Terry Gilliam

27:26And I've never had a thought of a career. I just do what interests me. And I've been very lucky to survive and make a living doing it. And so that was John. And I, the magazine was actually in trouble. It was failing. So I hitchhiked around Europe. I took off for Europe. I hitchhiked around for five months. I think it was. I got, I was down in Morocco. I got to Turkey. And I just loved Europe. I thought America has, I loved Israel. But this is real. Yeah. In Europe. Yeah. And each country spoke a different language. They had different culture. They had different food. I was blown away by the richness of Europe.

28:10And so I came back to the States. Because I basically had run out of money. I had run out of money in Turkey. And I got back to Paris. And I don't know if Pilote magazine means anything to me. It was a very popular human magazine in Paris. And it was Astrigs and Obelix comic strip that Rene O 'City wrote. And he was the editor of the magazine. I got to Paris. And I met Rene when he was in New York with Harvey. These connect, it's all about connections. So long the line. I was broke. I said, Rene, I don't have any money to get back to America. Can you help me out? And he said, here's two pages.

28:51Do funny things about snowman. And if you want. So I'm sitting in this freezing little left -back hotel, Garrett room, and drawing snowman while I'm freezing to death. And it gave me enough money to get back to America. Which then the only place I really had to stay was Harvey's attic. So I lived in this attic for a bit. And eventually then went back to LA. And via a friend Joel Siegel. Do you remember Joel Siegel used to be a good morning American? He was the critic, the film critic. Oh yeah. Well, Joel was an old friend again coming from College Human magazine because he was doing that for UCLA.

29:33And I was doing buying for Occidental. And these weird connections that he was at that point working in advertising. And it got me a job being a writer and a copywriter. Like what was the writer and a designer? All I did the whole thing for print ads. Yeah, well for all sorts of guys print primarily. Do you remember any of the ads you did? There was one for a soup and I can't what was the name of the soap? Something soup. With a funnier were they serious? They're all funny. And whatever the soup was, it was what they were selling was soup that you didn't have to add water to. Yeah. Unlike Hines and all this.

30:17And that was a thing. And so I wrote this very silly thing about water addicts who couldn't stop. They wanted to put water in the soup. And a guy with straight sneaking down at night when his wife was asleep adding water to this loop. His wife found all of this nonsense I was doing. Can you can you make fun of the product that you're actually selling? You're going to do is tap that tap that because you've got to make it humerus without denigrating the product. On the other side the other thing I was supposed to be doing was coming up with ads for universal pictures for films. And I had absolute contempt for the stuff they were doing in the films.

30:58And that's kind of where I lost my job because I was you know it was like when I said Madigan there was a film called Madigan. And I kept my big line was once he was happy but now he's mad again. Exactly. Did they use that ad? No, of course not. They fired him. But it was it was it was just ridiculous. I hated it. I at one point it was kind of funny but once once you're thrusted to a situation where you're having to fool people into buying this crap product. I couldn't do that. Even when I was younger when I was working my way through college. I was selling encyclopedias at one point. And it was I think it was it was the Britannica.

31:44And how it worked there got some company to come up with a pitch that then all the salesmen would use this pitch. I'm here I'm in your neighborhood tonight. I'm looking on doing some research on social blah blah blah blah blah and get in the door. It was all this stuff. And some were making real big money. And what they would do the group I was with were all college students. They put you in a car. You take take you out and drop you around different territories different. And then you were left there for an hour hour and a half two hours to do your work. And I was impossible because I couldn't I knock on somebody's door and I start and I look there and there's the family sitting around the table having their dinner.

32:29The guy had been working his ass off for eight ten hours and he was home with his family and I was interrupted. I couldn't do this. It was only one house that I actually get past the door and it was two old people who had nothing else in their life. And there was a perky young kid at the door. Come on in and I got to the point where I'd convinced him to buy this huge raft of encyclopedias and I didn't know how to do the paperwork. And I then had to talk my way out of their house and I failed to sell a single book. Wow. I think that's again. It's what you do when you're younger, what it leads to later in some strange way.

33:14It doesn't mean you will go upwards but you learn all the things you don't want to do. As I got older I just do well that door is closed. That's I've closed those doors. I'm not going so it narrowed my focus let's say. I mean again working my way through college I was assembly line at the Chevrolet plant in Van Ayes, California on the night shift. Unbearable. Also because I wasn't allowed to use anything involved colored recognition. It turns out the test or you know where you get a circle with Dodd's in it and you can see a number. I can't see the number. Wow. And yet my whole life has been working with color.

33:52Yes. Amazing. Amazing. So after a month and a bit on the night shift horrible and I find it quick and I said that's it. So I've had a lot of terrible jobs which limits my choice because as a kid I just wanted everything. I wanted to do everything. And you waste your life wanting it all. Yes. And the more you can narrow down to all the things at least get all the things you don't want to do now you're left with a choice of two, three maybe if you're lucky and only one of those doors are good open. And that's it. Did you ever want to make a full animated feature? No. No. I think I backed into animation on the Python stuff was it wasn't my intention.

34:39I was thinking to yourself as a comedian first or even now. A comedy writer? No I think creative person. I can draw some comic images. I don't actually think of myself. I don't know what I do. I understand. Yeah. I keep learning to make films. I'm still a student. Yes. It's it's that's why that good. You're kind of similar. Same thing. There's nothing you really do that you can say I do this. Absolutely not. Yes. I know I do. Yes. And yet you have a vision of the world or an idea of what the world or you react to things and maybe your past is developed your sense of the world for sure. Which is unique.

35:17For sure. And that's what I think it's about. Yeah. We're not so wonderful. We're just a bit unique because nobody did the road that we've traveled. Yeah. And that's true for everybody by the way. It shows to do it. But they don't. I understand. It was like an I graduated from college with no fucking idea of what I wanted to do. Yes. And my friends were all getting jobs and advertising. Dr. they planned their lives out. And off they went. They were making money. And I mean when I got the job at Health Magazine, I was being paid two dollars less a week than I would have got on the doll. But I was.

35:58But you were working. I was doing. Exactly. With great people learning. And that was what was it. And I was all these friends who graduated were making big bucks for years. And as I got older and more successful, they got older and more bored with the trap they had found themselves in. Yeah. That's it. How do you gauge which ideas are worth pursuing? I don't. I'm guessing you have a lot of ideas. Less and less with each year as I get older. It's just closing it. It's like, no, I pursue the ones that obsessed me. I become the victim. I am actually the victim of these ideas. And I am completely in in their thrall.

36:45And I can't get out. I mean, I've got a script at the moment. It may it'll never get made because why do you say that? It's a satire of the world we're living in now. And it'll push all the buttons of all the people. I've actually sometimes it's called Carnival at the end of days. Anyway, and it's fun for all those who enjoy taking offense. That's what I've done. And that's why I don't know where I'm going to get the studios won't touch it. The studios are tiptoeing. Everybody's tiptoeing around the activists, which are a very small group of people, but they're just very good at what they do. So I've just gone for it.

