"Stormy in love, stormy in interviews, breakfast in bed... that's me, love." - Graham Chapman
In 1980, soon after "The Life of Brian", Graham Chapman was the first of the Pythons to write and publish his autobiography. It's almost as if he knew he wouldn't have as much time as the rest of them.
His "Graham Chapman - A Liar's Autobiography, Vol. VI" is untenable as a historical document. Filled with silly digressions and lapses into outright fantasy, and fueled by a memory debauched by gin, it is true to its title, and little else. Still, you get some glimpses of a rich inner life, His "Chapter Nought" dealing with the false ups and inevitable downs of alcohol withdrawal, is silly, heart-breaking and hard to follow, probably much like his experience. Chapman never made it easy You had to chop through quite the thicket to reach him. And even then...
Let's do the bio-- he grew up in Leicester, the son of a police officer, the original Constable Pan Am, perhaps? His earliest memory was walking with his Dad after a bombing, (the Germans were bombing England somewhat regularly back then,) and seeing body parts strewn about. This prepared him for the study of medicine, and for the comedian's ability to cut through sinews of conformity. He went to Cambridge, joined the Footlights Revue the same year John Cleese did, and he and Cleese followed a parallel, almost the same track to Monty Python, developing a writing partnership.
But it wasn't easy for Cleese. He recalls writing with Chapman in Ibiza-- him in the room at the typewriter, Chapman out on the balcony sunbathing, tossing in suggestions between dozes. And, while everyone else in Python is quick to assume that Chapman had a much greater day to day contribution than Cleese lets on, it is telling that no one else would write with him. While writing Season 4, Chapman wrote with Douglas Adams.
As an acting member of the troupe, the others found him even more irritating and destabilizing. During the filming of "Upper Class Twit of the Year", Chapman brought his drinking to the attention of the others by hiding gin in his briefcase-- with most of the discovered bottle empty by lunch. Tales of dropped lines seem to revolve almost exclusively around Chapman, resulting at least once in the abandonment of a sketch. When they got to their first movie, they were so lacking in confidence in Chapman's abilities that they "wrote him out", by giving him the lead-- the patsy straight man character, King Arthur-- while the rest of them all got to do their bits. He still messed things up, being too gripped with the shakes to cross the rope bridge during the shooting of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", despite his experience as a mountain climber.
This reveals an interesting and little discussed dynamic at work in Monty Python, namely that, with the exception of Chapman, they were all pretty boring, conventional men. They kept office hours and wrote during them to the best of their ability, Monday thru Friday. On weekends, they went for drives with their families or girlfriends. There were no drinking binges, no 2 a.m. walkabouts in search of the perfect line, none of the mercurial insanity that we equate with genius. They were all about the process, and allowed the genius to emerge gradually.
Chapman didn't play that. He was gay, when the Python class were still very uncomfortable with homosexuality. (Witness all the horrific gay stereotypes in various sketches.) He was a drunkard, although a somewhat furtive one, and Python lore is rife with his antics-- going around parties bellowing "Yum-Te-Buggedy!" and biting people's ankles. He was a hedonist, and explored any and all experiential options. He was an affront to the conformity that the other lads could never escape. He compulsively smoked a pipe, and that's as ordinary as he got. He was, for many years, truly mad.
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| "Stop Being Silly!" |
Python benefited enormously from Chapman's insanity. Palin attributes the breed of parrot "the Norwegian Blue" to Chapman, "Splunge" became a Python standby, and even the word"silly", used as a reprimand (as in "That last sketch was very silly,") seems to be irrevocably attached to Chapman. He also embodied in many ways the ghost of Oscar Wilde (even playing him once), teasing out insane logical holes in standard arguments. This from the Contractual Obligation Album; "There's nothing an agnostic can't do if he really doesn't know whether he believes in anything or not." That line would not be out of place in the best absurdist literature.
It is a given that television shows and films cannot be run by mad hedonists. Many have heard the story of Dennis Hopper's first attempt to shoot "Easy Rider". You need a steady hand at the helm. And no doubt it must have been irritating to deal with the chaos that Chapman could bring to the deal, as well as work through it to discharge your (and often his) responsibilities. But it must be said that the very ethos of Python was to attack conformity and inflexible behavior. The Pythons could write it, and even perform it. But they could not embrace that ethos. In that sense, they were frauds, preaching a gospel they did not believe. Why are chartered accountants up for mockery because of their boring, tedious jobs, while comedy writers, with an equally boring and tedious work ethic, are not? Chapman may have forgotten his lines, but while the other members of Monty Python talked the talk, Chapman walked the walk-- and not in a particularly straight line.
It should be said, for all his irresponsible insanity, Chapman could be a very decent man. Once in that infamous inn in Torquay, Chapman bragged ad nauseum about this wonderful date he had lined up for the night. But when the date showed up, it was an old man in a wheel chair. Chapman, disorganized as ever, had called the wrong number, and wound up with some fan to whom he had sent a picture some time ago. To Chapman's credit, he went to dinner with the man, without any comment or complaint.
On the other side of the spectrum, he once kneed Cleese in the crotch for stealing his pipe. So there's that.
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Cleese, overcome at Chapman's funeral.
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His passing in 1989 marked the end of a certain brand of lunacy for Monty Python, one that the others might ape once in awhile, but will never manage to recreate authentically. Cleese will bring the outrageous and angry satire, and Palin will bring the sweet randomness, and Idle will bring the snark. But there will be an empty space where the "Norwegian Blue" should go.
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