Eric Idle’s Life of Python
“I think all the Pythons are nuts in some way,” Eric Idle once wrote, “and together we make one completely insane person.” That insane entity, the comedy supergroup Monty Python, convened in 1969, with the BBC sketch show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Its six members—Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman, plus a lone American, Terry Gilliam—became the defining absurdists of postwar Britain, stomping their collective foot on polite society. You know the rest: the ex-parrot, the Comfy Chair, the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Knights Who Say “Ni!” If he had done nothing else, Idle would have given humanity an enduring gift with “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” the ditty that ends “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” sung by a group of unlikely optimists while they’re being crucified. At one point, it was ranked the most played song at British funerals.
But Idle’s work extends beyond Monty Python. His TV film “The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash,” from 1978, which chronicles the rise of a not-quite-the-Beatles rock band, was an early specimen of the mockumentary. (A sequel, “The Rutles 2: Can’t Buy Me Lunch,” appeared in 2003.) Based in Los Angeles since 1994, Idle has lent his trademark jolly obnoxiousness to everything from the English National Opera’s production of “The Mikado” to the reality show “The Masked Singer.” With his musical partner, John du Prez, he wrote “Spamalot,” a stage musical “lovingly ripped off” from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” which won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Musical and was revived on Broadway last season. Idle and the surviving Pythons—Chapman died in 1989, Jones in 2020—are now beloved octogenarians, the closest thing comedy has to living deities.
And yet there have been signs of disquiet in the Python kingdom. The group’s most recent (and, they insist, final) reunion was a decade ago, at London’s O2 Arena, and was motivated less by fan service than by financial straits. A producer of “Holy Grail” had successfully sued for “Spamalot” royalties, claiming that he’d been the “seventh Python.” (Idle called the idea “laughable.”) This past February, Idle tweeted about the Pythons’ money problems—“I never dreamed that at this age the income streams would tail off so disastrously”—and pointed the finger at their asset manager, Holly Gilliam, Terry’s daughter. Cleese came to Holly’s defense, calling her “very efficient, clear-minded, hard-working, and pleasant.” The two men, who had toured together as recently as 2016, traded barbs on X: Idle revealed that he hadn’t seen Cleese for years; Cleese posted, “We always loathed and despised each other, but it’s only recently that the truth has begun to emerge,” then said that he was joking. Still, fans wondered: Had the Spam soured?
Perhaps owing to the Pythons’ depleted coffers, Idle, at eighty-one, has kept busy. Next month, Crown will publish “The Spamalot Diaries,” his recently unearthed journal from the making of the show, which offers a closeup look at his collaboration with Mike Nichols, its director. When Idle and I spoke over Zoom, not long ago, he was planning a solo tour of New Zealand, Australia, and the West Coast, where he would sing songs, tell tales, and sell merch. (Days later, he called back to say that a producing company had pulled out, and the North American leg was postponed.) In our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, we talked about the ups and downs of collaboration, his friendship with George Harrison, his strained relationship with Cleese, and—oh, what else?—the meaning of life.
Hi, Eric. How is your summer?
It’s very hot. But it ends next week. I have to start rehearsing for this tour. Then it’s work, work, work forever.
What’s the idea of the tour?
I’ve done it as a one-man musical. There’s comedy, and there’s songs. I’ve got a virtual band. Whenever I want the band, they come onscreen. It’s easier than taking them on the road, because musicians are smelly and difficult and all that.
I read “The Spamalot Diaries.” Can you tell me about how you found this journal?
We were moving house last year—I call it Downsize Abbey. All the servants have to be fired. And I found this diary and thought, Oh, look at this! I gave it to my wife, and she really loved it, and she doesn’t like anything I do. The thing I liked about the diary is you don’t know the show is going to be a success, because it’s not like you’re writing with hindsight. Every day, you’ve got those anxieties: Is this going to work? What needs cutting? I think I must have rewritten Act II about ten times during the rehearsal process.
It really gets into the nitty-gritty of musical comedy—how much work goes into something that’s supposed to appear like it was always that way.
When you actually look at it, the process is a long one. There’s a new book on Rodgers and Hammerstein I was reading last year, and it said they never knew what was in Act II. You go in with how it starts, you get to intermission—but what happens? I loved that process. I loved working with Mike. He was just the best person I think I ever worked with. I was always a fan of him as a comedian, and we’d been friends for fifteen years, but we’d never worked together.
How did you meet?
I met him at a party at Paul Simon’s, in 1975. Python was in town. We did City Center, and they all came. I talked to him for about an hour and a half, and we got on really well. Then he went away, and I said, “Who is that?” “Duh, it’s Mike Nichols!” I was a fan of his albums when I was at Cambridge, but I’d never seen him on telly—I’d only heard the voice.
When you look back on your working relationship with him during “Spamalot,” what stands out as inspired moments of Mike making something better than it was?
He wouldn’t try and write things for you, but he would suggest ideas. Because he was a comedian, you could trust his instincts. He knew about shape. He said to me early on, “The three most important things about a musical are the play, the play, the play.” He once said to me, “You must believe in it.” And I said, “Mike, you’re talking about the Knights Who Say ‘Ni!’ ” He said, “Nevertheless, they must believe they are.” That was a really important lesson. The Pythons always instinctively believed in the roles we were playing. We didn’t question them. I don’t think he would take anything less than the very best and the most honest. Did you read that book “Cocktails with George and Martha”?
I did! Wonderful book by Philip Gefter, about “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
It was Mike’s first film, and he’s telling Jack Warner, “No, it’s going to be in black-and-white.” I don’t know where he got that confidence, but that’s what he was like.
There are moments of conflict between you and him. On April 30, 2004, you wrote, “Mike began a meeting yesterday with a forty-minute speech about what was wrong with my script. It was in front of everyone and it felt very unfair to me.” Then he called you the next morning and “tearfully and wholeheartedly” apologized. When you read Mark Harris’s biography of Nichols, you get the sense that he could butt heads with people as well as inspire them.
I remember how relieved I was, and how generous he was about saying he was wrong. It is possible for you to go head to head with someone and still be friends and carry on working. That’s part of the process. People must care deeply about something, or what’s the point? But then, after that, he just was so loving and supportive of me. Had we not been friends for fifteen years beforehand, I don’t know if I would necessarily have had the balls to stand up to him. He said, “I am the director.” I said, “Well, I’m the writer.” From then on, it was plain sailing.