At the beginning of last month, from September 5th through the 11th, Eric, along with Tania and Lily, came down to my neck of the woods- Utah! For an entire week, the Idle family stayed and volunteered at the nation’s largest animal sanctuary, Best Friends, which is located in Anglo Canyon, not far from Kanab. Unfortunately for me, I found out about this just four days after he had left, or else I could have driven about three/four hours down there and had a visit.
However, Animal Radio, their own radio station which airs every Saturday, played an interview last week that they had with Eric while he was there. I saved the interview to my computer, and after listening to it a few times, have written down what they said…
E= Eric.
AR= People from Animal Radio.
E: Lalala… The funny thing is, Tania over lunch says to me, "The great thing about this place is that no one has recognized you," she said. *laughs* Except for lunch! *laughs*
AR: Anyway, we’re talking with Eric Idle who is, um, we’re delighted to say, visiting Best Friends with his wife and daughter.
E: Yes.
AR: What brings you here?
E: Well, they brought me here. *laughs* They came last year and they had a fabulous time. They said "Dad, you’ll really love it", and so they kindly brought me back this time and I’ve had a lovely time staying here and watching them work. I can’t work because of my surgery.
AR: So you just get to sit and watch them?
E: Yes, I get to sit and watch them, and I work a little bit in my cabin… just um… working on my book of my tour…
AR: This is the tour of America?
E: The Greedy Bastard Tour, yes.
AR: Do you have any like, sort of comic lines that we can use? Something that can make Best Friends not just nice but funny?
E: Um, well, I’ve had a terrific day watching my wife shoveling bull shit and horse shit. *naughty laugh* And uh, you know, she’s served me some during my years of marriage, but to watch her actually shoveling it was fantastic. I sat on the terrace, playing guitar, watching her work. And that was very nice. *laughs* I don’t think that’s promised to man generally, but you want to see your wives work. *more naughty laughs* Maybe it’s not got the appeal, the tourist appeal, it might have.
AR: You guys got pets at home?
E: Yes, we have uh, we have two dogs, a beagle called Bagel, who eats everything, and a very thin German shepherd.
AR: A very thin German shepherd?
E: Yes, it’s almost anorexic. It’s a very picky eater. So the beagle eats everything and the shepherd just turns his nose up at everything.
AR: I have exactly the same thing. I have two dogs, well, one’s a sheltie and the other is a sort of terrier mix, one who loves to eat and one who refuses. Is that sort of what it is?
E: It’s exactly the same thing.
AR: Do people look at you and think or say ‘Oh, he’s not looking after him properly’? That’s what they do to me.
E: Well, the shepherd is my wife’s dog so I bear no responsibility at all for the feeding habits. All I do is earn and they spend. That’s the vision in our house. It’s a very fair division. *laughs*
AR: Well, um, in England in particular… go back to England for one second… there are always… well, England is known as this land that is kind of besotted animals, particularly dogs and cats, and especially hampsters, and there’s this one hedgehod rescue… They have all of these weird animal organizations and rescues for strange things.
E: Also, they use them very much for entertainment, I’m very pleased to say. We have badger watch, you know, which is a nocturnal show which is on television for hours at a time as they watch this set to see if anything moves. And it didn’t for hours at a time… Another thing I’m really fond of in England is that they have sheepdog trials, which they show on television…
AR: That was one of the most popular shows on TV…
E: HUGELY popular in England, but Americans can’t believe you actually watch dogs herding sheep into pens for points.
AR: And by the hour.
E: Fascinating, by the way, you know.
AR: And another one that was very popular was the rescue show and apparently people went on every day, or twice a week or something, and people were rushing home from work to see whether such and such goat would be adopted.
E: They have the antique road show, they can have the antique goat show. *laughs* People can bring in their goats and get rid of them…
AR: Can we work on something together like this?
E: *laughs* I don’t think we can, heavensly!
AR: One of the most famous ones wasn’t your particular skit, it was John Cleese who did that one, or were you the guy behind the counter?
E: The parrot?
AR: The dead parrot, of course.
E: Cleese was always very fond about animal sketches.
