The Most Holy Grail! Part One

"I laughed until I stopped." - Raoulf K. Denktash, fake reviewer

Remember the first time you saw this movie?

I was a teen, just in middle school, and this was one of the first movies HBO showed on its cable channel. I remember "The Holy Grail", a Bette Midler special, and "Night Moves," wherein there were tits. (I don't mean to be sexist, but boobs are a key driver of teen boy behavior. I honestly can't remember if "Night Moves" had anything else to recommend it.) I remember the overly grim backgrounds, the fog and shadow, juxtaposed with prancing men. I remember readily identifiable comedy and silliness, punctuated by blood (some of it also silly, and some of it alarming.) Keep in mind, I grew up with sitcoms, which are funny-ish, but unchallenging. Everyone's kind of nice and well lit. However, this movie-- there was a danger here. We weren't going to be comforted by these jokes.

One image in particular, the fat bride ("Huge tracts of land!"), smiling inanely while the effete prince started to sing his tale, her chin stained with her own blood, haunted me in my teenage dreams. (A year or so later, I saw Richard Pryor host Saturday Night Live in its first season, and I felt the same sense of danger, that the car was picking up speed and the brakes had been cut-- anything could happen. So different from the tranquil show they produce these days.)

I also remember how easy it was to quote the movie. There was a bully who used to hound me around the schoolyard. He wasn't a typical bully, with muscles on his muscles. He wore glasses, was in many of the same advanced classes I was, and shared a similarly geeky sensibility-- in a sane world, we would have been friends. But he was mean. He led a cadre of thugs, and they spent their lunchtimes trying to catch me. (I wasn't mean, but I was fast.) On the odd occasion when they managed to catch up, he would-- you guessed it-- taunt me, using the French Knight's insults. "I fart in your general direction." etc. That's when I realized that bullies weren't all that. I knew the lines as well, better, than he did, and my outrageous accent was better. I mean, apart from the physical threat, what was I worried about?

I imagine most of the people who read this blog have similar stories, as do the many many many who do not. In screenwriting classes that I teach, I often meet students who have never seen "Citizen Kane" or "Vertigo", but they've all seen "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Forty plus years after it was released, it's still the edgiest and funniest comedy out there. It's more than just a thread in the tapestry of our culture-- it's the unicorn right there in the middle.

Not the Creator of Monty Python

But this movie didn't just spring from the loins of some genius God. It was created and developed by six guys, who had spent the last five years working together on a TV show. If you were to do an archaeological dig of the Holy Ground of this movie, you would find vast seams of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and little else. And dammit, that's what this blog is about! So instead of just an appreciation piece, let's break the movie down into the bits, whose bits and how they were developed. We have some material to draw on from the creators-- "Monty Python Speaks" by David Morgan, Michael Palin's Diaries, Kim Howard Johnson's "The First 200 Years of Monty Python" and "The Pythons Autobiography by the Pythons". But these are primarily anecdotal. We'll delve a little deeper, into the thematic resonances in the sketches themselves, and how it all came together into this great movie. And by the way, if you don't own this movie yet, you can BUY IT HERE. I also recommend you by the (Book), which has the screenplay, with all sorts of production stills and Gilliam sketches, as well as additional jokes. (Advertising slogan; "Stopped my menopause" M. K. Thatcher).

Before we get to the content, let's start with the origin story.

While most films start with a concept, ("It's Diehard in an office high rise!") it seems that "The Holy Grail" began with a desire to make a film. This probably came primarily from Terry Jones, the auteur of the group.

The group's earlier foray into film, "And Now For Something Completely Different", wound up disappointing them, both creatively and commercially. Cleese, in particular, had thought that the film would make them loads of money, and when it didn't, he became understandably suspicious of the world of film. The question of how to translate their sketch comedy into a movie concerned all of them, because they were smart. How could their six voices come together into a single narrative?

But Jones could smell the cheese. He and the Pythons were making short films at this point, sponsored by a hairspray company. It was the early 70s, and the dry look was so much more important than the ozone layer. The films were industrials, not for broadcast, but Jones directed them. The next step, inevitably, was a feature, and Jones already had his production team in place.

Jones was also a Middle Ages wonk. He went all medieval, all the time. He drank his grog with a Chaucer chaser. The legend of King Arthur was a natural fit for him. Plus, all the zeitgeist knew about King Arthur was "Camelot" and Disney's "The Sword in the Stone". I don't imagine those representations sat well in Jones' craw. Where was all the lovely filth?

Gilliam behind the scenes, Chapman under the table

One of the immediate benefits of an Arthurian movie is the pre-fab structure. Arthur looks for knights to join his round table, they all come together, they get the quest, they go their separate ways seeking the grail, and they all come back together for a final battle. This allows for an incredibly episodic structure, where the script can go in many different directions, but still be held together by the central story. Perfect for six different guys, all writing by themselves.

If you'll recall, the Python writing process began with the lads going off on their own and writing. Cleese and Chapman would often write together, Palin and Jones as well, while Eric would go it alone, and Gilliam would just draw shit. They saw no reason to change this dynamic as they created the feature. The results were-- mixed. There were adventures in Medieval England. There were also sketches in modern times, with an Arthur King finding the Grail in Herrod's, a high end London department store. The first assembly of material resembled nothing so much as a long-ish episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, with a few people named Arthur. Much like the first season.

