Monty Python
Monty Python, also known as the Pythons, were a British comedy troupe formed in 1969 consisting of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. The group initially came to prominence in the UK for the sketch comedy television series Monty Python's Flying Circus, which aired on the BBC from 1969 to 1974. Their work then developed into a larger collection that included live shows, films, albums, books, and musicals; their influence on comedy has been compared to the Beatles' influence on music. Their sketch show has been called "an important moment in the evolution of television comedy".
Monty Python's Flying Circus was loosely structured as a sketch show, but its innovative stream of consciousness approach and Gilliam's animation skills pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in style and content. A self-contained comedy unit, the Pythons had creative control that allowed them to experiment with form and content, discarding rules of television comedy. They followed their television work by making the films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and The Meaning of Life. Their influence on British comedy has been apparent for years, while it has coloured the work of the early editions of Saturday Night Live through to absurdist trends in television comedy.
At the 41st British Academy Film Awards in 1988, Monty Python received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema. In 1998, they were awarded the AFI Star Award by the American Film Institute. Holy Grail and Life of Brian are frequently ranked on lists of the greatest comedy films. A 2005 poll asked more than 300 comedians, comedy writers, producers, and directors to name the greatest comedians of all time, and half of Monty Python's members made the top 50.
History
Before ''Flying Circus''
Jones and Palin met at Oxford University, where they performed together with the Oxford Revue. Chapman and Cleese met at Cambridge University. Idle was also at Cambridge, but started a year after Chapman and Cleese. Cleese met Gilliam in New York City while on tour with the Cambridge University Footlights revue Cambridge Circus. Chapman, Cleese, and Idle were members of the Footlights, which at that time also included the future Goodies, and Jonathan Lynn. During Idle's presidency of the club, feminist writer Germaine Greer and broadcaster Clive James were members. Recordings of Footlights' revues at Pembroke College include sketches and performances by Cleese and Idle, which, along with tapes of Idle's performances in some of the drama society's theatrical productions, are kept in the archives of the Pembroke Players.The six Python members appeared in or wrote these shows before Flying Circus:
- I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again : Cleese, Idle and Chapman
- The Frost Report : Cleese, Idle, Chapman, Palin and Jones
- At Last the 1948 Show : Chapman and Cleese, Idle
- Twice a Fortnight : Palin and Jones
- Do Not Adjust Your Set : Idle, Jones, and Palin, Gilliam
- We Have Ways of Making You Laugh : Idle, Gilliam
- How to Irritate People : Cleese and Chapman, Palin
- The Complete and Utter History of Britain : Palin and Jones
- Doctor in the House, Cleese and Chapman
File:The_Four_Yorkshiremen,_2014_.jpg|thumb|The "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch at the 2014 Monty Python reunion. Written by Cleese, Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Marty Feldman, it was originally performed on their TV series At Last the 1948 Show in 1967. It parodies nostalgic conversations about humble beginnings or difficult childhoods.
Following the success of Do Not Adjust Your Set, Thames Television offered Gilliam, Idle, Jones, and Palin their own late-night adult comedy series together. At the same time, Chapman and Cleese were offered a show by the BBC, which had been impressed by their work on The Frost Report and At Last the 1948 Show. Cleese was reluctant to do a two-man show for various reasons, including Chapman's supposedly difficult and erratic personality. Cleese had fond memories of working with Palin on How to Irritate People and invited him to join the team. With no studio available at Thames until summer 1970 for the late-night show, Palin agreed to join Cleese and Chapman, and suggested the involvement of his writing partner Jones and colleague Idle—who in turn wanted Gilliam to provide animations for the projected series. Much has been made of the fact that the Monty Python troupe is the result of Cleese's desire to work with Palin and the chance circumstances that brought the other four members into the fold.
By contrast, according to John Cleese's autobiography, the origins of Monty Python lay in the admiration that writing partners Cleese and Chapman had for the new type of comedy being done on Do Not Adjust Your Set; as a result, a meeting was initiated by Cleese between Chapman, Idle, Jones, Palin, and himself at which it was agreed to pool their writing and performing efforts and jointly seek production sponsorship. According to their official website, the group was born from a Kashmir tandoori restaurant in Hampstead on 11 May 1969, following a taping of Do Not Adjust Your Set which Cleese and Chapman attended. It was the first time all six got together, with their first meetings then taking place at Cleese's apartment in Basil Street, Knightsbridge in central London.