AR: You’ve got a new show coming out soon.
E: Well I’ve been for the last three years adapting Monty Python and the Holy Grail as a Broadway musical. And it’s called SPAMALOT, and it opens in Chicago in December and then we open on Broadway on March the tenth. And it’s fantastic. We’ve got some great silly songs and Mike Nichols is directing it. And we’ve got wonderful people like David Hyde Pierce being in it, and Tim Curry, and Hank Azaria from the Simpsons… It’s just a great project. It’s going to be very very silly and we of course have the French throwing cows at the English at the dramatic moment of the conflict. This is very unfortunate, I think.
AR: Unfortunate for the cows, possibly. We should stress to our animal-loving audience not necessarily a real cow.
E: No, in fact, we’re using a real actress to play the cow. *laughs* I think we’re going to have to drop actresses. ‘No actresses have been harmed during the making of this musical.’
AR: So, in risk of offending everybody who is listening, what are the truly comical aspects of Americans?
E: Um…
AR: You can tell me, I’m English.
E: *laughs* Well, I think there’s a lot about Americans which is quite funny, but they are very sensitive people so I don’t want to hurt their feelings as I live here amongst them, you know what I mean? Um, I love the fact that they feel that they’re leading the world, as if they look behind nobody’s actually following. *laughs* I like the way that they feel that death is optional, that if somehow you take enough pills and if you are slim enough you don’t have to go through that particularly unpleasant scene. They actually have less illusions, I find. I mean, I do love Americans, I’m married to one and I have a child who is half-American, and I do find that their way of being is very agreeable. I’ve lived in France and enjoyed French liberty, but I think American freedom is actually a very strong thing, providing they stick with it, and there’s some doubt at the moment, that it’s really a wonderful country to live in, where freedom of speech is guaranteed and you can say what you think and feel.
AR: You’re very charming and we’re holding up the whole family which is supposed to be working at Dog Town this afternoon, and uh, so we should let you all go and do that and get back to your comic tour of Best Friends.
E: Well thank you. And I would recommend anybody who wants to have a good holiday to come up here. It’s really one of the most beautiful spots on Earth. Zion National Park is the most extraordinary place I think I’ve ever seen in my life.
AR: It’s amazing, isn’t it?
E: Extraordinary! And you’ll have a very nice time here. They’re very nice people, and if you like animals… And it’s called Best Friends… My wife’s mouthing something to me… ‘And you’re fired.’ What? *laughs*
AR: And also, we don’t drop animals on top of peoples’ heads unlike what you did in Python.
E: No, we never dropped real dogs and cats. We were never knowingly cruel.
AR: Thanks so much for spending time with us, and once again, watch out for SPAMALOT coming in…
E: December in Chicago and March the tenth it opens on Broadway.
AR: We’ll all be looking forward to it. Eric Idle, thanks for being with us.
E: Thanks for having me.
Personally, I think they could have left out the whole 'dropping animals' thing... people know it's not real animals... But anyspam, there's a nice little interview for you! :)
Ride Forth To SPAMALOT Continued
It’s amazing to imagine that SPAMALOT, the anticipated musical of Holy Grail, will be premiering in Chicago in just two months! Tickets for any Chicago shows are basically SOLD OUT; you’d be lucky to find something offering you the back-most corner! The hype is certainly up and now all we have to do is wait, and if you live near Chicago, stare at lovely SPAMALOT ads adorned on the backsides of Pepsi cans.
Last issue I posted part of an article that Eric wrote concerning SPAMALOT. Now, here are the other two parts of the article…
I told you of my quest to make a musical comedy. This frustrated determination goes back as far as the late seventies, when I began shooting an adaptation I had made of The Pirates of Penzance. I had no budget, no deal, no cast, no studio and no money, but I knew a great photo opportunity when I saw it. I had a fantastic final scene for my movie. I was going to film the entire British army marching down the Mall, in their red coats and their bearskins, the flanks of their horses gleaming, their brasses glinting, their sabers drawn, their bright breast plates flashing in the June sunlight. Over this I would play the magnificent elegiac, ironic, but magnificent anthem which was one of three numbers I was lifting from HMS Pinafore, and which might indeed be my own motto.
