Comic actor Eric Idle. ERIC IDLE:
ALAN SMITHEE'S FLAMING PYTHON
By
Alex Simon
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the March 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.
Eric Idle is regarded as one of the fathers of cutting edge comedy. As a member of the legendary Monty Python troupe of TV, stage and film fame, Idle has been keeping the world in fits of side-splitting laughter for nearly 30 years. Born March 29, 1943 in South Shields, Durham, England, Idle began his comedy career while at Cambridge, where he joined the school's legendary Footlights revue, along with future Python John Cleese. After graduating Cambridge, Idle wrote for BBC Radio's I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, before moving to TV writing for The Frost Report, Marty Feldman and The Two Ronnies. Do Not Adjust Your Set, a children's show for Thames Television, led to the ground-breaking Monty Python's Flying Circus television show for the BBC, which ran from 1969-74. Along with fellow Pythons Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and the late Graham Chapman, Idle and the Flying Circus helped bring a new brand of humor to the airwaves, one that combined absurdity, social satire, surrealism, animation and spam. The world has yet to recover from their inspired lunacy.
Five Python feature films followed the TV series: And Now for Something Completely Different (1971), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), the hugely (and absurdly) controversial Biblical satire Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982), and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983). In addition to the films, the Pythons released several hit records, books, three CD-ROMs and even a popular web site (PythOnline).
Post-Python Idle has kept busy. He has appeared in many other films (Splitting Heirs, Nuns on the Run), had his own TV series (Rutland Weekend Television), written a novel called "Hello Sailor," a comedy book ("The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book"), and a play which ran in London's West End for five months called Pass the Butler.
1998 finds Idle nominated for a Grammy for Best Audio, for reading his Dove Kids book "The Quite Remarkable Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat." At the upcoming Aspen Comedy Festival on March 7, the Pythons will re-unite for a Q & A and be presented with an award for their outstanding achievements in the world of humor. His newest novel, "Levity, or The Road to Mars" will be published by Vintage Books this fall.
On the screen, Idle stars in the outrageous comedy Burn Hollywood Burn, from the prolific pen of Joe Eszterhas. The film, presented as a mock-documentary, satirizes the making of a big-budget Hollywood action epic. Idle plays a director named Alan Smithee. When his big action epic goes over-budget and the producers force him to make changes that he's against, Smithee realizes that he can't take his name off the final product, because it just happens to be the same as the pseudonym used by the Director's Guild for any director who doesn't want credit for his work! Smithee, in desperation, steals the negative of the film before any prints can be struck and therein the chaos ensues. The film co-stars Ryan O'Neal, Richard Jeni, rappers Coolio and Chuck D., as well as a host of Hollywood royalty making cameos or playing themselves including Sylvester Stallone, Whoopi Goldberg, Jackie Chan, Robert Evans, Shane Black, and Dominic Dunne, to name a few.
In person, Eric Idle is every bit the delightful loon one would expect him to be, constantly inspiring those around him to laugh at life. Having moved to "this side of the pond" several years ago with his wife and young daughter, Eric sat down in a Four Seasons hotel suite recently to reflect on his remarkable career as one of the world's funniest men. Between the fits of laughter, here's what transpired:
Most comedians say that their humor stems from painful childhoods. How was yours?
Eric Idle: My childhood was a piece of shit. I was orphaned by the RAF at the age of two and I was shoved into a boarding school at seven for twelve years. "So you became a comedian, how odd!" (laughs)
Were you a funny kid, interested in dramatics and things like that?
I guess so. I was into puppeting a bit. Writing and performing sketches and so on, which is really what Python is: writing sketches and then donning masks and disguises...I guess I started doing that about 11 or 12. In boarding school, remember, you have all these extra hours in the day, because even when you're not in school, you're still in school! (laughs) So there were always things that you wanted to do to fill in your time. There was no TV then to sit and gawk into. You had to find different ways of filling in time. I guess one of them was reading, which always been great...I think I'd always been funny because being funny is a wonderful defense against bullying, of which there was an enormous amount, as well as institutionalized bullying was very big. You were beaten. It was a very Victorian sort of boarding school. And then you get to be a bully yourself as you move up the system.
