By James Heflin - October 9, 2003
He´s not the nicest Python. That would be Michael Palin. He´s not the tallest Python, John ¨does it rhyme with knees or piece?¨ Cleese. He´s second tallest since Graham Chapman died, and now, according to his own bio, in last place for nicest, after all of the aforementioned plus Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam.
But Eric Idle may be, and it´s a tall order, the Python who pulls off the most complex characters. Cleese characters often sport tempers of volcanic intensity, like the spittle-spewing self-defense teacher screaming at a student who timidly suggests that defending against something other than fresh fruit might be interesting (¨We want to learn how to defend ourselves against pointed sticks, do we?!? Getting all high and mighty, eh?¨). Palin often plays intensely weird, nervous types and Chapman, rigid conservatives.
The whole Python crew plays a bewildering array of roles, and no rules ever apply. But it´s safe to say Idle´s Monty Python characters often sport a self-satisfied seriousness that is, of course, ridiculous. His jokes often require a bit more setup than, say, Terry Jones´ naked organist or John Cleese´s minister of silly walks. As a powdered-wigged bailiff, he delivers a clear-eyed, withering look to a man accused of mistranslating phrases in a Hungarian-English phrase book (¨Can you direct me to the railway station¨ has become ¨please fondle my buttocks¨), but only after playing it straight for a few lines. As a sociologist in enormous glasses discussing the ¨Hell´s Grannies¨ gang, he holds forth with the smug savoir-faire that only a Brit can muster in such doses. Then, at just the moment he´s working himself into an academic lather, gesturing excitedly, he falls down a manhole.
Perhaps Idle´s most famous Monty Python role is the excited man in a bar trying to elicit titillating info from a stuffed shirt of a fellow about his wife, the oft-quoted ¨nudge, nudge, wink, wink¨ sketch (¨Your wife, squire does she go? Eh?¨). The whole sketch is an elaborate setup for its final joke, delivered by an Idle who´s gone from cagey insinuator to pleading nincompoop: ¨You´ve slept, with a lady? ... What´s it like?¨
In the post-Python world, Idle has tried his hand at projects of all kinds, from his late ´70s Beatles parody film The Rutles -- All You Need Is Cash to novels (most recently The Road to Mars , about a robot assistant to a comedy team who´s trying to learn to be funny) and comedy albums. He´s even sung in The Mikado .
Idle´s most recent effort, a comedy album called The Rutland Isles , echoes his fondness for all things containing the word ¨rut¨ (his current tour is even starting in Rutland, Vt.), as he adds to the huge pile of travelogues narrated by British men in short pants with a visit to the 498,000-island Rutland chain, the West Pole home of surfing apes and the telephone bird.
Several more projects are in the works. A 2002 documentary called Can´t Buy Me Lunch , featuring interviews with a long list of famous actors and musicians about the influence of the Rutles, has unfortunately been relegated to a vault, awaiting the right deal to make it to screens. Idle´s not happy about that one. He´s also been hard at work on a Broadway musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail called Spamelot .
In 2000, Idle embarked on the Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python tour, in which he, a band and several actors exploited Monty Python for cash. Idle´s current stage show, featuring a similar mix of Python sketches, rude sing-alongs and new material primarily from the Rutland Isles CD, is called the Greedy Bastard Tour .
I caught up with the greedy bastard himself before the first performance of the new tour, on the morning of his first day in infamous Rutland.
Q: How greedy a bastard are you?
A: Well, it's about 8:30, and we got here about 5 or 3 in the morning, so not that greedy, I guess.
Q: Too early to be greedy?
A: Too early to be greedy.
Q: How is Rutland?
A: I don't know — I've only seen it by night. I'm looking forward to it — legendary Rutland.
Q: What should we expect to see in the Greedy Bastard show?
A: It's a silly show. I think you can expect a silly show. There's gonna be music and songs; there's gonna be stand-up comedy and some sketches.
Q: You haven't done a lot of stand-up, have you?
A: I've done a lot of talking to people. It's not so much stand-up as talking and hopefully being funny. It isn't really stand-up, it's sort of a British/English stand-up comedy.