For in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations
He remains an Englishman!
For he himself has said it
And it’s greatly to his credit
That he is an Englishman.
He remains an Englishman!
Researching this movie I had become friendly with some cavalry officers of the King’s Troop, a brigade of hussars garrisoned in St. John’s Wood. At least once a week they would ride past my house, perhaps fifty horses, hooves clip clopping, pulling their field guns down to the park to practice. After visiting their barracks, and discovering they were Python fans and loved Gilbert and Sullivan, I had gained permission to film them bringing their perfect horse-drawn Victorian field guns into action in Hyde Park and firing off a 21 gun salute for the Queen’s birthday. More, they had offered me permission to take a camera crew on to the Queen Victoria monument, an ornate edifice on a traffic island directly in front of Buckingham Palace, and shoot the entire British army marching down the Mall. This was a godsend and a million dollar shot, since even if you could afford it you could never achieve it. Fortunately for me, the British army in full dress uniform is not all that different from a century before. All I had to do was to avoid shooting anything that was not in period and I would have the most superb footage. And herein lay the problem. The army marches down the Mall, wheels around the Victoria monument and passes directly in front of the monarch and her consort, where they make an eyes right, while she receives their salute sitting on her horse saluting. I could shoot any part of this event, with the single exception of the Queen. Everything else would be perfect for the movie. I didn’t have the Victoria monument quite to myself, there were one or two obligatory cameramen from the Press, but largely it was just me with my shoulder length hair, baseball cap, tank top and shorts and my tiny crew. It was a blazing June day as we ecstatically captured rank after rank of the British army advancing directly down the Mall at us in wide screen. It was a magnificent shot. I could practically hear Sullivan’s music in my head. This was fantastic. As the front ranks wheeled around us, we scrambled to the Buckingham Palace side of the monument to catch them marching directly in front of us. I directed my cameraman to close in on the horses hooves, the glistening buckles, the glinting helmets, the gleaming swords, all tight shots I could use later to intercut my footage. I was running around enthusiastically pointing and exhorting and bending and jumping about with glee at what we were getting when I became aware that I was being watched. Two pairs of eyes were staring at me: the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, both on horseback had become riveted by our activity. You have to understand that this was their show; the eyes of the entire world were on them; thousands of people had turned out to see them, lining the London streets for hours, TV cameras were beaming their image live round the world, as they took the salute from the whole army, while this maniac ran around, directly in front of them, not fifteen yards away, totally ignoring them. What was he doing? It must have seemed incomprehensible to them. Not once did I even turn my camera in their direction. I was clearly shooting everything but them. They were the stars of the show and I was shooting the extras. They stared at me in mute incomprehensibility, this hippy ragamuffin, right on their patch, on their turf, outside the gates of their Palace, deliberately ignoring them! This was the Queen of England, the center of an historic ritual, the Trooping of the Colour, a tradition that goes back centuries. What was going on? What the hell was I doing? I could feel their eyes, boring into me. I stopped what I was doing and turned to look at them. I was watching the Queen watching me. Her hand raised to her hat in salute. The Duke next to her in utter disbelief. They stared at me for thirty seconds while I froze. What to do? Impossible to explain in a look, a glance, a gesture that I meant no offence, that they simply couldn’t be in my Victorian film. That I meant no disrespect. There was no way to convey anything at all. I grinned at them, shrugged, nodded in a vaguely reassuring way and went back to shooting my inserts. They never stopped watching me. Two completely different worlds passed by, each utterly incomprehensible to the other.
I never got to make The Pirates of Penzance, which is a pity, as it had some cute ideas, but I never abandoned my love for the musical comedy form. The Rutles is of course a musical, as is Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life which has about eight songs in it, more than most musicals. (Most of them by John Du Prez and me.) So now John and I had determined to open the Pandora’s box of Python and start work on The Holy Grail and simply see where it led us, trusting in good faith and optimism.
