Welcome to stuff you should know Roundhouse stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuff Bryant and Jerry's not here, but we are here, live and beautiful Los Angeles, California for the Los Angeles Podcast Festivals. Very nice. This crowd is massive. Sounds massive. Yeah, you were asking for it too. I find that when you turn and point at microphone and just drive some crazy, they make noise. It's good old trick. Walter Cronkite thought us that it's first person I could think of, the first guy with the microphone that came to mine. So how do you feel, a man? You're feeling good. I'm good and a little sleepy. Uh, but I'm not supposed to be honest. I'm supposed to. I feel great in charge, right, I'm a little sleepy. So if I'm not funny, that's why we've got the We we have a thing, took and I have a thing literally now because we've encountered so many of them, of these kind of table cloths that are like pantyhose and to get anywhere in the microphone, right, yeah, but made of like nylons, right, so you have to be like right up on it and it has this weird kind of give, but putting kind of feels a little like sexy. So if we're like sitting here during the show, it's weird. It's it's this thing. I'm all over the place emotionally right now, they're in a tailspin. You're ready, yeah, I'm ready. So um, we're talking today about Monty Python, right, and if you'll you'll go back with us. We're gonna head back to swing in London in nineteen where a group of English boys got together and started a little television show called How to Irritate People? And it was actually a television special and it was hosted by a guy named John Cleese, Yeah, written by a guy named John Cleese and a dude named Graham Chapman and um also starring a guy named Michael Palin. And those were the only three members of what would become Monty Python today. Spoil it already, but it was written by Clice and Chapman and the sort of the goal here was to do a special and to get Americans primed for this thing called British humor and sell it to American audiences, but um, it's sort of failed in that respect. It didn't generate a lot of interest among American Uh, I guess TV executives. Sure, yeah, well it was it was funny ish, you know. Um, it just wasn't It wasn't quite Monty Python. But you could see the seeds in it, right. It was starting to grow from this and about a year later, Um, the BBC went to John Cleese and said, hey, we like what you did with How to Irritate People? Do you want your own show? And cliceaid, sure, I'd love to have a show, but I don't want to be the star. I want to be part of an ensemble. And the BBC said, go put your team together. So uh, he spoken to his wristwatch and said Python assemble. And they all came from different corners of the earth and came together and formed a giant robot with a sword, the first time Monty Python ever came together. That would be amazing. So he said, all right, I have this friend, Graham Chapman. We went to Cambridge together. He's my writing partner. He's definitely in and we just worked with this guy Michael Palin. He's really funny. So he should be in. But he was doing a show called Uh, Do Not Adjust Your Set. It was a kid show and uh Clice was a fan of that and he said, well, that's wonderful. We would love you to come on. He says, well, I had these other guys on the show I really like working with. So if you want me, you have to take this Welshman named Terry Jones, and uh, this other guy named Eric Idle, and this other weird looking American that's this weird looking, weird, weird all around period named Terry Gilliam. And Clice was game. He said, fine, let's just get all of us together. And then there were six so they came together and Terry Gilliam was definitely the odd man out here was from Minnesota. Um. The other five had gone to what's called um Oxbridge, right Oxford and Cambridge, Yeah, um, where they kind of have like a lockdown on TV writing in the UK. So if you went to Cambridge where you went to Oxford, and you want to get into TV writing, especially TV comedy writing, um, that's a pretty good place to start out. Yeah. Like here in America, it's Rutgers right right, yeah, yeah, or San Jose State I can't ever always get those two confused. Um. No, of course it's Harvard, everyone knows that. Um. But yeah, over there it's Cambridge and Oxford. And it turns out if you go to one of those schools, you're probably a pretty smart, clever person, which is a good start if you want to be the world's greatest comedy troup of all time. In Chuck's opinion, is that all right? Say that? I think you can share your opinion on this one. We probably won't get any angry listening mail on that. How could you say that you should help homeless people? How dare you say that? But I do agree, Monty Python is pretty great. You should probably explain that. Yes, we did it. Well. We did an episode on homelessness, and we released it around Thanksgiving or Christmas to really kind of like sticking in people's heart, right. Yeah, our position was that you should help homeless people. Yeah, I mean we took a stance on that. Yeah, and we got probably more angry listener mail than we've gotten for any other episode we've ever released, pretty much about like parting like homeless people can all go to hell? You know, you know you shouldn't be telling people they should give them money or all sorts of stuff. They made decisions. It led to that, right, I think out what's coming to so, but but everyone agrees Monty Python is great. That was the overall point. So they were divided up into sort of naturally divided into writing teams with them. They already had cles and Chapman who had known each other, and Michael Palin and Terry Jones worked together. Eric Idyl was the lone wolf. He wrote by himself, and Terry Gilliam was has always been in his own world doing his animation, so he was sort of in his own space as well. So they were getting primed and ready in the BBC said all right, we'll give you a run of thirteen half hour episodes and um and by the way, I've spent the past two weeks non stop watching Flying Circuits. It's been amazing. It's like when your job is to sit around and watch Monty Python and then come and talk about it