jesus Um, of course it got
28:43
Speaker 1: banned in several places by people who hadn't even seen
28:46
Speaker 1: the movie, had no idea really what it was about.
28:48
Speaker 1: That's what we do in America, right and Norway. Norway
28:52
Speaker 1: and seven American states banned it. And you can probably
28:55
Speaker 1: take a pretty good stay of it. Which American states banned.
28:58
Speaker 1: It's like the South and then something ran him like Idaho,
29:01
Speaker 1: you know, and then featuring Norway. I bet Georgia probably
29:06
Speaker 1: sadly banned it. You imagine for sure. Uh well, anytime
29:10
Speaker 1: you do a comedic take on Biblical times, you're gonna
29:12
Speaker 1: you're gonna be in trouble. But if you watch the movie,
29:15
Speaker 1: it's it's not it's no, it's not offensive. You know,
29:18
Speaker 1: Like I'm not very touchy about stuff like that, but
29:22
Speaker 1: I was watching it, and I'm like, this actually isn't
29:25
Speaker 1: offensive at any point. Really, you're not easily offended though,
29:29
Speaker 1: unless you talk, unless you bring up Phil Collins. That's
29:34
Speaker 1: my button, so and I love to push it. Uh So.
29:39
Speaker 1: The final film they made was called Monty Python's The
29:42
Speaker 1: Meaning of Life. Oh wait, hold on, hold on, I'm sorry,
29:45
Speaker 1: there's one other spectacular fact about the life of Brian.
29:48
Speaker 1: It won the Jury Award at the Canned Film Festival
29:52
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine. I have an arrow, an asterisk
29:56
Speaker 1: and three exclamation points pointing to that sentence. Well, meaning
30:00
Speaker 1: of Life to two then or did you mix it up?
30:07
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm sorry. The asterisk didn't work. You needed
30:15
Speaker 1: one more arrow. They released Monty Python's Meaning of Life,
30:21
Speaker 1: which won the Jury Prize at the Can Film Believe It?
30:27
Speaker 1: And it was by this time these were like financial
30:30
Speaker 1: and critical successes, like everyone was on board the train
30:32
Speaker 1: and it was another sketch movie. UM, very funny. I
30:36
Speaker 1: like the Meaning of Life, but to me still the
30:38
Speaker 1: other narrative films were a little better, but of course
30:41
Speaker 1: the very classic UM, every Sperm is Sacred, which is
30:45
Speaker 1: very funny because if you watch Monty Python, nothing was
30:47
Speaker 1: sacred about anything. They would take on Hitler and cannibalism
30:52
Speaker 1: and race and gay rights, and nothing was sacred except
30:56
Speaker 1: every sperm. Apparently, there's this really great article UM that
31:00
Speaker 1: a lot of this is based on. UM. It's called
31:02
Speaker 1: The Beatles of Comedy by a guy named David Free,
31:05
Speaker 1: and he points out that it's sad that the word
31:07
Speaker 1: irreverend is overused these days, because the literal sense of
31:12
Speaker 1: irreverend is the best way to describe Python. That they
31:15
Speaker 1: didn't have automatic respect for anything, which is pretty good
31:18
Speaker 1: description if you ask me so. A Meaning of Life
31:21
Speaker 1: was the last official project that they ever did together
31:25
Speaker 1: for a while. Uh they in nineteen Um, I guess
31:29
Speaker 1: in the late eighties they got together and did a
31:31
Speaker 1: couple of live shows. Uh they did one at the
31:34
Speaker 1: Aspen Comedy Festival, and then a couple of years ago
31:37
Speaker 1: finally did one. Well. They owed money for Spam a Lot,
31:40
Speaker 1: the Great Broadway Show. They were sued by one of
31:43
Speaker 1: the producers of Holy Grail and uh because of Spam
31:47
Speaker 1: a Lot and we're very famously owed about eight hundred
31:50
Speaker 1: thousand pounds they owed him eight. Yeah, they lost, and
31:55
Speaker 1: um they came out and said, you know, we're gonna
31:57
Speaker 1: get back together and do some shows for the money
31:59
Speaker 1: so we can pay off this lawsuit. And everyone was
32:02
Speaker 1: delighted that they were going to do these tin shows.
