Still Walking Silly, After 20 Years

“It’s a mockery, blasphemous. Personally, I was offended.”

-Father Arnold Gonzalez, San Gabriel Mission, after a screening of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” 1979

“You’ll have to stop that now. It’s getting altogether too silly.”

-Graham Chapman, in the midst of any number of Monty Python’s Flying Circus episodes, 1969-1974

Well, yes, it was a mockery and, certainly, it was quite silly. Gee, there wasn’t even any cheese in the cheese shop, was there? What could be sillier than that? And, not only was it silly, but half the time they were making fun of “chat shows” and “Match of the Day” and all sorts of quirky little English things that we couldn’t begin to understand.

So, why is it that 20 years after the debut of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” the world still can’t seem to get enough of twit competitions and the Ministry of Silly Walks? How is it that this pack of bratty English schoolboys (plus one renegade American) managed to become the first comedy troupe in history to attain rock star levels of fame and adulation? Has any other television program ever aired on both PBS and MTV? Who actually wrote “The Lumberjack Song”? And, by the way, can a sweater vest really keep you warm?

Of course, we’re not going to answer any of those questions here. Your only hope is to tune into Showtime this weekend when the pay cable channel premieres two one-hour specials celebrating the Pythons’ 20th anniversary.

“Life of Python,” featuring interviews with John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, debuts Friday at 10 p.m. “Twenty Years of Monty Python (Parrot Sketch Not Included)S debuts Saturday at 10 p.m. and features clips of memorable Python moments, including excerpts from some “Flying Circus” episodes filmed in Germany and never shown in America.

The Saturday night special will also include the final appearance of Graham Chapman, who died of cancer last October.

Chapman’s death on Oct. 4 came just one day short of the 20th anniversary of the Python’s debut show. Fellow Python Jones, remarking on the irony of it, was quoted as saying, “I thought it was in terribly bad taste for him to die when he did.”

It certainly was. Although Chapman’s individual star never rose quite so high as those of Cleese, Palin or Idle, he was in many ways the soul of the troupe. His characters on stage tended to be straight men and authority figures-constables and professors. But offstage, Chapman was, by far, the most outrageous Python.

Until he stopped drinking in the late 1970s, Chapman’s alcoholic binges and barroom exploits put him in a league with the Who’s Keith Moon, who also happened to be one of his best friends. He also described himself as Raggressively gay,” a stance that delighted some and offended others.

In his 1980 life story, “A Liar’s Autobiography,” Chapman wrote that after he’d appeared on a BBC interview program, a woman had written in to say that someone from Monty Python had appeared on television and admitted to being a homosexual.

“Her handwriting became visibly angrier as she went on to say that persons like that should not be allowed to live,” Chapman wrote. “Eric Idle wrote back to the lady saying that we (the Pythons) had found out which one it was and killed him. Curiously enough, we did the next series of shows without John Cleese. I wonder what she thought...”

Chapman, like all the Pythons, had an academic background. He studied medicine at Cambridge, which is where he met Cleese, who was preparing for a career in law. Idle was also a Cambridge student (majoring in English). Jones and Palin attended Oxford (where Palin earned a history degree). Gilliam, the lone American, grew up in the San Fernando Valley and has a political science degree from Occidental College. None of this is particularly important, although it might help explain why they were always writing jokes about the Crimean War and Emmanuel Kant.

This is the kind of thing that can be expected on Showtime this weekend. They’ll show lots of clips, like of people exploding and Jones dressed like a fishwife and Gilliam’s drawings of giant feet crushing strange things. Maybe someone will dress like the Pope, except that he’ll be wearing stockings and a garter belt.

But that would be blasphemous, wouldn’t it? A mockery. And silly. Very, very silly.