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“I think all the Pythons are nuts in some way,” Eric Idle once wrote, “and together we make one completely insane person.” That insane entity, the comedy supergroup Monty Python, convened in 1969, with the BBC sketch show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Its six members—Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman, plus a lone American, Terry Gilliam—became the defining absurdists of postwar Britain, stomping their collective foot on polite society. You know the rest: the ex-parrot, the Comfy Chair, the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Knights Who Say “Ni!” If he had done nothing else, Idle would have given humanity an enduring gift with “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” the ditty that ends “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” sung by a group of unlikely optimists while they’re being crucified. At one point, it was ranked the most played song at British funerals.
But Idle’s work extends beyond Monty Python. His TV film “The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash,” from 1978, which chronicles the rise of a not-quite-the-Beatles rock band, was an early specimen of the mockumentary. (A sequel, “The Rutles 2: Can’t Buy Me Lunch,” appeared in 2003.) Based in Los Angeles since 1994, Idle has lent his trademark jolly obnoxiousness to everything from the English National Opera’s production of “The Mikado” to the reality show “The Masked Singer.” With his musical partner, John du Prez, he wrote “Spamalot,” a stage musical “lovingly ripped off” from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” which won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Musical and was revived on Broadway last season. Idle and the surviving Pythons—Chapman died in 1989, Jones in 2020—are now beloved octogenarians, the closest thing comedy has to living deities.
And yet there have been signs of disquiet in the Python kingdom. The group’s most recent (and, they insist, final) reunion was a decade ago, at London’s O2 Arena, and was motivated less by fan service than by financial straits. A producer of “Holy Grail” had successfully sued for “Spamalot” royalties, claiming that he’d been the “seventh Python.” (Idle called the idea “laughable.”) This past February, Idle tweeted about the Pythons’ money problems—“I never dreamed that at this age the income streams would tail off so disastrously”—and pointed the finger at their asset manager, Holly Gilliam, Terry’s daughter. Cleese came to Holly’s defense, calling her “very efficient, clear-minded, hard-working, and pleasant.” The two men, who had toured together as recently as 2016, traded barbs on X: Idle revealed that he hadn’t seen Cleese for years; Cleese posted, “We always loathed and despised each other, but it’s only recently that the truth has begun to emerge,” then said that he was joking. Still, fans wondered: Had the Spam soured?
Perhaps owing to the Pythons’ depleted coffers, Idle, at eighty-one, has kept busy. Next month, Crown will publish “The Spamalot Diaries,” his recently unearthed journal from the making of the show, which offers a closeup look at his collaboration with Mike Nichols, its director. When Idle and I spoke over Zoom, not long ago, he was planning a solo tour of New Zealand, Australia, and the West Coast, where he would sing songs, tell tales, and sell merch. (Days later, he called back to say that a producing company had pulled out, and the North American leg was postponed.) In our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, we talked about the ups and downs of collaboration, his friendship with George Harrison, his strained relationship with Cleese, and—oh, what else?—the meaning of life.
Hi, Eric. How is your summer?
It’s very hot. But it ends next week. I have to start rehearsing for this tour. Then it’s work, work, work forever.
What’s the idea of the tour?
I’ve done it as a one-man musical. There’s comedy, and there’s songs. I’ve got a virtual band. Whenever I want the band, they come onscreen. It’s easier than taking them on the road, because musicians are smelly and difficult and all that.
I read “The Spamalot Diaries.” Can you tell me about how you found this journal?
We were moving house last year—I call it Downsize Abbey. All the servants have to be fired. And I found this diary and thought, Oh, look at this! I gave it to my wife, and she really loved it, and she doesn’t like anything I do. The thing I liked about the diary is you don’t know the show is going to be a success, because it’s not like you’re writing with hindsight. Every day, you’ve got those anxieties: Is this going to work? What needs cutting? I think I must have rewritten Act II about ten times during the rehearsal process.
It really gets into the nitty-gritty of musical comedy—how much work goes into something that’s supposed to appear like it was always that way.
When you actually look at it, the process is a long one. There’s a new book on Rodgers and Hammerstein I was reading last year, and it said they never knew what was in Act II. You go in with how it starts, you get to intermission—but what happens? I loved that process. I loved working with Mike. He was just the best person I think I ever worked with. I was always a fan of him as a comedian, and we’d been friends for fifteen years, but we’d never worked together.