Q: How is that different?
A: Well, I'll tell you tonight. [Laughs.] Its difference is the fact that it's not so funny. No. I will be doing a comedy show and we've worked on it for several months and there'll be some highlights of Python stuff, obviously -- we always have to do that. We have sing-alongs -- we encourage people to sing along to very silly songs. We put the words up in some cases -- "Philosopher's Song." And we do some of the biggest hits of the Python sketches and then some new stuff.
Q: Is this new stuff that you've written?
A: It's new stuff from the Rutland Isles , a CD I released recently, which is a sort of documentary about these Rutland Isles that don't exist and the various fabulous creatures on them. It's sort of like a Discovery Channel parody.
Q: Including, I believe, "the Penis Fish"?
A: "The Penis Fish" indeed! I didn't know I could say that first thing in the morning.
Q: You live in California?
A: I do, correct.
Q: Why do you live in America?
A: Well what sort of question is that? Why do you live in America? Nice place to live, California. I'm married to an American. I have an American daughter. They prefer it if I live with them. And I like it -- it's a nice place, an agreeable place.
Q: What do you think of our -- well, I hesitate to use the word "president" -- of Bush?
A: Well, I'm an Englishman, you know. I don't get a vote. I get to pay taxes. Without representation. [Stage voice] I'm not bitter.
Even if I'd voted, he still would have been president, wouldn't he? Because, after all, it wasn't really about the votes. I think he's a disaster in all ways. That's just an observer's opinion. I think you need to choose somebody who can do the job, and I'm sure you will. I've great faith in America.
I've been taking bets for three months that they'll all be replaced. I'm ordinarily very pessimistic about this, but I've noticed that Americans, once they turn, or once they make up their minds and realize what's going on, are very, very swift to change. I believe they will. And if they don't, then you're screwed. You've no chance whatsoever. But never mind: It'll be good for Canada.
Q: You have many rude words in your songs. My mother tells me they're unnecessary. Is she right?
A: There's so much of life that is unnecessary, but that still makes it kind of enjoyable.
I think sometimes rude words are necessary to say because then they stop being rude because you've said them. They have more value if you don't say them. They have more potent power.
So I'm afraid I'm guilty of using a few rude words. I try and use them if possible in some kind of context where they're funny or amusing. But it's like -- who chooses the rude words? [Stage voice again] The funny words are Anglo-Saxon and shall not be used.
They're in the dictionary; they mean certain specific things. They're usually sexual words. People are a little uncomfortable with sexual words. But you know, you listen to an Eminem record and realize that's ridiculous. Your kids already know all these lyrics.
Q: What's the status of the unreleased Rutles sequel Can't Buy Me Lunch ?
A: Can't Buy Me Lunch is still under arrest in a Warner's jail. It's hidden in a vault. It was taken out the other day, about three or four weeks ago. Arc Lights is a major cinema in L.A., and they had a festival of "Don't Knock the Rock" and we played [ Can't Buy Me Lunch ] and it played to a packed house and huge laughs, and then they took it away and put it back in the vault again. So I don't know what's gonna happen to it. Posthumous work, I suspect.
I could make a really good DVD, because I've got the interviews from all those people. I cut it down to 60 minutes -- I had lots and lots of stuff. But who would have thought they'd want something with Tom Hanks, Robin Williams and Steve Martin and James Taylor and David Bowie and Garry Shandling and Mike Nichols and Salman Rushdie? Who'd want that? Better have a new reality show on, don't you think?
Q: How do you feel about constantly being asked about Monty Python?
A: Well, I feel OK about it. I mean, it's like I sort of ask for it if I do a show, but I sort of make up for it by doing Monty Python sketches. That's what people seem to want, partly. I do a bit of a mix of all that -- I do some of my favorite Monty Python bits and I'm doing some stuff that's actually pre-Python.
Q: How do you account for the incredible longevity of Monty Python material?
