TheAspenFest@PythoNET

Part Two

Bob: Is it true that the BBC wanted Flying Circus in the title?
John: The BBC had to call it something on their schedule so they started calling it by the name of the executive who was in charge who was Barry Took, and they called it "Barry Took's Flying Circus."(footnote 1) We rather liked Flying Circus and then we had to decide whose it was. And then we thought it might be Gwen Dibley's, because (to Michael) who was she?
Michael: Well I just found, at my mother-in-law's one quiet weekend, she was reading a magazine of the Townswomen's Guild, sort of people who do good work in the counties of England, and in each of these places they have embroidery classes and flower arranging and all that... (in Gumby voice) FLOWER ARRANGING! (back to normal voice) and they also had a little bit where it said "accompanied by Gwen Dibley on the piano" and the name Gwen Dibley sort of intrigued me and I thought how nice it would be to give someone their own series without them knowing, so that only when the listings came out for that weekend, the family would say, "Mum! You've got the series ... on television!"
Terry J: The very first scripts that went into the BBC were called Bunn Whackett Buzzle Stubble and Boot, which was a football team that John and Graham had, and we were calling it Bunn Whackett Buzzle Stubble and Boot right up to the day before the Radio Times had to go to press. And the BBC rang us up and said now come on, you've got to call it something sensible, this is stupid! We were all sitting there in John's place, I think as far as I remember, and we said oh it's got to be somebody's flying circus, and I think John said how about something slimy, slithery...
John: Untrustworthy...
Terry J: ...and phallic...
John: ...typical show business agent, so we all said "Python! Python! Python!" and then somebody else shouted out "Monty" which made us laugh because Monty to us means Lord Montgomery, our great general of the second world war..
Terry J: Who is he?!
Michael: I thought it was Monty Shosheim, the Jazz musician!
John: (laughs)
Terry J: Jazz clarinet ...
Michael: Yeah.
Terry J: It was a great moment, I rushed home to my brother and said "We've got a title, at last! It's gonna be Monty Python's Flying Circus!" and he said "it'll never work."

CLIP
Flying Circus opening animation (Michael's Gumby Voice version)

BACK TO STAGE
Bob: Did they not pay attention for a while? You got away with a lot early on?
John: There was a period when there was a lot of freedom.
Michael: No one kept an eye on us at all. We were paid very little, we just worked out of the basement, got all our gear together, went out 'round the country filming these ridiculous things, and nobody bothered us at all until we had the masturbation problem. (realizes what he just said and laughs) Sorry, I had the masturbation problem! No, we did a sketch about the Summarize Proust Competition in which someone gave their hobbies, they were asked their hobbies, and he said "Strangling animals, golf and masturbating." Terrific roar of laughter from the audience. And the BBC came to us, the heads of the BBC had a look at this and said you cannot have masturbating, we cannot put masturbating out on television. And fought them, we went and had this wonderful meeting at the BBC, the six of us sitting around, uh, with Graham, trying to reason with Duncan Wood, his name was, about using the word "masturbating."
Terry J: (recalling meeting) What's wrong with masturbating? You masturbate, don't you Duncan? (uncomfortably, as Duncan) Well, uh, well,....
Michael: Behind his desk, and all that ... Anyway, in the end, they won, and we had to cut out "masturbating." So out came the sketch and it said "strangling animals, golf," pause, HUGE laugh! Enormous laugh at the word "golf"!

CLIP
"Strangling animals, golf" (pause) (HUGE laugh)

BACK TO STAGE
Terry J: I always thought, hmm, strangling animals is all right but masturbating isn't? (footnote 2)
Bob: With all the confidence so many years later, about 25 or so, John, you weren't completely confident right off the bat, were you?
John: Well I had a very strange experience on our stage tour. I'm sure they all remember it differently but I remember we started off in Brighton, we worked our way to the Midlands and we were doing a show in Bristol, and we were doing a matinee there, and for some extraordinary reason, the audience just didn't laugh. And after about...

