Name: Monty Python on Letterman, Part 1: 1982 re-upped
Uploaded: 2019-07-05T18:19:54.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Monty Python on Letterman, Part 1: 1982 re-upped' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-07-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Monty Python on Letterman, Part 1: 1982 re-upped' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-07-05. Transcript available.

Monty Python on Letterman, Part 1: 1982  re-upped

As the American member of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Terry Gilliam's work
became familiar
and added worldwide, and I'm sorry, adored worldwide.
On his own, Mr. Gilliam has produced, directed, and co-wrote a marvelous, co-written
a marvelous
fantasy entitled Time Bandits, a wonderful film. Please welcome Mr. Terry Gilliam.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you very much for joining us today, and we'll see you next time, Mr. Gilliam.
Thank you very much for joining us today, and we'll see you next time, Mr. Gilliam.
Thank you very much for joining us today, and we'll see you next time.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today, and we'll see you next time.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you very much for joining us today, and we'll be here in just a minute
for heaven's sake.
Oh shit!
What kind of cheap show is this?
I mean, there's a promise.
No physical injury.
I signed something.
It said that I would be safe.
Have a seat here.
Let me just sweep up first, and then we can get done and talk business.
Never.
Nice to meet you, sir.
Hi.
First of all, before we get rolling here, I really enjoyed your film.
I thought it was terrific.
Time Bandits.
Thank you.
I liked it for about nine different reasons.
I thought you were going to say nine different minutes.
No, no, no.
It was great.
Now, you sound like you're from Great Britain somewhere, but you're not, are
you?
Yes.
We know our little secret, don't we?
Mm-hmm.
Well, do we?
Yes.
We did.
Didn't we?
Emily?
You were not born.
No.
Well, I'm Minneapolis, Minnesota is where I was born.
How did you get to London or to England at least?
This is a very late night show, is it?
Goes up to about five in the morning, does it?
Yes, all night long.
We're trying to raise money.
We have a clinic in the Netherlands we're supporting, and we'll be taking phone
calls and pledges
in just a minute.
Oh, that's a terribly long story.
I mean, I don't know where it even stopped.
Well, you did some, I did some.
Interesting.
You went to Los Angeles.
Why didn't you tell me?
All right.
I guess I can finish up here alone, Terry, if you want to take off.
I was reading the review of your show, and the one thing it seemed to say is
that you were
far more interesting than the guests you have on your show.
Oh, and if only, if only Mr. Letterman hadn't remained so determinedly in the
background,
the show might have had more excitement and brashness.
Something like that.
Hmm.
Mention anything in there about helium socks?
No.
So, I think, if you could just carry on, I'll sit here and read the paper.
Um, I thought all of, do you want to continue this?
No, not really.
Not really.
Um, give me this.
Now, you were, you were the only American member of Monty Python.
Tell us that connection.
How do I got?
Yeah.
After college, which was somewhere in Los Angeles, I went to New York and
edited along,
well, I edited, I was an assistant editor of a magazine called Help, and Rodney
Kurtzman,
who began Mad Magazine, was doing.
And one of the things we used to do there were photo stories called fumetti,
they were like
comic strips, but real people were playing in them.
We used to get actors and people out of work to appear in them.
And Cleese was one of the people that turned up in New York one day.
He was with a group called Cambridge Circus, which had Graham Chapman in it.
It was the Footlights Review from Cambridge, and I got John to appear in one of
these things.
So, when years later, at about 50, I think I was about 54 at the time, when I
went to London,
John pointed me towards a few TV producers, who were my sort of age bracket.
And one of them was producing a show called Do Not Adjust Your Set, which Mike
Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Eidel were doing.
And I got on that and did some sketches, and then one day I started doing
animation, and then we all got together, and we sleep a lot together.
And occasionally we do material as well.
All right, we have to pause here to do something we do occasionally, and I'm
not sure what it is exactly, but whatever you do, don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed, you'll be right.
Thank you.
