Monty Python: Encyclopedia II - Monty Python - The Pythons

Monty Python - The Pythons

Monty Python - Michael Palin

The youngest Python by a matter of weeks, Palin is often labelled 'the nice one'. He attended Oxford, where he met his Python writing partner Terry Jones. The two also wrote the series Ripping Yarns together. Palin and Jones originally wrote together, but soon found it was more productive to write apart and then come together and review what the other had written. Therefore, Jones and Palin's sketches tended to be more focused than that of the other four, taking one bizarre, hilarious situation, sticking to it, and building on it. Examples include The Spanish inquisition sketch and the Mr Creosote sketch in The Meaning of Life. These sketches take everyday situations (talking in the sitting room, dining out) but then introduce an unexpected, impossible to predict, rogue element (The Spanish Inquisition, a grotesquely overweight man). From here, Palin and Jones could play around with the newly created environment, taking it to impossible, unbelievably stupid extremes, for example, attempting to torture old ladies with cushions or having Cleese's waiter feed Mr Creosote until he actually explodes, showering the other diners in viscera. In recent years, Palin has starred in a number of documentary travel series for the BBC in which he visits various – usually remote – locales, often along some predetermined route, for example his series Pole to Pole and the BBC sponsored Around the World in Eighty Days, where he followed the route of the fictional journey of Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's novel of the same name. Palin is one of the most popular personalities in Britain today.

Monty Python - Terry Jones

All the Pythons have an eclectic range of talents, but Terry Jones is particularly hard to compartmentalise. George Perry has commented that should you "speak to him on subjects as diverse as fossil fuels, or Rupert Bear, or mercenaries in the Middle Ages or Modern China and in a moment you will find yourself hopelessly out of your depth, floored by his knowledge." However, not everyone considers Jones a show off, merely that he has a good natured enthusiasm. It is this same good natured enthusiasm that has led to his unflagging loyalty to the preservation of the group. As long as there is Terry Jones, there will be, in some way, a Monty Python. Jones' dedication to Python is not a recent occurrence however. As well as writing with Michael Palin, he committed himself to directing the Python films Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Life of Brian, when it was felt that a member of the group should be in charge. Though the rest of the group appreciate such efforts, it would be a lie to say that there was not a little resentment at being bossed around by a man they viewed as an equal, especially when he acted as director. This has resulted in light hearted joking at Jones' expense: Eric Idle, for example, constantly hails him as the most boring man on the planet. Of Jones' innumerable contributions to the show, his parodic, screechy-voiced depictions of middle-aged women are among the most memorable.

Monty Python - Eric Idle

Two writing partnerships were absorbed into the Pythons - John Cleese and Graham Chapman, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. That left Terry Gilliam in his own corner, considered to be a sensible position in view of the arcane nature of his work, and Eric Idle. Idle was content to be cast as the group loner, preferring to write by himself, at his own pace, although he sometimes found it difficult in having to present material to the others and make it seem funny without the back-up support of a partner. Cleese claimed that, though he often felt his position was unfair, Idle was an independent person and worked best on his own. Idle claimed, "It was easier in a show where there were thirteen in a series than with a film, where stuff was read out all the time, and you had to convince five others. And they were not the most un-egotistical of writers either." Idle studied at Cambridge, a year behind John Cleese and Graham Chapman. His participation was essential to the Python synergy. His talent for verbal humour is exceptional, leading the group to dub him "master of the one liner". As a performer he can master with ease tongue twisting word plays that verge on impossibility. He is also a talented songwriter and accomplished guitarist with a real ear for lyrics and styles. This talent lent heavily to the Python's work, composing, amongst others, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life', which has become the group's signature tune. Idle is currently the writer of the Broadway version of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", named Spamalot.

Monty Python - John Cleese

Perhaps the best known of the Pythons, Cleese attended Cambridge (after being expelled from Clifton College, Bristol for painting footsteps from a statue to a bathroom), where he met his future Python writing partner Graham Chapman. His work with Chapman was, aside from Gilliam's animations, perhaps the most surreal of the Pythons' work and almost certainly the most intentionally satirical. Unlike Palin and Jones, Cleese and Chapman actually wrote together, in the same room. Cleese claims that their writing partnership involved him sitting with pen and paper, and Chapman sitting back, not speaking for lengths at a time, but when he did speak, it was often brilliant. Without Chapman's input, the Dead Parrot sketch would have been about the duller subject of a car (it is much harder to imagine Cleese throwing about a car in the same way he threw about the parrot). Their work often involved ordinary people in ordinary situations, doing incredibly strange and surreal things. For example, Cleese and Chapman transformed the ordinary sight "a civil servant in black suit and bowler hat makes his way to work" into a bizarre, unforgettable scene; the straight faced Cleese used his physical potential to their full force as the crane-legged civil servant performing an athletic, grotesque, utterly unique walk to his office at the 'Ministry of Silly Walks'. This sketch was in fact written by Palin and Jones, but Cleese made it his own, showcasing his talent for physical comedy (also famously used in Fawlty Towers) and playing characters who could remain serious, even straight faced, whilst doing something utterly ludicrous. His role as Sir Lancelot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail also showcases this, as he fights his way through a castle to save a damsel in distress, much like, say, Kevin Costner in films such as Robin Hood, although completely oblivious to the fact that he is actually savaging wedding guests. Another popular device used by the two was highly articulate arguments over completely arbitrary subjects, such as in the cheese shop, the dead parrot sketch or the Argument clinic. All of these roles were opposite Michael Palin, who Cleese often claims is his favourite Python to work with.

