Exploring the True Meaning of the Wacky ‘Python’ World

Thirty years ago when the zany comedy troupe Monty Python’s Flying Circus hit British airwaves, few knew what to make of it. But its blend of intellectuality and scatology eventually permeated British culture.

Today, 17 years after the gang last worked together on “Monty Python’s Meaning of Life,” it’s practically impossible to read a British newspaper or go to a British comedy club without coming across a Monty Python phrase or mannerism--be it a silly walk, a bicycle repairman or a reference to a dead parrot. That influence will be explored in “Life of Python,” a Biography special, airing Sunday on A&E.;

During the two-hour program, the five surviving Pythons--John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin--each talk about what led them into such surreal comic leaps, and show snippets of sketches.

“The Pythons influenced a lot of people,” says British comedian-actor Eddie Izzard, who provides much of the narration for the show. “The original ‘Saturday Night Live’ cast said they were influenced by them. And I’m sure Kids in the Hall and ‘Not the 9 O’Clock News’ were. Anyone playing any sketch characters, like Rowan Atkinson [“Mr. Bean”], must have been influenced. I’m doing a stand-up version of the Monty Python style.”

Explaining how Izzard came to guide TV viewers around the Python world, “Life of Python” producer Elaine Shepherd says, “Eddie is quite an obsessive fan. He’d met Eric and was part of their mini-reunion last year during the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen.”

Izzard recalls, “I said to them about this project, ‘I’d be happy to do anything, even sweep the floors.’ When I was growing up, I wanted to be a Python. I discovered them as a teenager. I wasn’t allowed to see much TV as a kid, so I didn’t see the original shows. But I listened to their records and tapes endlessly and learned their sketches and routines by heart.”

The comic found in Palin a creative connection, he says: “I felt my style was very close to Michael’s. I like to play disparate characters with disparate voices. He can play high and low, and so can I. John always plays high. Terry Jones plays the buffoon. Eric is crazy. Graham Chapman [who died of cancer in 1989] was insanely straight.”

Like many comics, Izzard found his own developing comedy greatly influenced by Python.

“I once said I was their bastard child,” he says. “The central thing of what I do comes from them.

They took big subjects and talked big nonsense about them. They’d summarize Proust in 15 seconds. It was so liberating seeing their re-enaction of Pearl Harbor with the Women’s Guild hitting each other with their handbags because they hate each other.”

Says Cleese: “If you want to understand me or the Pythons, just remember we were writers who happened to perform.”

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Talking about what he brought to the Python mentality, Cleese says, “I did harder-edged jokes before anyone else. The producers were scared because of the black humor. I’d say, ‘Let’s record the joke, and we can cut it if the audience doesn’t like it.’

“By leaving them with the final say, they were always comfortable. We’d do the jokes, and they got much bigger laughs than they thought, and they were left thinking, ‘What was I so worried about?’ Harder humor was acceptable to the audience.

“At the same time, I was interested in more surreal leaps of logic--lateral thinking,” says Cleese, who cites George Burns and Jack Benny among his key influences. “I used to call it wilder humor because it had a lot of energy and it appeared uncontrolled, but it was always controlled.”

Cleese, who left the Pythons after the third season, has always been reluctant to see the group re-formed. But of the 30th anniversary special, which aired in Britain with some of the bits included in the A&E; special, he says, “Getting together was a lot of fun. We spent a couple weeks writing the stuff and then got together in the studio and performed it for four days. We came up with 20 minutes of new material that I thought was very funny. A lot of it was being very rude about the BBC.”

Much of the “ruder” material does not appear in the A&E; documentary, although it can be seen in the home video/DVD version, which will be available this fall. What does survive, though, is Palin’s tour of Pythonland--actually a regular neighborhood in west London, practically walking distance from the BBC studio, since budgets were limited. He and a camera crew visit locations for some of the sketches, like “The Fish Slapping Dance” and “Hell’s Grannies,” and then replay the originals.

The BBC has produced Python tributes before, notably on the group’s 10th and 20th anniversaries, but not with actual Python involvement.

“This 30th anniversary show came about because Michael Palin had worked for our department making travel programs”--his latest, “Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure,” is due on PBS in May-- the BBC’s Shepherd says, “and he said he’d like the department to do something.

“Because of the nature of this place, it took a year to have a meeting with four of them. Eric was in the States. They seemed to have a really nice time together, and they enjoyed each other’s company. John seemed to get quite nostalgic. Terry Gilliam wasn’t going to be in it because he was supposed to be off shooting ‘Don Quixote’ with Johnny Depp, but then that got postponed. The project gathered a strange momentum.

“And it’s not as if we had to revive interest in ‘Monty Python.’ It’s never gone away. In fact, people are already wondering how we’re going to celebrate the 35th anniversary.”

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* “Life of Python” can be seen at 8 and 10 p.m. Sunday on A&E.; The network has rated it TV-14-D (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14 with special advisories for suggestive dialogue.)