live, you're you're doing pretty well in life. So very lucky guy. And UM. So they had to come up with a name, and um Flying Circus was kind of always part of it, and the BBC, as legend goes, supposedly even said, guys, we've already printed, except they said it with a cool accent. Um we printed flying circus already, So you can't change that part. But you need to, you know, if you have a front to that didn't think of it quick and uh, I think Clice said what about a python, like something kind of slimy and weird. So they said python. And then apparently Monty Monty is just like sort of an English like guy in the pub would be Monty just sort of a tired English thing like like Todd here in America. So Monty Python was born. They liked the ring of it. It literally means nothing. There's no significance other than they just thought it sounded cool. Yeah, and they had other other ideas besides um, Monty Python's flying circus. First two they had a horse, a spoon in a bass in It's pretty funny owl stretching time. I love that, the toad elevating moment, bum wackets, buzzard, stubble, and boot. I think I think Monty Python's Flying Circus is the best of the bunch. Well, and then they had a couple of things before Flying Circus, even eat L Moist's flying circus, right, and Will Will Stranglers flying Circus, which that's pretty good too. Yeah, but that sounds too legit, like everyone would be like, who's Will strangling? It Will Strangling, right, But then you know, once you know it is Monty Python, you can't imagine anything else, right. It's like a partial was called I don't know the explainer raters. It's actually not bad. Drop that down. Uh sorry, I got lost with the explain writers. I went to a place. So you're like, so, if you ever want to get confused, research British television because they don't call season seasons, they call him series. Right. So Monty Python had their first series and then the next year they had their second series, and I'm like, what is this person talking about? And then I finally looked it up after like a couple of days. Did you really not know that until recently? Okay? Yeah, And I'm like I knew from anew from context what they were talking about, but it was kind of confusing because by the time they get to the fourth series actually changed the name to just That's what got me sure? So they so they had they actually had four seasons, and the first season it was pretty much what you would expect, right, this is really really brand new, cutting edge stuff. And they actually we're not the first to really kind of experiment with sketch comedy. There was another show, um called Q five that was done by a guy named Spike Milligan who's like this legendary radio surreal comedic genius, right, and um, they they follow on the footsteps of of Q five, which had started just a few years before Flying Circus. But these guys like took it to a whole other level and the BBC had no idea what they had on their hands, so they would shuffle it around late at night. Some some weeks they would just like not show it at all. Some entire regions of the UK didn't receive it. Um, it was just treated pretty pretty poorly. Yeah, and the deal with Q five. You can go watch some of this on YouTube. It's really good. And actually the Pythons were kind of upset because when they saw Q five they're like, well, man, it's it's being done. Like that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to take comedy and give people something unexpected and turn it on its ear and subvert it and basically be weird and so I went and looked up a little bit of Q five and the one skit that I saw was literally like fifteen seconds long, but it gives you a really good idea of what Spike Milligan was doing. And it just opens on a shot of a man with a a Mona Lisa paint by numbers, so half of it is finished, half of it has the big areas with the little numbers in there, and I think, well, that's that's funny, that's the joke. And so you know, the guy goes to paint and he puts on the canvas. He paints another white section and writes a number. I was like, it got me. I was like, man, I didn't see it coming. So that's what Spike Milligan was doing. And that's what Python was kind of shooting for, was just to do something that people hadn't seen. Yeah, So even though they were not being treated well, there wasn't a lot of marketing or pr or whatever behind it. Um it's still kind of developed a bit of a cult following, like word of mouth following UM among I would guess people taking acid in the sixties in London, you know, yeah, it was nineteen sixty nine, it was in color, which was kind of a different thing. That a deal. Yeah, especially when you think about Terry Gilliams animations. You know, like to see that in black and white, it's still be great, but to see it in color late at night on acid must have been something else. Sure. Uh so if he watched Flying Circus, I mean, did anyone ever watch these episodes at all? They're all on YouTube. I encourage you, Like they have all fifty I think episodes on YouTube. Uh, and it's it's really amazing, Like when you when you watch it, you see the seeds of everything from like Mr Show, uh too, Tenacious D, Two Kids in the Hall, Uh, Like Children's Hospital would not be a TV show if it wasn't for Monty Python and Flying Circus, like this sort of absurdist silliness. Uh. Sometimes they'd make a statement, sometimes it was physical comedy, sometimes it was clever wordplay. It was really all over the map with what they were doing. Um and as we'll see, they really kind of permeated pop culture, as everybody knows. But like a lot of this stuff was just like a one off thing, like the Spanish Inquisition. Everybody knows the Spanish Inquisition right now, and Expects the Spanish Inquisition um and they were on one episode that just took place on one episode in season two, and yet it's like basically one of the backbones of like comedy pop culture. And and that's a really good point about um Monty Python, that they were just packing episodes with great idea after a great idea and like basically zero filler. And that was definitely part of one of the reasons why they were the seeds that grew all of these other things too. Yeah, and one of the reasons why they're often called the Beatles of comedy because they weren't together that long, but their ratio of like great material to stuff and you know, you watch I guess like Saturday Night Live is probably the standard in the United States for years, and half of those sketches each week aren't great. You know, Like, let's be honest, that's what sketch comedy is. It's like a risk. You're throwing it out there. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But when you look at Flying Circus and like the Beatles, like their ratio of great, great stuff to things that didn't quite work was just astounding. It was amazing. Yea. So one of the other hallmarks of Monty pytheline is that they played almost every character amongst themselves. Terry Gilliam played the fewest characters because most of the time he was um off doing animations that ended up proving like really important to to every episode and then the show overall. Um So he usually played the least, but he also played like the some of the most memorable ones, usually the just the dirtiest ones, like the character in the back. You're like, what's wrong with that guy? That was Terry Gillian. Yeah, And he felt very much like out of his world. He was in all of the other guys. You know, he knew he was like, you know, I'm nowhere near you, dude, So I'll do my weird animations. And if you need like a crazy leper in an episode, I'm your guy. I'm the leper um. Michael Palin is probably my favorite, but that's kind of like low hanging fruit to say Michael Palin's your favorite Python because he was pretty much everyone agrees that he was probably the best after on the show. Yeah, he was. He was probably the most broad and accessible comedian with like raw comedic talents and well, who did I say last week, Graham Chapman, what's your favorite? Yeah, I think I've changed my mind. And when you watch enough Monty Python, and I think that's kind of the point that you're going to get through this whole thing. There's an all star like in every episode, in every sketch, and you kind of end up changing your mind a lot. But I'm on Eric Idol right now, big yeah, yeah, he's people like yeah, man, he was good. Uh still is so. Um. They're very famous for playing, like you said, all the characters playing the women. Uh. Some of the best laughs you will get watching Flying Circus or when Terry Jones plays like the great correctly English ladies like Brian's mom. Yeah yeah, Life of Brian. Did you finally watch it? I did. I watched it again this morning. I woke up at like seven thirty and watch Life of Brian. Right, I can pay for this, Yeah, I didn't have that moment. Actually ordered room service was wonderful. So they all kind of fell into their specialties a bit though, like Terry Jones would um, he could play like the middle class gentleman and the great you know, like old English bag lady type. Uh. Cleese and Chapman were the tallest. John Cleese was six five, Graham Chapman was six too, So they often played like authority figures or barristers or policeman or you know, sort of the toughs. They're a little more imposing. Palin could do anything he wanted at any time. He was probably the most versatile. And then Eric Idol he did the feminine ladies really well. And um, salesman, he was good at salesman. Yeah, he was for me that when it comes to like word play, he was kind of the best. But they all had their strengths. And and who was it Gilliam that said they were like a molecule. Yeah, they fit together like a molecule, like if you if you take anyone and and as we'll see, actually the couple have been taken from the group here there over time. Um, it's just not the same. It's it just doesn't quite work. And it's not because there was a star or a leader. And that's probably one of the strengths of Monty Python is there wasn't a star or a leader. It was just this random assemblage of guys, including an animator like who would have guessed, like, yes, we we've got to have the animator to um that came together to formed this thing that had never been seen before and really hasn't been seen since. Yeah, so it um it ran. The Flying Circus ran for four seasons only. Uh Clice left after season three, and like we said, the fourth season was just called Monty Python. I think it only had about half a dozen episodes. And for Python fans, everyone kind of says, like, yeah, that fourth season, you take clease away. It's just not the same. But it didn't hit in America until later thanks to syndication, and in nineteen seventy four, Uh in Dallas, Texas, of all places, on K E p A Is anyone from Dallas, No say K E p A beat away with it? Uh, That's where debuted in the United States, and then it got picked up all over the country here and there. I remember on Georgia on GPTV when I was a kid, I was like, you know, ten eleven years old, and I was exposed to British comedy by watching Binny Hill in Flying Circus, and then later on I got into other things like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder and all that good stuff. But um, yeah, it was all of a sudden, Americans caught on, and so they said, well, we should make movies then and Americans caught on, you said, nineteen seventy, right, Yeah, that was the last year that they had a TV show. They've been trying to like crack the American market for years and it just wasn't happening, and they've basically given up hope. And then once it started to catch on an American they already had a pretty good cult following in the UK. Um. Once that American component came in, they were like, yeah, we should, we should keep doing this. Let's try a movie. They already had one movie under their belt. Um, it was called it in Now for something completely different, right, yeah, it was. It was a weird. What they did was they took um literally took sketches that they had already done in front of the live studio audience for Flying Circus. They recreated those sketches on a studio stage. Um, and it was a sketch movie. It was like Kentucky Fried movie or something like that. And um, you know, it didn't work so great. I think their best movies were the ones where they actually had a story to the thing. Um, well, we'll get to the movies. Everyone knows what they are. Sure