Classic Pythonline

Written by Eric Idle. Published on Pythonline.com in 1996.

Text by Eric Idle; Illustration by Terry Gilliam

[Originally published on Pythonline.com in 1996]

WIND IN THE WILLOWS
SMASH HIT WORLD PREMIERE!

(Bulgaria Hosts Gala Evening For Latest Python Movie!)

The Chief Weights & Measures Officer for Sofia, (South-West Section) congratulates the Python team on their latest offering. ‘Nearly as Good as Yellowbeard’ opined the Head of The Tinned Goods (Export Division) of the Bulgarian Cereals & Grain Products Monopoly (at present living in Majorca). “Terry Gilliam’s portrait of a middle-aged Jewish Rastofarian would have had me rolling in the aisles except for the fact that everyone was standing in the aisles, owing to a little-known fire regulation in Bulgarian cinemas which forbids clients from sitting down during the performance of a film.”

Thousands of stars of stage, screen and marketing co-operatives thronged the densely-packed Cinema Dom in Sofia’s prestigious Ekzarh Yossif Street last Monday night to witness the World Premiere of Terry Jones’s eagerly awaited ‘The Wind In The Willows’ - starring Eric Idle as Ratty, Nicol Williamson as Badger, Terry Jones as Toad and Steve Coogan as Mole, with guest appearances from John Cleese as Mr Toad’s Defence Counsel and Michael Palin as The Sun.

Cinema Manager Stefan Kitanov posited largest turn-out for a World Premiere of a Major Western Motion Picture since ‘Lassie Come Home!’ (a searing social comment pic spotlighting canine homelessness and inner city dental decay amongst rodents) was accidentally opened in Bulgaria prior to being shelved. “It is a tremendous boost for our plum industry,” claimed the Vice-President of the Balkan Preserved Fruit Marketing Board.

The film was shown with Swedish subtitles, and the sound was turned off to allow the commentary in Bulgarian and the playing of festive Bulgairan folk music over the cinema’s loudspeaker system. “We always find our Bulgarian Folk Dance Tunes fit almost any Hollywood-style sex and violence movies for children,” said the Head of the Red Arrows Display Team.*

In the month’s run-up to the World premiere, the Cinema Dom had been hosting a month-long Python Fest in which every single Python movie or related movie had been screened at least once along with episodes of the TV series. “It has certainly been a tremendous four weeks in which our damson production has tripled,” claimed The Deputy Chairman of the Balkan Soft Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association. “We certainly enjoyed the shows,” said the General Manager of the Rouse Animal Feeds Association.

Terry arrived in Sofia on 9th June 1996 and returned to London on the 11th June. “It’s a great country,” he said,” and the apricots are some of the best I’ve tasted this year.”

*It is not clear what the leader of the Red Arrows Squadron was doing in Sofia, but he has since opened up a receiving station for all damaged fruit and disabled vegetables. 

Text by Eric Idle; Illustration by Terry Gilliam

[Originally published on Pythonline.com in 1996]

TERRY JONES’ REPORT ON THE MONTY PYTHON FESTIVAL,
BULGARIA, JUNE 1996

(THE ONLY REPORT ON A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE EVENT WRITTEN BEFORE IT HAPPENED!)

So this is Bulgaria! I would hardly have realized that I was in that fabled land created by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, were it not for the presence of so many Greek Orthodox priests hiding under my dining room table. “What are you doing there?” I try not to sound too threatening, but the harm is done. The Greek Orthodox priests shriek with fear and lock themselves in my side-board. I must change my Tyrannosaurus Rex Haircut. The hairdresser said it was the latest style, but I’ve been unable to approach old ladies in the street, or businessmen with a history of heart by-pass surgery ever since I had it done.

“It’s all right!” I call out to the Greek Orthodox priests currently cowering in my side-board, “I’m not really a Tyrannosaurus Rax. It’s just this haircut makes me look a bit like one.”

The side-board door opens and a half-full bottle of sherry is flung with considerable force towards me, striking me on one of my dorsal spines. Now this makes me really MAD! With one savage strike of my immense claw I shatter the sideboard, and the Greek Orthodox priests scatter like so many maggots from a rotten tree-stump. With swift strides I give chase, scooping them up in my massive claws and cramming them into the slavering sabre teeth of my three foot jaws, tearing their flesh and ripping through their rhasons (the equivalent of the cassock in the Orthodox Eastern Church) shredding their epimanikia or liturgical cuffs and puncturing with each razor sharp talon their epigonations (which is a lozenge-shaped piece of stiff material about 12 by 10 inches and embroidered, which hangs at the right side from the shoulders to the knee). In my feeding frenzy I am deaf to their pleas for mercy and cries to God. But then that’s what being a Carnosaur of the Saurischian group from the late Cretaceous age is all about.

When calm has returned to my dining room once more, I look around for signs of the Welcoming Committee from the British Council, who are organizing the Monty Python Festival in Sofia. The only sign of life are a few ants that have crawled in through my kitchen window. These are no meal for a starving dinosaur of my measurements,but I scoop them up and pop them into my jaws without thinking.

Suddenly a cough makes me spin round. There is someone who could well be a member of the British Council waving a white handkerchief. With one simple grab he is gone and I have chewed his mortal remains and swallowed. Whoever he is is no more. Nothing is a match for a Tyrannosaurus Rex! I am the King of All Living Carnivores if only I weren’t extinct.

