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John
Cleese Interview Bits
Interviewed by Will Clinger
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WILL: Monty Python had a reunion recently at Aspen for the Comedy
Festival, right?
JOHN: That's right. HBO said they'd like to sort of go to Aspen
and we hadn't seen each other for about nine months so we thought, well,
if somebody's prepared to pay for the airfares and the hotel rooms, that's
great. So went and had a business meeting and then in the evening, we actually
appeared on the stage and did the show. And HBO actually did it very well.
They got some good clips from the television show, the stage show, and
from the films. And then Robert Klein, who was sort of acting as moderator,
asked us questions. And I think it's cut together into a very nice fifty-eight
minute show. And everybody's saying, well, what about the business meeting?
And the answer is we've decided we'd like to do a stage tour again after
eighteen years. So, we're going to take the stage show out of wraps and
probably put some new material in if the fans allow us. Because we're always
the guys who want to do the new material and the fans always want to see
the old stuff. So we're trying to get that balanced right. And then, I
don't know yet, it's not been arranged which cities we'll go to, but obviously
we will do New York and London, I guess L.A., and I shall personally vote
for Chicago. Write to the other Pythons and tell them to go to Chicago. |
WILL: For a guy that started studying law at Cambridge and then
went on to become part of the Monty Python group, that seems like something
completely different. How did that happen?
JOHN: Well, I think it takes a long time in life to figure out
what it is you really want to do. At 58, I'm still looking but I sort of
filled in thirty-five years with jokes, and it's been at least well-paid.
WILL: Then, will you go back to law?
JOHN: Oh, no I would never go back to do law. But there are
one or two things I'm quite interested in. I always have been interested
in the psychology institute. Sort of psychologically-oriented books that
I wrote. And I wrote those for about three or four years with a pal of
mine called Robin Skynner, who is a proper psychologist, and that was one
of the most interesting things I ever did and brought in absolutely no
money at all for the first four years so, you know, I mixed in bits.
WILL: Did you know you were, did you have this theatrical bent,
if you will, even as a child?
JOHN: No, I had no idea at all, because people in Weston Super-Mare
either ran shops or went into insurance or, if they were very, very successful,
became chartered accountants. So, people who were on stage were kind of
looked at as very odd, certainly from another planet.
WILL: And you hated it even when you were doing it.
JOHN: I never enjoyed it that much. Terry Jones at Aspen said
something that struck me as being quite perceptive and I hadn't thought
of it. He said the greatest moment was writing it and then reading it out
to each other. And if I had written something that made Michael Palin laugh
and Eric Idle and Terry Jones and Gilliam roar with laughter then we had
to go out and put the bloody thing on television! You see what I mean?
The moment of utter pleasure was making them fall around, after that, it
was doing it the second time.
WILL: It's anti-climatic.
JOHN: Almost. Yeah, it was kind of, I used to think it was like
a sausage machine, we'd just go into the studio every week and turn them
out. But the fun was the writing and all the tedium was the price you actually
had to pay to get the writing on the screen. |
WILL: Was it ever contentious?
JOHN: We used to fight about material. I don't think we fought
about anything else but we cared terribly about material. And to give you
some idea about how crazy some of the arguments were, I remember once we
decided there was some stuffed animal hanging from the ceiling of this
particular dormitory in a girl's school and it had a light bulb screwed
in each one of it's four feet and we got in a big argument about whether
it should be a sheep or a goat. And blows were almost exchanged. I remember
thinking, "This is insane." We had people saying, "A goat is not funny!
It has to be a sheep!" and other people saying, "A sheep, are you insane?
I think it's going to be funny as a goat!" And we cared terribly about
the material and that was we spilted about. Now, we don't care at all.
We're just fat-cats; we're lazy and unprepared and we take all the money
we can. But we're very happy. |
WILL: There are certain Python bits that are classics. You think
of the Dead Parrot, the Spam, the Spanish Inquisition, one of my favorites.
Are there any that you thought were going to be classics and yet...
JOHN: Well, we never thought any of them were going to be classics.
We were just doing something totally experimental to see if we could make
people laugh. I still remember a half-hour before we recorded the first
show, I said to Michael Palin who was in the dressing room as we sort of
got our funny mustaches on and hair right, and I said, "Michael, you realize
we might be the first people in history to do an entire comedy show without
a single laugh from the audience?" and he said, "I was thinking the same
thing." I mean, it was so experimental, we had no idea that people would
like it. And it took a long time before anyone really twigged it because
I don't think we got any good notices for about seven or eight weeks. Seven
or eight shows had gone out before we started to get some good crits. And
it was very uncertain at the start. Also, the BBC kept cancelling us and
putting out horse-jumping shows so we wouldn't be on one week, it would
be horse-jumping, and we'd be back on the next week. It took a long time
to gain momentum.
WILL: Now, when people come up to you and say, "Do the silly
walk," or "Talk like this. Won't you talk like this?", what do you do?
Do you run like hell?
JOHN: I get them beaten up by my bodyguards. They're very nice
guys, the bodyguards, and they do it with great taste, but they do beat
the shit out of them. |
WILL: Hazel Pethig.
JOHN: Yes!
WILL: The costume designer for Python.
JOHN: And not just for Python. She's done all my movies, too.
WILL: Really?
JOHN: Yes. A Fish Called Wanda..
WILL: She claims that you are the most uncooperative when it
comes to squeezing into costumes.
JOHN: I shall never work with her again.
WILL: Well, can you confirm or deny?
JOHN: I hate acting. It is an unbelievably boring process and
the moment that you finish a take, somebody comes up to you and starts
doing this [John messes with Will's face] and somebody else is doing this
and someone else is doing this. It's horrible. It's like being six years
old again and having your mother prepare to send you off to a party. And
I find that deeply humiliating and I hate it. So I have to work with people
I really love, because then they know when I get grumpy, they don't take
it personally. But it's so uncomfortable. As I say, filming is boring anyway.
It's like sitting in a departure lounge in an airport for three months
waiting for your flight to leave. You hurry up and wait.
WILL: Right. Except this is very exciting.
JOHN: It's deeply exciting as you can tell from the fact I'm
on valet.
WILL: Well, were there any costumes that you remember with particular
distaste?
JOHN: Yes. I remember Michael Palin and Terry Jones wrote a
particularly poor and uninteresting sketch about the Spanish Armada and
I had to put on this breastplate, solid old breastplate made of metal,
and it was a heat wave, there were few and far between, but it had to be
that day. And I stood there in this and a metal helmet and chain mail.
And when I went to (Howard) Davies the next day, or, sat next to the director,
the only part of me that was on the screen was this bit of the breastplate
and my arm. My head was out of shot.
WILL: Sort of like an extra.
JOHN: Exactly. And I said to Ian (MacNaughton), "Couldn't you
have gotten an extra to do that?" and Ian said, "Oh no. No, no, John,"
he said, "They're much more expensive than you are." And I said, "What
do you mean?" and he said, "Well, when you do extra work like this I only
have to pay you ten pounds a day and if I used a real extra it would cost
me thirty-two." |
