Silly Days & Twisted Nights: The Art Of MONTY PYTHON

Silly Days & Twisted Nights: The Art Of MONTY PYTHON

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TOBY GOLDSTEIN

Somewhere in this wicked world, fish are laughing—peering through the plexiglass of their tanks and enjoying an absolute belly-bouncer about the incredible stupidity of the humanity walking by. Gills softly flapping, they jovially nudge one another, spying a particularly inane action on the other side of the glass, and variously chuckle, cackle, guffaw and giggle. We featherless bipeds are a strange and nasty sort, wouldn't you agree? And don't think that we're about to get away with our stunts for even a moment, because those fish hove turned into six very dangerous sharks of the mind, called Monty Python. They're jusl waiting for us to fall on our collective tat ass, and when we do, they'll deftly slip another banana peel in the pathway.

The fish we have so grandly introduced are in fact the scene setters of Monty Python's fourth feature film, The Meaning Of life (humble title), and one of them, whose slight resemblance to Peter Cook comes mainly from a pair of questioning eyebrows, is sitting in a Manhattan hotel room, lounging around in Japanese-style pajamas. Eric Idle—as well as several other Pythons—has arrived to promote The Meaning Of Life, which he readily admits is a natural attention-grabber (these Pythons have no shame). "This is very universal," he declares. "Also put out by Universal [hohoho]. Everyone wants to know the meaning of life, or they tend to want to hove some insight into it. It's probably disgusting enough for America," Idle soys wisely.

The Meaning Of Life does hove so many of those taste-defying moments which have marked Python routines for the past 15 years. Sliced limbs, sacrilege, bodily functions, gratuitous gore—all the little pleasures that make viewers heartily pleased to be stuck with their own measly problems—are splashed on the screen. Oh, and there are lovely little songs—including o reverent ode to sperms sung by schoolchildren—to make the time pass more quickly and sustain the feeling that you've just entered a musical in the lower depths. Whether you will indeed be disgusted by the whole shebang, or highly entertained as successive follies march across the screen, depends on you, dear viewer. The Pythons aren't about to concede anything.

Although the six 40ish chaps who are the principal troupe members had been working on comedy projects since they finished school, Python life as we know it formed out of cosmic debris into a half-hour television show on the BBC back in the late '60s. Having been in London at the time, i saw one of those early shows, and immediately felt as if I'd been injected with some drug through my eyes. Unlike everything else on the screen—before or since— Moniy Python's Flying Circus didn't have a beginning or an end. There was lots of middle, which occurred in apparently random order. Helterskelter, animation mixed into pseudodocumentary into song into slapstick.

By the time you thought you had a line on one bit, another one, completely different, came along. And nowhere in the chaos was there anyone called Monty, or a python. Admittedly, there might hove been one or two paper airplanes in sight, but the last word, "circus," really summed it up.

"I think we hit the technology at the right time," Idle fondly recalls of the series. "We were young enough to be able to go in there and play with the toys, which nobody had ever exploited, or used for that sort of mad comedy style. They hod used it on radio and it evolved into a high art, like the Goon Show, which took it as far as you could get, just using sounds and images. And we were able to translate it, in that half-hour formot.

"We created the structure, or nonstructure, where we could throw anything in. Nothing would be wasted. If you had a four-minute sketch and only the first minute and a half was funny, you'd only do that; you wouldn't be lumbered doing the whole thing and finding a tag. It's a common condition in comedy," Idle believes. "I've not really seen Your Show Of Shows, but it seems like the Sid Caesar stuff was exactly the same sort of thing. I think the only step we took forward was to not even bother to finish off things,we'd just interrupt and segue them and put animotion in, to take us out of a hard situation."

if it seems that Saturday Night Live has carried on the Python spirit, it's far from coincidental. Lome Michaels, who created the show, was working at Canada's CBC while the Python TV series was Still in production. Observing that, and their first film, And Now For Something Comp/ete/y Different,

Michaels knew he wanted to adapt that formula for the American market.

Since then, Idle relates, the creators of a new British series called Not The Nine O'Clock News was over here to observe Saturday Night Live in production before launching their show. So much for certain assumptions that another country's humor doesn't travel well.

"The humor that has stumbling blocks is the localized humor which depends on product jokes, advertising jokes, local things on the surface level of our culture," Idle explains. "Things that translate are more general—or just ploin funny. They switch over quite easily, because they're about behavior and people's obsessions and people's tendency to screw up every perfect paradise. And I think these things are common to everybody,

"The interesting thing was Python's accessibility—it went to 76 countries! Almost because it's simple, paradigmatic humor; anyone con get a laugh out of it because they can translate automatically their own obsessions and hatreds into it. So what the Japanese make of things—it's almost o Zen for them," says Idle, □ little in awe of his reach. "It goes to places like Yugoslavia, Nigeria and Hong Kong, and you wonder what people make of it there. They watch it, so let's hope they enjoy it."