37:26I teamed up with a young playwright, 33 -year -old guy, because I thought I would have worked with somebody younger rather than my generation. Just because I know what my attitude to the world is, I want to know his and how. And we've done it. And it's very funny. And everybody who I respect, I've said, I want to see this film. And at the same time, I think deep down, I'm not going to get the money. If I can do it for five quid, it would be different, but it costs. That's the thing with films. They're expensive things. And it's not like writing a book. Does it have to be with today's technology?

38:02There's no way to hand make that film. I keep trying to see if it's possible. I think maybe I've been lucky for too long working with the real stuff. But it may come to that. I may have to get down my little claymation. I might have to. I don't know. But that's it. I mean, the last, okay, don't kill the film. It only took me 30 years to make. But there's, and I think that's worn me out. That's a point of that kind of perseverance takes its toll.

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40:16Have there been any others over the years that you've started that have never reached fruition? There's a wonderful one called the defective detective. I wrote it with Richard Lagrovane's who wrote Fisher King. We did it after the film was a success. It's stuck in the balls of paramount pictures. They're sitting on it and they're not going to do anything with it, but the way studios work is they don't want a script that they own to go out and be made by somebody else and possibly be successful. So it's just languishing there and it is making me crazy because I think it's brilliant script and not just because we were involved.

40:56It is a good tale. I mean I think I think at least I can tell what a good story is. Let's use that script as an example. If you were able to make it, how different would the finished film be than the script? I'd become a living thing. The script is a seed. You stick it in the ground and you start they're all I can say every film I've made is in a sense it's told the tale that I wanted to tell but the tale was told in a different way. We get to the magical city at the end of it, but the getting there is where and you're surprised along the way. Well that's what makes it interesting because films are hard work and if I spend a lot of time writing it, co -writing it, I don't write on my own.

41:44Co -write. I'm just an extension of somebody else as well. But if I spend a lot of time I'm almost trapped in that vision and the minute you start bringing designers in, actors in, it starts shifting because I want their input. I'm not the kind of direction this is mine. You do what I want. I'm completely opposite of that. It's the collaboration that makes it exciting. You start getting lost occasionally. You're going to the forest of ideas. But I know where I'm heading in the long term and I'll take little deed tours. It is a different film than it would have been if I just stayed the course on doing what I want.

42:24But it's more alive. When you cast someone does that automatically change everything? Here's the question. Would Brazil be different if it was Tom Cruise rather than John the Price? Different movie? Correct. And that's what happened? Different movie. Yeah and that's always that. It's the actors are so crucial and I spend, I don't think I direct actors. I think I hire the one that's the most interesting. It was like Adam Driver was not my first choice for the Don Quixote. And I met him and I, everything we talked about. He intrigued me. He didn't look like a movie star, which was really important for me.

43:03He looked interestingly and he had when 9 -11 occurred, he had gone and joined the Marines to fight for his country. Wow. That is completely quicksotic. Yes. And this guy's interesting. He thinks differently. He behaves differently. Let's see what happens. And I just, we had lunch at a pub somewhere in London. By the end of the day I said, there's nobody else who could do this film as far as I'm concerned. And it wasn't originally John the Price. It was Mike Paylon. Wow. Yeah. That'd be a whole entirely different movie. Completely. But Mike eventually, because I was involved in this producer who didn't produce the film.

43:39And Mike got tired of waiting, pissing around. And Jonathan, who, you know, has been a very close friend since Brazil, he was pestering me constantly to play key audio. And I said, you're not all -time. I was always ducking, Jonathan. And finally, he's incredible in it. Of course he is. He's incredible. I couldn't see it. That was what it was about. And when he turned 70, I said, okay, now he's the right age. I don't have to spend money on Bushy eyebrows. I've saved money. And John is that it's absolutely breathtaking. There's no question about it. I don't know. It's that weird it was partly because we'd become too close.

44:18I knew too much about Jonathan. And that's always the day you don't want to know everything about an actor. They have to have see how they're listening to it. The mystery. Yeah. Because once he got it, he just went, why all of he was so excited? And every moment you could see his enthusiasm, it totally jumps off the screen. And here's what's funny. Because basically, Adam Driver is supposed to be the main character in the piece. He's the, he creates the situation. And so what we started shooting and the order of shooting was not the order of the script. And because of location, it ended up with Jonathan's scenes were first before Adam's big scenes.

45:03And Jonathan was so spectacular. I looked at Adam and I said, I looked at his face. They said, what the fuck? This is both my film. And this guy's walking away with the whole thing. And in the end, the balance was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. It's a funny duo because they don't look like they belong together. They look like they're from two different worlds. I suppose ones in America. They are. That's really funny. You say that because to me, they're only in, and they weren't so well, I think that's what intrigues me. What you've just said in Triggs because what you see is different than what I saw is price seems like he's in one movie.

45:45And Driver seems like he's in a more modern movie. Yeah. Oh yeah. And it's just different. Yeah. But that juxtaposition makes it feel like I've not seen a movie like this before. Which is great. I love that feeling. It's also the idea that Adam is the one that created this monster. It's his Frankenstein monster who he's got there. Yeah. Because the point of the film for me, one of the key points was the dangers of filmmaking. Yeah. What they do to people, actresses. And it's like, and here's a little local cobbler who gets dragged into play Don Quixote. And he becomes Don Quixote. And there was more stuff that isn't the film about him traveling around to local fairs.

46:26Always acting the role of, so that wagon that you see was in is always introduction for him then turning up at a fair being Don Quixote. There's a man in this town his name is Walter. He's quite wonderfully, wonderfully eccentric, passionate guy. He at all the possessions, all the the key ceremonies, he plays Bracho for to Bracho. The man who created this town. Yes. And he is it. He lives every moment as this character. And that was a strange, I think that may have been part of the thinking in my head to see a real person in this real world. He's really living in another century. Yes. And that's it.

47:11Yes. Fascinating. Yeah. And how do you not see him? Maybe that character wouldn't be that character. But again, that's it. It's the things you bump into along the way and so I could use that. Or that's an interesting trigger. I don't know. That's why I don't want to know how it's done. I don't want to know how the trigger occurs. Yes. I just want to be surprised. But it happens. I bet it happens sometimes when we don't even know what the trigger is. You know, like something that we saw 30 years ago is in our subconscious and that impacts the choice we make. We don't know why. We never know why.

47:48It's only just in this new script. I just there was something that I've solved a problem. I've got some main character and a Guatemalan family trying to get across the US border. Okay. So they reached the Great Wall. That's what it was in the script. And then a friend of mine who is a very brilliant writer and successful. He had some problems with certain things. And a character that was a result of Trump's 2016 campaign. Trump used to always refer to the Mexicans. They're criminals. They're drug dealers. They're rapists. So I've created a guy who is taking credit for being a low rapist anyway.

48:39And my friend, the writer, was bothered by this. So I went back and tried to find not a preamble, but at least getting Trump speaking so that we can use this his thing about rapists, Mexican rapists. And the scene was the Great Wall, but somewhere around the wall were the police waiting on the spot, the south of the border folk. And I've now put them behind a bit of the wall, but the bit of the wall is only a hundred feet long. The rest was never built. So this is in the middle of the desert. Is this huge fucking wall only a hundred feet wide with hop car hiding behind it? And they're watching on their television in their cop car.