At this point Terry Gilliam moves to cross his legs and accidentally gives Graham's urn a swift kick, knocking his lid off, sending him flying off the trunk and onto the rug in a cloud of ash. The audience screams in shock, then laughter, as the hydrated Pythons spring to their feet. Terry G. suddenly wields a whisk broom and dustpan and proceeds to make a worse mess of Graham. Now the butler runs onstage with a Dustbuster, and the whirring of its motor is almost as loud as the audience roar. He tries to suck up the late Dr. Chapman, but Bob yells at the butler and he leaves. John sticks his finger into the ashes and has a taste.
Michael: (to John) You disgusting ... !
Meanwhile Graham's cut-out visage just smiles quietly to itself. In desperation Michael uses his foot to grind the atomized bits into the rug. As the commotion dies down and the dust cloud starts to settle, everyone sits back down their chairs.

John: So after about four sketches... (pause for audience roar) ... of this Bristol matinee audience not laughing at something that people had been falling around at for two weeks I realized that they were right and that it wasn't funny. I'm being perfectly serious, if people aren't laughing, it isn't funny. And then the next house came in the evening and they started to laugh again in all the right places and the show became funny again. But I mean comedy's incredibly brittle, and if something goes wrong with the atmosphere you're dead.
Michael: The first recording I remember the reaction being very very quiet, because the BBC has a sort of audience selection unit and as they didn't know what Monty Python was going to be like, they didn't know which audience to get for it. So we had an audience of old-age pensioners and people...
Eric: They thought it was a circus. They came in and said "there's no animals." So you know where the little old ladies look like that...

CLIP
clapping old ladies

BACK TO STAGE
Eric ... that's why we put them in because that was like our first audience.
Bob: You call them pepperpots, right?
Mumbles of assent.
Bob: Now you broke it up into groups, you mostly wrote in various groups, they were Terry Jones and Michael, right?
Terry J & Michael: yeah...
Bob: You and Graham often wrote together, you often wrote alone, and Terry was alone in his attic, right? (to Terry G) Now what is your, I mean you're the most mysterious Python in a way because you were off making ...
Terry G: Ooooo (eerily) ooooo!!
Bob: ... and, uh, the wonderful foot and use of all these artworks, what was it like, were you more or less alone when they were rehearsing in the studio ...
Terry G: Yeah, in some ways I was the most free because they had to submit their material to the group, and everybody voted on whether it went into the good pile, the medium pile or the shit pile. My stuff was never comprehensible to them, and often not to me either, and I would sort of explain to them what I was doing and they would all just look like...
The others stare at him blankly
Terry G: .. like they're doing now.

CLIP
Conrad Pooh's Dancing Teeth

BACK TO STAGE
Bob: But that's the key to what was one of the things that was completely different. Up to now it seems that most television shows were cameras taking pictures of a proscenium stage.
Terry G: Well one of the things we decided very early on was to get rid of punch lines, because before you would see, one was, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore had a wonderful show and they would do great characters, and the sketch would go along, fantastic, and then they would have to go into the punch line, and invariably the punch line wasn't as good as the body of the sketch, so we solved it, you know, the Gordian Knot, chop. Get rid of the punch line.

CLIP
Eric & John at restaurant table
"This is the silliest sketch I've ever been in."
"Shall we stop it?"
"Yeah all right."
"The End"