32:04
Speaker 1: They were one of their first reunion appearances in Aspen.
32:08
Speaker 1: They were being interviewed by Robert Klein, and Graham Chapman
32:12
Speaker 1: wasn't there because Graham Chapman died in um one day
32:16
Speaker 1: before the twentieth anniversary of the debut of The Flying Circus,
32:19
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. Um, yeah, he just couldn't
32:23
Speaker 1: hang on for one more day and um and so, uh,
32:27
Speaker 1: Graham's happens not there, but they actually brought his ashes
32:32
Speaker 1: in an urn and he's on the table during the interview.
32:35
Speaker 1: So for those of you listening to this in the
32:37
Speaker 1: future at home, the ashes were kicked over. Oh yeah,
32:41
Speaker 1: and Ted Danson thought it was really funny. Yeah. I
32:43
Speaker 1: was like, is that Ted danceing? Totally ted dance? That
32:46
Speaker 1: guy's good. Have you seen Fargo Season two? It's amazing
32:56
Speaker 1: you get money for that or anything. You're just plugging it. Oh,
32:58
Speaker 1: I'm just a fan. I love dancing. Uh. But that
33:04
Speaker 1: kind of like typifies Monty Python, like nothing was sacred.
33:07
Speaker 1: They would take their dear dear friend. Uh and well
33:10
Speaker 1: obviously they weren't his ashes, let's get real, but they
33:13
Speaker 1: would pretend like they kicked him over on stage for
33:15
Speaker 1: a joke. It did. So they performed at the O
33:20
Speaker 1: two Arena in England two years ago. They did those
33:23
Speaker 1: tin shows to get out of debt, and that was
33:25
Speaker 1: the last time they performed together. Uh. They say that's it,
33:29
Speaker 1: They're not gonna do it again. And uh, you know,
33:31
Speaker 1: they were together for short years on TV The Beatles
33:34
Speaker 1: of Comedy. It's pretty amazing. So we're gonna talk a
33:37
Speaker 1: little bit about how they worked. Um. There have been
33:41
Speaker 1: a lot of interviews with sort of the inside story
33:43
Speaker 1: with the guys, and they kind of all roundly say
33:46
Speaker 1: it was very democratic process. Um. Palin comes out and says,
33:50
Speaker 1: you know, Clice was a little bit of the leader.
33:53
Speaker 1: He's a little forceful his presence, he was a large man. Uh,
33:57
Speaker 1: he could be very convincing when he wanted something. But
34:00
Speaker 1: he said, but in the end it was very democratic,
34:02
Speaker 1: like no one really wanted to be the leader, right. Uh.
34:05
Speaker 1: Terry Jones kind of considered himself a bit of a
34:07
Speaker 1: leader just because he directed so much like he directed,
34:10
Speaker 1: He co directed, um, the Holy Grail, but he totally
34:13
Speaker 1: directed Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. Um
34:17
Speaker 1: So even still, I don't think he he actually saw
34:20
Speaker 1: himself as like the leader of Monty Python. He was
34:23
Speaker 1: probably just the one you could get the attention of
34:25
Speaker 1: the other ones long enough to direct them, right. Yeah.
34:28
Speaker 1: And they would fight and argue, like you know, get
34:30
Speaker 1: any group of creative folks together and you're gonna argue.
34:32
Speaker 1: But they said it was never about big things. They
34:34
Speaker 1: would argue about like the size of the chair and
34:36
Speaker 1: the sketch, but not like the big picture stuff, which
34:40
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. And then everybody kind of had their
34:42
Speaker 1: own little niche that they brought to the table, like, Um,
34:45
Speaker 1: John and Graham uh were funny, but also very angry
34:51
Speaker 1: and kind of bitter, Like you could tell that they
34:53
Speaker 1: were like that the traditional English schoolboys who parents had
34:57
Speaker 1: like sent them off to school at age like eight
34:59
Speaker 1: and had seen them since, you know, kind of thing. Um.
35:02
Speaker 1: And then uh, Terry Jones and Michael Palin were a
35:06
Speaker 1: little more like surreal, little more whimsical. And then Eric
35:10
Speaker 1: Oddo was very verbal. They said, yeah he's my guy.