A few more strides takes me into my living-room. There, lined up on the mat in front of the mantlepiece is the Manager of the Kino Dom (the cinema in Sofia where they are running a retrospective of Monty Python and related films from mid-March to mid-June). His name is Stefan Kitanov and he is accompanied by several members of the staff of the Kino Dom, but it is no avail. One of the greek Orthodox priests as disagreed with me. Perhaps he was off. I have this terrible ache in my stomach. I roll over, unable to even reach out and spike Stefan Kitanov with my razor sharp talons. The pain grows. Another of the Greek Orthodox priests seems to have gone rancid in my stomach. Arrgh! Never eat Episcopal Vestments without boiling them first, I remember my mother dinosaur telling me…but it is too late! The wretched pain grows and I roll about howling.

Suddenly my Hairdresser arrives and shaves my head. Instantly I come to my senses and realise that I am still miles from Bulgaria and am still in my home in London.

My date with destiny at the Kino Dom is not until June 9th. And best of all I am not extinct! Hooray!

Text by Eric Idle, illustrations by Terry Gilliam.

Text by Eric Idle; Illustration by Terry Gilliam

[First published in The Guardian, October 6, 1989. Reprinted on Pythonline, 1996]

Graham Remembered

By Michael Palin

I first heard of Graham Chapman as one of that pool of ex­ Oxbridge revue talent that sloshed around the BBC in the mid­1960s.

I use the word sloshed advisedly, for many of our best times were had propping up the various bars of the Corporation. Graham was like a figure out of a Biggles story. Strong, finely chiselled features, pipe at a jaunty angle in his mouth, pint in one hand and progger in the other. A progger was Graham’s name for the flat­ended instrument which he used to bed down the tobacco in his pipe. I never knew whether it was a real name or not. Graham liked words and used them well, but if he felt the right one didn’t exist he’d invent another one.

In the post­ Cambridge days he was a journeyman writer, like us all. One day he would be working with John Cleese to produce a dazzling succession of successful sketches for The Frost Report, the next he would be writing filler jokes for the Petula Clark show.

He kept a low profile as a performer until At Last the 1948 Show in which he revealed a talent for playing intense, rather serious characters hilariously. He was a charismatic performer, drawing the eye to himself, as much for the originality and un­showbizziness of his approach, as for the likely detectable hint of unpredictability. An audience was never quite sure what he would do next. Nor I think, as a performer, was Graham. During a singing court scene in one of the early Python shows he quite inadvertently substituted ‘window dresser’ for ‘window clearer’ in his song. A Freudian slip at which we all fell about, especially Graham.

In 1969, when the mutual admiration society which became known as Monty Python assembled, Graham met David Sherlock and embarked on one of the many radical changes in his life, when they decided to live together. It was a courageous decision, which shocked some of his friends at the time but was borne out triumphantly by the fact that they shared the rest of their lives. David, together with their adopted son John Tomiczak, nursed and cared for him with stoic patience and quiet strength throughout his final illness.

Graham’s need to relax himself with a dram or two took a disproportionate hold on his life as the pressures of a heavy Python schedule grew. Drink was not always the friend he thought it, affecting his performances and occasionally doing a great disservice to a much underrated natural acting talent.

His writing contributions to Python were of quality rather than quantity. Whilst all around were scratching their heads for inspiration. Graham would puff his pipe and glance sideways at the Times crossword and be quite silent for 30 minutes or so before coming out with a single shaft of inspiration that would transform a mundane sketch into something very mad and wonderful.

Such surreal flashes were the very essence of Python as were his memorable performances as the Colonel, as the Hostess in the Eurovision song contest, Raymond Luxury-Yacht and others.His off­stage performances included collecting an award from the Sun newspaper by leaping high in the air, emitting a loud squawk and crawling all the way back to his table with the award in his mouth, leaving Lord Mountbatten, who had given him the award, looking very confused.

But Graham’s most memorable performances were sustained and demanding-as King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Brian in the Life of Brian.

Around the time of the filming of Life of Brian, Graham made a conscious effort to free himself from the dependence on the large G and Ts-after that “ice but no lemon please. ” His restless ever­inquisitive need to be freed from the boring and the conventional had led him to the brink, but his cautious disciplined rational side saved him at the last minute from toppling over. He gave up drinking and later, with immense difficulty also laid aside his pipe.

Perhaps Graham too easily overestimated the talents of others while underestimating his own and, as a result, his ventures outside Python-Out of the Trees for the BBC and his two films, Odd Job and Yellowbeard - were full of good ideas badly resolved. The commercial failure of Yellowbeard depressed him.

His recent illness was another in a series of mountains which Graham had to climb. He always regarded death as highly overrated and could never understand why anybody made such a fuss about it. Despite great physical discomfort he remained alert, informed, articulate and humorous.

He hated to be bored which is why he joined the Dangerous Sports Club and once hurled himself into thin air attached to a length of rubber… “I was high for two weeks after that.”

I suspect he would have enjoyed an old age of increasing eccentricity, dispensing his considerable wisdom and hospitality, occasionally leaping in the air and shouting “Eeke!”

The “Abuse” feature of Pythonline.com, the official Monty Python website, from 1996.