BACK TO STAGE
Terry J: One of the things we tried to do with the show was to try and do something that was so unpredictable that it had no shape and you could never say what the kind of humor was. And I think that the fact that "pythonesque" is now a word in the Oxford English Dictionary shows the extent to which we failed.
Terry G: There's one thing that I really wanted to do at one point which was, the show would be going on and we would slowly take the sound down in a sketch, and do it very slowly, so people all over England would then (mimes someone getting up to turn their t.v. sound up), go down, go down a bit more ... This would go on for about five minutes until they had their sets at maximum level, and then we'd make the biggest noise we could, and blow up their reception but they didn't let us do that. (Eric is laughing his head off at this point)
Terry J: The BBC has rules about this sort of thing.
John: (seriously) The trouble now, when I watch these shows is, you know we did do some of these things really for the first time. And when you watch them now, you can't remember quite how you reacted to this completely fresh thing, you know we've lost something, we can't see them again now in the way that the first audience did.
No one seems to know how to respond. There is an awkward silence.
Terry G: Well that kind of killed the evening, didn't it? (relieved laughter)
John: I'll go. Sorry. (Gets up) Sorry about that. (he walks off the stage, hanging his head)
Michael: (stands up) I'll get him. (follows him offstage)
Terry G: He's so sensitive.
Eric: Well at least it gives us a chance to talk about John. (to Bob) You want to ask any questions about John, his personal life?
Bob: Come back John!
Michael walks back onto the stage without John.
Michael: He says he'll come on if we talk about sketches he's written. Okay, so let's talk about some. (he sits down) You remember any, Eric?
Eric: Uh, no.
Michael: Argument
Bob: Argument!
Michael: Argument, very good sketch.

CLIP
Argument Clinic
From "An argument is a collective series of statements"
through "Thank you, good morning."

BACK TO STAGE
A pouting John shuffles slowly back to his seat.
Terry G: Oh, Johnnie, Johnnie. (pats him on the leg reassuringly)
Michael: So temperamental! Such a little prima donna.
Terry J: Such a little creep, imagine what he was like in writing sessions. God, you know ...
Bob: Well, what was it like in writing sessions?
Terry J: Oh, what was it like in writing sessions...
Eric: Actually I remember it was rather fun, because what used to happen is we would go away for 2 weeks and they would write and I would write and Terry would do sketches...

At this point Terry G, who is in the shot as Eric talks, is snickering and sharing some seemingly naughty private joke with Michael, who is out of the shot. For some reason Terry G picks up the glass of water that is sitting on the trunk in front of him, sticks his index finger into it carefully, pulls his finger out and shakes the water off. The scene then cuts to a closeup of Eric who is still talking, depriving us from seeing what Terry does next with his newly-moistened digit.

Eric: then we'd come together for two or three days and we'd go to Terry's house and we'd just start to read out material, take it in turns to read out material. And sometimes it was absolutely hysterical. I mean it was fun to hear these things done, performed for the first time.
Terry J: It was the best time of Python, reading out the sketches. You'd start the sessions, you'd know you're going to hear something that you've never heard before, and that it was going to make you really laugh.
Eric: And then the other thing that was very good I thought was that people are very good critics of each others' work, so they'd say you know, that's really funny, that bit on page 2 to page 3, but then it goes off. And so what would happen sometimes they'll say well we know how to finish that, so the sketches would snap around. Or they'd say why don't you just cut it there or we'll bring in the colonel. A good deal of editing which was very good, group editing. And a great deal of honesty and people's feelings were hurt, but the fact was you could actually say that's a piece of shit, you know, and nobody would really cry.
Bob: Was the benchmark really that it would make you all laugh?
Eric: That was it.
Michael: Just about all.
Terry G: And I don't think that's happened since. I mean 6 people, it was all about making 6 people laugh. That was the end of it. There were no producers, there were no executives, there were no market research people saying this is what the audience should be going for, six people. (the audience, "industry" folks, remember, burst out into applause.)
Bob: As you all know the parrot sketch seems to be voted the most favorite.
John: It's a wonderful sketch.
Bob: It is a wonderful sketch.
Michael: (To John) Who wrote it, John? Who wrote that sketch I wonder? (to the urn) Graham? It was Graham.
John: I think I did ... didn't I write that one?
Bob: Well it came from a mechanic. A fellow who fixed cars, and who had an excuse for every...
Michael: Yeah he was a man I knew, who I'd bought a car off and every time you took the car back, he'd say (petshopkeeper voice) "Oh, it's all right", (normal voice) you know, he'd have an excuse for everything. The door's fallen off. (petshopkeeper) "Well, they do on these cars, they're new."
John: You have any trouble, bring it in.
Michael: (normal voice) The brake doesn't work, I've gone down the hill, smashed into a brick wall.. (petshopkeeper) "Well, bring it in. Bring it in, I'll have a look at it. It's lunchtime at the moment."
John: And we'd done this sketch for another show which had not been seen by many people. And Graham and I had this odd feeling that there was something very funny here if only we could find the right context for it. And we then decided Pet Shop, and would it be a dog or a parrot?