it didn't do very well. No, it wasn't a huge hit. And it was made again for America. Would be like, hey, America, Condie, just check this out. So it was yet another reason they'd kind of given up on America. But so America comes into the full and they're like, yes, let's try to make a movie. Yeah, And Clice had left, but he was obviously in the movie, so he didn't leave bitterly. He said that he was um go and read his quote here. He said that he wanted to be a part of the group, but he didn't want to be married to them because that's what I felt like. I began to lose any kind of control over my life and I was not forceful enough and saying no. And he also had a couple of things he wasn't wild about in the show, and he felt like he wasn't being listened to. So he ended up leaving, but was still like friends with the guys and wanted to do the movies for sure. Sure. He also um said that he was the one who had to work with Graham Chapman during um Graham Chapman's alcoholic phase. He said that, Um, he was writing with Graham Chapman. Um, who I didn't know this. He was um uh, he was gay and he was out and this is like nineteen sixty nine, early nineteen seventies hadn't been very long before that the UK had chemically castrated Alan touring for being gay and this guy is out and and for gay rights. Even actually Graham Chapman that was part of this philosophy. He was like, you know what, let's let's put it right in their faces and see what they think about it. Yeah, exactly. Um. So Clice is like he Graham Chapman was. He had a huge, huge problem with alcohol. Um uh during the time that they were making Monty pipeine and and Clice was the one who had to work with them because they were buds from the king Ambridge days. Um. And he said that, combined with the group not listening to him and feeling like they were, it was taking over his life. He's like, come out. So after the third season Clice left, but that was about the time when um, they decided that they were going to go try to make um the Holy Grail, that's right on the Holy Grail. Yeah. Uh anyone ever seen that little movie. I think joke for joke, like Blazing Saddles and Holy Grail are in like an eternal race to see, like a pound for pound with the funniest movie of all times in my opinion. So you like Holy Grail more than Life of Brian. Yeah, same here. I mean I love Life of Brian, but just the sheer amount of laughs and jokes and Holy Grail is astounding. It's astounding. So they had a tiny little budget for Holy Grail. They you know, didn't have money being thrown their way. And uh, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam co directed, which is a little weird, and Terry owns later would say that I think like a kind of annoyed Gilliam. So we ended up alternating days like Monday, Terry Jones would direct Tuesday, Terry Gilliam would direct, sort of a weird way to go about things as terrible, terrible way, but direct the movement. Uh. And they filmed in Scotland, and uh it was just a problematic shoot to the weather in Scotland. If you've ever been there is uh, it's just like it is here. It's wonderful. Um, it was very much a hardship shooting in Scotland. Uh, they had a bunch of problems with the budget. They didn't have what they needed, no, but but that led to some pretty awesome jokes. Yeah, go ahead. So the idea of um King Arthur riding around on an invisible horse while his his squire follows him clapping together coconuts, that was because they didn't have any money for horses for the movie, so they were forced to come up with this awesome joke, which I mean, it's funny when you first see it, and then it's funny when you're like sitting there eating spaghetti two days later and you like think about how nuts that would be in real life, you know. But that came out of these budget constraints that they had. Uh. They were also had trouble kind of you know, raising money and I think finishing funds. So there they had some very famous bands invest in the movie. George Harrison had always been a champion. He later would invest He actually he created a production company to make Life of Brian but Um for Holy Grail, led Zeppelin, Pink Fleet, Right, led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd in Genesis all invested twenty thousand. But why is Genesis getting a laugh? This is like Peter Gabriel, Genesis's not invisible touch. Hey, hey, hey, there's nothing wrong with Phil Collins Genesis. Man, nothing wrong. Sorry, I can have you thrown out. I'm up fine stage. I knew you were gonna say that. I was like, I bet I've offended Josh with that. It's it's I think he gets a bad rap. Unfairly sure he does. Well, they were He's not like Sammy Hagar. Well, you want to know something funny, My wife Emily loves Van Hagar more than David Lee, rothan Haleen and she's proud of it. She's like, oh, man, put on that song right now. There's some my world issues and like the world's not right and uh yeah. And I was like, or we could I hear Janet Varney laughing in the background. That's laugh in the world. Uh yeah. So anyway, Van Hagar and oh never mind starring Phil Collins. I think that's where we left off. That's right. It was Phil Collins who got everybody else to invest probably, so that's a made up fact. Uh. In the movie, Michael Palin plays the most roles. Uh. He twel He plays twelve different characters. He played Sir Galahad played the soldier who argues about swallows. Remember that great scene. He plays Dennis the Peasant. He plays a mud villager singing camel at night, the right head of the Three Headed Night, Uh, the King of the Swamp Castle, a wedding guest at the Swamp Castle, Brother Maynard's assistants Brother Maynard Uh. He was the main knight who says me and he played one of the French taunting knights. Uh. Terry Gilliam played the I'm sorry. Graham Chapman actually played the fewest because he was King Arthur, and as in Life of Brian, they didn't want to overuse him as the league character, so he played King Arthur, the voice of God, the Hiccup, and guard in the middle head of the Three Headed Night. So that's Holy Grail their next movie from then from this point forward, Holy Grail is just like a hit, right everybody exactly. UM. So they're like, okay, we'll go off and