High jinks are back in life of Monty
Reviewed by Richard Di Dio
The Pythons Autobiography
By The Pythons
Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's 359 pp, $60
Stand totally erect, straight-backed, bowler lodged firmly
on your head. Now bring your right knee up, chin level. Back
down in a semi-squat, then cluck like a chicken. Snap the right
leg out viciously, haul it back in and then out again like a
confused pendulum. The motion takes you forward for your first
slithering step without disturbing the contents of your briefcase.
Aaaah... you always remember your first Silly Walk.
And the first time you saw Monty Python's Flying Circus
- Eric Idle, Terry Jones, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael
Palin, and the invisible American, Terry Gilliam - leading the
Second British Invasion as avatars of a new type of comedy.
The Python Autobiography by the Pythons is a collection
of recent interviews spliced together with diary entries and
more than 1,000 pictures. Reading this coffee-table-size book
is like trying to follow one of the Pythons' shows. "And now
for something completely different": Here is a passage from
Michael Palin's diary written during the filming of Life
of Brian, followed by a recent John Cleese recollection
about his brief foray into journalism for Newsweek, segueing
into early sketchbooks of Terry Gilliam. The effect is ultimately
a coherent, funny, and poignant history of a brilliant group
of comic writers and actors at a time in TV that will not happen
again.
Oh yes, it's also irreverent as only Python can be. The death
of Graham Chapman in 1989 left the group short a founder, and
perhaps its strongest straight character actor and wordsmith.
In the editor's words: "Due to his insistence on being inconveniently
dead, Dr. Graham Chapman was unable, more than unwilling, to
author this section of the book himself." But Chapman passages
- using old quotes from him and current interviews with his
brother, sister-in-law, and former lover - appear throughout
the book, providing non sequiturs that make the narrative work.
Watching PBS's first airing of Monty Python's Flying Circus
and the release of And Now for Something Completely Different
was an awakening to a new form of TV comedy, which was both
intellectual and crude, often confusing because of its British
references, and hilarious. (At least to a college senior anesthetized
by years of Laugh-In.)
This comedy was new to the United States only. Flying Circus
was the culmination of a decade of satire that had arisen in
Britain, fueled by the likes of Peter Cook and David Frost.
But Python did make an important contribution, which was perhaps
the main reason for success.
Spike Milligan of Goon Show fame had experimented with
sketch comedy that did not rely on clean beginnings and endings.
Python members took this idea to its extreme, writing scenes
that turned into other scenes when they felt that the joke had
been made, in a train-of-consciousness approach. What made this
work were the film and music bits used to link the sketches
together, and, most important, the cutout animations of Terry
Gilliam.
The autobiography provides a six-headed account of the Pythons'
strangely effective, collective writing process that should
be required reading for any theatrical troupe. The book is also
replete with riotous accounts of the squabbles that are inevitable
in the crucible of writing, performance and TV deadlines. In
one memorable blowup, the description of the disagreement could
come from one of the shows.
According to Cleese, "We got into a terrible fight about whether
a candelabra should be made out of a goat or a sheep. We knew
that there was going to be a lightbulb screwed into each of
its four feet, but there was this almost vitriolic fight, three
against three, insulting each other:... 'What do you mean a
sheep? It has got to be a goat.' "
Luckily, the Pythons agreed on great writing and performance,
and combined these with a unique view of quintessentially British
class distinction and pomposity. Hence the Minister of Silly
Walks.
They also agreed on their name. The autobiography contains
a page from Terry Jones' notebook during those times. In almost
biblical litany, the proposed names are listed: Arthur Megapode's
Cheap Show, The Vaseline Review, Owl Stretching Time, Bun Wackett
Buzzard Stubble and Boot, A Horse a Spoon and a Basin, Norman
Python's FC, Bob Python's FC, Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Chapman, speaking from the grave, provides the reason for the
ultimate agreement: "Monty was the name we associated with rather
unpleasant Charing Cross Road agents, and Pythons are unpleasant
anyway."
The autobiography is more than a compendium of how not to run
out of cheese, lumberjacks, argument clinics, Spam, and the
unfortunate explosion of Mr. Creosote. It is essential reading,
and laughing, on the birth of satire. It's...
Before becoming
a professor of mathematics and physics at La Salle University,
Richard Di Dio was a writer-producer-performer in the satirical
comedy troupe No Respect for the Human Condition Players.
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