Monty Python - Graham Chapman

Chapman was perhaps best remembered for taking on the lead roles in The Holy Grail, as King Arthur, and Life of Brian, as Brian Cohen. The movie roles were fairly straight, the comedy deriving from the stereotypical lead in bizarre situations, encountering eccentric characters, still being played as serious, and unflinching. These roles, however, were unusual for the Graham Chapman the public had come to know on the Flying Circus, where he figured as the tall, craggy pipe smoker who gave the impression of calmness, disguising a manic unpredictability as real in his characters as they were in reality. For behind the pipe-smoking, rugby-playing exterior lay an alcoholic homosexual, with whom the rest of the Pythons often had trouble dealing. This was one of the reasons that Cleese left the television show after series three. Chapman particularly had trouble filming the Holy Grail in Scotland, where he got a case of delirium tremens, often called DTs. During his worst alcoholism, he was reportedly consuming two quarts of gin every day.³ However, by the time his definitive role of Brian arose, he was sober and continued to produce some of his best work with the Pythons. Graham Chapman died of cancer on 4 October 1989. Thanks to the nature of the other Pythons, he is now lovingly referred to as "the dead one."

Monty Python - Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam started off as an animator and strip cartoonist; one of his early photographic strips for Harvey Kurtzman's Help! (magazine) featured John Cleese. Moving to England, he animated features for Do Not Adjust Your Set and then joined Monty Python's Flying Circus when it was created. Being American, he was the only non-British member. He was the principal artist-animator of the surreal cartoons which frequently linked the show's sketches together, and defined the group's visual language in other mediums. Gilliam's Monty Python animations have a very distinctive style. He mixed his own art, characterised by soft gradients and odd bulbous shapes, with backgrounds and moving cutouts from antique photographs, mostly from the Victorian era. The style has been mimicked repeatedly throughout the years: in the children's television cartoon Angela Anaconda, a series of television commercials for Guinness Beer, the Jibjab cartoons featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and the television history series Terry Jones' Medieval Lives. The title sequence for Desperate Housewives and the visits to the land of the living in Grim Fandango is also highly Gilliamesque. Besides doing the animations for the Flying Circus, he also appeared in several sketches, usually playing parts that no one else wanted to play (generally because they required a lot of make-up or uncomfortable costumes, such as a recurring knight in armour who would end sketches by walking on and hitting one of the other characters over the head with a plucked chicken) and played side parts in the films. He co-directed The Holy Grail and directed short segments of other Python films (for instance Crimson Permanent Assurance Company, the short film that appears before The Meaning of Life). Gilliam has gone on to become a celebrated and imaginative film director with such notable titles as Time Bandits, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to his credit. His latest work is The Brothers Grimm, released in August 2005.

Monty Python - The 7th Python

Commonly referred to as the "7th Python", or the "Python Girl", Carol Cleveland was the only significant female performer in the Monty Python ensemble. Originally hired by producer/director John Howard Davies for just the first five episodes of the Flying Circus TV series, she went on to appear in nearly every episode as well as in all of the Python films. Her common portrayal as the stereotypical "blonde bimbo" eventually earned her the nickname "Carol Cleavage" by the other Pythons.

Much in the same way that many people are alleged to be the Fifth Beatle, there are also other notable contributors to the Python troupe. John Cleese's ex-wife Connie Booth, who would go on to write and star with him in Fawlty Towers, was probably the only other significant female performer. She appeared in, amongst others, The Lumberjack Song and as the "witch" in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It has been suggested that she may also have assisted Cleese and Chapman in their writing.

Neil Innes is the only non-Python, besides Douglas Adams, to be credited with writing material for the Flying Circus. He appeared in sketches and the Python movies, as well as performing some of his songs in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. He was also a regular stand-in for absent Pythons on the rare occasions when they appear to re-create sketches. For example, he took the place of John Cleese when he was unable to appear at the memorial concert for George Harrison. Terry Gilliam once noted that if anyone qualified for the title of the "Seventh Python," it would certainly be Innes. Innes was one of the creative talents in the off-beat Bonzo Dog Band, appreciated for such nutty compositions as "The Intro And The Outro" and "I'm The Urban Spaceman". He would later portray Ron Nasty of the Rutles and write virtually all of the Rutles compositions.

Eddie Izzard, a massive fan of the group, also occasionally stands in for absent members. When the BBC held a "Python Night" in 1999 to celebrate 30 years of the first broadcast of Flying Circus, the Pythons recorded some new material with Izzard standing in for Eric Idle, who was in America. He also appeared with them "Live at Aspen" and hosted a history of the group entitled "the Life of Python."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Pythons", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki