The Pythons: Autobiography by the Pythons - Hardcover

Chapman, Graham; Palin, Michael; Cleese, John; Gilliam, Terry; Idle, Eric; Jones, Terry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312311443 ISBN 13: 9780312311445

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2003

Synopsis

Over thirty years ago, a group of five Englishmen and one wayward American, re-wrote the rules of comedy. Monty Python's Flying Circus, an unheralded, previously unseen and practically unprogrammed half hour of sketches, hilarities, inanities and animations first appeared on the BBC late one night in 1969. Its impact on the world has been felt ever since.

From its humble beginnings as late night entertainment on a British TV channel that went off the air before midnight, it blossomed into arguably the most influential movement in modern comedy. They found the Holy Grail, they detailed the life of the Savior-also-ran Brian, and when we were lost, they explained The Meaning of Life.

Now, those purveyors of dead parrots and silly walks are going to tell us something more: Their story. In their own, intimate, never before heard words.

The Pythons by The Pythons is the definitive word on all things Pythonesque (the only word invented by a modern comedian which is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary.) 30 years of insight, hindsight, and bad sight - now told for the first time. Stuff they're never remembered before alongside stories they'd forgotten to say, coupled with things they couldn't say then and even more things they can't pronounce now (with a healthy dollop of things they would never have said in the first place if any others had been in the room at the time.)

The Pythons by The Pythons is a unique look at arguably the most important comic team of the modern age, lavishly illustrated with 1000 photographs and illustrations, many culled from the teams' own personal collections, many seen here for the first time. A tome, a tombstone, the definitive word on all things Python, as told by all things Python - do you want Spam with that?

About this title

About the Author

Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, were all lifelong (so far) members of Monty Python.
Bob McCabe is a writer.

Reviews

This massive autobiography/oral history offers a full literary meal about the irreverent Python troupe and an equally satisfying wealth of photos covering childhoods, weddings, film and TV appearances. It opens with members Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam supplying witty commentaries about their collaborators, then follows with the foursome-plus Terry Young-profiling themselves. Graham Chapman, who died in 1989, comes alive through sparkling reminiscences by his longtime partner, David Sherlock. The groundbreaking sextet first captured attention through David Frost's The Frost Report in 1966 and became comedy cult kings with the BBC series Monty Python's Flying Circus. The accounts and accompanying photographs regarding their experiences and conflicts on Circus and the subsequent motion pictures The Life of Brian, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Meaning of Life are captivatingly honest closeups of the creative process; the reprinted postcards the gang sent Terry Jones from Amsterdam are priceless. "Dear Terry," reads one, "Graham is sitting on my right. On my left is an empty chair. Opposite sits John Goldstone & to his left (not mine) is Little John. To his left & slightly in front of him i.e. at the head of the table sits a silly little man who is in charge of us." Despite inevitable skirmishes, an open attitude prevailed that allowed everyone to express themselves freely: says Idle, "You could say anything-`I think that's crap'-and nobody would punch you and get upset." By book's end, readers will feel they know each Python intimately and marvel that six such different personalities could collaborate to produce such hilarious, scathingly subversive comedy. 1,000 color and b&w photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The six men who were Monty Python get billed above the guy who put together this coffee-table tome on their achievement, but this is film critic and broadcaster Bob McCabe's book. He wove together the words of the late Graham Chapman (excerpted from his writings), John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and a very few others, principally Chapman's life partner, David Sherlock. And he got the lot to share the memorabilia that decorate the book, stem to stern, ranging from baby pictures to that foot that crushed the closing credits of every episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, the British TV show that launched the six writer-performers' long collaboration. The layout of pictures and text is un-Pythonly restrained (Gilliam, the artist Python whose animation and sets have given new meaning to the word baroque, obviously had nothing to do with the book's design), and the oral history purveyed is genuinely fascinating, so that this is no mere browser's delight but a readable book. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312311443
• ISBN 13: 9780312311445
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368