49:25They're watching Trump's greatest greatest moments. And so we get the whole speech, Trump's speech. But what is so funny about this piece of wall just isolated on its own? Yeah. They can just walk around anywhere. But you cut. You're good. And again, this writer friend who I've solved his problem about the rapist business, he was just blown away by it. And here's why it's that way. Because years ago, there was a lady here introduced, I don't I think she's still here. She runs a charity in Israel and the West Bank in Palestine. And it's bringing Israeli teenagers and Palestinian teenagers together to realize they are not enemies.

50:10They are very common. So much of their lives are common. And it's called Windows for Peace. And I think, fuck this is good. This woman doing something, not talking about how you're doing it. So I was in Israel. I was doing a theater show outside of in Java. And Rudy, her name is Rudy. And she said, you want to come into Palestine with me? Want to take a ride in the West Bank? I said, you got it. So first thing is we're in Jerusalem and there's Easter and there's the wall. It comes up a road. There's a road that's crossing this way. Up goes the wall. It is all its monumental horror. And then it stops because there's now a lovely villa here with a wonderful garden.

50:55It stops. But then here is a cross street going there. The wall is there. The next bit is a nunnery, big garden. So this one isolated bit of wall. And what was intriguing. I was this the low wall around the villa where all these Palestinian women coming shop shopping in Jerusalem. And they have to tightrope this wall to get past the wall. And I dragged once the Israeli teenagers and come on, we're going to the West Bank kids. And you climbed the wall. We were tightropeed across. I showed them. This is what it's like over here folks. And the great growth industries were Palestinian taxis because they would bring you all the ladies.

51:38So there was almost a traffic jam of tax because the taxis are the only ones that can go on the beautiful roads on the West Bank. The settlers and the taxi drivers. And so that was a growth industry on the West Bank. The other one was donkeys and carts because we were in a taxi going along coming to a big band and the oncoming Palestinian taxis were flashing their lights. Signelle which means they're at that moment there's an army checkpoint around the corner. So our taxi driver just goes right turn up a dirt road through an olive grove over this little Palestinian village and down the other side around the checkpoint.

52:22And that's why the other growth industry is donkeys and carts for the dirt roads. Unbelievable. I'm so excited to have been there to see. And here's I ended up a town called Tulkarn which is was originally a refugee camp which is now a city. And it was just a refugee camp but it's grown over the years. And what are the big posters on the walls the big beltboards are these young kids. They were suicide bombers, pop stars like pop stars up there. And they're the martyrs the kids. So that's the future for the young kids in Tulkarn. Be a martyr. Not a good thing. And we end up eventually with the Palestinian side of the charity with the guy who runs it.

53:12We're sitting on a nice concrete floor. His old mother was here just having tea. And all I talked about was despair. That's all. And so we went through it and really these are good people. And next from after our tea on the concrete floor in this shabby little place, I was driven 45 minutes back to Israel to the British ambassador's house where I dined with him and his wife and the servants and he called the food and I said, this is what I just seen and been through. What are you doing to ameliorate this situation? And he said, well, that's basically it's not our job. What is the fuck your job back?

53:55It's like bringing these people together. It's just crazy. So that was it.

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55:21You told the story of coming up with the rape joke, which your co -writer had a problem with, and then you revised it to give it context to make it work for him. Through that collaboration, do you feel like it got better? Yeah, it's much better. It's one of the things that's so interesting and working with other people. If you're not stuck on, this is my way. And you're open to those conversations. What is it that is rubbing you the wrong way? You can actually make it better. But that's the trick. I think it's always been like doing the animation. When I got this job on TV show, what originally was, because I never studied animation other couple books in a little thing.

56:05I was on this TV show and I was pre -pithing. Yeah, this is pre -pithing. Yeah, this is where I became first an animator on television before I applied. This is in London as well. Yeah, yeah. And it was cool. But we've raised to make you laugh, I think it was cool. And I was there as a character, a churris. And I would do a little drawing of the guests that came on. It was a talk show, but there was a lot of comedy involved sketches and things. And I would do these little drawings and the camera'd go in and that's it. And we'd go on to it. And one of the writers and performers of the show had spent several months collecting off the radio.

56:46There was a guy named Jimmy Young who was a DJ, who I suppose was unique about him in between the songs. He would do these terrible connections. And they're full of puns and all that terrible stuff. But it was connecting that with that. Yeah. And this guy from the show, he had collected a couple of months worth of this stuff and nobody knew what to do with it. And I said, can I make an animated film of this stuff? And they said, go ahead. I had two wakes and 400 puns. And the only way I could do it is cutting out other people's artwork, moving it around. And that was suddenly me, an animator on television.

57:24Now, well known. And now the device isn't all this. That's unbelievable. No, unbelievable. Also the idea that it's the first comedy group I suppose that's a multimedia group. I suppose. And that says because there were great, David Frost show. There was, this is the way it was all the comedy shows, but they never had a guy doing these animated sequences and that. Not as part of the group. It was like you were in the band. Yeah. No, that was it. We were a boy band without a manager. It was great. Nobody was in charge. We were completely democratic organization. And it was, it was wondrous because.

58:03Were you there from the inception of the group? Yep. Now, what did actually happen from this show that I'd been on with the animation time? I then did a couple bits for a show that Mike Palin, Terry Jones, and Eric, I know we're doing with a couple other actors. It was a kids show. Then I became part of that. So as Eric, Mike, Terry, and me. And then John Cleans and Graham, John was offered a BBC New Show. And so he chose to work. I think Mike Palin has always been the connecting tissue. He's the nice one. And we all love working with Mike. And John, I think, what work? And he's great. He's fantastic.

58:40And that's what happened. So the four of us and the two of them became, and we just had to complete freedom. It was at a time when there were only three television channels. BBC One, Two, and ITV. Now, that's a special time. It doesn't exist anymore. So us, big on the BBC, even when Louis came out sort of late at night, we gathered an audience, and it grew very quickly. And that can never happen now. I think the idea, are you considered an influencer? You're beyond an influencer. Come on, you do real things. No, but it's the idea. There's so many people out there. They're just because of the choice of clothes or whatever.

59:20But I don't, well, fashion is never been important in my life. So that doesn't tell me. But you make music, and that's music, to be as God's voice. Absolutely. And it's the making of things. It's always to be important. I don't care about it. I only want to make things. It doesn't matter what it is. It's just a vehicle for the idea. Yup, and that's what we do. But I still, and you keep claiming you don't pay anything. You don't do anything. It's true. Come on. You must. No, no, no, no, no. I'm a fan. I like it. I can see the way the pieces come together, and I can feel where they don't go together as well as they could.

1:00:00And can verbalize it clearly until we get to that place. How long do I take you to get to that place? Very quickly, because it's just intuitive. It's like, I know. But how do they let you... How do you let your opinion get the way of their work? Nobody let me. I just started. I just started. I was in school. I just started making things. And then, mostly... No, but luckily, they were successful. Well, they not been successful. Of course. It's different. Yeah. We're the same thing. We're on the verge of being unsuccessful. Yes. Because I didn't even know it could be a job. You know, it just turned into a job.

