I just saw him tonight in Scottsdale, and took my parents for their 40th anniversary, along with a few friends. Cleese was onstage for almost two hours, and showed clips from Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, Meaning Of Life, Holy Grail, A Fish Called Wanda, Graham Chapman’s memorial service in 1989, and an early-60’s David Frost show he did with Marty Feldman. He talked about his most-recent divorce (which cost him $20 million), his childhood, how Flying Circus was created, behind the scenes movie trivia, etc. Tonight was the last stop on his U.S. tour, and my first (and likely last) time seeing a Python alum live.
Ha! I would have put R.I.P. or something, but I just fixed it. Didn’t mean for it to look like an expiration date! His remembrance of Chapman was very touching (without being too heavy), and it’s sad that Graham was only 48 when he died. John is now 70. I missed Eric Idle’s tour (whenever that was), and was too young for the old Python shows, i.e. Hollywood Bowl, so I’m glad I caught Cleese this time, who can’t be too far from retirement.
I too thought it looked like a rip date.
I’m a Python/Towers fan. how much actual talking did he do? was it a Q&A or was it a stand up show or just kinda storyteller type stuff?
Late,
grmpysmrf
Mostly storytelling, there was a Q&A at the very end which lasted about 15 minutes. He talked about his parents, how he got into comedy, his various writing jobs, working with Marty Feldman, Steve Martin (who privately edited a lot of A Fish Called Wanda), mentioned his favorite sketches/bits: Python - The Cheese Shop, Fawlty Towers - the Australian guest and Fire Drill, talked about how the scene in Wanda with Otto shoving the chips up Ken’s nose was hilarious to everyone in cast and crew, but test audiences never laughed at that scene. A focus group told Cleese they were too worried about Palin not being able to breathe because of the fries in his nose and apple in his mouth. Got his divorce stories out of the way early, which was good. Talked about when they went to the BBC offices to pitch Flying Circus, they didn’t have a single idea in mind, except that they “just planned to make a funny show with lots of jokes”, and the execs went ahead and gave them the green light for 13 episodes.
He showed The Fish Dance, the Black Knight scene from Grail, the professor scene from Meaning of Life, a montage of the dog killings in Wanda (and a scene with Curtis), among others. If you’ve never scene the video of Graham Chapman’s memorial service in '89, it’s worth looking up.
Most certainly a fan of Python, particularly the films. The Python team are easily the greatest British comedy team there ever has been. Cleese’ finest moment was Fawlty Towers, a perfect little show. The poor guy got screwed by the last wife alright, but he just joked it off. I think he has another young one on his arm since, but I think he said he either wouldn’t get married again or else make sure to get a pre-nup.
Am a big fan of Palin too. Met him recently and was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever talked too. I missed out on getting him to give a talk to a society I ran two years ago, a big regret.
All good comedy since the 1970s owes something to Python.