Monty Python Reunion A Blast From The Past

–  You wrote quite a few sketches that were surrealist to the extreme, but you yourself look normal and stable.

“I guess it’s all in the head. So many things can run through my head, I do not know how I even got to write them all down. Why would someone write a skit about someone who comes home and says that something in the mill went wrong, and when his wife asks him over and over what happened, he would say: ‘I did not expect the Spanish Inquisition’, then the script does indeed bring the Spanish Inquisition into the house. I don’t know if that’s a crazy thing to do or not. Is it crazy?”
–  Certainly.

“To me it all seemed quite natural (laughs). Take Graham Chapman, for example. He qualified as a doctor, climbed mountains, smoked a pipe, was really the archetype of a British gentleman – and yet was barking mad. You would not see it in everyday life, but he was. When he developed the dead parrot sketch, for example, he decided to call it ‘Norwegian Blue’ – which is such a great name for it. I do not know where these things pop up. I guess that all of the brain’s electrical circuits can bring you the most brilliant ideas.”

– At the time, many people thought you were on drugs.

“Yes. But the most we took was paracetamol every once a week (laughs). People came to that conclusion because we were the children of the sixties and it was common to believe that in order to do something creative, you have to smoke something. But if we were to use drugs, it would have hurt our writing discipline. If you look at all our skits, you will see that a lot of the work is carefully calculated. The skits and dialogues were very verbal, very accurate. Drugs would have destroyed everything.”

–  Still, there are many people who can’t understand your humor at all.

“Absolutely. I think my parents are two of them. There are a lot of people who feel threatened by us, as if we are somehow ‘clever’. I do not think it’s the most clever thing to do to to put a handkerchief around your head and shout: “my brain hurts!, ” as we do in the sketch of Mr. Gumbi. But I also think that for everything that has value, there will be people who will either benefit or be repulsed by it.”

“In the case of Monty Python, at the most extreme there are some whose love can be really obsessive. I can go down to the subway and people recite the entire dead parrot skit to me- unless I shoot them. Equally, some people will be repulsed by us, which is good. The worst result is just to be somewhere in the middle, with people saying: ‘Ah, Monty Python. Yeah, interesting’.”
–  You caused a great commotion with the film ‘Life of Brian.’ It is argued that you attacked the three major religions. Do you remember how Jews reacted?

Micahel Palin: “I actually heard that Jews really loved it. Because Jews have an excellent sense of humour. And this film, in the end, is a comedy. People think this movie is laughing at Jesus, but this is not true. The film is about a man who is mistakenly taken for Jesus. Where the viewer has no sense of humour, it will not change it anyway.”

–
In 1989, it seemed the party was over, when Graham Chapman died of cancer the day before the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Monty Python. Since then, the group had – until now – refused to perform together again, despite many pleas from all their millions of fans. Palin, it turns out, was the main objector.

“I admit I was the one who did not want to give up the rest of my engagements. In 1998 there was informal conversation about a reunion. Some of us wanted to make appearances in Las Vegas, others to have smaller venues. And I did not want to give up the projects I had already committed to. I was also worried if it could work without Graham Chapman, without his good head which was very essential to us. But here, in the end, I have agreed and we are doing it.”

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