35:13
Speaker 1: Yeah he's good, so good. Uh So one of the
35:17
Speaker 1: big factors in their success was the freedom that they
35:20
Speaker 1: had with the BBC. Um, but it was sort of
35:23
Speaker 1: a mixed bag. They had a lot of freedom to
35:24
Speaker 1: do what they wanted, but it is the BBC and
35:27
Speaker 1: it is on television, so they would often battle them
35:30
Speaker 1: about words they could say with the sensors. And of
35:34
Speaker 1: course and um, they were famously censored for using the
35:37
Speaker 1: word masturbation. Yeah, they were in the the um what
35:42
Speaker 1: was it masturbation? Well, josh In the UH explain in
35:51
Speaker 1: the summarized Prust competition, there was a game show that
35:54
Speaker 1: was you had to say you had to summarize of
35:56
Speaker 1: pruce poem or prus short story in UH like sixty
36:01
Speaker 1: seconds or less. So they had this whole game show
36:04
Speaker 1: and so they said strangling animals, golf and masturbation or
36:08
Speaker 1: his hobbies right, and so originally the BBC was like,
36:11
Speaker 1: you can't say that. Well, they recorded it anyway, and
36:14
Speaker 1: then the BBC went behind them and um edited it out.
36:18
Speaker 1: So in the original version that was aired, it was
36:22
Speaker 1: strangling animals, which they left in golf like a dead
36:26
Speaker 1: air for a second and then a big laugh. And
36:30
Speaker 1: they said when they went back and watched it, they
36:32
Speaker 1: were like, this doesn't make any sense, Like, what's what's
36:34
Speaker 1: so funny about golf? So UM, As far as their
36:39
Speaker 1: aim kind of depends on who you talk to. Terry
36:42
Speaker 1: Jones very much said that they were trying to subvert
36:44
Speaker 1: the establishment and they were trying to make a statement
36:47
Speaker 1: and try to make some noise. UM. Michael Palin said,
36:51
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's kind of overrated. We were
36:53
Speaker 1: just trying to be funny as we could be. So
36:55
Speaker 1: I think it was probably you know, as always, the
36:57
Speaker 1: truth is sort of somewhere in the middle there with
36:59
Speaker 1: what they were trying to get accomplished. Uh. They also
37:03
Speaker 1: said that radio was a big influence because they were
37:05
Speaker 1: from the generation where uh they none of them, you know,
37:09
Speaker 1: they didn't have TV until they were like twelve or
37:11
Speaker 1: thirteen years old. So that theater of the mind that
37:14
Speaker 1: you get when you would listen to the radio as
37:15
Speaker 1: a kid. And uh, I know that not many people
37:18
Speaker 1: in this room can probably imagine that, but now we
37:20
Speaker 1: have podcasts that do that R Yeah, which is wonderful. No,
37:22
Speaker 1: that really struck me that that was one of their
37:24
Speaker 1: big creative inspirations was being raised on radio. You know,
37:29
Speaker 1: um that that they were forced to use their imaginations
37:32
Speaker 1: and that they managed to figure out how to translate
37:35
Speaker 1: that into TV. It's pretty pretty interesting. Yeah. And I
37:38
Speaker 1: mentioned like Tenacious T and Kids in the Hall and
37:42
Speaker 1: the shows that would come along that would and Mr
37:44
Speaker 1: Show especially where each show would have sort of this
37:48
Speaker 1: weird theme that ran through it, but it was never
37:50
Speaker 1: like a statement. I mean it would be like a
37:54
Speaker 1: watch of episode the aten Idi Flying Circus where the
37:56
Speaker 1: theme was just a pig and like in the very beginning, Uh,
38:01
Speaker 1: Graham Chapman just sits down and you hear this, and
38:04
Speaker 1: then they cut to a chalkboard of a bunch of
38:07
Speaker 1: pigs drawn and they just x out another one. And
38:11
Speaker 1: then just randomly through the episode that would be a
38:13
Speaker 1: pig here there, or someone else would sit on a
38:16
Speaker 1: pig and they would cut it and do another one.
38:18
Speaker 1: Meant nothing at all but that in the animation, Like
38:21
Speaker 1: then a pig would drop on, you know, Jesus's head
38:24
Speaker 1: and there would be a fart noise in the animation.