CLIP:
Dead Parrot
From "Hello, I wish to register a complaint."
Through "Now that's what I call a dead parrot."

BACK TO STAGE
John: Somebody came up to me 2 weeks later and they said, can I ask you a question about that parrot sketch and I said sure, they said "It is about the Vietnam War, isn't it?"
Bob: Didn't you do sort of a parody of this sketch as a testimony at Graham's funeral?
Eric: John did it.
John: Yes, I just thought it was right, I mean, the great thing about being around Graham is he just adored bad taste.
Bob: Was he the house physician, incidentally, for the group?
Michael: He was a doctor, he was a medical man, yes.

CLIP
Graham as Gumby Brain Surgeon

BACK TO STAGE
Bob: There's a question from the Pythonline website, that I'd like to ask:
The question that follows, along with the Pythons' answers, are all in German, but subtitled thusly:
Bob: "Why did you decide to do t.v. episodes in German?"
The Ps look thoughtfully into space.
John: "What an asinine question. Could we please get to the clip? I need to use the restroom."
Others: Ja, ja, jawohl...
Eric: "Yes, and I would like some Chinese takeout and spam."
Michael: "I can kill a bat with an egg spoon." (footnote 3)

CLIP: Michael is standing in a forest, wearing liederhosen, a hat and a forced smile. His arm is around some fraulein, while Eric, Terry J, John, Graham and 4 other men are dressed in odd black uniforms (Austrian border police) and grouped familiarly. They sing the Lumberjack Song's tune but the lyrics they sing are in German ... ich bin ein holzfaller und fuhl much stark ... (transcriber's note: if, like me, you'd never seen this, it's sort of like having a dream about the lumberjack sketch) Captions display the non-disorienting English words. Very carefully and precisely, Michael sings the 2nd verse in German. (footnote 4)

BACK TO STAGE
Bob: That's pretty obscure to Americans, do you explain that?
Eric: Well the Germans came to us and they said, look, we don't have a sense of humor. But we understand you do. Will you come to Germany and write a comedy show for us? They said we'll take you on a writing wreckie. And nobody's ever heard of a writing wreckie, you know, it was like 10 days' holiday in Bavaria. So we said, sure, we'll go. And we went to the airport and we flew to Munich, and they met us at the airport with huge steins of beer, and we were going there to write sketches for Germany, to do comedy sketches. And they took us, from the airport, straight to Dachau. This is a true story! And as we tried to get to Dachau, everybody kept denying they knew where it was. We'd stop and say "Where is the camp?" and they'd say "What camp? We have not heard of this." Finally we got there and it was just closing as we drove up. And they said, "No, you cannot come in" and Graham said "Tell them we're Jewish!" God bless him, and they let us in! But we never understood what they were trying to do, whether they were trying to say, well, let's do a comedy sketch about this, or whether they're saying well let's get this over with, and up front... I mean, I never, I still don't understand what the move was.(footnote 5)

John: It was odd. But we wrote a script, basically, they translated it into German, a 50 minute show. We actually went through the translation with them so that we understood as well as we possibly could what it all meant, you know, and which words to emphasize, and then we learned it all parrot-fashion..
Terry G: Phonetically, yeah.
John: Um, and then we did it, and it was enormous, enormous fun.

Footnote 1: Other sources put it more fancifully: "Baron Von Took's Flying Circus." go back

Footnote 2: Happily, the word "masturbation" is restored into the Summarize Proust sketch on most newer videos. Less happily, the word "cancer," dubbed out of Terry Gilliam's "Prince and the Black Spot" cartoon in another show, is not. go back