''Monty Python's Flying Circus''
Development of the series
According to show director Ian MacNaughton, the first discussion over the idea for the show Monty Python's Flying Circus was a result of BBC's comedy advisor, Barry Took, bringing the Pythons along with John Howard Davies and MacNaughton together into one conference room at the BBC Television Centre. The Pythons had a definite idea about what they wanted to do with the series. They were admirers of the work of Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore on Beyond the Fringe—seminal to the British "satire boom"—and had worked on Frost, which was similar in style.They enjoyed Cook and Moore's sketch show Not Only... But Also. One problem the Pythons perceived with these programmes was that though the body of the sketch would be strong, the writers would often struggle to then find a punchline funny enough to end on, and this would detract from the overall sketch quality. They decided that they would simply not bother to "cap" their sketches in the traditional manner, and early episodes of the Flying Circus series make great play of this abandonment of the punchline. However, as they began assembling material for the show, the Pythons watched one of their collective heroes, Spike Milligan, whom they had admired on The Goon Show recording his groundbreaking BBC series Q.... Not only was Q... more irreverent and anarchic than any previous television comedy, but Milligan also would often "give up" on sketches halfway through and wander off set. It was clear that their new series would now seem less original, and Jones in particular became determined the Pythons should innovate. Michael Palin recalls "Terry Jones and I adored the Q... shows... was the first writer to play with the conventions of television." Charles Isherwood writes that the Pythons "derived their sketch formats in part from the rowdy tradition of the music hall."
File:Monty Python Live 02-07-14 12 56 41.jpg|thumb|"The Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch performed at the 2014 Python reunion. Featuring Cleese as a bowler-hatted civil servant in a fictitious British government ministry responsible for developing silly walks through grants, it appears in season 2, episode 1 of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
After much debate, Jones remembered an animation Gilliam had created for Do Not Adjust Your Set called "Beware of the Elephants", which had intrigued him with its stream-of-consciousness style. Jones felt it would be a good concept to apply to the series: allowing sketches to blend into one another. Palin had been equally fascinated by another of Gilliam's efforts, entitled "Christmas Cards", and agreed that it represented "a way of doing things differently". Since Cleese, Chapman, and Idle were less concerned with the overall flow of the programme, Jones, Palin, and Gilliam became largely responsible for the presentation style of the Flying Circus series, in which disparate sketches are linked to give each episode the appearance of a single stream-of-consciousness. The BBC states, "Gilliam's unique animation style became crucial, segueing seamlessly between any two completely unrelated ideas and making the stream-of-consciousness work."
Writing started at 9:00a.m. and finished at 5:00p.m. Typically, Cleese and Chapman worked as one pair isolated from the others, as did Jones and Palin, while Idle wrote alone. After a few days, they would join with Gilliam, critique their scripts, and exchange ideas. Their approach to writing was democratic. If the majority found an idea humorous, it was included in the show. The casting of roles for the sketches was a similarly unselfish process, since each member viewed himself primarily as a "writer", rather than an actor eager for screen time. When the themes for sketches were chosen, Gilliam had a free hand in bridging them with animations, using a camera, scissors, and airbrush.
file:Monty_Python_Live_02-07-14_12_46_43_.jpg|thumb|left|"The Spanish Inquisition" sketch performed by Gilliam, Palin and Jones at the 2014 Python reunion. As a sketch writer and creator of animations, Gilliam did considerably less acting, but did have some notable sketch roles such as this.
While the show was a collaborative process, different factions within Python were responsible for elements of the team's humour. In general, the work of the Oxford-educated members was more visual, and more fanciful conceptually, while the Cambridge graduates' sketches tended to be more verbal and more aggressive. Cleese confirmed that "most of the sketches with heavy abuse were Graham's and mine, anything that started with a slow pan across countryside and impressive music was Mike and Terry's, and anything that got utterly involved with words and disappeared up any personal orifice was Eric's". Gilliam's animations ranged from the whimsical to the savage.
Several names for the show were considered before Monty Python's Flying Circus was settled upon. Some were Owl Stretching Time, The Toad Elevating Moment, A Horse, a Spoon and a Basin, Vaseline Review, and Bun, Wackett, Buzzard, Stubble and Boot. Reportedly, these names were considered for the show because the group members found it funny that the show name would have nothing to do with the actual content of the series. Flying Circus stuck when the BBC explained it had printed that name in its schedules and was not prepared to amend it. Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus was named after a woman Palin had read about in the newspaper, thinking it would be amusing if she were to discover she had her own TV show. Baron Von Took's Flying Circus was considered as an affectionate tribute to Barry Took, the man who had brought them together. Arthur Megapode's Flying Circus was suggested, then discarded. The name Baron Von Took's Flying Circus had the form of Baron Manfred von Richthofen's Flying Circus of WWI fame, and the new group was forming in a time when the Royal Guardsmen's 1966 song "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" had peaked. The term 'flying circus' was also another name for the popular entertainment of the 1920s known as barnstorming, where multiple performers collaborated with their stunts to perform a combined set of acts.
Differing, somewhat confusing accounts are given of the origins of the Python name, although the members agree that its only "significance" was that they thought it sounded funny. In the 1998 documentary Live at Aspen during the US Comedy Arts Festival, where the troupe was awarded the AFI Star Award by the American Film Institute, the group implied that "Monty" was selected as a gently mocking tribute to Field Marshal Lord Montgomery, a British general of World War II; requiring a "slippery-sounding" surname, they settled on "Python". On other occasions, Idle has claimed that the name "Monty" was that of a popular and rotund fellow who drank in his local pub; people would often walk in and ask the barman, "Has Monty been in yet?", forcing the name to become stuck in his mind. The name Monty Python was later described by the BBC as being "envisaged by the team as the perfect name for a sleazy entertainment agent".