Coconuts!

Enter the coconuts.

Michael Palin had a way of wandering through his material, starting off in one direction, finding an interesting line to follow, and taking it in a completely different direction. The most famous example of this was "The Lumberjack Song", which began as a mildly funny sketch about a Sweeny-Todd-ish psychotic barber, trying not to kill again. But all of that is forgotten when he says "I never really wanted to do this in the first place. I wanted to be... a lumberjack!" In these comedic ramblings, he often finds true seams of gold.

So now, with the coconuts. Starting off his sketch, pondering how they were going to afford horses for what would doubtless be a low budget shoot, he came up with coconuts. The creator of the "Silly Walks" sketch, he probably envisioned how silly it would look if, instead of horses, the knights were banging coconuts together. Then, I imagine, he refined that vision-- the Knights themselves wouldn't bang the coconuts. They'd have pages for that. The Knights would stand erect, hands holding imaginary reigns, and regally prance, while the pages huddled behind them, carrying everything, and banging the coconuts to create the auditory illusion that the Knight is actually riding a horse.

This is the image that landed the movie creatively for the whole team. Jones suggested that instead of casting about for locales and time periods, that everyone settle on the actual Arthurian legend, and with the example of the coconuts, everyone began to see the movie. Palin's genius had brought everyone onto the same page, and now the real work could start.

If you have the time, and a copy of "The Soundtrack...", you'll hear a great bit with Cleese as the color commentator, narrating the movie as it begins. You hear the galloping of coconuts, and when Chapman says "Whoa there!", the first line of the movie, the audience bursts into laughter. Of course, this is the soundtrack, so you can't see why they're laughing, and Cleese narrates "And the film starts off with a great visual joke. I certainly hope the soundtrack does it justice..."  This is a great gag for the album, of course, but it also displays the appreciation the lads had for the coconuts. No wonder they are revered to this day.

So Jones acquired his Vision (Unified) Limited. Now he needed the money to pull it off. This was before the era of Kickstarter, where crowd sourcing and celebrity made cinematic ambition (and wankery) so very, very possible. It was also an era wherein British cinema was in the doldrums, Richard Lester being the only bright spot on the horizon. The order of the day in England was franchise films, low rent comedies that could be reliably expected to manage substantial returns on investment. (Sound familiar, Thanos?) And the BBC was no help. They didn't understand what the lads were doing on their station, and saw little of the money the Pythons were making off of their platform because the Pythons had created their own legal entity and owned the rights to their material. They were getting ready to cancel the Pythons, and weren't about to send mixed messages by funding their film. So, where to go?

Rock n' Roll!

Look! It's a Heroes' Heroes!

The lads came of age in the 60s, when swingin' London ruled the pop world. Rock icons like Elvis and the Beatles were their Heroes. So imagine their sublime shock when they heard that these icons loved "Monty Python's Flying Circus"! Elvis used to quote "Nudge, Nudge" all the time, calling people "Squire." (I would have liked to see that! "Nudge, nudge, thank you very much.") Paul McCartney used to stop long recording sessions at Abbey Road so that he could watch the show. George Harrison wrote a fan letter to the BBC, apparently. (The lads never saw it-- the BBC, unaware of who George Harrison was, didn't forward the note.) So when the word went forth that Monty Python needed money for an original film, the rock stars stepped up. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin ("Not a balloon, you thick-headed Saxon git!") and Jethro Tull, among others, chipped in, getting the film's budget up to the required 230,000 pounds. Not only do the Pythons have their money, they also have the knowledge that they have become their Heroes' Heroes.

The last piece needed-- how to make the vision manifest. True, Jones was a medieval compendium, and knew what he wanted the film to look like-- or rather, what he wanted the film to not look like-- which was like every film made about the Middle Ages, with the huge banquet halls, creamy complexions and spotless velvet dresses with long trains. But how to bring that vision to life on what would still be a teeny weeny budget. If only he knew someone, someone with a similar vision, with a similar artistic obstinance and a history of creating interesting visual worlds. Wait a second-- what about Gilliam?

When the time came to officially designate a director, all eyes turned to Jones. Suddenly overwhelmed by the responsibility he was about to shoulder, Jones said "How about Terry and I co-direct?" without having said a prior word to Gilliam. Thrown under the bus so utterly, Gilliam grabbed the rear axle and dug in.

Despite the fact that movies with multiple directors rarely turn out well, this turned out to be a genius move. Sure, there were differences of opinion and bruised egos, but Jones and Gilliam were able to challenge each other towards greater cinematic heights. The result was a movie that looked more like the Dark Ages than any movie that had come before, or since. Excalibur, with it's pyrotechnics, and Game of Thrones with its incestuous sexual politics, fail to capture the era as magnificently as these two newbies-- and it was a comedy, at that! How does a movie with prancing knights and murderous bunnies manage to be more realistic than its better funded, better researched and better tech-ed predecessors? Well, Jones and Gilliam manage it.

Of course, Scotland helped. All the pieces were in place. Next, let's take a look at the content itself, and see how they all came together.

Run Away!