How did you meet?
I met him at a party at Paul Simon’s, in 1975. Python was in town. We did City Center, and they all came. I talked to him for about an hour and a half, and we got on really well. Then he went away, and I said, “Who is that?” “Duh, it’s Mike Nichols!” I was a fan of his albums when I was at Cambridge, but I’d never seen him on telly—I’d only heard the voice.
When you look back on your working relationship with him during “Spamalot,” what stands out as inspired moments of Mike making something better than it was?
He wouldn’t try and write things for you, but he would suggest ideas. Because he was a comedian, you could trust his instincts. He knew about shape. He said to me early on, “The three most important things about a musical are the play, the play, the play.” He once said to me, “You must believe in it.” And I said, “Mike, you’re talking about the Knights Who Say ‘Ni!’ ” He said, “Nevertheless, they must believe they are.” That was a really important lesson. The Pythons always instinctively believed in the roles we were playing. We didn’t question them. I don’t think he would take anything less than the very best and the most honest. Did you read that book “Cocktails with George and Martha”?
I did! Wonderful book by Philip Gefter, about “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
It was Mike’s first film, and he’s telling Jack Warner, “No, it’s going to be in black-and-white.” I don’t know where he got that confidence, but that’s what he was like.
There are moments of conflict between you and him. On April 30, 2004, you wrote, “Mike began a meeting yesterday with a forty-minute speech about what was wrong with my script. It was in front of everyone and it felt very unfair to me.” Then he called you the next morning and “tearfully and wholeheartedly” apologized. When you read Mark Harris’s biography of Nichols, you get the sense that he could butt heads with people as well as inspire them.
I remember how relieved I was, and how generous he was about saying he was wrong. It is possible for you to go head to head with someone and still be friends and carry on working. That’s part of the process. People must care deeply about something, or what’s the point? But then, after that, he just was so loving and supportive of me. Had we not been friends for fifteen years beforehand, I don’t know if I would necessarily have had the balls to stand up to him. He said, “I am the director.” I said, “Well, I’m the writer.” From then on, it was plain sailing.
There’s a line that stood out to me from the diary: “On a positive note, I did realize this morning that the Grail is essentially about the Pythons: each knight’s character is a reflection of our own.” Can you tell me what that means?
You know, John Cleese is Lancelot, and he’s violent and keeps smashing people to bits. Michael Palin has got an eye for the girls, but he mustn’t do that. I’m Sir Robin, a friend of the musicians. Terry Jones is Bedevere: a bit batty, with odd theories. And Gilliam’s a kind of daft Patsy. [The film has] ninety-eight characters in it. Well, you can’t have ninety-eight characters [in a play]. One of the best breakthroughs I had was thinking, Anybody played by Michael Palin could be the same actor. Anybody played by John Cleese could be the same actor. You made them aspects of that character.
In your “sortabiography,” from 2018, you write that, decades after “Holy Grail,” you were working on a sequel, “The Final Crusade,” and John Cleese didn’t want to do it.
Yes, in the end it was John. Funnily enough, I’ve got a little booklet of it, which I’m taking on tour to sell in the lobby. It’s called “Almost the Final Python Film: The Not Making of The Final Crusade.” I had this idea, and I wrote a little treatment. I go and see John, and we have a pleasant lunch in Montecito. He likes it, so I send it to all the others. We all meet in Cliveden, which is a hotel on the Thames owned by the Astors. And John announces that he doesn’t want to do it. Then Gilliam says, “Could you have mentioned this before we all gathered here?” [Cleese, who has a different memory of these events, says that he never thought the movie was a good idea, and still doesn’t.]
I liked the idea that we would all play the same knights, but twenty years have passed, and we would be much older and grumpier. They want us to take Arthur’s body back to the Holy Land, and Graham could still play Arthur: we could use vocal technology to have him say any lines we wanted from inside the sepulcher. I loved the idea of Graham complaining, “Get on with it!”
I mourn the Python movie that wasn’t made. Does it get tense with everyone in the group having veto power?
I love the veto power. I thought it was the most civilized rule that I’ve ever been part of. They actually got rid of it recently, I’m sad to say—to their shame. You can’t really force someone to be in something if they don’t really want to be in it. And occasionally it was quite useful for people to reconsider business decisions that they all thought was a good idea, and then when you came back it wasn’t such a good idea.
