Laughs, Chills, & Advice at the Monty Python Reunion

By Jeff Kreisler on 10/16/2009

Last night: Monty Python's 40th Anniversary at the Ziegfeld Theater. Here's how I lived it...

First of all, the weather. WTF? I wasn't expecting a Winter Inquisition.
No one expects the Winter Inquisition! Our chief weapon is cold. Cold & rain. Rain & cold. Wait... our two main weapons are cold, and rain, and wind... No wait, Three!

i.e. The weather sucked, but that just highlighted how great the rest of the evening went. If it was worth hypothermia, it had to have been good.

After grabbing my ticket and passing by the most enthusiastic usher in history (with apologies to Usher), I found a comfy spot at the end of the Red Carpet. Turns out it was a sort of Comedy Blog Alley, with TheComicsComic & The Apiary also represented. Blogs will have the last word, old media. Yes, we will. This, my first Red Carpet event, was as I expected: a slow parade of stars who deserve medals for keeping their energy and wits about them in the face of 200 sometimes boring, sometimes odd, often incomprehensible questions in the cold. No wonder so many go bonkers.

There were plenty of stars, for you star needing folk. Caught the Whitest Kids U' Know passing the carpet. They're funny. Check 'em out. Whoopi Goldberg was there. Janeane Garofalo. Jeremy Piven. There were rumors Jude Law was going to rush over after the end of his Broadway show. Don't think he made it. Would've noticed my date salivating.

Mad Men represented pretty well, too. A little jarring to see them there, and not just because they're so well-groomed. Perhaps a retro show about American advertising and misogyny is the logical extension, nee, inevitable end point, of a line drawn from the Frost Report through Flying Circus to The Meaning of Life. Don Draper, you are mysterious indeed.

I asked a couple of them to sell me, Mad Men-style, Monty Python, in five words or less:
Rich Summers (Harry Crane): "I don't understand this thing"
Michael Gladis (Paul Kinsey): "Irreverent sacred holy profane shit"
I'd buy that.

I got to chat with three of the five Pythons, which was cool. No, it was cold. Cold, brief conversations at the end of a running-late line, but I'll take it..

I'd been lucky enough to work with Terry Jones in the past, so we just caught up briefly (congrats, new baby!) but afterwards I remembered I had a job to do (bad Jeff, very bad Jeff).

Wouldn't it be useful for aspiring sketch groups to get some advice from these greats? Here's what a couple of them said when asked to dispense such tidbits.
Do with it as you wish.
Michael Palin: "Be free, Be yourself, & Be" (think he overheard my five words or less comment)
John Cleese: "Take a sketch you really, really love and watch it again and again until it's no longer funny, until you're totally bored with it, because then you'll see what's really going on and you'll really understand what's happening" Your own sketch or someone else's? "Either."

Then it was on into the theater. Have you ever been to the Ziegfeld? You should go. Besides the ushers, there are high, sweeping ceilings, and, in this case, free popcorn. It's a massive 1600-ish seat theater with a huge, clear screen - even far back, the picture and sound are impeccable - and a glowing, vibrating audience. This is how films are projected in our dreams. If Peter Jackson made a movie about watching movies, it would happen here.

At about 7:30 - not as late a start as expected - Evan Shapiro, President of IFC and Sundance, popped on stage and introduced Monty Python Almost The Truth, The Lawyer's Cut. This was the theatrical version of the 6-hour documentary showing all next week on IFC. I'm not going to review it - loved it! - but a few things really stuck out.

1. A lot of laughter from the audience. Even at just snippets of sketches. Some laughs were those of recognition - "Oh, yeah, I love that sketch" - but there was also a whole lot of the laughter of surprise, the genuine, punched in the gut guffaws. Good to hear.

2. The culture and setting of their TV-less childhood does help explain why we saw five 60 year old boys onstage later.

3. John Cleese, on wanting to end the Flying Circus run, felt that they were repeating themselves, that they were working at sausage factory, and he didn't want to do that. I couldn't help but think of contemporary TV comedies. Those that had short but brilliant lives and are loved with great passion (Arrested Development, the British Office, Flight of the Conchords, the original run of Family Guy, the Sopranos) and those that are just making sausage (Generic Network Sitcom! It's Watchable).

After the film, Monty Python - Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese, and a cardboard cutout of Graham Chapman - rode a heartfelt standing ovation to their seats on the stage. (Carol Cleveland later took Chapman's chair).

They then proceeded to do 35-40 minutes of the most enthralling Q&A in the history of Qs and/or As. Blank cards had been passed out to the audience, and white-gloved waiters brought our questions to the Pythons, who then sorted through and went at it (making up some of their own Qs along the way). IFC.com and PythOnline.com were simulcasting it, so I'm sure you watched, but, in case not, here are some highlights (watch it now):

- The Cheese Shop sketch apparently caused the most table read laughter. Great insight into the writing, too. Apparently, as Cleese wrote, he was discouraged,didn't think there was anything funny there. Chapman, in his regular pipe-smoking not-contributing much way (according to Cleese), just kept saying it would be fine, and to go on. In the end, it was more than fine. It was great and Palin - the straight man - fell out of his chair.

- Cleese said you could tell which sketches were written by which writing team (typically Palin & Jones or Cleese & Graham) because his tended to climax with screaming and required a thesaurus, whereas the others' simply went on too long.

- Cleese does like to dominate, in his I'm-not-quite-sure-if-he's-joking-or-really-being-a-jerk-but-the-others-seem-to-put-up-with-him way. I doubt you're surprised by that.

- From Talia, age 10. "Can I come on stage and reenact the Spanish Inquisition scene for you?" "Yes." And, well, she did. This innocent girl climbed on stage and recited the sketch, verbatim (flawless as far as I can remember). Besides wanting to meet her agent (kidding!), I was struck by what a great example of the timelessness and transcendence of these sketches. A little American girl born 30 years after a sketch was written, reciting, from memory, spontaneously, in front of 1605 people who knew it by heart. And nailing it. Amazing.

- They did a deft job of avoiding answering a few questions, especially about what current comedy makes them all laugh. Palin: "Oh, I love them... They make me laugh. Next question, 'What time is it?'"

But the information gleaned wasn't the best part of the evening. It was their interaction. Watching, nee, feeling, these old friends playing with and off of each other. Throwing insults and one-liners, mocking each other, and, just as often, gleefully setting each other up for spontaneous, brilliant, touching, and hilarious moments. You could break it down comedio-scientificially and see them using character traits and repetition and status - tools that every comedy creator must master. Or you could just watch as a group who hadn't been together in in years, simply picked up where they left off, with a rhythm and an energy and, frankly, a love that had been honed over so much time and so many projects and so much risk taking and daring and failure and success that it had become permanently hard-wired into their beings. Like a needle back on the record. They were not just old friends brought together, they were pieces of a magical, mystical life machine, that, on their own had some powers, but, when brought into close proximity began to glow and hum and hover and, in a flash, created something Divine.

They ended with Eric Idle leading us in the Galaxy Song.

After the Q&A - and another standing O - they were presented with a BAFTA Special Award. The presenter, with a great sense of place, kept it short and sweet, simply noting that Monty Python "transformed comedy." Yes, they did. They did that, at least.

Then we waited in line for the bathroom and went our separate ways. But this time, we whistled...

top photo: timesonline.co.uk
other photos: jeffkreisler.com