do our own things because one of the one of the things that characterized these guys as individuals was they always had their own work and it didn't necessarily have anything to do with comedy. Like Eric Idel. All he does is comedic acting. But he's got his own stuff too. Um. Michael Palin got into making travel documentaries for the BBC. That was his thing. Um. Terry Jones opened a brewery, Penrose Brewery and Hertfordshire, which I'm saying how it's spelled so in in the UK it's it's probably like um chatting Ham or something that's so uh. And then John Kleete strangely formed a company that created UM training videos for for BIS. This well, not funny ones from what I understand either was he in those I don't know. I don't know way if he was in those that they weren't funny, even if he was trying to be, He's like, please stop laughing. Well, I'd love to see. This is very serious. It's about industrial safety, the emergency exits all behind and across like. Well, he was kind of deadpan like that. That was sort of his thing. Whether he liked it or not, he was funny. Uh. And of course that's much later their second I guess, their third movie. Their second narrative film in nine was the Life of Brian, which I watched this morning. Uh. To me, Terry Jones kind of steals that movie is Brian's mother. Every scene he is in he just walks away with uh. And that movie came about from a press conference from Holy Grail. People were asking like, what's your next thing gonna be? What's your next movie? And as a joke, Eric Idle said, Jesus Christ lust for Glory and that sort of got the seeds started that they should maybe go to biblical times since they medieval times. So when they started writing this movie, Um Jesus actually became a smaller and smaller and smaller figure character I should say, in the movie Um, and it became about Brian, this guy who's mistaken for the Messiah the same time. He's born on the same day as Jesus Um. But he's most decidedly not the Messiah. You haven't seen. It's definitely worth seeing. It's still hilarious. Is just Holy Gray old life of Brian in my opinion, Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's he's Yeah, something more to be said about it. So because it was about Um Jesus, even though it wasn't at all about Jesus Um, of course it got banned in several places by people who hadn't even seen the movie, had no idea really what it was about. That's what we do in America, right and Norway. Norway and seven American states banned it. And you can probably take a pretty good stay of it. Which American states banned. It's like the South and then something ran him like Idaho, you know, and then featuring Norway. I bet Georgia probably sadly banned it. You imagine for sure. Uh well, anytime you do a comedic take on Biblical times, you're gonna you're gonna be in trouble. But if you watch the movie, it's it's not it's no, it's not offensive. You know, Like I'm not very touchy about stuff like that, but I was watching it, and I'm like, this actually isn't offensive at any point. Really, you're not easily offended though, unless you talk, unless you bring up Phil Collins. That's my button, so and I love to push it. Uh So. The final film they made was called Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Oh wait, hold on, hold on, I'm sorry, there's one other spectacular fact about the life of Brian. It won the Jury Award at the Canned Film Festival in nineteen seventy nine. I have an arrow, an asterisk and three exclamation points pointing to that sentence. Well, meaning of Life to two then or did you mix it up? Oh no, I'm sorry. The asterisk didn't work. You needed one more arrow. They released Monty Python's Meaning of Life, which won the Jury Prize at the Can Film Believe It? And it was by this time these were like financial and critical successes, like everyone was on board the train and it was another sketch movie. UM, very funny. I like the Meaning of Life, but to me still the other narrative films were a little better, but of course the very classic UM, every Sperm is Sacred, which is very funny because if you watch Monty Python, nothing was sacred about anything. They would take on Hitler and cannibalism and race and gay rights, and nothing was sacred except every sperm. Apparently, there's this really great article UM that a lot of this is based on. UM. It's called The Beatles of Comedy by a guy named David Free, and he points out that it's sad that the word irreverend is overused these days, because the literal sense of irreverend is the best way to describe Python. That they didn't have automatic respect for anything, which is pretty good description if you ask me so. A Meaning of Life was the last official project that they ever did together for a while. Uh they in nineteen Um, I guess in the late eighties they got together and did a couple of live shows. Uh they did one at the Aspen Comedy Festival, and then a couple of years ago finally did one. Well. They owed money for Spam a Lot, the Great Broadway Show. They were sued by one of the producers of Holy Grail and uh because of Spam a Lot and we're very famously owed about eight hundred thousand pounds they owed him eight. Yeah, they lost, and um they came out and said, you know, we're gonna get back together and do some shows for the money so we can pay off this lawsuit. And everyone was delighted that they were going to do these tin shows. They were one of their first reunion appearances in Aspen. They were being interviewed by Robert Klein, and Graham Chapman wasn't there because Graham Chapman died in um one day before the twentieth anniversary of the debut of The Flying Circus, which is kind of cool. Um, yeah, he just couldn't hang on for one more day and um and so, uh, Graham's happens not there, but they actually brought his ashes in an urn and he's on the table during the interview. So for those of you listening to this in the future at home, the ashes were kicked over. Oh yeah, and Ted Danson thought it was really funny. Yeah. I was like, is that Ted danceing? Totally ted dance? That guy's good. Have you seen Fargo Season two? It's amazing you get money for that or anything. You're just plugging it. Oh, I'm just a fan. I love dancing. Uh. But