Michael Palin, you wrote, was against a tour of the O2 reunion.
People get older. You can’t really say, “Well, no, you’ve got to come on the road.” It’s a big job, touring. He was probably the funniest, Michael, to be with in life. But the other part of him is a sort of serious person who wants to write travel books. I met him in 1963! It’s a long life you’ve been with these people, and they’re not necessarily in the same position, wanting to be in the same place, you know?
Now that the veto power has been overturned, what is that going to mean going forward?
I don’t think there is anything going forward. I think O2 was the last chance that we could have taken a show out. I mean, I’ve been on the road with John Cleese, about eight years ago, but that was different. It’s not Python. I don’t think there is any Python left. Two of them are gone, and some are on the edge! [Laughs.] And some got lucky and didn’t go. I don’t think there’s a there there. It’s forty years ago that we did anything fresh, really. “The Meaning of Life” was 1983. I forced them to do a reunion because we needed the money, and put on “Spamalot.” I don’t think it’s something that they want to do.
Back in February, there was this exchange between you and John Cleese on X that got a little testy, but maybe tongue-in-cheek. How is your relationship with John?
Well, I would say poor. I’d been unhappy with the business and how it was working. And they aren’t unhappy. It’s odd with John, because things started to go a bit south during lockdown, and I got worried. I haven’t seen him for eight years. I think when you lose touch with people face to face, all sorts of things can happen. It’s a pity. It’s not how we were. Again, I met him in 1963, so that’s an awfully long time. I’ve known many versions of John: times of happiness, times of sadness, times of success, times of less success. You just have to take a long view. We don’t have to force each other to face each other on everything that has to be decided. I try not to get involved if I can, because I feel very lucky that I’ve survived. [Idle was given a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2019, but it was treated successfully.] I had a reprieve, and you shouldn’t spend the rest of your time bickering if you’ve had a reprieve.
I interviewed John a couple years ago, and it got a bit contentious. He does a lot of railing against political correctness these days, and he left England in a very public huff over the state of the media there, and he said London wasn’t English enough anymore. Do you agree with him on any of that?
Well, I live in California, for very good reasons. I don’t agree with him, but we never really agreed on anything in Python. Politically, everybody had a different viewpoint. It wasn’t really what we were doing. We were trying to say, “Is this bit funny? What would make it funnier?” But where people get to in their lives is nothing you can really do anything about, is it? People say, Weren’t you great friends? I don’t think “friends” is exactly the right term. We were colleagues. We worked together very well.
You all met back in the sixties, which is a long time ago now, and yet you’re bound by the wonderful work that you did together and the intellectual property that still exists, and there’s a financial side to that. This thing on X started with you talking about how Holly Gilliam was not doing a good job with your finances, and John came out and defended her. Was that the source of what the two of you were disagreeing over?
Absolutely. I don’t think it’s appropriate that somebody’s daughter is managing the company. You can’t be neutral in a situation where your dad is on the board. I think it’s not right, and it leads to dangerous feelings and difficulties. So really what’s happened is I’ve left and they’ve put her back in. I’m comfortable. I’m fine. I don’t have to argue with people. It’s a shame, but that’s how it is.
You also posted in February, “I don’t know why people always assume we’re loaded. Python is a disaster. Spamalot made money 20 years ago. I have to work for my living. Not easy at this age.” How true is that?
One-hundred-per-cent true. I never thought Python would get into a situation where it doesn’t have enough to keep us all in our old age. But three of us are on the road touring! It’s not entirely due to one person. Spotify’s nicked everything, and YouTube nicks everything. People assume you’re loaded. But, like anybody else, I have to work for a living. I don’t think that’s bad for me, to be honest. I’m touring. It keeps me fit. I like making people laugh. Would I like to sit around reading a book? Of course I would. Sometimes you can’t get what you want.
In John’s memoir, “So, Anyway. . .,” he describes the group’s chemistry when you disagreed: “Michael, who hated confrontation, would retire to a safe distance; Graham would say even less than usual; Eric would try to be reasonable and constructive; Terry Gilliam would side with anyone else called Terry; and Terry Jones and I would lock horns and . . . not behave well.” How accurate is that?