Footnote 3: I don't speak German, but those who do note that the Pythons took this opportunity to make an extra joke for the benefit of the Deutsch. According to Bonnie, here's the gist: Bob says what his caption says. John says "25 years ago we made 2 broadcasts for German television, and got a very very pleasant recommendation." (Think he was going for "reception" - he made a few other grammar/syntax errors that we wouldn't understand.) Eric spoke the best German, and said "In this way one may get a cheap laugh." Michael attempted to say what the screen translation said, but sounded like he just learned it phonetically and said it rather badly. Actually, this is an actual line spoken by Mike in the first German show circa 1971, the "Stake Your Claim" sketch, translated in that show's subtitles as "I can kill a bat with an egg whisk." To remember the same line all these years Mike must be given some credit. He has said that's the only bit of German he still remembers! go back

Footnote 3: The full lyrics to the "Holzfaller" song are given in the Monty Python Songbook (Bongosok) and at our own lyrics page. When the real Python shows appear dubbed in German they use an entirely different translation. No, that is not Connie Booth as the fraulein.go back

Footnote 4: John Cleese told the same Dachau story on Dennis Miller Live from Aspen only one day earlier. Eric does, however, add some additional reflections. go back

On to Part Three!

Piss Off!

Bob: Is it true that the BBC wanted Flying Circus in the title? John: The BBC had to call it something on their schedule so they started calling it by the name of the executive who was in charge who was Barry Took, and they called it "Barry Took's Flying Circus."(footnote 1) We rather liked Flying Circus and then we had to decide whose it was. And then we thought it might be Gwen Dibley's, because (to Michael) who was she? Michael: Well I just found, at my mother-in-law's one quiet weekend, she was reading a magazine of the Townswomen's Guild, sort of people who do good work in the counties of England, and in each of these places they have embroidery classes and flower arranging and all that... (in Gumby voice) FLOWER ARRANGING! (back to normal voice) and they also had a little bit where it said "accompanied by Gwen Dibley on the piano" and the name Gwen Dibley sort of intrigued me and I thought how nice it would be to give someone their own series without them knowing, so that only when the listings came out for that weekend, the family would say, "Mum! You've got the series ... on television!"
Terry J: The very first scripts that went into the BBC were called Bunn Whackett Buzzle Stubble and Boot, which was a football team that John and Graham had, and we were calling it Bunn Whackett Buzzle Stubble and Boot right up to the day before the Radio Times had to go to press. And the BBC rang us up and said now come on, you've got to call it something sensible, this is stupid! We were all sitting there in John's place, I think as far as I remember, and we said oh it's got to be somebody's flying circus, and I think John said how about something slimy, slithery... John: Untrustworthy... Terry J: ...and phallic... John: ...typical show business agent, so we all said "Python! Python! Python!" and then somebody else shouted out "Monty" which made us laugh because Monty to us means Lord Montgomery, our great general of the second world war.. Terry J: Who is he?! Michael: I thought it was Monty Shosheim, the Jazz musician! John: (laughs) Terry J: Jazz clarinet ... Michael: Yeah. Terry J: It was a great moment, I rushed home to my brother and said "We've got a title, at last! It's gonna be Monty Python's Flying Circus!" and he said "it'll never work." CLIP Flying Circus opening animation (Michael's Gumby Voice version) BACK TO STAGE Bob: Did they not pay attention for a while? You got away with a lot early on? John: There was a period when there was a lot of freedom. Michael: No one kept an eye on us at all. We were paid very little, we just worked out of the basement, got all our gear together, went out 'round the country filming these ridiculous things, and nobody bothered us at all until we had the masturbation problem. (realizes what he just said and laughs) Sorry, I had the masturbation problem! No, we did a sketch about the Summarize Proust Competition in which someone gave their hobbies, they were asked their hobbies, and he said "Strangling animals, golf and masturbating." Terrific roar of laughter from the audience. And the BBC came to us, the heads of the BBC had a look at this and said you cannot have masturbating, we cannot put masturbating out on television. And fought them, we went and had this wonderful meeting at the BBC, the six of us sitting around, uh, with Graham, trying to reason with Duncan Wood, his name was, about using the word "masturbating."
