The most interesting thing about talking to the surviving members of the seminal British comedy troupe Monty Python is that you find that they are very much intellectuals. It may be hard to believe that the men that exposed their bums, dressed as very ugly woman and did some of the silliest things imaginable on national TV, then international TV, and also as a series of very popular films such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, are all brilliant in many other areas outside writing comedy. Michael Palin does his documentary travel shows, Terry Gilliam is one of the most brilliant and imaginative filmmakers of any century, John Cleese is one of the most well known people in the world and since co-directing The Holy Grail Terry Jones has become an expert in Medieval Times, so much so that Jones, the BBC and The History Channel have all teamed up to bring you the documentary show Terry Jones' Medieval Lives.
Terry Jones hasnt much luck directing films since Monty Python broke up both Erik the Viking and The Wind in the Willows have been commercial and critical failures. He has a great more luck writing science fiction novels such as Starship Titanic which he co-wrote with Douglas Adams, The Pythons which is credited to the all the Pythons and this coming year will be even more interesting because hes got more episodes of the TV show coming and a biography called Who Murdered Chaucer?
Check out The History Channels website for more about Terry Jones' Medieval Lives
Daniel Robert Epstein: Did you come with the idea for Medieval Lives?
Terry Jones: Medieval Lives is similar to something I'd suggested a couple years ago. But this formula was actually suggested by BBC2 and by the Office of Film and TV the company who we made it with. So they came up with the idea, really. But since it was something very close to my heart I agreed to do it.
DRE: Are you involved with the whole show or just the segments youre in?
TJ: No, its my show. Its called Terry Jones's Medieval Lives so it was designed as my show. I wrote the scripts and I present all the way through every each half hour. Its eight half hours, well English half hours, so that's like 25 minutes or something. Each one takes a figure from the medieval world, like a knight or a damsel or a monk or a peasant, and at the beginning of each show we do a little silly pastiche of what we might think these figures are like. Then the whole show kind of like explores what they were really like back then.
So the aim of the show and why I wanted to make it was really to get away from the stereotypes about the Middle Ages. Also to get away from the misconceptions that surround the Middle Ages. Of course, it isn't really a period at all it's just sort of an emotional group of centuries. But to get away from the idea that this was all darkness in England and then the Renaissance comes along and everything is light and the modern world begins. Thats total fiction. A lot of the superstition in England is actually Renaissance not Medieval. For example, the idea of witchcraft and then the burning of witches, which people would say, Oh, Medieval is not Medieval at all! That's totally Renaissance. In the Middle Ages people didn't really believe in witchcraft. Before then the authorities and people didn't take it seriously. But then in 1484, when you're really into the Renaissance by then, the Pope suddenly declares that witchcraft was a real thing and really sort of announced open season on women. It was all part of the deterioration in the condition of women that happened after the 14th century from the 15th century onward until the 20th century. In the Middle Ages women had rights and had individuality. By the 14th century, women were sort of getting quite a lot of equality in terms of actually what they could do, in terms of jobs, in terms of how they were regarded in society. This was all kind of turned back with the Reformation and the Renaissance and women were de-sexualized as part of the way for men to keep them under control.
One of the curious things we came across was that in the images of St. George and the Dragon in the 15th century the dragon begins to acquire female genitalia, which is really quite weird, you know what I mean? The woman, Samantha Richards, who has been doing research on it, thinks that it's all to do with the men demonizing female sexuality. So St. George comes and delivers the damsel from the demon of her sexuality. I mean, we see this happening until the 19th century, when women are regarded as not having any sexuality. If a woman shows an interest in sex she's led off to be put off into a lunacy asylum. The Victorian concept of women was totally desexualized. That would have been very kind of surprising to anybody in the Middle Ages. One of the nice things we come up with in the Damsel is that if a woman felt that her man was under performing, wasn't any good in bed. She was quite at liberty to go public about it and we have various legal cases, in which a jury of 12 maidens, or 12 trusted women were gathered to look at a certain man's member to see whether he gets an erection or not. There was one man whose wife complained that his member was underperforming, so he was examined by 12 good women. One of them got rather carried away and according to the legal record, exposed her naked breasts to William, and with her hands warmed from the fire rubbed his part, still he couldn't get an erection. Whereby everybody sort of cursed him and told him he was no good. Terrible way to enter history, really.
DRE: I was surprised to see you in armor at the beginning of the first episode. I figured after making [Monty Python and] The Holy Grail you would never want to wear it again?
TJ: Ill tell you, I didn't really wear the armor for very long actually, it was just a couple of shots. The worst thing about the armor we wore in The Holy Grail is that it was all made of wool so it just got stretched and once it got wet it was just horrible putting it on again in the morning.
DRE: Are you excited about Eric Idle bringing Holy Grail to Broadway?
TJ: Yes, we are waiting with baited breath. I've heard some of the songs, he's got some fabulous songs he's putting into it. One is a real showstopper. I hope everything else is as good as that one is. It's really I think it's going to be quite fun I think.
DRE: Will you come to New York City to see it?
TJ: Well, if they're still allowing planes to fly to America, yes, I might.
DRE: He also told me there is no chance of a Python Reunion?
TJ: No, I wouldn't have thought so. I mean, we came close four years ago and Eric did a lot of work setting it up and everything, and getting interest into it. Then really Mike sort of suddenly decided he really didn't want to do it. So it all collapsed really. I don't think that Eric will set out to pick that one up again and I don't think anyone else is going to.
DRE: Did you have desire to tour with them again?
TJ: It's not something I would put down as an artistic priority. I'd do it because it would be great fun to do. But you'd feel a bit like you were going backwards, I think.
DRE: Obviously the Monty Python guys are very iconic in American and even more so in the UK.
TJ: No, I'd say it was probably bigger in the States than it was over here.
DRE: What youre doing with Medieval Lives isnt dissimilar to what Michael Palins travel series.
TJ: Yeah I guess it is sort of equivalent to that. I have to say, Ive never really intended to sort of get involved in TV documentaries. But it's just because I wrote a book about 20 years ago called Chaucer's Knight, which was basically a sort of historical thing. TV is going so down market nowadays, they wanted to see if they can crossover and see in someone involved with comedy could actually deliver the program. For the last ten years people have been offering me shows and most of the time I'd say no. But I did make a few shows about the Crusades about 12 years ago because I was interested in that subject. The idea was to tell the history of the Crusades from the Arab point of view, and I thought that was kind of interesting. We did that and then since then Ive done various other things for The Discovery Channel. But I'm sort of more interested in writing. Ive just finished a book that was published in October called Who Murdered Chaucer. That's coming out; I think it's being published by St. Martin's Press in the States this year. It's had a great reaction over here, I must say. But it's blatantly a history book, so it's actually kind of quite academic. Historians say it's really interesting, which is very gratifying. But it's a kind of a new look at Richard II, the usurpation of Henry IV and seeing Chaucer's role in that. The seeing of Chaucer as a political animal. But it's written in a very accessible style. Anyway, so that came out this year, we're doing the Medieval Lives, and then this coming year, I'm currently working on a screenplay for an American company.
DRE: What company is that?
TJ: It's Rob Minkoffs. He directed the animated Lion King [and the live action Haunted Mansion].
DRE: Is it going to be animated?
TJ: Yeah if we can get it set up it'll be an animated thing. It was an idea they came to me with and I thought it was a really nice. So Ive written them a storyline. Actually I wrote it at the beginning of the past year, but then I had to go and do the Medieval Lives thing so it's all been on hold for a bit. Then they came back with some ideas and Ive actually sent them off the new treatment. Hopefully after that we'll get the thing going. I think it's a really nice piece so I'm looking forward to writing more with it. But Ive got another novel I want to write.
DRE: What about you directing?
TJ: I'm not really into directing. But I'd like to write myself something to actually direct. That would be a fun thing to do.
DRE: I read youre doing things to honor Peter Cook?
TJ: Yeah, of course, Ive been doing a few things with Peter Cook Foundation. Unfortunately, I was close to doing something last Tuesday I think it was, and I was ill, I got a virus so I was just totally laid out. I wasn't able to make it.
DRE: How aware does that make of your own immortality?
TJ: I guess not many days go by that I don't think about that in some way. I started to think about my mortality about a week ago when I had that virus. It's a bit like being slightly dead, you know? You finally come back into the world, you sort of feel like life has been given back to you. I feel very grateful to be alive again.
DRE: Is it pleasing that you and your work will be remembered?
TJ: Well, not really. It's more like you're constantly thinking about well, will this next thing work? Or how will I make this work? How to get this going? That's kind of what interests me. I always have liked making things. It's that attraction when you've actually done something. It goes pretty quickly, when you're at work.
DRE: I read theyre making biopic of Graham Chapman.
TJ: Oh, really?
DRE: Who would you want to play you?
TJ: Oh, I think, oh my dear. What's the name of the woman who plays in The Mask? And she does a singing routine in The Mask.
DRE: Cameron Diaz.
TJ: Yeah I'd like Cameron Diaz to play me.
DRE: Youve written a bit about George Bush in the last year.
TJ: And Tony Blair, let me say.
DRE: Whats your opinion in the New Year?
TJ: Well, I think it's a bit of a disaster. I really think you have pretty evil lot of people in power in the States at the moment. A lot of the freedoms that we boast of in the West are being curtailed and a lot of the freedom of speech is disappearing too. It's not a very attractive period that the US is going through, or that the UK is going through. I mean, at least I can understand George Bush; I can see where he comes from. He's not George Bush, he's Cheney Rumsfeld and Bechtel. You can see where they come from and what their motives are. Which are no different from many people who wanted to pursue war in the Middle Ages. The Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Warrick were both against Richard II pursuing peace with France. The reason they were against it is because they made money out of war. So I don't think people change very much. However what's so pathetic about Blair is that he supinely supports this extremely right wing, redneck, ghastly government that are the lot of people that you've got running your country. And why Blair should be doing that, and giving them a sort of fig leaf of respectability, I have no idea whatsoever.
DRE: Is your opinion the majority attitude in the UK?
TJ: It's difficult to say, actually. I think an informed opinion, yeah. I really wouldn't want to say whether my attitude is typical over here. Its probably a minority attitude. Because again the press is so supine and doesn't really report what's going on. I keep banging on about the Project for the New American Century; I don't know whether you ever looked at their website. It's really a think tank set up by Cheney, Rumsfeld and all that lot. It was set up in I think 1997. Its all there, about what they intend to do. Attacking Saddam Hussein was there, not as an option, but as an objective, long before September 11th and long before Bush got into power. You can actually read up on the Project for a New American Century website, there's one bit where they say that the whole motive really is to increase the American spending on defense from 3.4 percent of the Gross National Product to 3.8. They were saying that the regime of Saddam Hussein may provide the justification but we should never lose sight of the fact that the main objective is to establish a military force presence in the Gulf. That's the reason for deposing him. They put it there in black and white. It is a whole attitude; America is now the most powerful, unchallenged country in the world, so America can actually impose a Pax Americana by force. They say it, without any blushing there. It's not a secret. They say, well this is going to be difficult to sell to the American people unless there is some cataclysmic event like a new Pearl Harbor. Not to say that, you know, they invented September 11th, but the whole thing about why they didn't react quicker to it. It could just be that they said, Hey, this is the cataclysmic event we actually wanted!
DRE: If Monty Pythons Flying Circus had a point of view, what was it?
TJ: I hope when you're doing stuff that some sort of attitude does come through. But if you write with a point of view, from the beginning, then it sort of tends to be a bit preachy. But I would hope that when you do a body of work that actually some attitude comes through, whatever that attitude is, I don't think it's a sort of single attitude, but maybe it's just a questioning attitude, maybe think for yourself.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Terry Jones hasnt much luck directing films since Monty Python broke up both Erik the Viking and The Wind in the Willows have been commercial and critical failures. He has a great more luck writing science fiction novels such as Starship Titanic which he co-wrote with Douglas Adams, The Pythons which is credited to the all the Pythons and this coming year will be even more interesting because hes got more episodes of the TV show coming and a biography called Who Murdered Chaucer?
Check out The History Channels website for more about Terry Jones' Medieval Lives
Daniel Robert Epstein: Did you come with the idea for Medieval Lives?
Terry Jones: Medieval Lives is similar to something I'd suggested a couple years ago. But this formula was actually suggested by BBC2 and by the Office of Film and TV the company who we made it with. So they came up with the idea, really. But since it was something very close to my heart I agreed to do it.
DRE: Are you involved with the whole show or just the segments youre in?
TJ: No, its my show. Its called Terry Jones's Medieval Lives so it was designed as my show. I wrote the scripts and I present all the way through every each half hour. Its eight half hours, well English half hours, so that's like 25 minutes or something. Each one takes a figure from the medieval world, like a knight or a damsel or a monk or a peasant, and at the beginning of each show we do a little silly pastiche of what we might think these figures are like. Then the whole show kind of like explores what they were really like back then.
So the aim of the show and why I wanted to make it was really to get away from the stereotypes about the Middle Ages. Also to get away from the misconceptions that surround the Middle Ages. Of course, it isn't really a period at all it's just sort of an emotional group of centuries. But to get away from the idea that this was all darkness in England and then the Renaissance comes along and everything is light and the modern world begins. Thats total fiction. A lot of the superstition in England is actually Renaissance not Medieval. For example, the idea of witchcraft and then the burning of witches, which people would say, Oh, Medieval is not Medieval at all! That's totally Renaissance. In the Middle Ages people didn't really believe in witchcraft. Before then the authorities and people didn't take it seriously. But then in 1484, when you're really into the Renaissance by then, the Pope suddenly declares that witchcraft was a real thing and really sort of announced open season on women. It was all part of the deterioration in the condition of women that happened after the 14th century from the 15th century onward until the 20th century. In the Middle Ages women had rights and had individuality. By the 14th century, women were sort of getting quite a lot of equality in terms of actually what they could do, in terms of jobs, in terms of how they were regarded in society. This was all kind of turned back with the Reformation and the Renaissance and women were de-sexualized as part of the way for men to keep them under control.
One of the curious things we came across was that in the images of St. George and the Dragon in the 15th century the dragon begins to acquire female genitalia, which is really quite weird, you know what I mean? The woman, Samantha Richards, who has been doing research on it, thinks that it's all to do with the men demonizing female sexuality. So St. George comes and delivers the damsel from the demon of her sexuality. I mean, we see this happening until the 19th century, when women are regarded as not having any sexuality. If a woman shows an interest in sex she's led off to be put off into a lunacy asylum. The Victorian concept of women was totally desexualized. That would have been very kind of surprising to anybody in the Middle Ages. One of the nice things we come up with in the Damsel is that if a woman felt that her man was under performing, wasn't any good in bed. She was quite at liberty to go public about it and we have various legal cases, in which a jury of 12 maidens, or 12 trusted women were gathered to look at a certain man's member to see whether he gets an erection or not. There was one man whose wife complained that his member was underperforming, so he was examined by 12 good women. One of them got rather carried away and according to the legal record, exposed her naked breasts to William, and with her hands warmed from the fire rubbed his part, still he couldn't get an erection. Whereby everybody sort of cursed him and told him he was no good. Terrible way to enter history, really.
