20 Facts About Monty Python and the Holy Grail That Might Make You Say, “Ni!”

[AdamSmith]

20 Facts About Monty Python and the Holy Grail That Might Make You Say, “Ni!”

March 9, 2015

Sitting at or near the top of many “best” lists (including an Amazon UK/IMDB poll rating it Britain’s Best Comedy) is Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the bare bones little film that could. The oft quoted, silly and irreverent Pythons (John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam) share their take on King Arthur and the movie features each of the players in several roles. For my money, there are few funny movie scenes that hold as well as that of the Black Knight, it never fails to crack me up. And if any of you whippersnappers out there have yet to see this, then you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest…WITH A HERRING.

Black Knight Reliable Bridge Security T Shirt
$24.99 Only $19.99 with Coupon Code: KNIGHT

________________________________________

1. The opening credits are so plain because the sequence was done at the end of filming and there was no budget left. The “Swedish” subtitles were written by Michael Palin; he used it as an opportunity to entertain the “captive” audience. When the film opened at Cannes, the subtitles got huge laughs and right at the end of the credits, the film stopped and a bunch of firemen ran in to usher out the audience. Because of the perfect concurrence of events, filmgoers thought it was all part of the show, but they had been evacuated for a real bomb scare. After the theater was deemed clear, the audience went back in and resumed watching.

According to John Cleese, “The Llama is funny, like moose and Nixon, and fish of any kind.”

2. The Monty Python group was formed (according to Gilliam) while he was working for David Frost. He met John Cleese (who was doing “The Frost Report” along with Chapman) and everyone was working in television–Mike Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Idle on “Do Not Adjust Your Set.” Gilliam was a cartoonist; John Cleese introduced him to the “Do Not Adjust Your Set” producer, who liked Gilliam’s work. Gilliam began doing caricatures of the weekly guests and did his first animation there. Cleese had a standing show invitation for the BBC, so the group did a show together. After their fourth outing, the BBC said they didn’t understand the show and were ready to pull them off air, but the public loved them and thus, Python was born.

Other group names considered were: A Horse, a Spoon and a Basin, Owl Stretching Time, The Toad Elevating Moment, Bun Whacket Buzzard Stubble and Boot and Gwen Dibley’s Flying Circus (Gwen Dibley was the lady who played piano at Palin’s mother’s afternoon town guild meetings and Palin thought she’d be quite surprised to have a group named after her.) For a while they had a working title of Circus, then Cleese suggested “python” as something nasty and sneaky and Idle came up with a sneaky agent called Monty. Terry Jones remembered a “Do Not Adjust Your Set” animation called “Elephants” that inspired him to think of continuous sketches that flowed like animation and that idea became the format for their show.

3. Self-described by co-director Terry Gilliam (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Twelve Monkeys, The Fisher King, Brazil, Time Bandits) as “ambitious little shits who wanted to direct at all costs,” he and Terry Jones (Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, The Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life) decided to do a film and that anyone named Terry would get to direct it.

4. In the original script, half the film was set in the middle ages and the other half in the 20th century. The story flipped about between them; at end of the first draft, the Holy Grail was discovered at Harrods department store, at the Holy Grail counter…because Harrods has everything. At the time, Terry Jones was working on his (Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary) book and thought it would be nice to keep it in middle ages, so they figured why not do the King Arthur story?

5. The opening shot was actually completed at the end of filming, near Terry Gilliam’s house. They had a big problem with locations, which had been set up in Scotland ahead of time. A week before filming was to begin, they got word the Environmental Department had forbidden them to shoot at any castles. In a last minute panic they found the privately owned Doune Castle in Glencoe. So all location shots (of different castles) are Doune.

6. Gilliam said the only time he ever saw Michael Palin get really annoyed is when he had to spend all day crawling in the Plague Village mud. The mud was foul and “full of pig shit; people had to get tetanus shots.” Palin said he spoke to a prop man about how he’d know which mud to eat–the man said he’d put down chocolate–to Palin it all looked the same. After about 14 takes, Palin lost it and beat the ground, which according to Cleese was “hysterical.” After all that, most of Palin’s crawling and mud eating was cut.

7. When Patsy (GIlliam) and Arthur (Graham Chapman) are crossing the meadow, the castle in the background (and later, Camelot) is a plywood cutout. Shooting had to be stopped many times as the wind kept blowing it over.

8. The actual period of the film is the 1350s. Gilliam said they blackened and yellowed all the actors’ teeth “because people always think medieval means bad teeth, but it probably wasn’t that way.” Referencing the Mary Rose (a ship sunk in 1545 and salvaged in 1982), the director related that the mariners all had perfect teeth because they had no sugar in their diet.

9. The Black Knight scene was inspired by a story John Cleese heard at college: two Roman wrestlers were engaged in a long match and they became so entangled that one of them suffered a broken limb. He couldn’t take the pain any longer and submitted, so various attendants came over, untangled them and tapped the winner on the shoulder, saying “You won,” at which time they discovered he was dead. Cleese and Chapman did their own stunts, including the sword fighting, which was described as very difficult because of the tiny eye slits in the helmets. At the time of shooting, they had run out of budget and the producer was running the camera and lighting; they had about three other people and it took a week to shoot the scene.