Thank God for computers, because mine tells me I began writing the first draft of Spamalot on Monday December 31st 2001. I had filled a small red spiral note book with notes and sketches and now I downloaded the text of the Grail from one of the many illicit websites, which thankfully saved me all the bother of typing out the script and I could paste and cut and rewrite as necessary. I worked hard and fast and early, usually starting at dawn with a cup of tea, a pencil and a plain piece of paper. It went well and I printed out a First Draft on January 24th 2002. at 6.37 a.m.
On that same January day I met John Du Prez for breakfast at a deli in Studio City where I presented him with the still warm First Draft. That night, to celebrate, we went to see a very funny all male version of H.M.S Pinafore somewhere on Melrose. Inspired by this particularly silly production of Gilbert and Sullivan we started work writing the songs next day at 9 a.m. on the 25th January. John and I are fairly prolific. We write fast. We’ll catch an idea and run with it, stopping to tape record snatches that we like. I’ll be frantically scribbling down lyrics on a legal pad and John will be at the keyboard polishing chords and changes and melody. Sometimes I play guitar along with his keyboard, sometimes not. Later I go back and revise the lyrics for individual songs. Usually it takes me about a day to hammer out a lyric for each song and then when we come to record it I’ll polish them again before we go into the studio. We like the studio. It helps us to focus our work. Songs come to life in there. We usually lay down a live track to get the feel of the song, John on keyboard, me on guitar, right there in the same room with Larry Mah who plugs us directly into the board. Then I’ll have a rough stab at singing the lyric in his tiny triangular glass closet. There is just room for John and I to squeeze in together and add chorus voices. I usually leave them to it after lunch and when I hear the songs again they have been totally transformed into magic: accordions, geese squawking, coconuts clacking, full orchestrations. It is truly amazing what you can do with John Du Prez, Larry Mah and Pro Tools.
Looking back now at the First Draft I am struck by how little of the original lyrics we kept. In the text I had indicated areas where I felt we needed a song, but it was all still fairly loose. There were some completed lyrics, some snatches of doggerel, and some fairly sketchy rhyming gags to indicate song possibilities. Here and there we lifted a line for a song, or we picked up a theme from a suggestion, but there was a total sea change the minute John came on board. That’s the great thing about a partner, they get you to places you would never even have imagined. We got so into writing that at one point we ad libbed a complete song directly on to the tape recorder, John at the piano and me screaming lyrics. We just opened a vein and out the song poured. It is still the best song in the show and it was the one that all the Pythons immediately responded to. (No of course I’m not going to tell you what it is….) We wrote songs solidly for two and a half weeks and then went into Larry’s tiny garage studio in Sylmar for some fairly intense recording. The resulting CD is just John and me on everything, though we did pay a few session fees to Shawana Kemp, Jennifer Julian and Samantha Harris, our girls from my 2000 tour, to add the essential glamour of female voices. Now it sounded like Broadway. We finished the recording sessions at about 4pm on the 27th February when John drove straight to LAX to catch his flight back to the UK, while I tinkered with a few last minute revisions. Five weeks in total since the time he touched down…
Of course, don’t get me wrong, this was only a first draft. I have learned one thing about writing and that it is all about re-writing. Just so you know, we are currently on Draft 9 and we have written something like thirty songs. There will certainly be a Draft 10 before we begin rehearsals in New York City in October, and even this week we are going into the studio to try out a further four songs. But at this point in the process we had a First Draft book and a CD of demo songs, the next thing to do was approach the Pythons. How would they react….? I sent them each a package and waited, nervously.
Adapting the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the stage has been a great job. It is a very funny film. Even after three years working on the Book much of the original writing still makes me laugh out loud.
- You’re using coconuts.
- What?
- You’re using two halves of coconuts and banging ‘em together.
- I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
- Is there someone else we could talk to?
It’s endearingly silly. It has a freshness and a simplicity which is rare. I think it has some of the same charm as A Hard Day’s Night: young men ignorant of what exactly they are doing but totally confident about it.