38:26
Speaker 1: And so they had this weird kind of theme like
38:28
Speaker 1: that one was the Pig Show or whatever, and you
38:31
Speaker 1: very much see that. Like Mr. Show, they sort of
38:33
Speaker 1: had these little thematic elements that tied it together. One
38:36
Speaker 1: other thing Mr Show did very well that, um, you
38:39
Speaker 1: can kind of say Python started was like blending one
38:44
Speaker 1: one sketch into another. Yeah, like one would not end
38:47
Speaker 1: before the other one began. They just kind of cross paths,
38:51
Speaker 1: and Um, that was I think pretty much they pioneered that, Yeah,
38:56
Speaker 1: and it could be done in a lot of ways. Uh.
38:59
Speaker 1: Sometimes they literally ran into each other, like you would
39:02
Speaker 1: have a thing with medieval nights and he would walk
39:04
Speaker 1: to the next set, which was like a modern day
39:06
Speaker 1: living room, or it would end like I saw one
39:09
Speaker 1: where they did a little snapshot to close the sketch
39:14
Speaker 1: and then they would pull back from that snapshot and
39:16
Speaker 1: it's just a picture on the wall in the next sketch.
39:19
Speaker 1: So they just had really clever ways of sort of
39:21
Speaker 1: tying it all together. It was very cool. They'd also
39:23
Speaker 1: sometimes run the credits in the middle of the show, right,
39:27
Speaker 1: and then I run them again at the end, like
39:29
Speaker 1: that's where they went in the middle of the show. Yeah,
39:31
Speaker 1: or John Clice would it would like the show would
39:34
Speaker 1: stop as it if it had been canceled, and Clice
39:36
Speaker 1: would come on as a as a supposed member of
39:38
Speaker 1: the BBC to apologize for the content of the show
39:41
Speaker 1: in the middle of the show, and then someone would
39:44
Speaker 1: just come in like lasso him all stage. They go
39:46
Speaker 1: right into the next sketch. Very cool. So they're also
39:50
Speaker 1: uh anachronisms masters that juxtaposition. Um, you know, everyone who's
39:56
Speaker 1: seen Holy Grail. It ends when modern day police show
39:59
Speaker 1: up and arrest the not only the actors in the
40:02
Speaker 1: big battle scene, but the cast and crew, and they
40:05
Speaker 1: would shut the movie down. So they would throw weird
40:08
Speaker 1: things like that in there, like the Picasso thing, Yeah,
40:11
Speaker 1: Picasso painting a painting, riding a bicycle while he's on
40:15
Speaker 1: the highway, the twenty nine high way, just random, or
40:18
Speaker 1: the Spanish Inquisition being in a modern day household. Um.
40:22
Speaker 1: And they were extremely smart, very very well educated dudes. Um.
40:28
Speaker 1: But if they if they were doing a project, they
40:31
Speaker 1: would also like do more research and just automatically know everything.
40:35
Speaker 1: And some of their best jokes came out of that research.
40:37
Speaker 1: Like when they were researching UM for the Holy Grail. Uh,
40:41
Speaker 1: they they found that UM one of the common tactics
40:45
Speaker 1: during medieval sieges was taunting the people who were trying
40:49
Speaker 1: to siege the castle. Right, so that was actually done
40:52
Speaker 1: apparently verbatim in history. Uh. The other thing they learned
40:57
Speaker 1: in their research was that they did used to launch animals.
41:01
Speaker 1: We actually covered this in I think Our Castle's episode
41:04
Speaker 1: many years ago, where they would launch animals. The idea,
41:08
Speaker 1: of course they didn't cover this in the in the movie,
41:10
Speaker 1: but the idea was that they would be diseased animals,
41:13
Speaker 1: so it actually have an effect other than just being
41:15
Speaker 1: really weird and disconcerting to see a cow come flying
41:18
Speaker 1: any but it would be like a cow that was
41:20
Speaker 1: very sick and would get people sick when it exploded
41:22
Speaker 1: all over everyone really gross and lead to a plague
41:25
Speaker 1: in the castle, ending the siege. You know, Josh. Starting
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Speaker 1: and square Space make it professional, make it beautiful. Uh.