Terry J: (recalling meeting) What's wrong with masturbating? You masturbate, don't you Duncan? (uncomfortably, as Duncan) Well, uh, well,.... Michael: Behind his desk, and all that ... Anyway, in the end, they won, and we had to cut out "masturbating." So out came the sketch and it said "strangling animals, golf," pause, HUGE laugh! Enormous laugh at the word "golf"! CLIP "Strangling animals, golf" (pause) (HUGE laugh) BACK TO STAGE Terry J: I always thought, hmm, strangling animals is all right but masturbating isn't? (footnote 2)
Bob: With all the confidence so many years later, about 25 or so, John, you weren't completely confident right off the bat, were you? John: Well I had a very strange experience on our stage tour. I'm sure they all remember it differently but I remember we started off in Brighton, we worked our way to the Midlands and we were doing a show in Bristol, and we were doing a matinee there, and for some extraordinary reason, the audience just didn't laugh. And after about... At this point Terry Gilliam moves to cross his legs and accidentally gives Graham's urn a swift kick, knocking his lid off, sending him flying off the trunk and onto the rug in a cloud of ash. The audience screams in shock, then laughter, as the hydrated Pythons spring to their feet. Terry G. suddenly wields a whisk broom and dustpan and proceeds to make a worse mess of Graham. Now the butler runs onstage with a Dustbuster, and the whirring of its motor is almost as loud as the audience roar. He tries to suck up the late Dr. Chapman, but Bob yells at the butler and he leaves. John sticks his finger into the ashes and has a taste. Michael: (to John) You disgusting ... ! Meanwhile Graham's cut-out visage just smiles quietly to itself. In desperation Michael uses his foot to grind the atomized bits into the rug. As the commotion dies down and the dust cloud starts to settle, everyone sits back down their chairs. John: So after about four sketches... (pause for audience roar) ... of this Bristol matinee audience not laughing at something that people had been falling around at for two weeks I realized that they were right and that it wasn't funny. I'm being perfectly serious, if people aren't laughing, it isn't funny. And then the next house came in the evening and they started to laugh again in all the right places and the show became funny again. But I mean comedy's incredibly brittle, and if something goes wrong with the atmosphere you're dead.
Michael: The first recording I remember the reaction being very very quiet, because the BBC has a sort of audience selection unit and as they didn't know what Monty Python was going to be like, they didn't know which audience to get for it. So we had an audience of old-age pensioners and people... Eric: They thought it was a circus. They came in and said "there's no animals." So you know where the little old ladies look like that... CLIP clapping old ladies BACK TO STAGE Eric ... that's why we put them in because that was like our first audience. Bob: You call them pepperpots, right? Mumbles of assent. Bob: Now you broke it up into groups, you mostly wrote in various groups, they were Terry Jones and Michael, right? Terry J & Michael: yeah... Bob: You and Graham often wrote together, you often wrote alone, and Terry was alone in his attic, right? (to Terry G) Now what is your, I mean you're the most mysterious Python in a way because you were off making ... Terry G: Ooooo (eerily) ooooo!! Bob: ... and, uh, the wonderful foot and use of all these artworks, what was it like, were you more or less alone when they were rehearsing in the studio ... Terry G: Yeah, in some ways I was the most free because they had to submit their material to the group, and everybody voted on whether it went into the good pile, the medium pile or the shit pile. My stuff was never comprehensible to them, and often not to me either, and I would sort of explain to them what I was doing and they would all just look like... The others stare at him blankly Terry G: .. like they're doing now. CLIP Conrad Pooh's Dancing Teeth BACK TO STAGE Bob: But that's the key to what was one of the things that was completely different. Up to now it seems that most television shows were cameras taking pictures of a proscenium stage. Terry G: Well one of the things we decided very early on was to get rid of punch lines, because before you would see, one was, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore had a wonderful show and they would do great characters, and the sketch would go along, fantastic, and then they would have to go into the punch line, and invariably the punch line wasn't as good as the body of the sketch, so we solved it, you know, the Gordian Knot, chop. Get rid of the punch line.
