This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the debut of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a series whose best moments remain sublime forays into the convergence of surreal humor, intellectual comedy and brilliant slapstick. The Daily Beast talked with John Cleese and Eric Idle about their impact on comedy and their take on present-day politics; their comments were revealing. And it suggests that neither shows any signs of slowing down.
Both have books in the works, for one thing. For Idle, that’s an expanded version of his memoir Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. For Cleese, it’s a second memoir; he told The Daily Beast that it would cover “Python and Fawlty Towers and probably A Fish Called Wanda.” Cleese also mentioned that he’s working on a stage adaptation of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Both men also pulled few punches with their take on the current state of American politics, with Idle drawing comparisons between the Watergate hearings — which coincided with Monty Python’s first American tour — and what’s taking place now. “It was amazing and riveting,” Idle said. “But it was a lesson in how resilient America is, too. William Barr is nothing more than this era’s John Mitchell, and you can see how well that turned out for him.”
Interestingly, Monty Python’s Flying Circus may have a larger following in the United States than in the U.K. Cleese commented that, “[I]t’s sad when your own country is the one that seems to lag behind.”
Both Cleese and Idle were also critical of social media, with Cleese in particular also weighing in on the relationship between money and politics. “There is a tendency in America toward predatory capitalism,” he said. “And there’s nothing more destructive to society than the idea that the only thing that matters is money. Because that’s basically sociopathic.”
That may sound jarring, right up until you remember that Monty Python’s Flying Circus features sketches like the “Upper Class Twit of the Year” competition. Perhaps we’ve always lived in an absurd world; Cleese, Idle and company just realized it earlier than most.
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