10. Gilliam said that because the film came out during the time of the Vietnam War, all the liberals who came to the see it were very anti-violence and couldn’t handle it–people didn’t laugh until the Black Knight’s very last limb was cut off. He said they (Jones and Gilliam) enjoyed the audience coming to terms with the scene, realizing it wasn’t about violence, but rather attitude. No matter how much of the guy is removed, he’s still a belligerent, mad character who won’t give up. Part of the scene is done with Cleese holding his arms behind his back, part by a one-legged silversmith, named Richard Burton (which delighted Cleese because he could say “Richard Burton was my stunt double”) and part with a wired puppet.

11. John Cleese’s first wife and “Fawlty Towers” co-writer and star, Connie Booth played the witch. During the scene, Eric Idle came so close to laughing that he bit his blade (on film).

12. The book scene was done to save money; Gilliam’s wife turned the pages (shot in his living room) and Michael Palin’s son Tom is the little baby.

13. Animated God was a picture of one of Britain’s most famous cricketers, W.G. Grace.

14. Gilliam spoke of people trying to write papers about the left-brain/right-brain theory of Python, noting that the group is split down the middle. John, Eric and Graham were Cambridge educated, Mike and Terry Jones went to Oxford and Terry Gilliam was the token American. In addition to the different universities, were differing heights. The Cambridge group was the “Tall Group” and the “Normal Sized People” were Mike, Terry and Gilliam. According to Gilliam, Cambridge seems to produce the kind of person whose best defense is strong offense (more logical, precise, etc.) and their verbal skills are more obvious. Mike, Terry and Gilliam were more conceptual. Whenever Python had a disagreement, there was usually a split down the middle of these groups.

15. The film played steadily at a cinema in France until The Life of Brian came out (1974-1979).

16. The catapulted cow was a toy from a railway set. It was the directors’ first model shot; Gilliam said, “We dug the camera into the ground, threw the cow in Julian Doyle’s (Production Manager) back garden, put it all together and we had entered the world of Special Effects. Explaining the tactic, the director said flinging animals in battle was not unheard of. During the Battle of Corsica, there was a town under siege for years. Gilliam related a story: the woman in charge of the town was trying to convince the besiegers that they were fine and had enough food, so she took the town’s last remaining pigs, stuffed them with bits of grain and other things and fired them out. It worked and the besiegers went home. The Python group was also obsessed with animals at the time, thus the Trojan Rabbit.

17. The directors were surprised at the success of the film. When it opened at Cinema One in New York, before dawn, there was a queue around the block. They didn’t know how people had heard about it and they snuck into shows with audiences. Gilliam remembered two people coming to him from out of the crowd, it was John Belushi and Gilda Radner, both of whom were just starting out–trying to break into showbiz.

18. The movie was made at a time in England when the rich were paying “crazy” taxes, 80 to 90 percent. All the music stars had made lots of money and were looking for ways of creating tax losses to salvage their earnings, so Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Elton John and Chrysalis Records funded the film. The Python group didn’t have a lot of money to make it (most of the money went to costuming), thus the mimed horse riding with coconut banging (copied from BBC radio horse-clopping) sound effects. It is the film from which they made the most money because it cost the least to make and the group owns most of it. There is no ad-libbing; everything was scripted and rehearsed, which helped to keep down the cost.

19. Shooting inside Doune Castle led to Terry Jones writing Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary when it was learned the castle’s interior was sectioned in two (by walls). One section was for the lord and one for the soldiers, each defensible from the other because the soldiers were mercenaries and couldn’t be trusted. The lord had to defend himself against his own defenders. Jones set on path of reexamining Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale and the symbol of knights being chivalrous; “It may have been a totally ironic piece written about a mercenary.”

20. Gilliam said, “The most damage we did was to the killer rabbit.” The lady who owned the bunny didn’t want it to get dirty or messed up, so they tried to keep her distracted. The dye they used didn’t immediately come out and the lady was crazed. He wondered why they didn’t just go out and buy a bunny instead of using a “trained” rabbit. The director felt that animal wranglers are the maddest people you’ll find on film, saying “The animals not really trained, they’re just doing what animals do–most of training is in trainers’ minds.”

http://se7ens.info/20-facts-about-monty-python-and-the-holy-grail/

[MsAnn]

One of my all time favorites..."It's just a flesh wound"

And to think that Radner and Belushi saw it when they were just starting out. Time does fly.

[AdamSmith]

[MsAnn]

[MsAnn]

For Adam Smith...