1:00:37I was, you just knew a band, some guys, and your opinion, they respected. The first thing was I was in a punk rock band, so I recorded my punk rock band. That was the first thing. Was not successful. Barely. Can punk rock rudimentary guitar? Bump, boom, boom. Very barely. Yeah, okay. Barely. It was more... Punk rock was more about the energy and the idea behind it than it was about the virtuosity. Yeah, exactly. And then hip hop started. I was watching this scene come up. And they were already starting to be these 12 -inch vinyl records. Early days of hip hop, that you would have never heard. They were just like local things.

1:01:16But those records didn't sound like what hip hop sounded like if you went to the hip hop club. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So more like a documentarian. I started making things just as a fan of hip hop. Right. The records that were coming out didn't reflect hip hop. Right. They reflected the old values of the way people made music. And they were just having somebody wrap on top of the old way. Bing Crosby Rappig. Exactly. Exactly. That's what they did. So my feeling was it's not that. It's punk rock. It's essentially punk rock. So I started making the punk rock version of Rapp Records and people like them.

1:01:53And then it went from there. And then once you, yeah, that's exactly the same with me. Doing some animation. Somebody liked it. They gave me another thing. Yeah. People like that. You get another one. Yeah. No training. No. And every step of the way, when I would do something different than what I did before, because you don't do the same thing over and over again, I was told that's insane. You can't do it. Terrible idea. Are you crazy? You're the rap guy. How could you make a heavy metal record? And then you have a successful heavy metal record. It's like, you're the rap and metal guy. How could you ever record with country artists?

1:02:23You know, every step of the way is just these barriers of small thinking. But this is like me going to the studios. You know, after time, bands in Brazil, all of it, you go in there and there, wow, I love it. As a kid, I time back just changed my life. This is insane. And I've got the new idea. Yes, but this new thing you're talking about, and it's been like 20 years of it. Yeah. It doesn't change. No. Those people stay the same. Yes. We keep shifting. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. I think both of us like things that are at least edgy, if not offensive. That also plays a role in the resistance. See, my problem is, I don't know what the boundaries of humor are.

1:03:08So I keep going to, I don't think they all have the clue. I don't know that there are. I know. You know, it's it. But people, we're living a time where people take offense before anything else. They are waiting to take offense. They were either at a time like that. And it's not actually the people that are being protected from the offenders. It's the activists who are in between, because I know too many people who just are quietly getting on with their own life being who they want to be. No problem. And I think some of these activists, they're beating a drum for them. They're sick. Yeah. It started years ago when film, there was this first show I got it.

1:03:45And these actors came up there. And they announced themselves first as an activist, not an actor. What the fuck are you talking about? I mean, that's, this is a virtue of signaling. The virtue of signaling is all it is. I'm on the right side doing the right thing for it. And I cannot stand when you, it's what is happening now. It's like, now, if you're not on their side, you're phobic. And I say, I'm a fob phob. This is what it is. It's a cheap laugh as good as a clever laugh.

1:04:18Not really, but it doesn't mean one doesn't go with the cheap laughs. I mean, we're desperate people. People try to make people laugh, whichever it is. It's wonderful when you actually get a sublime laugh. Something is truly wonderful. And my favorite moment is in life, a Brian, when the whole crowd, when Brian says, you're all individuals, whole crowd shout out, where all individuals in one voice speaks up, I'm not. That is sublime.

1:04:52That's so fun. How involved do you in the writing of the, of the projects you do? Well, I don't, with Python, I didn't really write. I did animation movies. I'm on the movies. Yeah, I'm always involved. I always work with somebody who is much better at character and dialogue than I am. Because I'm in the big ideas, the shapes, this, that, this kind of scene, that is what I do. And then I'm lucky enough to work with more talented people who put the words in the character's mouth. Yeah. I sometimes put words, but I just know, in the case of Time Battle's Mike, he's better than I am. So why should I even be trying to compete?

1:05:32I will write something and he'll rewrite it, making it better. That's all. Often do the actors write something better? Is that a typical thing? Sometimes, yes. I mean, so many actors are really smart. What they're not given credit for being as smart as they are. And they're funny when they're given a chance. And yes, they'll come up with a better line. This more true to the character, even. I mean, when we did Fisher King, Robin Williams, of course. How do you stop Robin? He just went for it all the time, because he actually had that feeling people are watching this movie because they're fans.

1:06:03And they want to see what Robin Williams does. And I had cast Jeff Bridges, not only was a brilliant actor, but he was the anchor that kept Robin and me on the ground. And so at any day, it has seen Robin and say, ah, I mean, just, and I'd say, okay, rather than fighting, it was no point in fighting, because that's just putting a cap on the pressure that's going to explode. So go for it, Rob. And out of his ad lipping, there would be moments, a couple of moments, really good. So I said, keep those in. Now, keep those, but get back to the script. And that's how it worked. So that's what I do. How did the Python GV shows get put together?

1:06:42Well, we worked in different combinations. John Cleese, Graham Chapman, worked together. Mike Pennington, Jones, worked together. Eric Heidel and I worked on our own. We were, and I didn't do what the others did. They were much better at words than a much better performance. So I was, in many ways, I had the most freedom of anybody, because everything was very democratic. When all the material would come in after everybody had been separated doing their work, they would come in and we'd vote on which stays in the show and what doesn't. And they never knew what I was doing. They couldn't, they couldn't really explain anything.

1:07:18I couldn't explain what I was doing. It was only on the day of the show that I would turn out with the film of what I'd done. And it worked. That's what I think is always been to me, the miracle. This monosolabic Minnesota farm boy turns up in England with all these Cambridge and Oxford educated brits. And somehow we shared the same sense of humor. It just came out in different ways, mind visually and there is verbally. Yeah. Did they ever write material based on them all being English where you didn't understand the joke? Or if you didn't grow up there, you wouldn't have understood it. No, I always did.

1:07:53I don't, from a very early age, I became an Anglo -File. Somehow. I mean, there was the Goons show and things that were turning up on disc in America. And I just loved the humor. And it was kind of like, with Beatles lyrics, I didn't know what Penny Lane was. It didn't matter. I sensed what it was about. And I loved the fact that eventually I could find out what these things were in their lives. But I wasn't really interested. It was poetry to me. And that's kind of what the rest of the Pfeiflands were doing. Yeah. How would the order, let's say, there were a dozen skits in an episode, would you be the one to put them in order?

1:08:33How would it get assembled? And how would the animations connect them? Well, very early on, we decided not to do punchlines. Because we'd seen so many TV comedy shows and there would be this wonderful material, great characterizations, and they'd have to end with a zinger. And the zingers were never as good as what we'd experienced. So we said, no punchlines. So what would happen as the sketches were written and as the big game assembled as we've worked them out, it would just be able to say, Ed Gilliam takes over from here before the punchline and gets us to there. That's all it was. And I was the freest of all.

1:09:11And I just did it and I could never explain what I was actually doing. Sometimes I had, oh, I could say, it's going to be like this. Most of times, I would just sit at home late at night because when I was doing the shows, I would probably have two all -nighters a week. So my brain was just free, floating around and the pieces of paper on my desk would start informing me of what we were doing and things. That's how it was. And that's why when I looked back, and some of the shows I can't believe I was the guy doing that because it seems, how did I ever come up with that ridiculous idea or brilliant idea, whatever it was?