Spurned by commercial channels because of the censorship threat implicit in advertising, the Python's natural habitat had to have been that amorphous conglomerate known as the BBC.

And naturally, when Flying Circus traveled to this country, its most appropriate location was on PBS. "We'd have liked it if they'd given us money, but you can't hove everything," sighs Idle. Vividly, I remember streets emptying at 10:30 on Sunday nights, when the show was aired in New York. I also seem to recall particularly well-loved episodes, like the dead parrot, or the transvestite lumberjack, being held over our heads like clubs during the perpetual membership drives: "You VILL GIFF us 200 more subscriptions, if you want to see Michael Palin again!" The money would flow in by torrents.

"I think what we're going to do is let PBS have the shows again," says Eric, considerably brightening my day. "We thought about cable, and obviously, we were offered a fortune to go into syndication if we'd cut it and put commercial breaks in. We resisted that, and rightly. I think people prefer the show when it floats through."

Acting apart from his fellow Pythons, Eric Idle did create one commercial television project. And if everyone will join in on a fast chorus of "Cneese And Onions," I'll tell you what it is. Yes...The Ruffes! (Aren't we clever.) As so frequently happens when the brain of a Python is going full gush, this landmark of video and musical history sprung out of an ongoing Idle project.

"I was doing a show in England called Ruf/and Weekend Television, which was somewhat similar to SCTV in that there was a tiny television station with no money. Neil Innes (of the late lamented Bonzo Dog Band) hod o very Beatle-y song, and I suddenly thought of the Rutles, I did that interviewer who was walking toward the camera and as a joke, tne camera pulls away and he's frying to chase after it. Then we segued into a song, and it was 'A Hard Day's Rut/ They showed that clip on Saturday Night Live and the response was terrific." Eventually encouraged by Lome Michaels, Idle placed tne show on NBC. Especially ironic, when you consider the plague of "Beatlemania" shows lurking on the horizon, The Rutles was one parody any rock fan could appreciate. "There was so much bad and inaccurate stuff being written (about the Beatles), that sometimes, it's easier to write comedy and get closer to the truth of what actually happened."

Among the show's fans were at least three of the formerly Fab Four.

"George liked if a lot [Harrison subsequently helped produced Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits.]. His character did come out quite unblemished," Idle grins. "Lennon and Yoko apparently loved it, and Allen Klein took them over a copy, I think. Ringo said he liked if after '68—1 have to find out what I did to him before that... And Paul was alwoys very guarded, until he found out I came from Liverpool—then he was all right. And I was a bit strong on him because I got to play him (as Dirk McQuickly).

"But it was a great story—it had a beginning, a miaa idle and an end. It was about four very successful guys and what happens with fame and wealth. Only when I wrote it, they were alive and well. It would've been harder to deal with after John's death," Idle says wistfully.

The Rutles was a fairly gentle comedy, and collective Monty Python projects are anything but gentle or subtle, "Savage" is a good word to apply here, also "gross," possibly "offensive" and definitely "surreal."

As Idle quickly points out, there are six different, equally strong egos and sensibilities at work, merging to form a Monty Python program. That makes describing the group's visual philosophy a difficult task for him. "I would say that the only thing we do half agree on is that we make comedy look realistic, i.e., the background, scenery, costumes and makeup. Then the comedy takes it a step more to realism. Like in Holy Grail, real shit was thrown on people. It's nice. At least we're out there suffering for other people's laughs, and this is the basis of comedy."

"I think Python's a blend of optimists and pessimists. Nobody's probably more pessimistic than John Cleese, has a bleaker view of mankind, its role and what it's doing. And Terry Jones tends to see the gross things like the vomit and the gluttony. He's more bowels. Then Michael's more of a sunny personality. And Gilliam tends to revel in the slicing-up and heads popping off and the animation. He likes violence— that's his view of comedy. He's American though," says Idle, with a knowing wink. "I've got the songs—the optimistic cosmic viewpoints." In other words, there's something for everyone, and if there is a common point of order, it's that everyone else's sacred cows are Monty Python's hamburger.

"There are personal biases and then there are these amorphous things like big business and big religion—which are quite similar—which tend to toke people's lives or absorb all their energies. Python tends to be drawn into areas that haven't been gone into yet. So in that sense, it's always trying to be innovative, and that, I think, is the good thing about it. We wouldn't do Grail II or Brian ///, Brian Meets Rocky."

Unable to imagine such a behemoth,

I ask idle, "Can you think of anything you would hold sacred?" "Well, if we could, we'd all be worshipping it!" he cheerfully replies. "That would be God, wouldn't it. And there he'd be. A slightly Buddhist view—if God appears, you attack it, and that's the only way you can make sure it's God."

Somewhat stunned (shocked and stunned) by that final observation, I venture into the sea of traffic clogging Madison Avenue. Now, this is something I can understand—frustration, annoyance, the urge to put a fisl through a recalcitrant cabbie's window. I hove rejoined the human race, and I bet the fish are laughing themselves sick over it.