CLIP Eric & John at restaurant table "This is the silliest sketch I've ever been in." "Shall we stop it?" "Yeah all right." "The End" BACK TO STAGE Terry J: One of the things we tried to do with the show was to try and do something that was so unpredictable that it had no shape and you could never say what the kind of humor was. And I think that the fact that "pythonesque" is now a word in the Oxford English Dictionary shows the extent to which we failed. Terry G: There's one thing that I really wanted to do at one point which was, the show would be going on and we would slowly take the sound down in a sketch, and do it very slowly, so people all over England would then (mimes someone getting up to turn their t.v. sound up), go down, go down a bit more ... This would go on for about five minutes until they had their sets at maximum level, and then we'd make the biggest noise we could, and blow up their reception but they didn't let us do that. (Eric is laughing his head off at this point) Terry J: The BBC has rules about this sort of thing. John: (seriously) The trouble now, when I watch these shows is, you know we did do some of these things really for the first time. And when you watch them now, you can't remember quite how you reacted to this completely fresh thing, you know we've lost something, we can't see them again now in the way that the first audience did. No one seems to know how to respond. There is an awkward silence. Terry G: Well that kind of killed the evening, didn't it? (relieved laughter) John: I'll go. Sorry. (Gets up) Sorry about that. (he walks off the stage, hanging his head) Michael: (stands up) I'll get him. (follows him offstage) Terry G: He's so sensitive. Eric: Well at least it gives us a chance to talk about John. (to Bob) You want to ask any questions about John, his personal life? Bob: Come back John! Michael walks back onto the stage without John. Michael: He says he'll come on if we talk about sketches he's written. Okay, so let's talk about some. (he sits down) You remember any, Eric? Eric: Uh, no. Michael: Argument Bob: Argument! Michael: Argument, very good sketch. CLIP Argument Clinic From "An argument is a collective series of statements" through "Thank you, good morning." BACK TO STAGE A pouting John shuffles slowly back to his seat. Terry G: Oh, Johnnie, Johnnie. (pats him on the leg reassuringly) Michael: So temperamental! Such a little prima donna. Terry J: Such a little creep, imagine what he was like in writing sessions. God, you know ... Bob: Well, what was it like in writing sessions? Terry J: Oh, what was it like in writing sessions... Eric: Actually I remember it was rather fun, because what used to happen is we would go away for 2 weeks and they would write and I would write and Terry would do sketches... At this point Terry G, who is in the shot as Eric talks, is snickering and sharing some seemingly naughty private joke with Michael, who is out of the shot. For some reason Terry G picks up the glass of water that is sitting on the trunk in front of him, sticks his index finger into it carefully, pulls his finger out and shakes the water off. The scene then cuts to a closeup of Eric who is still talking, depriving us from seeing what Terry does next with his newly-moistened digit. Eric: then we'd come together for two or three days and we'd go to Terry's house and we'd just start to read out material, take it in turns to read out material. And sometimes it was absolutely hysterical. I mean it was fun to hear these things done, performed for the first time. Terry J: It was the best time of Python, reading out the sketches. You'd start the sessions, you'd know you're going to hear something that you've never heard before, and that it was going to make you really laugh. Eric: And then the other thing that was very good I thought was that people are very good critics of each others' work, so they'd say you know, that's really funny, that bit on page 2 to page 3, but then it goes off. And so what would happen sometimes they'll say well we know how to finish that, so the sketches would snap around. Or they'd say why don't you just cut it there or we'll bring in the colonel. A good deal of editing which was very good, group editing. And a great deal of honesty and people's feelings were hurt, but the fact was you could actually say that's a piece of shit, you know, and nobody would really cry.