Arthur’s attempts to round up his knights and stop them bickering and running away is perfectly mock heroic. Almost epic. While dealing with large themes like the Quest for the Holy Grail the movie is really quite small in scale. Since the budget was a mere $400,000 we couldn’t afford armies or even horses (thank God for coconuts) that means most of the scenes can be fairly easily reconstructed on stage. There are of course technical problems: just how do you lop off people’s arms and legs on stage? But these are technical problems, which means somebody else has to solve them. That’s the great thing about being a writer….
The movie itself is discursive; characters pop up for one scene only to disappear immediately. Unless I was careful we would end up with a cast of sixty-eight: not good theater, and appalling economics. So it was always clear to me that our actors would have to play multi-roles. I also felt that we were missing good female parts for a Broadway show. I don’t know about you, but for me a show isn’t a show without leggy girls in spangly tights putting their legs over their heads. And that’s just backstage. But in the movie apart from the Witch and the memorable bathroom scene with Zoot and the Maidens who ask Galahad for a spanking, (a Broadway number if ever there was one), it’s all guys. I felt we needed to create a new part for The Lady of the Lake, who is referred to but doesn’t appear in the movie. All right, there is the Mother:
- Dennis there’s some lovely mud over here!
But, come on, that has to be a guy doesn’t it? It’s a classic Terry Jones’ ratbag. Pure Panto.
For American readers I should perhaps attempt to explain what Panto is, since all English people grow up with it, and it’s probably the most popular form of theater in Britain. Here goes: the Pantomime is a Christmas entertainment in the U.K. where the leading man is the Principal Boy who is played by a Girl, who romances the leading girl in tights, so that two girls kiss on stage, while the step mother of the girl is a man in drag, and her two ugly sisters are both men playing women….
I’ve lost you haven’t I? You think we’re weird don’t you? Let’s face it, your eyes have glossed over and you’re wondering how we ever managed to take an Empire. It’s hopeless. It’s like trying to explain cricket to Americans. It’s utterly impossible. Let’s just say that Panto is an odd hybrid of Vaudeville, Stand-up, Drag show, Variety, Revue, Broadway Musical and Fairy Tale. It’s full of double-entendres and cheap theatrical effects – well Spamalot really.
So, I know I’ve been teasing you for weeks, just how did the Python’s respond? (See Part 81, the Beginnings)
Synopsis of the plot of this article.
Eric Idle has had the idea of writing a Musical based on the Holy Grail. After fifteen hundred years he has written a book, recorded a CD and sent it off to the Pythons. How will they respond? Now read on:…
All the Pythons responded in an amazingly short time. Terry Jones was the first to reply. He called to say he loved it and was filled with enthusiasm. He had played the songs to his friends and they were all overjoyed.
Next came an email from Michael Palin:
First, fresh impressions. I loved most of it. Lots of good lyrics and very silly new songs which made me chuckle to the point of open, gurgling laughter. I think there is a core of very strong, very funny, catchy and very well-produced material here Love and congratulations to all, M
Terry Gilliam too responded by Email:
El
I loved Spamalot a lot. I laughed. I danced. I pranced. What is wrong?
Tel
Even the great John Cleese responded enthusiastically:
I really enjoyed almost all of the songs. My personal favorite is "xxxxx." As I listened to it, I thought that the idea of parodying the kinds of songs you get in a certain type of annoying musical was wonderful. There were two other songs in the second act, both involving your female vocalist…which seem to be developing this theme. I've never come across it before, and it's very original…
The blessed and venerable Jonesy even organized a meeting so keen was he on the project.
Re Spamalot!
Terry G., Mike P. and John C. (via the electric telephone) and I all met yesterday to see what everybody else thought about Spamalot!. There was an unnerving degree of agreement. First of all we all think it's a jolly good project and that the songs and book are generally pretty spiffing. And I think we all think it could be a big success.
Terry G. and John were both (surprisingly) tempted to get more involved in the whole project because they thought it was so good, but were tempered by the feeling that it is really your project and that you wouldn't appreciate interference from super-annuated, white haired ex-pythons. There was a general agreement that the thing would get done more efficiently and effectively as your project. There was, however, a hope expressed that the rest of us could be useful as sounding-boards and coming up with some ideas and thoughts and criticisms.