1:09:50And it worked because this one foreign element in the group became very much the signature of the part of the signature. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Again, it made it modern. It was different than any other thing we'd seen before because the animation, it wasn't just the intro and the outro. It was the connective tissue of the whole episode. It connected tissue really came from one animation I did for this children of the show that Mike, Terry and Eric involved. And it was just a stream of consciousness. And Terry Jones loved that. That's how we've got to do the show as this weird kind of stream of consciousness.

1:10:29Things unrelated, things somehow are connected in some way and we fell through it. And I was the connecting tissue. Let's talk through each of the stages of making a film quickly. First is the idea. Do you have lots of ideas? And how do you know which is the one to pursue? I don't know. I really don't know the process. How one thing becomes the thing I'm trying to say. I mean, the current thing I'm working on. I was here in Umbria on my own for the first time in many years. My wife got here, my children not here. And I was sitting in my house. And I suddenly gained confidence. There was nobody to say what an idiot I was.

1:11:09What a complete waste of time I was. It was the weirdest thing. And suddenly my brain just started dancing out. It's okay. Let's destroy humanity. It's a good start. And then work out why and how you avoid ultimately doing it. Is what happened? Is it helpful to have someone to say, stop thinking about that, you're an idiot? Is that a good... Well, obviously not. Because my wife does that all the time. No, but having that barrier could also... you'll dig in when you dig in and you won't dig in when it's less important. It could also be like a filter. Well, that's very important. Usually it's the budget, it's the filter.

1:11:48Time and cost becomes a thing. But there is... That's why I like working with a co -writer. Somebody else who will question why that's a good idea. Now, I've got to either defend it or not. Describe the writing process. From the first day you show up, you have an idea of what you want to do, what happens? Well, I've kind of written a story first. This is the story I'm trying to tell. Is it like three pages or... To be in the case of Brazil, it was 94. Okay. And most of it was thrown out. Okay. But you start. Yeah. There's something. There is something. And now, what do you think? Well, that's really stupid and why that?

1:12:24The question is, why are you doing that? How could you justify having that horrible idea? Yeah. You put things in context and how... Now, script is about... When you read, send a script to the studio, they'll always say, oh, this doesn't work. That doesn't work. And they're always wrong. Because what isn't working is something that takes place in the script 15 minutes before. You have to set the scene for that thing down there. And that's how it works. And studios don't understand this simple thing. In music, it must be like music. If you set a chord or in the mix, you'd be doing something and plant a major chord in the middle of miners.

1:13:03And that sort of hangs in the air. And then you develop it later on. I don't know if it works that way. That we always make either a demo in advance or we don't show it to anyone until it's the finished version. But it's working on a much smaller scale. It's a couple of people. It's not 100 people on a set. And that's the difference. So it's like, from the films you've got to put it in a written form. But the film is not about the written form. Well, that says the words, but it's the imagery and what the imagery is expanding from the words. So somebody's saying that this words, whatever you say, in one location, you put them in a different location.

1:13:42It means something completely different possibly. Yeah. And until the film is been shot. And the film, you shoot and you're making mistakes every day. And then you're trying to fix them. And time and budget are the determiners, ultimately, of what you've made. And I rail against, oh, I don't have time to do that. But then it makes me angry, which gets the adrenaline going. And the adrenaline comes up with clever ideas. Just to fuck up, basically. It really is. That happened on Munch House. And we had a schedule of 21 weeks. In the sixth week. It's a long time. That's a, this is what all for they are.

1:14:19Brazil was nine months. Wow. From beginning to end of shooting. Wow. I know. You have to be young to do that. Yeah, yeah. But so Munch House, and we had to think, at all the budget, all the money was gone in the sixth week of a 21 week shoot. And then the bond company, the insurance company, say, well, you can't do this, you can't do this. And they all said, the Baron cannot go to the moon. Because what was in the script? The Baron, it is, transgo to the moon. And on the moon, is a king and queen. And there's 2 ,000 people, all who, during the lunar eclipse, their heads detach from their bodies and they, or may not get back to the right body.

1:14:59And the king of the moon of these 2 ,000 people is Sean Coddry. Now, they say, you can't go to the moon. And I said, hold on. The Baron will go to the moon. My first idea was the film would be going along. And we reached the point when he arrived at the moon. And basically, we walked into the office with me and my co -writer. And we just are reading the script. Yeah, we're going to the moon. Fuck you. It was my first reaction. And then, it was Eric Eidel, who suggested maybe Robin Williams could play the king of the moon. And I thought, well, now we're in a different world here. And we didn't have the money for 2 ,000 people.

1:15:35And it was down, basically, the two people on the moon. I removed three zeros. And Sean Coddry said, there's not much point of being king of two people. And so he was gone. And that's actually, Sean went before Robin appeared. And then, Robin appeared. And we did it with two people on the moon. So much of the moon sequence was Robin ad -libbing. There's a lot of stuff there. It was not scripted. He was on great form. And we had a wonderful time. If five different great directors had one of the scripts that you start from, how different would those five movies be? They'd probably be better. But between the five guys.

1:16:14I don't know. Because that's what's, it's always intrigued me. What you're asking is something, I've always wanted to know. Here's a script, handed to five different well -known directors. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. And there would be five different films. Yeah. I mean, my noise has sort of twisted ending. Spielberg doesn't do that. Spielberg is the Norman Rockwell of cinema. He makes warm, cuddly films. I don't. I'm trying to shock people into looking things in new ways. Surprise them. You know, somebody like Michael Bay would be all action. Big technological things. We all have different skills.

1:16:53Who do you think of as peers? Colin Brothers. Great. I love the cons. Great. I think they're the only ones really out there selling, expanding the boundaries of what you can get away with. And getting away with is, is the key to everything. How many times can you get away with murder? How do you think we parse surreal material? Is it intellectual or is it something else? I don't think in that sense. I just react. It's really where I can't explain what surrealism is. But all I know is it makes me see the world in ways I haven't imagined. The brain is all about trying to make sense of things. It's what the brain is.

1:17:35So you put too completely conflicting ideas in front of the brain. And it starts working overtime trying to make sense. And you may never make sense of it. But it gets your brain active and struggling. And that to be is wonderful. Yeah. And that juxtaposition can create a feeling in the viewer where they don't know why, but I feel this. And it's almost impossible to explain why I'm feeling this. Or exactly even what the feeling is. It's just getting neurons buzzer around. Yeah. It's a cheap drug surrealism. How important is it for the audience to understand what they're seeing? To me, I'm trying to communicate to an audience.

1:18:17I want to tell a story. I want to bring them along with me. And I want to play with them while we're going there. So it is important. At the end of the film, I don't care if what you saw was a different film than the one I thought I made. I don't care. But you saw a film. And it made sense to you when we finished 12 monkeys. There was some woman who suddenly got my email. And she had worked out a whole cosmic religious film there. The 12 monkeys, the 12 disciples. James Cole, Bruce Willis' character, J. C. Jesus Christ. And it was elaborate and it was totally convincing that this is what we had done.

