Quotes

The Meaning of Monty Python

John Cleese: I think we all have a completely different feeling about "Meaning of Life". I mean, I think some of it's the funniest stuff we ever did. And other bits, I didn't like at all.

Michael Palin: I remember sitting out at the table, do you remember, outside the place in Jamaica. All these guys walking up on the beach, offering to sell us weed. "No, no, we're writing copy, writing comedy, please." We should have just taken it and the film would probably be made much, much better.

John Cleese: I remember that there were British troops who were caught at some point. And I remember they were all going to be tortured to death. And I remember the Regimental sergeant major came out of the offices, saluting, and they said, "Yes, Regimental sergeant major," they said, "Permission to panic, sir."
Michael Palin: A very good memory.
John Cleese: No, but, we all remember different things. I think it's extraordinary.

Terry Jones: Is that "I, Me, Mine" by George Harrison on the bottom shelves?
Eric Idle: It's actually by, um, no, it's not by George Harrison. It's by someone very similar, eh, John Locke.
Terry Jones: John Locke, oh.

John Cleese: Am I right in thinking that the word 'homosexual' is now thought of as being vaguely unpleasant?
Michael Palin: It's rather serious. It's scientific, isn't it, really.
Eric Idle: I think it's just the act, John.
[everyone burst out laughing]
Eric Idle: I think the word itself is perfectly innocuous.

Eric Idle: We didn't have a theme. We didn't have an idea. I mean, we didn't have a theme.
Terry Jones: So, we were writing to find a theme.

John Cleese: So, do you think we should do another film together?
Eric Idle: I think we should sit on the beach in St. Ann's Bay.
Michael Palin: I think we agree with that.
John Cleese: We'll ask for a studio that will give us a month on the beach somewhere nice next February and if movie comes out of it, the studio can have it.
Terry Jones: I need to pay off my mortgage, so I'd love to do another film.
Michael Palin: I think we should get Graham, some how or another. This should be the challenge for the scientific community - to recreate Graham.
John Cleese: We could get someone to channel him.
Michael Palin: That would be wonderful.
John Cleese: Take a medium with us.
Terry Gilliam: The Holy Grail with the holy relics of Graham. It's a great idea. There's enough recorded material of Graham's that he could always be there speaking.
Michael Palin: I like the idea of having a medium, who just has no sense of comic timing. He's got Graham's voice: "Oh-oh, hellooo. But not able to do anything funny." Poor Graham.
Eric Idle: If it's Graham's sense of timing, he won't show up.
[everyone bursts out laughing]

Michael Palin: Someone said to me the other day about Silly Walks and how we could write something like that. And their point was that now it would seem very offensive to people with disabilities. But, my point was the way you did it, was just it was a wonderfully - it wasn't, it wasn't sort of awkward. It was incredibly smooth. It was actually rather athletic. Wonderful. The bottom half of the body only moving. When other people came in, like the lady who served the tea and the tray all shook, then it did look like you were sort of making a joke about it.

Terry Gilliam: Victimization is what the modern world is about. And if you can be a victim, you've got a half way decent chance, I think. It works in marriages, as well.

Eric Idle: It's always had a very bright, you know, encyclopedic sense of ideas coming from it. I think people felt a little bit more intelligent when they watched it, even though it could be banal at times.

John Cleese: The question is, what do you make fun of? Because, when we grew up in, let's say the fifties, all right, we were - at school, right, and it seemed, at that time, that we lived in a relatively stable society. But, a lot of it was obviously stupid. And it was great, great fun making fun of the stupid bits. Because you thought, well, eventually, people would see how stupid they are and they'll sort things out. Now, we have a very fractured society. I don't thing anyone understands what's going on.

Eric Idle: We never did anything that approached sitcom or anything about domestic life, at all. Did we? It was always on the level of absurdity, if we went into it, you know. I think that's one of the great appeals of Python. It's ideas lead.

John Cleese: Comedy's about knocking things down; because they're ridiculous and need to be improved.

Michael Palin: I think that Python was - I mean, at the time we didn't think it was a groundbreaker. We didn't even know if it was going to last another year. I mean, shows weren't repeated much. And that was it. We'd go on to the next thing. But, it just was. And you look back at it now and we were dealing with things and, you know, churning out material that people wouldn't be able to do nowadays with the kind of exuberance that lasted for two and a half series.

Terry Gilliam: It was six people making the decision. It was within us. There was nobody else. There was no outside influence. If it made us laugh, it went in. And, you know, sometimes we were right and sometimes we were wrong. That's what always intrigued me, some of the stuff that we thought was really funny, in the end, we look back, it was not.

Eric Idle: [referring to his epitaph] Mine says, "Say no more". And hopefully when we're all dead, we'll be doing commercials, because they'll be using us and chopping us up to sell vacuum cleaners, I think.

Terry Gilliam: I think the whole point is that "Meaning to Life" is trying to give meaning to life, not that there is any meaning to life.

Terry Gilliam: I was always pleased with what we did in Life of Brian when Brian says, you know, I'm not a Roman, I'm a Jew - Kike, Sheeny... We used every, every word you could use. And said, I'm proud of it. And I thought, that was really great. And that's the problem with what goes on now, with language. It's people are so uncertain of which words cause offense and which don't. So people tip-toe around language all the time.

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