Name: Eric Idle Talks About Monty Python, Spamalot, and Why He Always Looks on the Bright Side of Life
Uploaded: 2021-06-07T17:00:05.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Eric Idle Talks About Monty Python, Spamalot, and Why He Always Looks on the Bright Side of Life' from Bob Saget on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-06-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Eric Idle Talks About Monty Python, Spamalot, and Why He Always Looks on the Bright Side of Life' from Bob Saget on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-06-07. Transcript available.

Eric Idle Talks About Monty Python, Spamalot, and Why He Always Looks on the Bright Side of Life

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everybody
welcome to the new episode nearing a hundred episodes any moment of Bob Saget's
here for you I love doing this podcast so much it gave me a reason to invite
this
gentleman over who I get to say as a friend of mine I know I know I had friend
issues as a kid okay it's not about name dropping some people just go well I've
got you know this person that
person and they name people that have the top five movies I idolized certain
people since I'm a kid so I didn't know I'd be a stand-up I didn't know but I
had an affinity for comedy and one of the
groups that was the biggest influence of my life was Monty Python and I got to
know
this gentleman who is one of the most brilliant people that I've ever met in
comedy and it's Eric Idol and he's my guest today so those of you that might
not
know Gen Z forget about it but you can learn you should try Gen X study up see
some movies see Holy Grail see life of Brian see meaning of life see I mean go
through the annals I said annals of Monty Python and then go through the
history of
Eric Idol spam a lot on Broadway a great writer this is called always look on
the
bright side of life it's a sort of biography that's what it is and it's a
really
good book I had the pleasure of doing the book talk for him here in Santa
Monica and
he went and did it in England and Canada and Australia it's really good book
especially if you're a Python fan they were undeniably kind of the Beatles of
comedy and George Harrison always wanted to meet Eric and they became really
dear
friends one of the best friends of each other's lives and George Harrison made
it
possible for life of Brian to get made he financed it so this is a really
special
podcast today of someone that I I saw Holy Grail in a theater in Philadelphia
when I
was 17 or 18 and I couldn't believe what I'd seen and we were all laughing out
loud
at the genius of these gentlemen and I'd already seen them on television and
Monty
Python Monty Python's flying circus some places they called it flying circus
some
places I called it Monty Python in any case brilliant brilliant men and women
that put this
together this historic comedy troupe that will live forever and if you're not
familiar with them I
recommend right away Holy Grail meaning of life life of Brian I'm a musical
comedy
aficionado or wannabe I'm a wannabe and I do musical comedy in my work I always
have
and this gentleman wrote this song always look on the bright side of life we're
a lot of
songs wrote the theme song for and saying for the meaning of life he's a
musical he's a pretty brilliant
man in in many many ways and uh it's my pleasure right now to move uh into a
man that's going to fill
this chair Eric Idle
who would you look at in your life and go oh my god I can't believe I got to
sit and talk
with them well um there's a lot of people unlikely and unusual I I met the guy
who who who discovered
DNA um is that true yeah uh what did you discover it in the couch well not in
just in the couch he's
got it in his trousers but it was we were on holiday so we had to get rid of it
but uh his name
doctor you know he did the DNA those two crick and watson dr watson right it
was his name oddly enough
bizarre yeah no and he was really funny he's a really funny guy and I we had
good fun and he was
he was very nice my wife loved him too he was a good companion for dinner how
did he so he worked
in a lab and he was just trying to figure out how human beings well that was
1950s in cambridge
and him and and crick and there was a rosy somebody from london university was
also involved i think
they nicked her research but they were trying to figure out the modeling shape
of what dna is
and they finally came up with it and they made the double helix and suddenly
everything fitted and
that was the beginning of the genetic science which now means we can uh we have
the genetic code completely
done well some people I don't think believe in that now uh there's no end to
how many stupid people
there are in the world and that's quite normal because how would you expect
there to be more
intelligent people than stupid yeah because it would be going the wrong way so
this is like we
people are evolving but slowly but if it was proportionally different I think
we'd be a much
more peaceful society around the whole world right people to be peaceful I
think the interesting thing
about covert has been on lockdown it was like being in the 18th century and I
actually quite enjoyed it
because you'd have to go out right dress up every bloody night think of
something funny to say or
where are you gonna have dinner or yeah it's really nice I it was like the 18th
century and occasionally
you'd hear news and that was it you have the most wonderful wife apparently yes
I do actually
know I've been we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary the other day which
is which was very
very much fun um she's lovely she's adorable she is and she's beautiful and you
fell in love with her
instantly is that I remember you actually told me this at dinner she asked I
was in New York and it was
an after party for Saturday Night Live down in the Bowery and she asked me to
dance which is asking for
it isn't it right you know and she got it so uh no we've been together since
that day which absolutely
love at first sight she asked you know she was just incredible I just went I
just come off the beach that
day from Barbados to New York from 86 to 16 degrees and and what had you been
doing all that time
I'd been on the beach um with Ricky Fatah playing guitar and uh I was I'd gone
to have Christmas with
Lorne Michaels in Barbados and Paul Simon who was with Shelley Duvall at the
time right and uh and um
he was he was on 49 ways to leave his lover by that time he was right at the
edge but he could not get
her to go it was one lover he could not get her to go anyway um so then uh Lorne
you know met me
because we were talking about the ruttles I had shown a clip of the ruttles on
saturday night live and
he said well let's make a what are you going to do I said I'm going to do a
documentary on it for the
BBC so we'll come and make it for NBC uh you'll have a bigger budget and I said
great so we met in
Barbados and I was waiting there when he went back to New York and pitched it
to NBC and then I would
call to for the meeting you know yes they're they're interested and so I went
in and Lorne produced
executive producer ruttles lord producer ruttles yes it was a broadway video it
was uh he had a series
of um he had a few late night slots so that was actually no this was prime time
he had two it was
put on in prime time initially where it came 73rd uh which is close um but then
then the late night
repeat was huge and then after that it went to England and they put it on and
they repeated it four
weeks later which is something the BBC never did it was huge I remember
watching it and and when you
when it but when you first showed it on saturday night live it was just a
couple few minutes short
that's what it was it was a clip it was like a television series called rutland
weekend television
okay and it so it was one track one song and with me doing the running away
from camera joke you know
talking and the camera keeps moving away so I have to bring it so it was that
and then we did a hard
days rut in black and white to the to the song and it was fantastic it was it
was interesting because um
people wrote in to the ruttles for after to snl so he had all this fan mail
coming into to dirk and
stick and nasty and that was very sweet and so you know it was a really nice
time because I had to wait
maybe three weeks four weeks on the beach while they set it all up and then I
just went into new york
to do the you know to do and then I had to I met tanya totally in love with her
and she and I had to
live with her in Dan Aykroyd's apartment flat uh in the bowery so I was writing
she'd go off to do her
job and I'd sit there all day with her enormous alsatian dog writing the ruttles
it was very it was very
lovely it was in the bond street in the bowery though it was really really
scary it's not now now
now it's now it's a fashion no no no for sure well not now after covid after
now it's opening up it
wasn't as fashionable uh this past year oh no but it was really fashionable
down there I went down there
yeah yeah yeah I always stay down there I love it there all it was then was
like empty empty lofts
deserted streets and CBGBs just across the road in bond street now you took me
off track timewise so
the ruttles was a series that you've been doing no rutland weekend television
rutland we can tell
it and how many had you done of that um I did two series of which is english
series there was uh six
and a seven and a christmas special which george harrison was the guest on
right another wonderful joke
I'm holding here in my hand um anybody that's looking at this on youtube
because it's not really
television it's just a thing I thought it was going to be radio no this is this
is radio it really is
this is there's not many people that watch this we have this for promos mainly
okay it's mainly so
that people can look at it and see some funny thing that you said and all you
have to do basically is
say george harrison or lord michaels and then i'll say you know that's it yeah
and then i'll go i just
sit here in awe because i was like 15 and uh was a python um or i mean i just i
would have i wouldn't
have slept with all of you but i you know you wrote things that spoke to me you
know it's it's it was
interesting to me when i came to this country just how how pervasive python had
been and it was quite
interesting because it was only on pbs it was never on network it would never
still not be on network
whether you'd ever put it on television so but because pbs was everywhere and
uh you could just
get it it's not measured but it was it's there it's everywhere and it went
around the country there was
no money to be seen from that at the time right because that's no money but if
we far more valuable
is we picked up fans oh my god and then they would have to buy things and
eventually when you know 20
years we didn't make a dime from the holy grail because somebody kind of i didn't
know that somebody
took it it was it was opened you know by don rugoff at cinema 2 and then
somebody got hold of it and
kept it going around all the colleges making a fortune showing with screenings
and that i don't know how
they got the print but then eventually after 20 years the copyright reverted to
us and we got it back and
then we could you know be and see some money from it and then well that i know
for a fact because i
know