So were you a bully yourself?
I tried not to be. I was protesting to the headmaster, "Ban the bomb" and all that. That was my way of protesting against the system. But you could even be beaten by the kids in our school. They could "slipper" you. Masters had the privilege of hitting you with a cane. It was very Tom Brown. We were all war orphans. It's interesting, I met a journalist earlier today who went to the same school...but I've had no contact with anyone from that period since.
From there you went to Cambridge?
Yes, at the age of 19 and that was just wonderful. They had this wonderful thing called The Footlights, which I got involved in and that was a wonderful club and experience to be in...That's where I met John Cleese and it pretty much took over the rest of my life at Cambridge. We were always performing, doing cabarets and sketches. That was the only way to be in the club, was to perform. You had to audition and then be voted in by the members.
Where did the rest of the Pythons come from?
Graham Chapman was from Cambridge. Mike and Terry were from Oxford and I'd met them during two consecutive summers at the Edinburgh Festival. At the end of the year we'd always take the revue up there...so I must've met Terry in '63 and Michael in '64. And (Terry) Gilliam (their frequent director/animator who went on to direct The Fisher King, among other films), who's American, appeared out of the blue when we were doing a kids' show called Do Not Adjust Your Set. This weird chap came in and said "Well, I've written some sketches." Mike and Terry said "We write the sketches. We don't need any bloody Yank writing our sketches!" (laughs) And I said "No, wait a minute. This guy is good. I don't know why, but there's something about him." So they said "All right, then" and they let him in. (laughs)
So you went straight from Cambridge to Television?
Radio and television. It was just after the big satire boom, so they were on the look-out for young, smart, agreeable, cheap people who could write from Cambridge. (laughs) Then we did a bit of writing for various shows and they asked if we'd like to do the kids' show and we did, and then they were going to offer us our own show for late in the night. Then Cleese came across with Chapman from Marty Feldman's show and said "Look, I've got this other offer from the BBC." We said that we'd gotten an offer from ITV, the other network. Cleese said "Well, we're secured for 13 (shows). It's for certain." So we agreed and the two shows melded.
The format of the kids' show was similar to that of Python?
Very similar. We had a band on the show called the Bonzo Dog Do-Da Band, who were real loonies. They did very wild, sort of send-ups of Hollywood 30's and 40's music. Up to that point we were fairly straight-laced Oxbridge students and I think they sort of skirted us left a bit. They introduced a whole new level of pop culture and 60's madness.
What was it like when you went to the BBC and did your first Flying Circus? Were you all viewed as these completely insane anarchists?
The BBC didn't really know who we were or what we were, and didn't really care in those days. It was a bit like the RAF: "Alright you, you go over there and that's your room over there and we'll see you at the end of the season. Jolly good. Carry on." And it was great. We had no executives. No help or interference. They gave us a loony director called Ian McNaughton, who'd been working for Spike Milligan...he was wild and wacky. We knew what we didn't want to do and that's all we knew. We didn't want to end sketches with tags and punchlines. We didn't want to cut to the singer, "And now on a serious note..." "And now for something completely different..." was something you always heard on comedy shows. "And now for something completely different, here in a relaxing mood, is Vera to sing 'The Dance of the Seventeen Veils.'" (laughs) And I remember our first show very well actually, because the BBC refused to accept our first four titles, which were A Horse, a Spoon and a Basin; Bunwacky Buzzard, Stubble and Boot; Owls Stretching Time. They kept saying "No! You cannot call the show Owls Stretching Time!" You know, duh! (laughs) So finally, they kept calling it The Circus. "Maybe The Flying Circus," they said. Then we came up with the name 'Monty Python.' So they sent out tickets and people came thinking they were actually seeing a circus! We had little old ladies making up our first audience. (little old lady voice) "Oh, is this a circus?" "I dunno, I don't see any animals." (laughs) They were totally puzzled. And I was quite puzzled, too. Because if you look at the first show, it's totally bizarre! I mean, sheep drop on people's heads...I used to play soccer in the park on Sundays and the show went out on Saturday nights. So on Sunday they'd go "That show of yours is bloody weird, but I quite like. But it's really a very stupid bloody, silly show!" (laughs)
What was the genesis of the name 'Monty Python'?
