"Everything
I've been in with the Pythons usually ends with something being
slung at me. I don't know whether they're trying to tell me
something! In the Holy Grail I had a cow dropped on me and a
huge wooden rabbit. In the Missionary I had a barstool thrown
at me. There's something unpleasant happening to me in Jabberwocky
I can't remember. In Life Of Brian I was hurled into an arena.
I still have a scar on my chin from falling onto my spear."
From a radio interview:
Neil:
Holy Grail was a bit disappointing for me, in that we only had
a tiny budget, and we thought well as it's people banging coconut
shells instead of having horses, it might also be funny to have
just a few musicians, so I was trying to write all these great
Arthurian themes, you know with just two french horns, so them
going "papapapapapapa", you know all that stuff, it
didn't sound big enough, so we had to junk it and
put library stuff on with 140 people playing it.
Q:
I remember in the film you being a wandering minstrel.
Neil:
Oh, yeah, that was all right, all that other stuff was simple
enough, but the real sort of film music you can't do, can you?
You need at least 140 people playing. So all producers and film
score bookers, please note, no skimping!
Q:
That must have been quite a jaunt, nipping up to the Scottish
highlands to make that film.
Neil:
That's true. I think I learned how to do crosswords then. Halfway
up a Scottish mountain in string chain mail — there's a giveaway
folks, it's not the real stuff, it's made out of string and sprayed-on
silver.
But either way you get soggy feet, and while a bit
of the camera's been forgotten, somebody with a red face and wellington
boots has to run all the way back down again to get something.
We had to do this, "mangled stoat for breakfast", five
letters, oh yes, that's TOAST. It was Chapman, dear old Graham,
he taught me how to do crosswords. And also I suggested at one
stage we do a little game called declining the verb to sheep worry.
"I am sheep worried," "you are sheep worried,"
and Cleese came up with the best one, I think it's a future pluperfect
tense, "I am about to have been sheep worried."
Photos
from pythonet.org
(used without
permission)
click
to embiggen
Q:
In the song "Knights of the Round Table", is that
John Halsey playing the pans?
"
Yeah, he did the diddle-up-bom dum, diddle-um-bom. He actually
got saucepans."
Q:
But that's not him doing it in the movie.*
"No.
But he certainly played the, uh… the solo, as it were.
The whacking on the knights heads. Because if you look very
carefully, it's done very appallingly. Badly cut. It was
a very cheaply-made movie, you know. It's no worse than
a Danny Kaye Robin Hood. Watch the musicians in any Danny
Kaye Robin Hood movie. They are appalling!"
*it's
Terry Gilliam
Trivia
Question Brain Teaser! ...
Graham's
is a sun, Terry J's is a tree, Michael's is a cross, John's
is a gryphon, Eric's is a chicken, and Neil's is a ________
.
(hint:
"mutton, beef, and this")
Holy
Grail thing
Real Video, low quality 173K streamdownload
"Everything
I've been in with the Pythons usually ends with something being
slung at me. I don't know whether they're trying to tell me
something! In the Holy Grail I had a cow dropped on me and a
huge wooden rabbit. In the Missionary I had a barstool thrown
at me. There's something unpleasant happening to me in Jabberwocky
I can't remember. In Life Of Brian I was hurled into an arena.
I still have a scar on my chin from falling onto my spear."
Neil:
That's true. I think I learned how to do crosswords then. Halfway
up a Scottish mountain in string chain mail — there's a giveaway
folks, it's not the real stuff, it's made out of string and sprayed-on
silver.
Q:
But that's not him doing it in the movie.*