1:19:00It is not at all what we did. But it's what she made out of what we had done. That's interesting. We can never know how someone else received something. Have you ever come back to something and had an inside about it that you didn't know for years? With time, that's recently I've heard a lot of people who said whether or kids they were frightened. They thought it was a horror film. They said, no, why are you talking about it? It wasn't meant as a horror film. It was just a good adventure. So I don't know if they really felt that then or they have now changed because as the world has changed, we've come much more delicate that something is challenging.

1:19:37For me, time bad is what's interesting. It was a kid's film and it was an adult. It was for all ages. And what happened at the end of it? Because there was a big fight with me and Dennis Abra and the producer about the ending of the parents being blown up because they're not listening to their son. And I said, this is what the film is about. Parents listen to your children. They're all from wiser. And what happened at the end, the boys came out of the film saying, yeah, no problem. Kevin's on his own without his parents. We can handle it. The girls came out like mothers. I mean, they were so worried about what happened.

1:20:11So I write from the very beginning, there was this distinction between the young boys and the young girls. The boys were full of testosterone. Wow, we can do it. Parents fuck that. The girls were very concerned about the boy. And I thought that's fantastic. That made sense to me. Those are very different views. It's all. You described the initial factions, I'll say, within Python. Did those factions remain the same throughout the duration? No, it was weird because we were all learning from each other. We were changing in different ways. I was picking up things from them. They were picking up things.

1:20:44We all, that's what, it was such a good time because we had to keep producing these shows, films. We were just clicking. We didn't have time to intellectualize what we were doing. We were just doing it because it came out and we made each other laugh. That was it. And the fact that it reached a larger audience was a delight. But we all became, I was finding, I was writing things that were more like something Eric was doing. He was picking up things from John and Mike. It was a wonderful experience, just where he liked that. Big sick, matching. Why did it only last the four seasons? It was enough.

1:21:22I think the sense was we weren't being original anymore. We wanted to be original and we were becoming repetitive. I see. And very successful, thank you very much. But that was not the purpose of what we were trying to do. Yeah. Have you ever had a job on a movie besides directing the movie? Yeah, we have. We began very early on when I was in New York working for two dollars less than the doll. And I got a job working for free in a little stop motion action studio got in Ted Nemeth, Aided Dancing, cigarette packs, it all for commercials. And his wife was a director and she was directing her version of Finicant's Wake.

1:22:02And I was on there as just a nobody to help out. And I remember one day, setting up a shot in this bar at a closing time and the circular table had upturned chairs. So it looked like a crown. And they were trying to do this shot with the cabaret all. And I said, that's just wrong. What they're doing is never going to achieve what they're trying to do. And I said to the director, wait, that's not going to work. Because then, in particular, I had a really good spatial sense of how things how they really didn't work. And I said, that ain't going to work. What you need to do is, and they paid no attention to me.

1:22:38And I said, good night. And that was the end I walked off the set. And it was the end. I made the lowest of the low, but ideas I have. And if you can't be bothered to listen, and that has been my way on sets ever since. Because I listened to people. I don't care who they are. And I try to make sure that everybody can speak to me. I try to break down the hierarchy when we were doing lunch else. It was very funny. In Italy, Catholic country. The Pepino Roututo, the Cidipotag for brilliant, brilliant man. Now, his English was not great. And I had an assistant who was translating. He didn't like it.

1:23:17He had done a Bob Fossick movie and thought his English was great. It wasn't. And I said, Pepino, it's not, you're not the problem. My English isn't very good. It's the problem. And I said, and it wouldn't stop. And it became more and more difficult. I said, you're a Catholic. I'm a Protestant. As a Catholic, you have God, the Pope, and then you. And I'm a Protestant. Anybody can speak directly to God. I'm God. And I don't want to Pope. For Pepino, you are. I want them all to speak to me, not to come through you, to speak to me. And I was my big fight. Do you remember the Broadway show? The Mighty Python?

1:24:00Oh, yeah, that's whatever that was. On Broadway. No, no, no, no. With the original cast, I saw it when I was, you know, I don't know, it was probably 12 years old, 15 years old. And it was, I still remember mind blowing. And one of the things I remember the most was the giant hand that came down onto the stage, just because it was such a visual, yeah, unexpected in a more straight performance situation. I don't have really any great memory of it all. It was just fun being on stage and being applauded. And my biggest memory is one of the nights we finished the show with a lumberjack song. And George Harrison was there.

1:24:38And Harry Nilson was there. And we all take the bow. And as the curtain is coming down, Harry steps forward upstage to the edge of the stage over the orchestra pit. And some fan reaches up to shake his hand and pulls him into the orchestra pit. Last we saw was Harry's feet in the air as he disappeared. And that's my memory of the show. Are you superstitious? Not really. I try to be, because it's more interesting. But I'm not very good at convincing myself. But I look for signs. I'm always looking for signs. And at a certain point, certain things are happening. And that's forming my view of what is going on.

1:25:22And if I fall down that day, I crash my car the next day. My dog was sick that. I think something, the reverberations are not good. The energy is not good. Something is wrong. I don't believe that. But I don't understand any more than that. What did you believe when you were young that you don't believe anymore? The God is omnipotent. And it's worth begging down and bowing to him. And if you pray, you will get the returns you're hoping for. I think nature is what it is. It's extraordinary. It's brutal. It's wonderful. But it doesn't respond. Except I do actually believe there's energy out there.

1:26:02If you somehow can feel it in sense of the world, you might be more in tune and have better luck than if you're fighting that. That's all it's about. I don't know. God will just have to get on his own without me. Prayings for you. Have you ever made a creative choice because you imagine the audience would prefer it instead of what you prefer? I've never actually done that. That's a weird one. That's if there's enough of them and enough in the audience that are really smart, people I admire or respect and they say, I'm wrong. I listen. But as a general thing, my assumption is the audience is unknowable.

1:26:42It is much larger than studio executives' thinks it is. So if the current thinking is all of this, I will go and feed the other bit of thinking and see just how big it is. Almost everything I do is time to find out the edge of civilization. Yeah. Did you watch TV as a kid? No, I'm not. I grew up on radio because we didn't have TV until I was like 13. And radio was wonderful because you have to do all the work. You have to, the costumes, everything is set. It's like reading a book. Same thing. You do the work and I convinced it was books and radio that developed my visual sense. Simple as that because those muscles needs exercise.

1:27:25Tell me about the place you grew up in. It was medicine like outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota. And we ran a little hill, dirt road out there. A house that had been a summer cottage. And my dad, he was a carpenter. My mother was a virgin also. So you know where this goes. And it's, no, anyway. My dad is a carpenter and he restored this little, little summer shack into a house that we grew up in. And for the first 10 years of my life, the toilet was at the end of the garden. In a biffy it was called the biffy. It was what we called it out in the out in the blue. And this is what my memories are.

1:28:08The snow in the winter, 40 degrees below zero. And it was just beautiful and freezing and having to go and spend an hour in the biffy. You go out in your shoes at a bathroom. That's all. And I have no memory of how freezing cold that must have been because it was normal. And the things that weren't normal in my life was the radio. Let's pretend it was a show. There was the fat man. And there was the shadow, Lamont Krautson. Only the shadow knows. And so he lived in these wonderful voices, the timbre of the voice, the sound, the footsteps, the sound effects, and your brain is invented all the visuals.