DRE: I was surprised to see you in armor at the beginning of the first episode. I figured after making [Monty Python and] The Holy Grail you would never want to wear it again?
TJ: Ill tell you, I didn't really wear the armor for very long actually, it was just a couple of shots. The worst thing about the armor we wore in The Holy Grail is that it was all made of wool so it just got stretched and once it got wet it was just horrible putting it on again in the morning.
DRE: Are you excited about Eric Idle bringing Holy Grail to Broadway?
TJ: Yes, we are waiting with baited breath. I've heard some of the songs, he's got some fabulous songs he's putting into it. One is a real showstopper. I hope everything else is as good as that one is. It's really I think it's going to be quite fun I think.
DRE: Will you come to New York City to see it?
TJ: Well, if they're still allowing planes to fly to America, yes, I might.
DRE: He also told me there is no chance of a Python Reunion?
TJ: No, I wouldn't have thought so. I mean, we came close four years ago and Eric did a lot of work setting it up and everything, and getting interest into it. Then really Mike sort of suddenly decided he really didn't want to do it. So it all collapsed really. I don't think that Eric will set out to pick that one up again and I don't think anyone else is going to.
DRE: Did you have desire to tour with them again?
TJ: It's not something I would put down as an artistic priority. I'd do it because it would be great fun to do. But you'd feel a bit like you were going backwards, I think.
DRE: Obviously the Monty Python guys are very iconic in American and even more so in the UK.
TJ: No, I'd say it was probably bigger in the States than it was over here.
DRE: What youre doing with Medieval Lives isnt dissimilar to what Michael Palins travel series.
TJ: Yeah I guess it is sort of equivalent to that. I have to say, Ive never really intended to sort of get involved in TV documentaries. But it's just because I wrote a book about 20 years ago called Chaucer's Knight, which was basically a sort of historical thing. TV is going so down market nowadays, they wanted to see if they can crossover and see in someone involved with comedy could actually deliver the program. For the last ten years people have been offering me shows and most of the time I'd say no. But I did make a few shows about the Crusades about 12 years ago because I was interested in that subject. The idea was to tell the history of the Crusades from the Arab point of view, and I thought that was kind of interesting. We did that and then since then Ive done various other things for The Discovery Channel. But I'm sort of more interested in writing. Ive just finished a book that was published in October called Who Murdered Chaucer. That's coming out; I think it's being published by St. Martin's Press in the States this year. It's had a great reaction over here, I must say. But it's blatantly a history book, so it's actually kind of quite academic. Historians say it's really interesting, which is very gratifying. But it's a kind of a new look at Richard II, the usurpation of Henry IV and seeing Chaucer's role in that. The seeing of Chaucer as a political animal. But it's written in a very accessible style. Anyway, so that came out this year, we're doing the Medieval Lives, and then this coming year, I'm currently working on a screenplay for an American company.
DRE: What company is that?
TJ: It's Rob Minkoffs. He directed the animated Lion King [and the live action Haunted Mansion].
DRE: Is it going to be animated?
TJ: Yeah if we can get it set up it'll be an animated thing. It was an idea they came to me with and I thought it was a really nice. So Ive written them a storyline. Actually I wrote it at the beginning of the past year, but then I had to go and do the Medieval Lives thing so it's all been on hold for a bit. Then they came back with some ideas and Ive actually sent them off the new treatment. Hopefully after that we'll get the thing going. I think it's a really nice piece so I'm looking forward to writing more with it. But Ive got another novel I want to write.
DRE: What about you directing?
TJ: I'm not really into directing. But I'd like to write myself something to actually direct. That would be a fun thing to do.
DRE: I read youre doing things to honor Peter Cook?
TJ: Yeah, of course, Ive been doing a few things with Peter Cook Foundation. Unfortunately, I was close to doing something last Tuesday I think it was, and I was ill, I got a virus so I was just totally laid out. I wasn't able to make it.