42:43
Speaker 1: They felt no social dread. Uh. They were just like
42:47
Speaker 1: they were often described as little boys. This article from
42:50
Speaker 1: the Atlantic said they not only weren't afraid they didn't
42:53
Speaker 1: know they should be afraid, so they kind of had
42:55
Speaker 1: the sweet naive quality about them, Like, what's what's wrong
42:58
Speaker 1: with doing the sketch about Hitler in the Pope is
43:02
Speaker 1: that we should we not do that. I don't think
43:04
Speaker 1: it ever occurred to him that that was off limits.
43:06
Speaker 1: There's a there's a really good example of that, um
43:08
Speaker 1: in the sketch called the Undertaker Sketch, which I think
43:12
Speaker 1: is probably the funniest sketch they made. Um let me
43:15
Speaker 1: set it up though. Uh. John Clice is this dude
43:19
Speaker 1: whose mother has recently died and he comes to the
43:21
Speaker 1: funeral parlor where Graham Chapman is the undertaker, and um,
43:27
Speaker 1: Graham Chapman kind of runs down the list of things
43:30
Speaker 1: they can do to John Clice's mother, right, like, um,
43:33
Speaker 1: they can barrier, but if she's not dead yet, she'll
43:36
Speaker 1: be eaten up by worms and beetles and it's quite shocking. Um,
43:39
Speaker 1: or they can they can just toss her in the
43:41
Speaker 1: Thames or something like that, right, And then John Cleese
43:45
Speaker 1: is he's a little shocked, but um uh, it turns
43:48
Speaker 1: out he has his mother in a burlap sack next
43:51
Speaker 1: to him, like he dragged her body to the funeral parlor. Right,
43:54
Speaker 1: So what they're playing there is God Save the Queen,
43:58
Speaker 1: and everyone is reverently standing around. They stopped rioting because
44:02
Speaker 1: they started playing God Save the Queen, and any good
44:04
Speaker 1: British er will just immediately stop whatever they're doing and
44:07
Speaker 1: like kind of piously stand there. The reason that they
44:10
Speaker 1: did God Save the Queen was because Monty Python all
44:14
Speaker 1: the guys in it had this this deep fantasy that
44:18
Speaker 1: one day the Queen would turn on the BBC and
44:22
Speaker 1: accidentally watch their show. And so they really hope that
44:26
Speaker 1: the one thing that she tuned into was the Undertaker sketch,
44:29
Speaker 1: like the foul Is sketch that they ever came up with,
44:32
Speaker 1: So that that's kind of a nod to that that desire. Yeah,
44:35
Speaker 1: and if you if you watch that sketch and you
44:37
Speaker 1: were uninformed, you hear people, you know, start to boo
44:41
Speaker 1: and hits a little bit and uh, let's have something
44:44
Speaker 1: decent that's disgusting, and you're like, oh my god, the
44:47
Speaker 1: audience is turning on them like they've gone too far. Uh,
44:50
Speaker 1: it was all planned, of course. The baby Oh my god, Wow,
44:56
Speaker 1: look what it is. Everyone, it's Kevin Polite. Well, thank
44:58
Speaker 1: you kelling. Wow, did that just happen? Something's in the water.
45:08
Speaker 1: What's he doing here? I don't know. That's a really
45:11
Speaker 1: good question. He's in the wrong place, clearly, Thank you, sir,
45:15
Speaker 1: Thank you Kevin Pollock. I've been waiting to say that
45:19
Speaker 1: for years. So the BBC hated the Undertaker sketch for
45:25
Speaker 1: obvious reasons. They did not want it to air, but
45:27
Speaker 1: they said, all right, we'll let you guys air it
45:29
Speaker 1: if we can put these plants in the audience to
45:31
Speaker 1: boo and hiss and yell would eventually come down and
45:34
Speaker 1: riot very awkwardly at the end. So that was the compromise.
45:37
Speaker 1: And they're like pretty awkward as long as the Queen watches, right,
45:43
Speaker 1: So uh sorry, where was Kevin Pollock? Really threw me off.
45:48
Speaker 1: When they got two movies. Um, you know, they never
45:50
Speaker 1: were allowed to cuss on the air, and when they
45:52
Speaker 1: got two movies they could obviously do what they wanted to,
45:55
Speaker 1: but for the most part, they still refrained from actual
45:58
Speaker 1: curse words. Um like, Brian has a few f bombs,
46:02
Speaker 1: a few, but that's it right before it works that
46:05
Speaker 1: they don't stand out, no, not much. But they they
46:08
Speaker 1: found one part where, um, something did stand out to them.
46:11
Speaker 1: They actually went back after they shot the movie and
46:14
Speaker 1: and dubbed in um instead of the C word. I'll
46:17
Speaker 1: let you guys figure that one out. Um they put
46:20
Speaker 1: in klutz instead. John Klice calls um Graham Chapman of
46:24
Speaker 1: klutz um because he screwed something up. I don't remember
46:27
Speaker 1: what it was. But they went back, not because of
46:29
Speaker 1: a sensor. They went back and um and edited at
46:33
Speaker 1: that's a really difficult sentence, edited it out that because
46:37
Speaker 1: they thought that it kind of detracted from the overall joke,
46:41
Speaker 1: the larger picture. So, um, they were they were self reverential.
46:47
Speaker 1: How about that. I don't know about reverential, but they
46:50
Speaker 1: didn't curse much. Um. We got a couple of tidbits
46:54
Speaker 1: to end here. Yeah. Well they um, you know, not
46:57
Speaker 1: only were they influential in the world of comedy, but
46:59
Speaker 1: they they're I mean, they're part of pop culture now,
47:02
Speaker 1: like people say things like the Nights who say NA
47:05
Speaker 1: and the Spanish and no one expects the Spanish inquisition.
47:09
Speaker 1: It's it's worked its way into the fabric and the
47:11
Speaker 1: lexicon of pop culture. Um. Python esque is actually a
47:15
Speaker 1: word that's in the Oxford Dictionary now. It's official. It's
47:18
Speaker 1: a real word spam like spam email. Uh named after
47:22
Speaker 1: the famous sketch. I wish we had the spam sketch. Well,
47:25
Speaker 1: you should have given me a heads. I know you
47:27
Speaker 1: guys have seen the spam sketch right where they come
47:30
Speaker 1: in and everything. Spam, spam, spam on the menu, one
47:32
Speaker 1: of their great word place sketches. But my favorite part
47:34
Speaker 1: of that sketch not the weird fact that there's Vikings
47:37
Speaker 1: in there or the weird fact that it stops halfway
47:40
Speaker 1: through and there's a history lesson from Michael Palin, but
47:43
Speaker 1: it is when the sketch starts. Are you looking it up? Uh? They,
47:48
Speaker 1: for no reason at all lower Uh the two main
47:52
Speaker 1: I think it's it's scraam Chapman. And so they lower
47:59
Speaker 1: them into the sea and from wires in a sitting
48:01
Speaker 1: position into their chair for no reason whatsoever. It's just
48:05
Speaker 1: a diner scene. And then they just are lowered in
48:08
Speaker 1: sitting like this and then sit in there chair and
48:10
Speaker 1: then it starts. Yeah, and then it starts. And that's
48:12
Speaker 1: like the genius of Monty Python for no reason whatsoever. Um,
48:15
Speaker 1: and Python is a it's a coding language. To you
48:18
Speaker 1: after Monty Python. There's actually a fossil snake, a fossil
48:21
Speaker 1: river snake that lived a hundred million years ago, um
48:24
Speaker 1: in what is now Australia called Monty python Oides rivers sliensis.
48:32
Speaker 1: Nice work, it's named after Monty Python. Uh. And like
48:36
Speaker 1: you said, the guys all went on to do their
48:38
Speaker 1: own thing. They were together very short time, made a huge,
48:41
Speaker 1: huge impact. Um, what do you say. Palin did travel
48:44
Speaker 1: docs among other things. Of course, fish called Wanda. We
48:47
Speaker 1: all saw him love that. Uh. They still enjoy being together. Um.