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/monty-python-celebration-tribeca-film-festival-117274662055.html

Monty Python' Cast Assembles in New York,

Indulges Questions About

Their Favorite Sketches

Ethan AlterWriter April 24, 2015

Forty-six years after the debut of their groundbreaking sketch comedy series, Monty Python’s Flying Circus; 40 years after the premiere of their beloved film Monty Python and the Holy Grail; and one year after their most recent (and probably final) reunion show at London’s O2 arena, the surviving members of Monty Python assembled in New York for the Tribeca Film Festival’s “Monty Python Celebration.”

The line-up of the event includes screenings of all three of the troupe’s feature films (Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life) as well as the American premiere of The Meaning of Live, a documentary taking viewers behind the scenes of the 2014 reunion show. Yahoo TV was in the audience as Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam met the press to discuss the halcyon days of Flying Circus, which modern comedians get their seal of approval and their all-time favorite Python sketch.

Flying Circus Got Off to a Less Than Flying Start

According to the Pythons, their groundbreaking sketch comedy show happened more or less by accident. They approached the BBC saying they wanted to collaborate on a series, but when the network asked what they wanted to do, they couldn’t articulate it. Rather than toss them out, though, the Beeb wound up handing the troupe a show, a time-slot and almost total creative freedom. “We were very lucky,” says Gilliam. “There were no executives over us, so we got to do what we wanted to do. And we were a big enough gang, we could beat up any of the executives.” But the suits still made their feelings known. “There were other people who just hated it,” Cleese remembers. “I think 7 out of 9 of the executives didn’t like it.”

Funnily enough, the Pythons themselves occasionally agreed. “There was no perfect episode of the series,” Cleese remarks. “I think episode number 11 or 12 of the first series was the nearest we got. There’s always something in there that’s hilarious, and something that’s awful.” Palin credits Cleese’s then-wife, Connie Booth, with helping encourage audience laughter during that first year. “If she hadn’t been in the studio audience, we wouldn’t have gotten any laughs.” Idle suggests that the lack of laughs had to do with the audience’s expectations. “They thought they were going to see a circus because it was sold as Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” That confusion crossed borders. “The first sale of the series to a foreign country was to Pakistan,” Palin says. “They wrote back saying ‘There are no jugglers, no acrobats.’ They thought they’d bought a circus! The BBC had to refund the money.”

There Was No “I” In Team

During their heyday, Python prided itself on the way they worked separately, and then came together, rather than writing every sketch in a big scrum. “There were groups,” Idle explains. “Michael and Terry Jones, John and Graham, and I wrote alone and Terry Gilliam did his sketches. Then we’d meet at Terry Jones’s house and went through the pile of material we spent two to three weeks writing. If it was funny, we put it in the show. If it wasn’t, we’d sell it to The Two Ronnies!” (For those not up to date on ‘70s British comedy, The Two Ronnies was a comedy show that’s the antithesis of Flying Circus.) Cleese elaborated on the point, saying “Michael and Terry were interested in the flow of the show, while Graham and I were just interested in writing funny sketches. That’s what made the team work. People always forget that a team works best when people do completely different things and have different strengths and weaknesses.”

Their Favorite American Comedians Right Now are (Fake) Newsman

When asked which comedians and comedy series they thought had some of the Python spirit, the group named Eddie Izzard, Steve Coogan and Key & Peele amongst others. But Idle lavished his biggest praise upon Comedy Central’s outgoing news team. “What’s interesting about America in the last few decades is that all of your news is funny now. Like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. What are you going to do now that they’re gone? And Just as the Republicans are coming back! That’s not a good idea.”

Contrary to Tabloid Reports, The Pythons Don’t Hate Each Other

The British tabloids — particularly Cleese’s least favorite paper, the Daily Mail — love to portray the comedy veterans as enemies, but all five hastened to say that’s a misreading of the facts. “We hate the Daily Mail slightly more than we hate each other,” Palin joked. Gilliam added, “We take the piss out of each other all the time, and it used to make people laugh. It doesn’t anymore — now people take it seriously.” Cleese remembered that, back in the day, “There was a lot of arguing, but it was always about the material. The British press writes this stuff about everyone. They ran a story about a time that Michael and I went to the same restaurant by accident and we sat at separate tables. As a joke, I sent him half a bottle of sparkling mineral water, and he sent me a salt shaker. And they wrote it as if we were being competitive!”

They Unanimously Pick the Fish Slapping Dance as the Best-Ever Flying Circus Sketch

Everyone has their favorite Python routine — the Lumberjack song, the Cheese Shop skit and, of course, the Dead Parrot sketch. But all five members of the group agree on one thing: the actual best-ever skit is the Fish Slapping Dance, a wordless, 20-second bit where Palin repeatedly slapped Cleese on the face with a pair of small fish. According to Idle, when the individual group members had to pick their own favorite sketches for their personal “Best of Flying Circus” lists, that was the only skit that overlapped across all five lists. Palin summed up the sketch’s appeal succinctly: “It’s short and can’t be deconstructed.”

The Monty Python Celebration at Tribeca Film Festival runs April 24 to 26 in New York City.

[AdamSmith]

The Funniest Joke (Killer Joke) sketch always slays me.

[marcanthony]

one of the best flicks of all time!