It’s pretty accurate. John would bait Terry until he exploded. I always thought we should have stood up for Terry Jones, because that wasn’t fair. That’s not an entirely inaccurate summation of how people behaved. But again, if you argue about something, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to carry on and have lunch at the pub. People would argue furiously about what type of chair it should be. “No, that’s not funny. This is funny.” That’s just in the nature of the obsession of comedians. It wasn’t always comfortable. It certainly wasn’t easy being the individual person in that group, because Mike and Terry [Jones] wrote together and John and Graham wrote together. I think that’s why I bonded with George Harrison so easily, because we were in the same sort of roles in our groups. He said to me once, “How’s it going?” “Oh, you know, it’s hard to get on camera with Cleese and Michael Palin.” He said, “Imagine how it was trying to get into the studio with Lennon and McCartney!” O.K., point taken.
I loved reading in your autobiography about your relationship with George. Can you remind me how you met?
We were opening “Holy Grail” and had a gala screening in L.A., at the Directors Guild. At the end of it, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. It was George. He said, “I’ve been looking for you. We can’t talk here. Let’s go up and have a reefer up in the control booth.” Then we had dinner, and we just talked all night. It was really something, finding a very good old friend for the first time. I play guitar, so we would play together.
What sustained the friendship over so many years?
He was a lovely man, and I was a little unhappy at the time. I was going through a divorce, and he was very supportive. He came and sang a song we wrote together on “Rutland Weekend Television.” We just were pals. It was a lovely friendship, and a lovely lifelong thing. I was there at the end, too. He wasn’t frightened of dying, because he was Hindu. He believed that he had escaped rebirth. And I said, “I’d do anything to be reborn!” I could make him laugh.
Was he funny?
Oh, he was hilarious. All the Beatles were funny. I think the reason they were popular in America was because they were so funny, when they first landed at the airport and they did that press conference. They were this very funny group, with a guy with a funny nose called Ringo. They looked like real people, and they were real people. They also happened to be a brilliant band. But I think humor really helped America absorb them.
It seems like there are a lot of parallels between the Beatles and the Pythons.
Up to a point. They started work at sixteen, and we had gone through A-level exams and then gone to Cambridge or Oxford. We weren’t kids anymore. We were about twenty-six, twenty-seven, when Python started, so we’d done our ten thousand hours. We were ready. And then we suddenly got gifted this empty space on British television with nobody in charge. It was executive-free comedy! We were there just to please ourselves. I don’t know if one can push the parallels too closely between the Beatles and Pythons, but it’s certainly very flattering.
There is a line in your autobiography: “People seem amazed these days that we all knew each other, but we were all part of the same generation of postwar kids who grew up with the rationing and shortages of the Fifties and conquered the world in every field in the Sixties.”
There was sort of a renaissance after the war. [England] was a depressing place. We had rationing until we were ten or eleven. We didn’t have television until we were thirteen. It happened in every field: in photography, in art, in fashion, in film. The reason was because there was nothing there. There was nobody in front of you. I think it’s hard for people nowadays, because there’s this lot still there who won’t get out of the way. But we didn’t have that. The BBC didn’t have people to turn to. They had a new time slot on Sunday evening, and they wondered if we could do a show. It was really a good time to be creative.
You write that, when you were at school, “I got very good at misbehaving and being sneaky and antiauthoritarian.” That seems like something else that you had in common with the rockers: rebelling against authority.
I think that’s right. They all went off and found this world of rock and roll. But we found it through comedy. We were influenced a lot by Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who were in a kids’ show we did. They were very strange, and they pushed us a little more left-field. Sometimes these groups find themselves. They don’t find themselves because they’re all friends. They find themselves like a football team: you need somebody who does this and somebody who does that. That’s the magic of it, underneath.
You were also around the Rolling Stones quite a lot. What did you observe about their dynamic?
I met Woody first, Ronnie Wood. He was a good pal. In ’76, they were all at the Earls Court, and we were there every night. Then we’d go back to his place, play snooker and pool. And Mick, he was a lovely man, very intelligent. We’d watch cricket together. He’s in “The Rutles.” He said, “What do you want me to do?” I said, “Talk about the Rutles.” He said, “Who should I be?” I said, “Just be Mick Jagger!” He knew exactly what to do.