Wow! Not only did they like it, they wanted to help! It doesn’t get much better than that. Fired up by their enthusiasm and inspired by their encouragement John Du Prez and I plunged into another writing session, using their criticisms and suggestions. The response to this new material was just as encouraging. This was Mike Palin:
I've listened to the new Spamalot material and like it very much. Knights Of Ni song is jolly and superbly silly and I love XXX. A rather beautiful song and very funny idea. I particularly like the way it becomes YYY and wondered if there might not be scope for it to escalate even further .., ending, via a series of climactic key changes into a great universal anthem of nostalgic longing. A huge cathartic moan.
Anyway, I think that generally the show is in an impressive state, full of life and good ideas. I think that the songs and jokes about Broadway are some of my favourite moments.
So, good work all round. Some great changes of mood and tempo, lovely melodies and, as I say, just a feeling of great, ebullient and redeeming silliness. Congratulations to all. Onwards and upwards,
Love M
Terry Gilliam wrote a very long and useful note clarifying his feelings about one of the songs, and added this…
I'm tempted to get involved with the design...however, my problem is that when I start thinking down those roads I start thinking of how it should be staged and then how the dance numbers ought to go and then...... You can't keep a bad director down, but I don't want to do that job. However there are some excellent chances to do some outrageous stuff. For example, puppets could be a visually fantastic other element. I'm talking about big puppets...giant three headed knights....dancing. I think the sets should be based on the medieval illustrated manuscript artwork I used for the animations. Then I think... I miss the Beast of Arghhh and it could prove useful as an element of different scale and pace. When I get like this I have to remind myself that I'm supposed to be busy directing films. And probably will be when you are trying to stage the show.
So, if he wasn’t going to do that job who was? And who was going to produce this show which was now looking as though it could really happen. Tom Hoberman, my lawyer, suggested Bill Haber. "He’ll get it completely," he said.
He did.
Bill is an extraordinary man, one of the four original partners who founded The Creative Artists Agency in Hollywood he has now moved on to producing shows on Broadway. His real life, though, is devoted to running the Save The Children Charity, for which he flies tirelessly around the world. He has just returned from the Sudan, in the Spring he flew to Baghdad. I have never known a finer man. His priorities are totally right. As he said to me recently "He who dies with the most toys, dies."
He came to visit me at my house. I had all the Holy Grail dolls out. I played him the CD and laid the script on him, but it didn’t matter: he was already in! It was the easiest pitch of my life. At the doorway on his way out we discussed who we might get to direct it.
"Well Mike would be great," I said.
"Mike Nichols?" he laughed. "Never in a hundred years," he said. "Mike’s a friend of mine," he said, "but he is so busy you can hardly even get him to read something. It’ll probably take him ages to even respond."
But what the hell, might as well give it a try we thought.
Three days later Mike Nichols called.
"Yes Yes Yes," he said.
Wow, my cup runneth over! In a few short months we had managed to achieve a project which everyone had said yes to. You know how rare this is?? Now came the anti-climax. It was time to make a deal with everyone. Time to go to the Broadway lawyers. Almost nine months of frustration followed. I guess that’s what lawyers are for. In fact we spent more on the lawyers than the entire total budget of the original movie! But then again, that’s what lawyers do…
Now, under our great and good leader Mike Nichols we have had two hugely hilarious reads. The most recent, with David Hyde-Pierce, Tim Curry and Hank Azaria was a hoot and now they too are on board. We have a great cast, a great choreographer Casey Nicholaw and amazing sets designed by Tim Hatley, a man who really understands Panto! We begin rehearsals in the Fall. It’s very exciting, but it’s Broadway. Millions of dollars can disappear overnight in a bunch of damp hankies. We can go off the rails at any stage, but, we are dedicated to laughter, and if we fail to achieve at least that in Chicago I will be very surprised. Fingers crossed. Wish us well. And come and see us!
We wish you well Eric! And we WILL come and see it!
Nutty For The Nutcracker
