Eric Idle - A Loony Alone

"Life is a comedy when watching, and a tragedy when experiencing." - Eric Idle

They were all born during World War II, grew up with radio and television, and went to college in the 60s, but strangely enough, Eric Idle was the only hippie. With long hair and the obligatory guitar, he seemed the flower child of the group, and stood apart from the tweedy conservatism of the rest of the lads. Sure they were silly, manic, brilliant-- but only Idle was cool.

Just goes to show how misleading appearances can be. Underneath the Woodstock-ian veneer was a caustic wit, a relentless suspicion of others, and a resistance to conformity or fellowship. While Cleese tried to team up with other members of the troupe besides Chapman, (with limited success) and while the others often chose their favorite partners to develop material with, Idle almost always worked alone. In "Monty Python Speaks", Idle relates his process; he gets up, makes his coffee, and writes until he's tired of writing.

Unless you're a prostitute or a trapeze artist, there's nothing wrong with working alone. I'm doing it right now. But Idle also confessed frustration with getting his material into the show. The Python process involved reading material in front of the group. If you wrote with a partner, you knew you had extra laughs during the read, and extra votes when material was being chosen for final shows. Idle blames this process for many of his sketches not getting in. Because he wrote alone, he had no partner to advocate for the material. This begs the question; Why does such an intelligent person, with an awareness of how the process works against solitude, and a peck of talented writers to team up with, why does said intelligent person resist working with someone else? Apparently, Graham Chapman was just sitting there, drinking! Why didn't Idle adjust his process to greater advantage for his material's inclusion?

I'm not sure, but it looks like-- he's kind of a dick.

I have no first hand knowledge to base this on. I do have a second hand anecdote from a trustworthy colleague who hosted Idle for one of his gigs, and according to him, Idle was an utter bastard. Insulting, sarcastic and all around mean. You didn't hear it from me.

Doing a quick Brainy Quotes search of his witticisms, you don't come up with much mean stuff-- an anecdote about him giving Cleese some money to shut up, but that's about it, and I'm sure Cleese had it coming. The rest is positively positive-- expressions of gratitude for his good fortune and involvement with Python. So maybe my colleague was just easily perturbed that day, or Idle was on the rag, I don't know. But it certainly fits with the portrait of a man who refused to write comedy with some of the best minds of his generation, even if it cost him air time.

The portrait spreads to his material-- much of it involving a lone man behind a desk addressing the camera. Even his sketches that existed in a non-television reality often devolved into long monologues-- the travelogue sketch immediately comes to mind, wherein Idle delivers an impressive, fast-paced, hyper-intelligent and enraged rant, as travel agent Palin politely, then angrily, tells him to shut up. Not only does he write alone-- he performs alone. His follow up to Monty Python, Radio 5, was all him, all the time, written and performed in multi-track solitude. (He let others join in for Rutland Weekend Television, a precursor to Fernwood 2 Night and Second City Television, which spawned the glorious Rutles.)

Idle grew up in a boarding school, a harsh and abusive place. Humor and caricature soon became his best defense, achieving parity by mocking the authority figures at school. This gift for mimicry becomes apparent in the series, with his impersonations of British TV personalities, most notably David Frost, portrayed as a person and a tree in different episodes. The impersonation is devastating, almost cruel, aimed at a man who employed him early in his writing career. (Idle might substitute "exploited" for "employed".) The sketch doesn't employ the random cruelty that Cleese and Chapman use so often. It's pointed right at Frost. The theme of the sketch could best be expressed; "David Frost is an asshole." (I bet Nixon loved that sketch.)

Still, being a brilliant loner has its advantages. Idle was the spearhead behind the Monty Python books, projects which began as exclusively Idle, the others only getting involved when they saw the possibilities Idle had already begun to realize. Book writing, of course, is uniquely suited to smart and wordy people who like to work alone. As the group disbanded and the Python process became less exacting, Idle found he could get more material into the albums. The "Contractual Obligation Album" might be considered Eric Idle's, with an avalanche of tunes that he sings, as well as a rock report that he delivers solo. (The others contribute material, but the album is dominated by Idle.) And speaking of exploitation, we would be remiss if we didn't mention "Spam-a-Lot", Idle's musical theater bastardization of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."as well as a few songs off the aforementioned "Contractual Obligation Album." Insofar as Python the entity exists, it exists because Eric Idle (alone) saw the benefits of exploiting said entity. It could be argued that without these contributions to the Python oeuvre, the group would mostly be remembered as the creative team behind an old TV series. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" created the cult. Eric Idle created the commodity.

Finally, there is "Life of Brian", perhaps Idle's (and Python's) crowning achievement. The idea began with an Idle joke about their next project; "Jesus Christ; Lust for Glory". There was no next project, and Idle was just being silly. But the idea stuck. Idle provided the locale for the Python retreat that resulted in the script, and Idle's friend George Harrison rounded up the funding. And lest we forget, the iconic song, indelibly embedded in the zeitgeist, was Idle's. Remember that guitar?

Hey, you don't have to be a perfectly centered and progressive human being to be brilliant and talented. So Idle works alone. So he's querulous and cutting. So his creative vision is often limited by what he can do, alone. His contribution to the Python canon is undeniable. His eagerness to create product under the franchise banner has kept the franchise going, 45 years later. And like Death, he gets the last laugh. After years of being frustrated by the Python process, he is the single member who has managed to turn the material into huge bags of gold for himself, while Jones wrote history books and Cleese racked up divorces.

Always look on the bright side...