A: I don't know. I think it was because it started into the television era. It was right at the beginning of the television era, and we're still in the television era. We were lucky enough to be in color -- six months earlier we'd have been in black and white on the BBC. And it's still sort of about television and the way television looks at things, in an odd way. It IS television. It's got a visceral thing, a visual thing with Gilliam['s cartoons]. It sort of attracts your attention and it's also really heavily written, it's got a lot of writing. I think it feels kind of refreshing to people still. We worked very hard on them. We did actually work overhard on them, and it seems to have paid off.
Q: Michael Palin always gets billing as "nicest Python." Why aren't you nicer, then?
A: I'm much nicer than him. I am nicer than him, because I'm nice to him. If you're nice to the nicest person, surely that makes you the nicest, doesn't it? See, I was the third tallest, but now Graham [Chapman] has died I'm the second tallest. So I may be working my way through the niceness as well, too. See, I may end up as the nicest and the tallest. You know, who knows?
Q: Do you think there's something that's distinctively different about British comedy versus American comedy?
A: In certain senses, yes. I think Americans, on the whole, want to be liked. I think that British comics, on the whole, don't, and that's kind of an advantage in comedy. ... I think the British go more for it, they go more for the sort of ... reality. They're not so frightened to be not-liked.
Q: You've done projects of all kinds. Is there any one genre you prefer over another?
A: I like performing live. It kind of keeps you honest -- you can't fake the laughter from the audience, you can't put the laugh track in afterwards. I like making my own little documentaries, but nobody seems to want to buy them. I'm not so fond of movies, 'cause I find them a bit tedious to be in. It was fun when [Monty Python] made them up. We were the writers and the directors and the producers and the editors and that was fun.
I like to make and do. I like to write and do. That's my sort of thing. Writing's my basis. I start very early, at 5 in the morning, and I tend to write ... and then try to figure out what I want to do with it.
Q: Do you have any plans to return to the Rutland Isles?
A: I wouldn't mind making a documentary. I got sort of a bit of a sniff from one of the networks, or more a cable station, to do a series, but they wouldn't pay anything. In fact it was cheaper to stay home.
I like one-offs, but nobody ever wants to buy them. That's my length -- I like a 70 [minute] or a TV documentary kind of length. I think that's a good length for comedy, but I am alone in this. [laughs] Happens so much! I'm either at the forefront of something or I'm lagging behind by about 14 years.
Q: Well, that's what they eventually call genius, right?
A: Yeah, yeah. Genius in show business is a rock and roll musician with a vague acquaintance with a guitar.
Q: You're a guitarist, aren't you?
A: I am a guitarist.
Q: Tell me about the Merchant Ivory parody film Remains of the Piano .
A: Well that's gone under. That died. The film company pulled the money, decided they weren't really serious about it, and so we all had to go home again. [Stage voice] Thank you very much! We weren't really serious about you, you know. We said we were gonna give you the money. What we meant was we're not gonna give you the money.
So Stratus, that's S-T-R-A-T-U-S, are being excoriated from the stage. The independent film business is like a nightmare. They tease good and worthy people endlessly.
Q: They never have the money?
A: They never have the money, though they say they do.
Q: Do you know what's next if not Remains of the Piano ?
A: I have no idea. I'm gonna spend three months on the road, so I'm reporting on that on pythonline [pythonline.com]. I play it a bit by ear. Oh, there's the musical -- sorry, there is something next, there's the Holy Grail ... as a musical, Spamelot , which is gonna head for Broadway with Mike Nichols directing. We've spent two and a half years on it -- my partner John Duprez, who's in the [ Greedy Bastard ] show.
Q: You did the Seussical as well.
A: I did the -- what do you call it -- the treatment of the Seussical . I didn't stay to write the book. But I was involved in the start of it, which whetted my appetite for musicals, and I certainly learned a lot from it.
Q: Please clear up the mystery: Is it pronounced John "Clees" or "Cleez?"
A: I don't know. I've heard it both ways. His grandpa was called Cheese. I'm gonna say it was "Cleez" and he changed his name.
Q: His grandfather was a Cheese?
A: Cheese. It was Cheese. Jack Cheese.