1:28:53And that was to be, there was also Johnny Lujak. Johnny Dosek was a quarterback for Notre Dame, university, a Catholic quarterback. This is fast. There were the Hardy boys as well who were, you know, boy detectives. Yeah. These were the things I used to listen to. That's it. How would you describe your taste? My taste. I don't have any taste. I'm happy when I get a hot pepper. I'm happy when I get a particularly sweet things. I want the whole range of possibilities and bombarding my palate. On the other hand, I'll just drink Coca -Cola. And artistically the same? Yeah. I don't want to define it.

1:29:38I want, I'm greedy. That's what I'm basically very greedy. I want it all. Quentin tells a story of you mentoring him at Sundance, Forrest's movie. Do you have any memory of that? I do. Tell me about it. Because what they did Sundance, they'd bring in a group of, quote, professionals. They're very the youngest spiring ones there. And my group was Stanley Donan. Oh, great. And so Stanley Donan, me and Walker Slodov, who directed the Tin Drama, a great German director. And we had all these young hopefuls in there. And this script turned up. And it was a reservoir of dogs. And I read it. I was utterly blown away by just the outrageousness of the boldness, the complete commitment that Quentin was like.

1:30:25And neither Stanley or Walker, they didn't understand this script. This is great. You got to understand this. And I met Quentin. Now the previous group of professionals, because he overlapped by one week. The previous group had shot all over him. They were just completely a responsive, unhelpful. And I said, Quentin, this is great. And he had actually shot a scene. Well, he was there at Sundance with Tim Roth, a scene that ultimately, Harvey Cotell, did the scene. And he's talking to himself in the mirror. And Kevin had 10 different angles on this scene. He said, you don't need a lot, kid. Just do it simply directly.

1:31:05And I said, but your work is great. And apparently that solid took, gave him a little bold of confidence. And so I get a credit on Resvard Talks. Wow. He speaks really highly of it. He talks about it. It's like a pivotal moment. And well, that's it. Because he had been shot upon. And confidence is such a delicate thing. It's so easy to make somebody unconfident, which they had. And I just said, this is fucking wonderful. Go for it. And I said, listen, don't try to do everything. Surround yourself with good talented people to respect. Listen to them. That's it. Did you stop doing animation when we stopped seeing it from you or have you done any animation since?

1:31:44When I stopped, I stopped. Okay. I think enough of you decided you'd had enough of me. Now, I just, I got to do what I'd always want to do, direct movies. Yeah. And I was holy grail, off we went. How would you describe each of the Python members? John is the tallest, the most strange, in some ways the most intellectual, but he doesn't understand humanity. And his, his complication, I think, is that he generally feels he needs to be in control of the world around him. So he surrounds himself with a lot of professionals, but he's never yet to control it. And that's his great sense. His brilliance is, and Falted Hours is, a perfect example of a man trying to control this world and failing.

1:32:34And John is at his best when he's like that. So he doesn't understand me because I'm very instinctive. I don't intellectualize. So where the opposite ends in the past? And in between Mike Paylon is not just the nicest person to the group. He's also, I think, he's the best actor. I think he's brilliant. His sense of comedy, his sense of character is so honest and brilliantly funny. And the great writer, and he, Teebub, Terry Jones, it's interesting because Terry was a bit like me, a bit monomoniacal. We believe we're right. But he's, Terry was wealth, which makes him feel even more that he's right because he's oppressed by the English.

1:33:16But he's, Terry was passionate, wildly passionate, and excited because of that. Eric is the cleverest in many ways because he can dance. He's the tap dancer. He can dance with words, music. He, in some sense, he knitted much of the group together because what he did was taking what another member of the group did and found his way to knit it in there. And he, unfortunately, is the successful famous python in Hollywood. So he bearers the brunt and both the fame and the pain of being a well -known comedian. And Graham Chapman was from another planet. Graham was just strange. He was a wonderful balance to John who is so precise and intellectual, argumentative.

1:34:08I can never words, which is the right brain and the left brain is the right brain more open. One of the, half the brains is the rigorous one, the language, oh, mathematics. John is that. I'm the opposite, and Terry Jones was the opposite as well. But Graham was from another planet. He was also the only gay python. That was his great claim to fame. So when a lot of the gay rights began, he became very active and very funny and outraged and graped. I never knew who he was, but he was there with us all the time, coming over with an odd word, an idea that just popped out of some other cosmos and it became a connecting bit that would work.

1:34:51So the chemical combination of the six of us, I think was totally unique, individually, where, whatever we are. But chemically, together we were just, I can't say the word brilliant, I think we were. I think you can. Were there ego clashes? Always. How were you resolved? How were you resolved? It's because. Okay, there's six egos that work there. Or six talented people with different skills. And there would be huge battles, but somehow democracy won. And there was, the basis of all the differences was a deep respect for each of us for each other. That was it. We could be disagreed with the other guy, but I respected him and his talent.

1:35:34So you couldn't dismiss anybody. And it just where big battles occurred. Now, it's sad because we've all gone our separate ways. Everybody's done reasonably well. But it's not the joy, the thrill that it was when we were a multi -stallular creature. When you speak to any of them is the vibe good. We just, we get, we're fighting over all sorts of very pathetic things. But when you're old and out of work, what can you do? Did you design the album covers, the Matching Kind Hanker Chiff? Yeah, that was fun. And also the three -sided record was my idea. Oh, that's so cool. It is. And I was so happy.

1:36:19It's the only time I've ever experienced that. I mean, just me, of course. How did you get the idea? I don't know why. I was watching how it worked. So, I mean, spirals. I've always loved spirals. Well, you have two spirals, one just inside the other. They go around together. So, where the needle drops, you don't know what spirals you're going to be on. And we did it. And it worked. And I loved the fact that nobody knew we had done it. So, it became people saying, oh, you've got to hear this. There's wonderful sketch. And it wouldn't come up. Another sketch. That was wonderful. So cool. Yeah, random.

1:36:52What you got was random. And that's what was, I mean, even so much fun big Python back then. Because there was such a fan base. And there was enough money to do what we wanted to do. That was a good thing, Seth. Was it huge out of the box? Like, people refer to Python as the Beatles of Comedy. But the Beatles, the explosion was immediate. Was that the case with Python too? It was kind of, because again, it was this period where there were only three channels in Britain. BBC One, BBC Two, and ITV. And we were BBC One. When the show, and we were given the free hand, that's the organization was a very, I wouldn't say laissez faire organization, but it allowed the people in charge to make choices without having, it wasn't committee work.

1:37:40And so John Cleese was wanted by the BBC to do a program. And so he brought in his five friends and they said, okay, you got, I think it was seven shows we were given. Go, make seven shows. We'll see how it works out. And I think all I remember is after the fourth show, because when it started, the BBC thought, the multiply sentence, flying circus, oh, it's a circus. And of course, it wasn't a circus in the way they thought of circus. First couple shows were nobody knew what the fuck this was. It was just what is this? But it caught on very quickly. And it was there because you only had three choices on a Sunday night.