He has the funniest line. At the very end, you ask him, “Do you think they’ll ever get back together again?” And he says, “I hope not.” Was that scripted for him?
Oh, no. He’s quick. I did a sequel further on and interviewed a lot of people about the Rutles: Garry Shandling, Salman Rushdie, David Bowie. Once you’re interviewing them about this fictitious group, they say things about the Beatles they wouldn’t say in a regular interview. Sometimes it’s closer to telling the truth.
One more rock star I want to ask you about is Elvis Presley. You found out he was a Python fan. Did you ever meet him?
No, but one of the books about him said he called everybody “squire,” from my “Nudge, Nudge” sketch, and I couldn’t believe it. And then I met Linda Thompson, who was his girlfriend, and she said, “He was a huge fan of yours. When the television went off at two in the morning, he’d make me sit in bed with him and do Python sketches.” And it wasn’t just any Python sketches. It was “Hello, Mrs. Entity!” She finally convinced me that he’d make her do the Pepperpot voices. I thought, This is wonderfully bizarre.
Someone else I’d like to ask you about, since she recently left us, is Shelley Duvall. How did you come to know her?
I first met her when Lorne Michaels asked me to go to Barbados for Christmas to talk about the Rutles, and she was going out with Paul Simon. She was giving up smoking, and she was so miserable that we all forced her to smoke. I wrote and directed her first “Faerie Tale Theatre,” about the frog prince, for Robin Williams and Teri Garr. And then I stepped in and played the Pied Piper when Bowie pulled out at the last minute. We knew her quite well, because she was in London for “The Shining.” She was always being driven mad by Kubrick, very unkindly.
What was she like? She seemed so otherworldly.
She was a very good actress. But then she had a lot of issues, as we’d say. She did that lovely series “Faerie Tale Theatre,” and then I think she left L.A., so we didn’t see her for quite a long time. But it was always a bit of a worry, her health—her mental health, particularly.
Speaking of which, in “The Spamalot Diaries,” you write about your daughter, Lily, who was fourteen at the time and who had her first bipolar episode right before the show opened in New York. Lily is now a mental-health advocate. Was it difficult to revisit that moment?
She’s been very up front about it. And it never goes away. Bipolar’s forever. It happened again when I was directing the O2 reunion. It was one of those awful moments in life: I’m singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” onstage, and she’s locked up in a ward in Seattle. For a parent, it’s very hard. It is an ongoing struggle. But she is a very creative person. She writes. She makes bags. The manic is fantastic—you’re creating and creating—and then the depression is very dangerous.
When this first happened, in 2005, you called it “the worst week of my life.” Do you have any advice for parents of children with mental illness?
It’s absolutely terrifying. I think the answer is NAMI, a support group. There are support groups, and that’s the only possible way you can learn what it’s like and how you can be helpful. You don’t say, “Cheer up.” There are all sorts of things you mustn’t say. And Lily’s very good at outlining how to help people. It’s medication. It’s therapy. There’s an enormous amount of work that has to be done to keep somebody on the level. It is a constant anxiety, really. But talking honestly is helpful. And she has a great sense of humor.
When I interviewed John Cleese a few years ago, he said, “I find Eric very easy to talk to, because unlike most English people he’s had a bit of therapy.”
Well, I live in California. It’s pretty much compulsory there. When I got to America, I was over fifty and thought, What the hell am I going to do? A friend of mine said, “I think you’re in a depression. You should see a therapist.” I said, “O.K.” You don’t come with a manual. Learning about why you feel things and when you feel them helps you understand your own character, which is not easy to see from inside yourself.
I want to ask about one last small topic, which is the universe and the meaning of life. After “Life of Brian,” you took up an interest in astronomy. Are you still into astronomy?
Yes. I’ve gotten into biology, too. The fact that life has existed on the planet for 4.6 billion years—not just five thousand years ago from a garden—is much more informative than what we’re supposed to believe. There’s a Katie Mack book about the end of the universe. It’s not just us—the universe is going to die. These are natural patterns, and I find that somehow very reassuring. I’ve got this very good friend, [the particle physicist] Brian Cox, who keeps me informed of what’s going on in science. Since the nineties, with the Hubble telescope and everything, we’ve learned so much about the universe. It’s a matter of whether we can save ourselves or whether stupidity will win. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