48:52
Speaker 1: I think John Cleese's wife said, you know, she loves
48:55
Speaker 1: her husband and she's never seen him have as much
48:57
Speaker 1: fun and laugh as much as when he's with the
48:59
Speaker 1: boys lads. Yeah, it's very sweet. Uh here's a very
49:04
Speaker 1: sad thing I should mention just yesterday. Uh don't you
49:09
Speaker 1: think we should save this for the very end to
49:11
Speaker 1: really bring him down. No, I'll wedge it in and
49:13
Speaker 1: we'll try and make you laugh again. Uh. Terry Jones
49:16
Speaker 1: just announced yesterday he is suffering from a rare form
49:19
Speaker 1: of dementia and it's super sad. Um. His his mates
49:24
Speaker 1: have known about it for a while and they've all
49:26
Speaker 1: kept a quiet but um, it's a form of dementia
49:28
Speaker 1: where it renders him and able to speak. So they
49:32
Speaker 1: officially came out with the announcement just yesterday and said
49:35
Speaker 1: Terry Jones won't be doing interviews anymore, and all the
49:37
Speaker 1: guys are making statements about that. They've known about this
49:40
Speaker 1: for a while. It's been very sad to see, uh,
49:42
Speaker 1: and now something funny, something completely different. So if you
49:47
Speaker 1: go to a UK funeral, um, you are probably very
49:52
Speaker 1: likely to be hit with the song always Look on
49:54
Speaker 1: the Bright Side of Life. Actually, there was a survey
49:58
Speaker 1: done in two thousand fourteen U of like thirty thousand
50:02
Speaker 1: British funerals that found that that was the number one
50:05
Speaker 1: song played in them and it beat out Invisible Touch.
50:12
Speaker 1: I'd be great. It beat out um My Heart Will
50:17
Speaker 1: Go On by Selene Dion, which is can you imagine
50:20
Speaker 1: how offensive is that? Yeah, being at a funeral and
50:24
Speaker 1: being subjected to that just be like, yeah, you would
50:29
Speaker 1: rise from the grave and gag. And it's not I've
50:32
Speaker 1: got nothing against Celine Dion or even that song, but
50:34
Speaker 1: that plus a funeral is just I got something against
50:39
Speaker 1: her in that song. I'll say it. You're you're a
50:42
Speaker 1: music snob, I am. Uh, so we'll finish with this
50:46
Speaker 1: little tidbit. Um. We might not know about Monty Python,
50:50
Speaker 1: and it might not have never made it to the
50:52
Speaker 1: United States, uh, if not for one Terry Jones. Because
50:56
Speaker 1: back in the day, it was common practice in the
50:58
Speaker 1: BBC and I guess in the United States too, to
51:01
Speaker 1: erase over tapes of shows because they were expensive. Yeah,
51:04
Speaker 1: they were pricey. And someone at the BBC literally called
51:07
Speaker 1: Terry Jones that said they're about to erase over flying Circus,
51:11
Speaker 1: get down here now. And Terry Jones left the phone
51:15
Speaker 1: hanging and the guy was like, hello, hello, Yeah, did
51:18
Speaker 1: you hear what I just said, Terry? And uh, a
51:22
Speaker 1: little leity know, Terry Jones is already on his way there,
51:25
Speaker 1: showed up while the guy was still on the phone,
51:27
Speaker 1: shouting Terry into the phone. This is like minutes later,
51:31
Speaker 1: Terry Jones grabs the tapes, goes and pays for his
51:34
Speaker 1: own um blank tapes, makes copies of him, and the
51:37
Speaker 1: legacy was secured. So we have Terry Jones to thank
51:41
Speaker 1: for that legacy. And and this the this unnamed person
51:45
Speaker 1: from the BBC who thought to call them rather than
51:48
Speaker 1: just going ahead and in erasing the tapes. Do you
51:52
Speaker 1: got anything else? No? Do you guys want to sit
51:55
Speaker 1: here and watch money pipeline close for like a half
51:57
Speaker 1: an hour? See if you can find this fan um, Seriously,
52:01
Speaker 1: I found the spam. It's three and a half minutes long. Perfect.
52:04
Speaker 1: Oh great, okay, you got three and a half minutes right,
52:07
Speaker 1: all right, It will be a great way to close
52:08
Speaker 1: it out. Those of you have to p t s. Okay,
52:15
Speaker 1: we bring you to close out this stuff you should
52:18
Speaker 1: know live episode at l a podcast fest the my
52:23
Speaker 1: Python Spam sketch. For more on this and thousands of
52:33
Speaker 1: other topics, is it how stuff works dot com