1:38:18And we were the one the most interesting choice available. So they stumbled off and very quickly we became hot. But the funny thing is, as we were rising very quickly on the fourth show, we were taken off and replaced by the horse of the year show. It was just an annual event where people riding their beautiful horses over this, that, the other thing. And the funny thing about it, we were taken off a yet during one of the exercise little horses. They played da, yum, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. The John Surs of March, the way we head backwards. And so there was no way of stopping Python. We were just spewing.

1:38:57And then Nancy Lewis was this woman who is a PR lady for Buddha Records in America. And she got wind of Python. She is responsible for bringing Python to America. She's not credited anywhere, which is a crime against Nancy. But she got a guy named Ron DeVillier from Texas. He was working one of the TV channels there. And it turned out that the TV channel he was working for, the boss band was Owen Wilson's father. And they had to gather together 11 paid -per -viewed channels, whatever they were. And they got it. Ron got it. And off we went and we hit it right from beginning. Baal. I think it was after the first couple of shows, I think in Des Moines, Iowa or somewhere in the Midwest, they pulled the show off.

1:39:46And a couple thousand people were demonstrating on the street to get the show back on. Was it pulled off because of being censored or banned? I know I did. No idea. I suppose the big break was when we were on national public and PR. I said that's where we were. And I just love the idea. In the US. Yeah, it was what it was called. And the fact there were no commercials. The show went out as we made it. And then we were preparing to do the Python New York show. And ABC TV had got very excited about the show. And a guy whose name I've forgotten had decided ABC would take it. All we had to do was change.

1:40:23Edit the show. That's dot, dot. So they did their baudelerized version of the show. And we were very late in waking up to the fact that the show was going to go out with all these ridiculous cuts in it. And we took them to court. And the court case was in New York, the big federal building there where the previous Attorney General, John Houth, under Nixon had been held in court. And we were there ABC versus Python. And Mike Paylon and I were the witnesses for Python. Wow. And this is a huge building. 44 high ceilings. Oh, oh, there's the John John is highly. And Mike and I had an individual turns in the witness box.

1:41:13That was quite wonderful. Now the stupid things up about the ABC lawyer. They were saying it was all a publicity stop for the upcoming New York show, which it wasn't. No. And in the fact we had been so long after the come out, it was only purely a publicity stop. It wasn't. We just were very slow at thinking about legal. We just didn't think about this. So we up there. Now the moment when they ABC lost was very simple. We sit in the jury box, the judge and Mike and I on either side of him and the ABC lawyers. And they showed our uncut versions first. And everybody laughed wonderful. And then they showed the bad guys versus nobody laughed.

1:41:58Because old material. It wasn't as funny. That's how stupid the ABC lawyer was. He didn't understand comedy. And we blocked it going out. We didn't win. Originally took more appeals, but it stopped ABC. Because ABC didn't understand. Because they loved the show. And they were just trying to make it available for more people. So we'd be loved by more people. We didn't care about more people. We just wanted to go out the way we made it. And we would suffer if it didn't. And in the end, the appeals went back and forth. Eventually, the ABC, who had been central to selling it off to ABC, lost. And we owned the shows.

1:42:40Wow. Incredible. Happy ending. Isn't that the end? Happy ending. Happy ending. At what point in the success did you realize this is really having impact? Like it's not regular success. Because it's something different. Yeah. I think it was the New York shows that really kind of made a live audience was there. And you were trying to leave at the end. You know, they were banging at the gates. It was like, if that kind of frenzy. Which was what the Beatles, I mean, a smaller version of it. But it was like gigantic. And this was already after the show was off. Was done. Yeah. The TV show was finished.

1:43:17I mean, it was, we knew we had succeeded. We knew it was working. But it wasn't the first time to experience. Yeah. But you actually get mobbed. Then you're at a different level. What was the ratio of the skits filmed to the ones that made it into the show? I don't know. I would, let's say three quarters got in. And put, I mean, the quality of writing was really good. It was the business of trying to organize which skits would go in that show. How we could relate them if anyway. And so some good thing is we just lost because there wasn't a way of fitting them in as far as we were concerned, yeah.

1:43:53Any inspirations from when you were young? I tried to be a magician. My dad built me a beautiful stall who worked from behind. And I would try to do my magic tricks to, you know, to impress the local kids. And I always fucked them up. So I became known as Terry the Clown because my failures made them laugh. I was a failed magician, but a pretty decent clown. It's what you're all anybody involved in comedy or even I'm sure in music. Is where the guys were maybe less popular at school. And how do you get the girls to look at you? How do you get people to notice you're interesting? So comedy is the best thing.

1:44:39And especially if you have to be smaller than the other guys who would like to beat the shit out of you. So you better get funny quickly. That's how you survive. It's survival techniques is what brings comedians alive, I think. Do you remember how and now for something completely different came about? No, I don't. That's what's wonderful. With, as you get older, great holds in your memory appear. You're the Swiss tree. Cheese of memory is what I got up to. And certain things stick and other things don't. And what normally sticks are the bad things. Because they're the most shocking. The most I suppose you would say traumatic.

1:45:15Yes. But as they don't kill you, I think I think you're on nature is right. You know, humor failed. Huber makes you strong. Right? You didn't say it quite like that. It is the knocks that are important. The knocks are because you've got to keep picking you. And that's what I mean. That's one reason Kihori is such an important character to me. It's about failure. He gets knocked down because his view of the world is noble and beautiful. The real world kicks him in the ass every time he's down on the ground. He's flat, but he gets up again and goes off trying to live this in this world of nobility, which doesn't really exist.

1:45:57That is inspiring. Failure is his ability to constantly get up again. Is to me a great inspiration. I wish poor people appreciated that. Is making things now as fun for you and interesting as it's always been? Just more difficult. I wanted to be a foot. Yes, because I know when I get into it, whether writing something or trying to make it, or what I really do, my real job is making birthday cards for my family. Beautiful. And each birthday comes along. It's a specific age. And I've got to come up with an idea that is about whatever is going on in their life at that age. And it's really hard work.

1:46:41And I spend a lot of time thinking, and then suddenly the idea is when the idea, I got it. Now I've got to do it. And I realize I haven't been spending what I should have been doing in all the time up to that. Practicing my drawing skills. And suddenly I can't draw properly anymore. Each thing is a battle, but at the end of it, I've done something. I've got all these birthday cards, Valentine's cards for my wife, even our anniversary cards. That's what I do. That's my art these days. And is it, I imagine, cracking the code of the card, is every bit as exciting as putting together a Python episodes.

1:47:17Like, you get to make something and you get to have that. Aha, look, there it is. But that's it. It's always, is that Archimedes, Eureka? It's Eureka moment, whatever, and an idea when a good idea hits you, it feels so brilliant because I don't even know where it came from. Yes. Somewhere in the psyche deep down into the bowels, maybe it's, I don't know, comes out of my house as far as I know. Well, thank you so much for talking to me. It's been a pleasure and I feel like we've been like long friends. Yeah, we are. We met another guy who talks out of his ass. Thank you, sir. Great. It's going to join.

1:47:57Thank you. Same.

1:48:31Thank you.