Fachbereichsarbeit aus Englisch Verfasserin: Barbara Höllwarth, 8A Betreuungslehrer: Mag. Martin Stehrer Schuljahr: 2002/2003 Erich Fried- Realgymnasium Glasergasse 25, 1090 Wien - 0 - CONTENTS I. It’s… (An Introduction) 2 II. The Early Days 3 III. The Beginning Of An Era 4 IV. Members 1. Graham Chapman 5 2. John Cleese 6 3. Terry Gilliam 8 4. Eric Idle 9 5. Terry Jones 10 8. Michael Palin 11 V. The Closest Anybody's Ever Come To Being A 7th Python 1. Carol Cleveland 12 2. Neil Innes 13 VI. Monty Python’s Flying Circus 1. The Series 14 2. The Beeb 16 3. The German Episodes 17 VII. Films By Monty Python 1. And Now For Something Completely Different 19 2. Monty Python And The Holy Grail 19 3. Life Of Brian 21 4. Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life 23 VIII. More Films (With/By Python Members) 1. The Rutles – All You Need Is Cash 25 2. A Fish Called Wanda 26 IX. What Monty Python Means To Me 28 - 1 - I. It’s... …actually is the first word in every Episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, announced by an exhausted old man in rags performed by Michael Palin, who, for example, comes out of the sea, crawls out of the desert or falls off a cliff. Sadly, there are still people who ask questions like „What’s Monty Python anyway?“ or even worse “Who is Monty Python?” although there already is a definition of the word “Pythonesque” in the Oxford Dictionary nowadays that says: ”after the style of, or resembling the humour of, Monty Python's Flying Circus, a popular British television comedy series of the 1970s noted esp. for its absurdist or surrealist humour.” Monty Python is a so-called British comedy group, although one of the six members is from America. The group was formed back in 1969 and worked, like most British comedians at that time, for the BBC. They set milestones for modern humour because they wrote and performed what they thought was funny and never cared about comedy tradition. What they did, was to change British humour by getting rid of punch lines and clear structures in their jokes and make something surreal, anarchic, chaotic and surprising out of it. The Pythons are now seen as pioneers of comedy in Britain and all over the world and obviously influence lots of comedy shows, films and even commercials, if you come to think of the Austrian “Anker” advert that was shown in summer ’02, with loads of animations that suspiciously looked like those from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, or the advert for a certain bank, shown in summer ’02 as well, in which a rather rude and mean commander turns out to be a quite nice man with patience for his soldiers, which was just about the same scene like in Monty Python’s “Meaning Of Life”. John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin are the inventors of the “funniest joke in the world”, “Pepperpots”, as the old women with high pitched voices, mainly performed by Terry Jones, are called, and of course of Monty Python, a legend that was about to change the world… - 2 - II. The Early Days The career started relatively early for all the six members of Monty Python. For those, who studied at the Oxford and Cambridge University and performed in many comedy shows and theatre groups, such as “Footlights”, “Cambridge Circus” and “Oxford Revue” and also for the American Terry Gilliam, who studied at the Occidental College in Minnesota, where he edited the school humour magazine “Fang”. After his graduation in 1962, he went to New York and started to work for a magazine called “Help!”. John Cleese and Graham Chapman, both studying in Cambridge, became good friends and toured New Zealand and America with Footlights. In New York, John was asked to star in a photo-feature for “Help!” magazine (he had to play a man who falls in love with Barbie doll) and it was on that occasion that he worked together with the American editor Terry Gilliam. Graham Chapman meanwhile went back to England for his medical studies while Eric Idle, who was in Cambridge as well, was elected president of the Footlights and fought for the women’s right to become members of this group. In Oxford, Michael Palin and Terry Jones became writing partners when working on the Oxford Revue and a show called “Hang Down Your Head And Die” and got their theatre experience that way. When he graduated in 1964, Jones was hired by the BBC and worked on “The Love Show” at first and after that he found a job at the British Broadcasting Corporation in a very small office as some sort of script editor who didn’t exactly know what he had to do there anyway. Terry Jones then became “the world’s worst production assistant” as he himself called it. After his graduation in 1965, Michael Palin became host of the Bristol teenage pop music show “Now!” and wrote some sketches with Terry Jones from time to time. Cleese also started to work for the British television after his graduation, and helped Terry Gilliam to find work in a show called “Do Not Adjust Your Set” together with Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Idle. According to Palin, it was very important for all of them because it was the first time they were given a free hand as writers and performers. Graham Chapman and John Cleese had an equally important television show at that time, “At Least The 1948 Show” in 1967. - 3 - Other shows they wrote before they were Pythons: - The Frost Report (1966) (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin) - How To Irritate People (1968) (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Michael Palin) - We Have Ways Of Making You Laugh (1968) (Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle) “We have Ways of Making You Laugh was very unfunny. We didn’t have any ways of making them laugh!” Eric Idle (“The First 280 Years Of Monty Python” p.29, 1999) - Complete and Utter History of Britain (1969) (Terry Jones, Michael Palin) III. The Beginning Of An Era “Do Not Adjust Your Set” had been a very successful television programme, so the cast was asked to work on a grown-up version of that show. John Cleese and Graham Chapman suggested that Michael Palin and Terry Jones, whom they knew from “The Frost Report”, might work with them. Jones and Palin brought Eric Idle into the group, who wanted Gilliam to be in it as well. “John and Graham were a pair, and he was interested in Mike. Mike, Terry, and I were sort of put together, and I guess we dragged along Terry Gilliam for that, too.” Eric Idle (“The First 280 Years Of Monty Python” p.33 , 1999) So the six of them declined to work for the television channel that featured “Do Not Adjust Your Set” who wanted them to start a new show. Instead they received a job offer by the BBC and accepted. Much to our delight the BBC didn’t insist on a “pilot” programme, so they had actually no idea what those comedians where up to. The only problem on the way to success that was left was a good name for the team. There were plenty of suggestions what the comedy group should be called, such as “Sex and Violence”, “The Whizzo Easishow! (Guaranteed to last ½ hour! Money back if not!)” and “Gwen Dibley’s Flying Circus”. - 4 - According to what Michael Palin said at the “U.S. Comedy Arts Festival Tribute To Monty Python” in 1998, he saw the name “Gwen Dibley” in a magazine from the Towns Womens’ Guilt and thought it would be nice to give this woman her own series without her knowledge. So when the listings came out for that weekend her family would say “Mum, you’ve got a series on television!” There were 5 pages filled with all sorts of possible names, a lot of them included a “Flying Circus” (“Bob Python’s Flying Circus”, “The Amazing Flying Circus”) but when the BBC insisted on a sensible name for the programme immediately, they finally agreed on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. The term “Flying Circus” is given to any collective source of annoyance and confusion. Now that they had a name and a job, a decision had to be made on what to do next because everything they knew so far was that the series was supposed to be funny… With a group of 6 fabulous comedians like Monty Python, this was not a problem for long and they soon got their very own outrageous and personal style. IV. Members IV.1. Graham Chapman "A modest, soft-spoken loud mouth.... Graham's favourite colour is off-white and his favourite heavy gas is Helium". (http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/8889/python/mp- bios.htm 5.12.2002) Graham Chapman was born in Leicester on January 8th in 1941. He studied medicine in Cambridge where he had his own cabaret show, before he started to write and act for Footlights together with John Cleese and Eric Idle. After his graduation he worked as a doctor at St.Bartholomew's hospital in London but soon gave it up to do comedy again. He became well known as the Colonel who was “not having things getting silly” from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In the Python Films he played King Arthur in “Monty Python And The Holy Grail” and the leading Role in “Life Of Brian”.