that kind of like typifies Monty Python, like nothing was sacred. They would take their dear dear friend. Uh and well obviously they weren't his ashes, let's get real, but they would pretend like they kicked him over on stage for a joke. It did. So they performed at the O two Arena in England two years ago. They did those tin shows to get out of debt, and that was the last time they performed together. Uh. They say that's it, They're not gonna do it again. And uh, you know, they were together for short years on TV The Beatles of Comedy. It's pretty amazing. So we're gonna talk a little bit about how they worked. Um. There have been a lot of interviews with sort of the inside story with the guys, and they kind of all roundly say it was very democratic process. Um. Palin comes out and says, you know, Clice was a little bit of the leader. He's a little forceful his presence, he was a large man. Uh, he could be very convincing when he wanted something. But he said, but in the end it was very democratic, like no one really wanted to be the leader, right. Uh. Terry Jones kind of considered himself a bit of a leader just because he directed so much like he directed, He co directed, um, the Holy Grail, but he totally directed Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. Um So even still, I don't think he he actually saw himself as like the leader of Monty Python. He was probably just the one you could get the attention of the other ones long enough to direct them, right. Yeah. And they would fight and argue, like you know, get any group of creative folks together and you're gonna argue. But they said it was never about big things. They would argue about like the size of the chair and the sketch, but not like the big picture stuff, which is pretty cool. And then everybody kind of had their own little niche that they brought to the table, like, Um, John and Graham uh were funny, but also very angry and kind of bitter, Like you could tell that they were like that the traditional English schoolboys who parents had like sent them off to school at age like eight and had seen them since, you know, kind of thing. Um. And then uh, Terry Jones and Michael Palin were a little more like surreal, little more whimsical. And then Eric Oddo was very verbal. They said, yeah he's my guy. Yeah he's good, so good. Uh So one of the big factors in their success was the freedom that they had with the BBC. Um, but it was sort of a mixed bag. They had a lot of freedom to do what they wanted, but it is the BBC and it is on television, so they would often battle them about words they could say with the sensors. And of course and um, they were famously censored for using the word masturbation. Yeah, they were in the the um what was it masturbation? Well, josh In the UH explain in the summarized Prust competition, there was a game show that was you had to say you had to summarize of pruce poem or prus short story in UH like sixty seconds or less. So they had this whole game show and so they said strangling animals, golf and masturbation or his hobbies right, and so originally the BBC was like, you can't say that. Well, they recorded it anyway, and then the BBC went behind them and um edited it out. So in the original version that was aired, it was strangling animals, which they left in golf like a dead air for a second and then a big laugh. And they said when they went back and watched it, they were like, this doesn't make any sense, Like, what's what's so funny about golf? So UM, As far as their aim kind of depends on who you talk to. Terry Jones very much said that they were trying to subvert the establishment and they were trying to make a statement and try to make some noise. UM. Michael Palin said, you know, I think that's kind of overrated. We were just trying to be funny as we could be. So I think it was probably you know, as always, the truth is sort of somewhere in the middle there with what they were trying to get accomplished. Uh. They also said that radio was a big influence because they were from the generation where uh they none of them, you know, they didn't have TV until they were like twelve or thirteen years old. So that theater of the mind that you get when you would listen to the radio as a kid. And uh, I know that not many people in this room can probably imagine that, but now we have podcasts that do that R Yeah, which is wonderful. No, that really struck me that that was one of their big creative inspirations was being raised on radio. You know, um that that they were forced to use their imaginations and that they managed to figure out how to translate that into TV. It's pretty pretty interesting. Yeah. And I mentioned like Tenacious T and Kids in the Hall and the shows that would come along that would and Mr Show especially where each show would have sort of this weird theme that ran through it, but it was never like a statement. I mean it would be like a watch of episode the aten Idi Flying Circus where the theme was just a pig and like in the very beginning, Uh, Graham Chapman just sits down and you hear this, and then they cut to a chalkboard of a bunch of pigs drawn and they just x out another one. And then just randomly through the episode that would be a pig here there, or someone else would sit on a pig and they would cut it and do another one. Meant nothing at all but that in the animation, Like then a pig would drop on, you know, Jesus's head and there would be a fart noise in the animation. And so they had this weird kind of theme like that one was the Pig Show or whatever, and you very much see that. Like Mr. Show, they sort of had these little thematic elements that tied it together. One other thing Mr Show did very well that, um, you can kind of say Python started was like blending one one sketch into another. Yeah, like one would not end before the other one began. They just kind of cross paths, and Um, that was I think pretty much they pioneered that, Yeah, and it could be done in a lot of ways. Uh. Sometimes they literally ran into each other, like you would have a thing with medieval nights and he would walk to the next set, which was like a modern day living room, or it would end like I saw one where they did a little snapshot to close the sketch and then they would pull back from that snapshot and it's just a picture on the wall in the next sketch. So they just had really clever ways of sort of tying it all together. It was very cool. They'd also sometimes run the credits in the middle of the show, right, and then I run them again at the end, like that's where they went in the middle of the show. Yeah, or John Clice would it would like the show would stop as it if it had been canceled, and Clice would come on as a as a supposed member of the BBC to apologize for the content of the show in the middle of the show, and then someone would just come in like lasso him all stage. They go right into the next sketch. Very cool. So they're also uh anachronisms masters that juxtaposition. Um, you know, everyone who's seen Holy Grail. It ends when modern day police show up and arrest the not only the actors in the big battle scene, but the cast and crew, and they would shut the movie down. So they would throw weird things like that in there, like the Picasso thing, Yeah, Picasso painting a painting, riding a bicycle while he's on the highway, the twenty nine high way, just random, or the Spanish Inquisition being in a modern day household. Um. And they were extremely smart, very very well educated dudes. Um. But if they if they were doing a project, they would also like do more research and just automatically know everything. And some of their best jokes came out of that research. Like when they were researching UM for the Holy Grail. Uh, they they found that UM one of the common tactics during medieval sieges was taunting the people who were trying to siege the castle. Right, so that was actually done apparently verbatim in history. Uh. The other thing they learned in their research was that they did used to launch animals. We actually covered this in I think Our Castle's episode many years ago, where they would launch animals. The idea, of course they didn't cover this in the in the movie, but the idea was that they would be diseased animals, so it actually have an effect other than just being really weird and disconcerting to see a cow come flying any but it would be like a cow that was very sick and would get people sick when it exploded all over everyone really gross and lead to a plague in the castle, ending the siege. You know, Josh. Starting your own business can be really difficult, but developing your online presence doesn't have to be right right because Google and Squarespace have teamed up to give small business owners what they need to succeed online checkers, a custom domain, business email, and a beautiful website all in one place. That's right. With Google and Squarespace, you can stand out, professional and increase your team's productivity. When create your square Space business website or online store, you're gonna receive a free year of business email and professional tools, all from Google. It's that simple. All you do is just visit squarespace dot com, slash Google and start your free trial. And while you're there, be sure to use our special g whizz offer code works w O r k S and you will get ten percent off your first purchase. Google and square Space make it professional, make it beautiful. Uh. They felt no social dread. Uh. They were just like they were often described as little boys. This article from the Atlantic said they not only weren't afraid they didn't know they should be afraid, so they kind of had the sweet naive quality about them, Like, what's what's wrong with doing the sketch about Hitler in the Pope is that we should we not do that. I don't think it ever occurred to him that that was off limits. There's a there's a really good example of that, um in the sketch called the Undertaker Sketch, which I think is probably the funniest sketch they made. Um let me set it up though. Uh. John Clice is this dude whose mother has recently died and he comes to the funeral parlor where Graham Chapman is the undertaker, and um, Graham Chapman kind of runs down the list of things they can do to John Clice's mother, right, like, um, they can barrier, but if she's not dead yet, she'll be eaten up by worms and beetles and it's quite shocking. Um, or they can they can just toss her in the Thames or something like that, right, And then John Cleese is he's a little shocked, but um uh, it turns out he has his mother in a burlap sack next to him, like he dragged her body to the funeral parlor. Right, So what they're playing there is God Save the Queen, and everyone is reverently standing around. They stopped rioting because they started playing God Save the Queen, and any good British er will just immediately stop whatever they're doing and like kind of piously stand there. The reason that they did God Save the Queen was because Monty Python all the guys in it had this this deep fantasy that one day the Queen would turn on the BBC and accidentally watch their show. And so they really hope that the one thing that she tuned into was the Undertaker sketch, like the foul Is sketch that they ever came up with, So that that's kind of a nod to that that desire. Yeah, and if you if you watch that sketch and you were uninformed, you hear people, you know, start to boo and hits a little bit and uh, let's have something decent that's disgusting, and you're like, oh my god, the audience is turning on them like they've gone too far. Uh, it was all planned, of course. The baby Oh my god, Wow, look what it is. Everyone, it's Kevin Polite. Well, thank you kelling. Wow, did that just happen? Something's in the water. What's he doing here? I don't know. That's a really good question. He's in the wrong place, clearly, Thank you, sir, Thank you Kevin Pollock. I've been waiting to say that for years. So the BBC hated the Undertaker sketch for obvious reasons. They did not want it to air, but they said, all right, we'll let you guys air it if we can put these plants in the audience to boo and hiss and yell would eventually come down and riot very awkwardly at the end. So that was the compromise. And they're like pretty awkward as long as the Queen watches, right, So uh sorry, where was Kevin Pollock? Really threw me off. When they got two movies. Um, you know, they never were allowed