The BBC always put "Circus" on the contract, so we deflated it by saying "Flying Circus." And I think it was Michael who said he wanted to call it Gwen Dibbly's Flying Circus because there was a real woman in his village called Gwen Dibbly. (laughs) And wouldn't it be funny if we named a television show after her? We were like, 'Alright, that's funny for you, Mike." So John and Graham came up with "Python" because they always liked animal jokes. And I came up with "Monty" because he was a bloke in the pub where I went in Stratford. "Has Monty been in yet?" "Hello! Where's Monty?" And he wore a bow-tie and he was like, an agent, and the name had this sort of seedy quality 'Monty Python.' It has a sort of persona, almost very Goddot. Waiting for Monty. (laughs)
Did you guys write all your sketches together, like in a round table?
No. Mike and Terry wrote together. John and Graham wrote together and I wrote alone. We'd go away for like, two weeks, get a block of stuff, then get together for two or three days and read it all out. And if you laughed, it was in and if you didn't, we sold it to The Two Ronnies. (laughs)
Did the show take off right away?
Well, it's not like here with ratings. It's the BBC, so they don't care if nobody's watching. We were only competing with ITV anyway...so it wasn't measured like that. It was never really a hugely popular thing. I guess it got bigger. Here was where it got big, when it finally came here, about 1974 or so. PBS is going to run the whole series again for the 25th anniversary, I think starting this April.
Tell us about Python's first excursion into feature films.
Well we started with And Now For Something Completely Different, which we did for £80,000. Then we did Holy Grail for £200,000, or about $400,000. I actually like Grail better than Life of Brian. I think it's more filmic and weird. It's not the general opinion of the whole group, but that's what I think...We were on such a tight budget with Grail, sharing rooms together. We couldn't afford horses, so that's how we got the things with the coconuts banging together. (laughs) That's how things happen. We actually raised money privately for that, from Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and Charisma Records...They were fans. And of course George Harrison picked up the tab for Life of Brian. It worked out well, really. We shot Brian in Tunisia where Sir Lew Grade had just made The Life of Christ, so we used their sets!
Did the uproar surrounding Brian surprise you?
We thought it was rather good. Saved us from doing publicity. (laughs) It was a wonderful American controversy. Once you're on the news, you're fine. You can go home now. You don't have to do a publicity tour. Oh, thank you very much. (laughs)
Who were Python's biggest influences?
I'd say it was a bit of the Goon Show (Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan) and a bit of Beyond the Fringe, which was Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett. They did this wonderful revue around '62. It was really fun.
You hosted Saturday Night Live four times during its heyday in the 1970's.
What was that like?
It was fairly chaotic. You always felt that the hours were written around Lorne (Michaels) desire not to get up before lunch and stay up all night and have a bit of fun. (In Python) we always worked office hours, start at 10, 10:30, break for lunch, then finish around 4:30. And they would sort of start after dinner, then go to five or six in the morning. They would never re-write, so they'd never stockpile stuff, you know what I mean? (On SNL) sometimes if they had a sketch, and we liked the first bit, we'd throw it across to somebody else, who would just complete it or stick it into something else. So we always had the opportunity to re-work things...But sometimes you'd have a panic as to whether they were going to have a monologue ready or not.
I remember that great sketch you did with Dan Aykroyd, as David Frost interviewing Nixon.
I wrote that! And I didn't get writing credit, which really pissed me off. Lorne said, "Well we don't have any budget for this sort of thing. I'm afraid we can't give you writing credit." "Well, that's okay. Alright, then. Oh, never mind." "You understand?" "Yes of course, it is only NBC, isn't it? I couldn't possibly have any money." (laughs) But the show was always the opposite of Python. It was about ego, celebrity, and fame! Fame in New York! Yeah, here we are! Yeah! And Python was about...nobody knew who the fuck we were. We never put our names up until the end credits, and even then it didn't say who played what. So it was sort of the opposite, but interesting though. For me it was good because it led to The Rutles.
The Rutles was the Beatles satire you did with Gary Weis. Tell us about that.