DRE: How aware does that make of your own immortality?
TJ: I guess not many days go by that I don't think about that in some way. I started to think about my mortality about a week ago when I had that virus. It's a bit like being slightly dead, you know? You finally come back into the world, you sort of feel like life has been given back to you. I feel very grateful to be alive again.
DRE: Is it pleasing that you and your work will be remembered?
TJ: Well, not really. It's more like you're constantly thinking about well, will this next thing work? Or how will I make this work? How to get this going? That's kind of what interests me. I always have liked making things. It's that attraction when you've actually done something. It goes pretty quickly, when you're at work.
DRE: I read theyre making biopic of Graham Chapman.
TJ: Oh, really?
DRE: Who would you want to play you?
TJ: Oh, I think, oh my dear. What's the name of the woman who plays in The Mask? And she does a singing routine in The Mask.
DRE: Cameron Diaz.
TJ: Yeah I'd like Cameron Diaz to play me.
DRE: Youve written a bit about George Bush in the last year.
TJ: And Tony Blair, let me say.
DRE: Whats your opinion in the New Year?
TJ: Well, I think it's a bit of a disaster. I really think you have pretty evil lot of people in power in the States at the moment. A lot of the freedoms that we boast of in the West are being curtailed and a lot of the freedom of speech is disappearing too. It's not a very attractive period that the US is going through, or that the UK is going through. I mean, at least I can understand George Bush; I can see where he comes from. He's not George Bush, he's Cheney Rumsfeld and Bechtel. You can see where they come from and what their motives are. Which are no different from many people who wanted to pursue war in the Middle Ages. The Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Warrick were both against Richard II pursuing peace with France. The reason they were against it is because they made money out of war. So I don't think people change very much. However what's so pathetic about Blair is that he supinely supports this extremely right wing, redneck, ghastly government that are the lot of people that you've got running your country. And why Blair should be doing that, and giving them a sort of fig leaf of respectability, I have no idea whatsoever.
DRE: Is your opinion the majority attitude in the UK?
TJ: It's difficult to say, actually. I think an informed opinion, yeah. I really wouldn't want to say whether my attitude is typical over here. Its probably a minority attitude. Because again the press is so supine and doesn't really report what's going on. I keep banging on about the Project for the New American Century; I don't know whether you ever looked at their website. It's really a think tank set up by Cheney, Rumsfeld and all that lot. It was set up in I think 1997. Its all there, about what they intend to do. Attacking Saddam Hussein was there, not as an option, but as an objective, long before September 11th and long before Bush got into power. You can actually read up on the Project for a New American Century website, there's one bit where they say that the whole motive really is to increase the American spending on defense from 3.4 percent of the Gross National Product to 3.8. They were saying that the regime of Saddam Hussein may provide the justification but we should never lose sight of the fact that the main objective is to establish a military force presence in the Gulf. That's the reason for deposing him. They put it there in black and white. It is a whole attitude; America is now the most powerful, unchallenged country in the world, so America can actually impose a Pax Americana by force. They say it, without any blushing there. It's not a secret. They say, well this is going to be difficult to sell to the American people unless there is some cataclysmic event like a new Pearl Harbor. Not to say that, you know, they invented September 11th, but the whole thing about why they didn't react quicker to it. It could just be that they said, Hey, this is the cataclysmic event we actually wanted!
DRE: If Monty Pythons Flying Circus had a point of view, what was it?
TJ: I hope when you're doing stuff that some sort of attitude does come through. But if you write with a point of view, from the beginning, then it sort of tends to be a bit preachy. But I would hope that when you do a body of work that actually some attitude comes through, whatever that attitude is, I don't think it's a sort of single attitude, but maybe it's just a questioning attitude, maybe think for yourself.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 23 of 23 COMMENTS
hellomrworld:
monty python is cool
randomjacks:
Python is just great all around. I break into a "Silly Walk" when in public to see what people do.