Bob: Was the benchmark really that it would make you all laugh? Eric: That was it. Michael: Just about all. Terry G: And I don't think that's happened since. I mean 6 people, it was all about making 6 people laugh. That was the end of it. There were no producers, there were no executives, there were no market research people saying this is what the audience should be going for, six people. (the audience, "industry" folks, remember, burst out into applause.) Bob: As you all know the parrot sketch seems to be voted the most favorite. John: It's a wonderful sketch. Bob: It is a wonderful sketch. Michael: (To John) Who wrote it, John? Who wrote that sketch I wonder? (to the urn) Graham? It was Graham. John: I think I did ... didn't I write that one? Bob: Well it came from a mechanic. A fellow who fixed cars, and who had an excuse for every... Michael: Yeah he was a man I knew, who I'd bought a car off and every time you took the car back, he'd say (petshopkeeper voice) "Oh, it's all right", (normal voice) you know, he'd have an excuse for everything. The door's fallen off. (petshopkeeper) "Well, they do on these cars, they're new." John: You have any trouble, bring it in. Michael: (normal voice) The brake doesn't work, I've gone down the hill, smashed into a brick wall.. (petshopkeeper) "Well, bring it in. Bring it in, I'll have a look at it. It's lunchtime at the moment." John: And we'd done this sketch for another show which had not been seen by many people. And Graham and I had this odd feeling that there was something very funny here if only we could find the right context for it. And we then decided Pet Shop, and would it be a dog or a parrot? CLIP: Dead Parrot From "Hello, I wish to register a complaint." Through "Now that's what I call a dead parrot." BACK TO STAGE John: Somebody came up to me 2 weeks later and they said, can I ask you a question about that parrot sketch and I said sure, they said "It is about the Vietnam War, isn't it?" Bob: Didn't you do sort of a parody of this sketch as a testimony at Graham's funeral? Eric: John did it. John: Yes, I just thought it was right, I mean, the great thing about being around Graham is he just adored bad taste. Bob: Was he the house physician, incidentally, for the group? Michael: He was a doctor, he was a medical man, yes. CLIP Graham as Gumby Brain Surgeon BACK TO STAGE Bob: There's a question from the Pythonline website, that I'd like to ask:
The question that follows, along with the Pythons' answers, are all in German, but subtitled thusly: Bob: "Why did you decide to do t.v. episodes in German?" The Ps look thoughtfully into space. John: "What an asinine question. Could we please get to the clip? I need to use the restroom." Others: Ja, ja, jawohl... Eric: "Yes, and I would like some Chinese takeout and spam." Michael: "I can kill a bat with an egg spoon." (footnote 3) CLIP: Michael is standing in a forest, wearing liederhosen, a hat and a forced smile. His arm is around some fraulein, while Eric, Terry J, John, Graham and 4 other men are dressed in odd black uniforms (Austrian border police) and grouped familiarly. They sing the Lumberjack Song's tune but the lyrics they sing are in German ... ich bin ein holzfaller und fuhl much stark ... (transcriber's note: if, like me, you'd never seen this, it's sort of like having a dream about the lumberjack sketch) Captions display the non-disorienting English words. Very carefully and precisely, Michael sings the 2nd verse in German. (footnote 4) BACK TO STAGE Bob: That's pretty obscure to Americans, do you explain that? Eric: Well the Germans came to us and they said, look, we don't have a sense of humor. But we understand you do. Will you come to Germany and write a comedy show for us? They said we'll take you on a writing wreckie. And nobody's ever heard of a writing wreckie, you know, it was like 10 days' holiday in Bavaria. So we said, sure, we'll go. And we went to the airport and we flew to Munich, and they met us at the airport with huge steins of beer, and we were going there to write sketches for Germany, to do comedy sketches. And they took us, from the airport, straight to Dachau. This is a true story! And as we tried to get to Dachau, everybody kept denying they knew where it was. We'd stop and say "Where is the camp?" and they'd say "What camp? We have not heard of this." Finally we got there and it was just closing as we drove up. And they said, "No, you cannot come in" and Graham said "Tell them we're Jewish!" God bless him, and they let us in! But we never understood what they were trying to do, whether they were trying to say, well, let's do a comedy sketch about this, or whether they're saying well let's get this over with, and up front... I mean, I never, I still don't understand what the move was.(footnote 5)
John: It was odd. But we wrote a script, basically, they translated it into German, a 50 minute show. We actually went through the translation with them so that we understood as well as we possibly could what it all meant, you know, and which words to emphasize, and then we learned it all parrot-fashion.. Terry G: Phonetically, yeah. John: Um, and then we did it, and it was enormous, enormous fun.