I had my own TV show after Python called Rutland Weekend Television. Rutland was a county in England which the Conservatives put out of existence after a thousand years of history. It's back now, I'm glad to say! (laughs) So we gave it its own TV station and The Rutles was just a sketch on that. When I first did Saturday Night Live I was asked to bring some stuff over. We played it over the air and the response was huge. People wrote in to The Rutles. "Dear Nasty, Stig and Barry," you know. So they asked me, "What are you doing next?" And I said I wanted to make a documentary about The Rutles. George (Harrison) was very encouraging and I was going to do it for the BBC. They said, "Well come and do it for NBC. We'll give you a bigger budget." So we sold it to NBC and Lorne suggested Gary Weis as co-director with me and...just went away and did it, really. I started in New York where I interviewed Paul Simon and Mick Jagger about The Rutles, which was nice to get under your belt, because Mick's really bitchy about The Beatles in their thinly-veiled disguise as he tells his stories. (laughs)And those rivalries don't die. There's extraordinary British band rivalries that are still going on.
It pre-dated Spinal Tap, didn't it?
Yes! I invented the mocu-mentary! It pre-dated Zelig , which is another one that gets credited (with being the first). But I'm not bitter or twisted. (laughs) I'm just broke. (laughs)
Do you have any favorite sketches from Flying Circus?
You know, I liked the Bruces. I really enjoyed them. I had sketches I loved performing on the stage show. I loved doing the Travel Agent, which was written by John and Graham. There's still a lot of good stuff that plays well.
Have you all stayed close?
Yes, we've all stayed close and we still meet and see each other. It's fun.
Will you ever work together again?
No. We've been tempted. Occasionally I've thought about Vegas. I thought that Monty Python live in Las Vegas would be a real trip. Basically I don't think we should do it, even for ready-money. It's disappointing ultimately. You hear people say "They want you, they want you, they want you!" What they want is how you were. We can't go back. And I think what it really is, is that they want to go back. I think it's okay for us all to turn up and sort of reminisce and have people say "Oh, look at those old bastards still natchin' away." I think that's okay. But I think people like to know that we're all still friends and really the shows are all better than we could be. We don't age. We're still 26. And they still find the new markets. It's extraordinary.
Tell us about your new novel "Levity, or The Road to Mars."
It's been something I've been trying to write for 16 or 18 years, and I just finally figured out what it was about. I'm proud of it. It's been fun and very nice to get away from film writing, which can drive you mad with their notes, listening to them while you pretend that you're impressed. But that's the way it is. I went to (famous comedy director) once for a meeting and he said "So, have you ever done comedy?" (laughs)...But the book is about comedy and comedians, which is sort of the only thing I know after all these years. I found it really a fabulous job. It's nice when someone just says to you "You know, I love what you're doing. I'm going to pay you to finish it." More of those jobs, please! What I miss about Python is that freedom and that liberty we had to do whatever we wanted. And when you write a novel, you have that liberty back. It's given me a new lease on my love of writing. Of course day to day, writing is fucking hell. But generally, compared to being an actor stuck in a trailer for 18 hours, it's wonderful because you're constantly searching within yourself for something. Only rarely can you do acting that even begins to touch what you can get into with writing.
Tell us about Alan Smithee.
I thought it was a good script. When I read a script I go "Can I play this or can I have fun playing this." And this was good because, unlike "comedy," this was real. There was a real move in his character. When we were filming, my mother was dying. And we brought her back here to my house to die. And I had to spend three or four days sort of crying and weeping in the story. So it was very therapeutic for me...So for me it was a really good acting role because you didn't have to be shallow. Usually in comedy, you've got it in take two or three because where are you going to go? You're not going to give more depth to it. So it was good for me to do it.
Did the film reflect a lot of truths that you've learned from your years in "the biz"?
Well, I used to be very bitter and cynical, but now I think the mistake that I made and that other people make is expecting it to be anything other than it is, which is Detroit. They're making cars, they're not making fabulous little art films. If you want to make fabulous little art films, go live in France or Germany where they pay you to do that. Here it's about making a certain type of film. A lot of people's expectations are dashed because they're looking for the wrong thing.
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