to cuss on the air, and when they got two movies they could obviously do what they wanted to, but for the most part, they still refrained from actual curse words. Um like, Brian has a few f bombs, a few, but that's it right before it works that they don't stand out, no, not much. But they they found one part where, um, something did stand out to them. They actually went back after they shot the movie and and dubbed in um instead of the C word. I'll let you guys figure that one out. Um they put in klutz instead. John Klice calls um Graham Chapman of klutz um because he screwed something up. I don't remember what it was. But they went back, not because of a sensor. They went back and um and edited at that's a really difficult sentence, edited it out that because they thought that it kind of detracted from the overall joke, the larger picture. So, um, they were they were self reverential. How about that. I don't know about reverential, but they didn't curse much. Um. We got a couple of tidbits to end here. Yeah. Well they um, you know, not only were they influential in the world of comedy, but they they're I mean, they're part of pop culture now, like people say things like the Nights who say NA and the Spanish and no one expects the Spanish inquisition. It's it's worked its way into the fabric and the lexicon of pop culture. Um. Python esque is actually a word that's in the Oxford Dictionary now. It's official. It's a real word spam like spam email. Uh named after the famous sketch. I wish we had the spam sketch. Well, you should have given me a heads. I know you guys have seen the spam sketch right where they come in and everything. Spam, spam, spam on the menu, one of their great word place sketches. But my favorite part of that sketch not the weird fact that there's Vikings in there or the weird fact that it stops halfway through and there's a history lesson from Michael Palin, but it is when the sketch starts. Are you looking it up? Uh? They, for no reason at all lower Uh the two main I think it's it's scraam Chapman. And so they lower them into the sea and from wires in a sitting position into their chair for no reason whatsoever. It's just a diner scene. And then they just are lowered in sitting like this and then sit in there chair and then it starts. Yeah, and then it starts. And that's like the genius of Monty Python for no reason whatsoever. Um, and Python is a it's a coding language. To you after Monty Python. There's actually a fossil snake, a fossil river snake that lived a hundred million years ago, um in what is now Australia called Monty python Oides rivers sliensis. Nice work, it's named after Monty Python. Uh. And like you said, the guys all went on to do their own thing. They were together very short time, made a huge, huge impact. Um, what do you say. Palin did travel docs among other things. Of course, fish called Wanda. We all saw him love that. Uh. They still enjoy being together. Um. I think John Cleese's wife said, you know, she loves her husband and she's never seen him have as much fun and laugh as much as when he's with the boys lads. Yeah, it's very sweet. Uh here's a very sad thing I should mention just yesterday. Uh don't you think we should save this for the very end to really bring him down. No, I'll wedge it in and we'll try and make you laugh again. Uh. Terry Jones just announced yesterday he is suffering from a rare form of dementia and it's super sad. Um. His his mates have known about it for a while and they've all kept a quiet but um, it's a form of dementia where it renders him and able to speak. So they officially came out with the announcement just yesterday and said Terry Jones won't be doing interviews anymore, and all the guys are making statements about that. They've known about this for a while. It's been very sad to see, uh, and now something funny, something completely different. So if you go to a UK funeral, um, you are probably very likely to be hit with the song always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Actually, there was a survey done in two thousand fourteen U of like thirty thousand British funerals that found that that was the number one song played in them and it beat out Invisible Touch. I'd be great. It beat out um My Heart Will Go On by Selene Dion, which is can you imagine how offensive is that? Yeah, being at a funeral and being subjected to that just be like, yeah, you would rise from the grave and gag. And it's not I've got nothing against Celine Dion or even that song, but that plus a funeral is just I got something against her in that song. I'll say it. You're you're a music snob, I am. Uh, so we'll finish with this little tidbit. Um. We might not know about Monty Python, and it might not have never made it to the United States, uh, if not for one Terry Jones. Because back in the day, it was common practice in the BBC and I guess in the United States too, to erase over tapes of shows because they were expensive. Yeah, they were pricey. And someone at the BBC literally called Terry Jones that said they're about to erase over flying Circus, get down here now. And Terry Jones left the phone hanging and the guy was like, hello, hello, Yeah, did you hear what I just said, Terry? And uh, a little leity know, Terry Jones is already on his way there, showed up while the guy was still on the phone, shouting Terry into the phone. This is like minutes later, Terry Jones grabs the tapes, goes and pays for his own um blank tapes, makes copies of him, and the legacy was secured. So we have Terry Jones to thank for that legacy. And and this the this unnamed person from the BBC who thought to call them rather than just going ahead and in erasing the tapes. Do you got anything else? No? Do you guys want to sit here and watch money pipeline close for like a half an hour? See if you can find this fan um, Seriously, I found the spam. It's three and a half minutes long. Perfect. Oh great, okay, you got three and a half minutes right, all right, It will be a great way to close it out. Those of you have to p t s. Okay, we bring you to close out this stuff you should know live episode at l a podcast fest the my Python Spam sketch. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com