Another commercial-free half hour of rock and roll from Paul Schaefer and Terry
Gilliam is with us, as we -- well, you know, 'cause you've been a long time.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Don't go to bed.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Another commercial-free half hour of rock and roll from Paul Schaefer and Terry
Gilliam is with us, as we -- well, you know, 'cause you've been watching.
And now, when Mighty Python was first produced, it was not -- when it came to
the United States, everyone in this country was under the impression that it
was a huge success in Great Britain.
Was that the case?
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, it -- funny, nobody's ever asked me that before.
I've never had to think about this.
Originally, when it came out, the first four shows were very odd, because the
BBC kept trying to hide them on the airwaves somewhere.
So they turned up on different nights at different times, usually very late.
This was not the show they thought that they had commissioned, right?
No.
They thought they had a rather jolly, satirical-type show with sort of well-dressed
people behaving reasonably well.
And they really -- they pulled us off after the fourth show and replaced us
with the International Horse of the Year show.
It was -- almost -- almost reached America and became the huge success that
Portland did.
But fortunately for us, it didn't work that way.
And enough people seemed to be screaming for it that they put it back on the
air.
And then it built rather rapidly, pretty much the way it did in the States.
But the States was really about four or five years later.
Did you guys make a lot of dough on that?
No.
But here's something that --
Big bucks!
Yeah, you're looking at property in Cuba here.
Tell us about the bit of the film we're going to see, if you can, Terry.
This is Time Bandits.
The beginning of the film is about a boy living with his rather crass, consumer-conscious
parents who pay very little attention to him.
One night, he goes to bed.
He's being bad -- after being badgered by his parents, he goes up to his
bedroom and turns out the lights and things like this start happening.
So this is the -- the first real bit of fantasy in the film, I think, right?
This is what wakes the audience up the first time.
Yeah, okay.
Watch the monitors, or if you're at home, as we say, the TVs will do.
Terry Gilliam, the man responsible for Time Bandits.
Just quickly here, throughout the film, the parents are portrayed as kind of
jerks, aren't they?
Yeah, I think -- I mean, it's really a kid's fantasy coming through.
I think we've all felt this about the parents.
It's terrific.
Doing quite well.
Thank you for being here.
I appreciate it.
We will be back with a report from George Miller's dream.
Thank you very much, Paul Schaefer, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome back to the show.
And what a show we have for you tonight.
Graham Chapman is one of the original members of Monty Python with the group.
He's been very successful on television, stage, and record.
He's authored several books, including an autobiography called The Liar's Autobiography.
And he starred in such films as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python's
Life of Brian.
While most Americans are familiar with his work, not many are aware of the
fascinating life this gentleman has led heretofore.
Please welcome Graham Chapman.
It's a pleasure to meet you.
Thank you very much for being here.
In the introduction there, I alluded to a fascinating life.
Oh, thank you.
Do you consider yourself to have led a fascinating life?
Unusual, I think, probably.
In what regard?
Perhaps I just admit it.
All the filthy things I've done.
What strikes you as being unusual and filthy?
Let's get right to it.
This is exciting.
No, I think I'd rather not.
No, it's all in my past, really.
And, no, we don't want to rake over those ashes again, I don't think.
Do we really?
Well, it's up to you, certainly.
Oh, no, I'd rather not.
What do you think?
You want to hear the dirty filming show?
Certainly is a sensitive group, isn't it?
Oh, okay, okay.
Well, if they really want that.
Well, yeah.
I was once on a show rather like this in England
and actually got some rather amazing mail from it,
including a very, very angry letter from a lady in Scotland.
And I'd been talking on this show a little bit about gay liberation, you know?
And this lady wrote a very, very angry letter to the Python office
saying that this person, who claimed to be a homosexual apparently,
didn't give his own name, didn't have the courage to do that, which is a lie.
Actually, my name is on the credits at the end.
I was introduced as Graham Chapman.
Fine.
But never mind.
This extremely angry letter said that I deserved eternal fire and damnation
from this particular moment.
Brimstone the lot, you know?
But Eric wrote a letter back to her saying,
we've found out which one it was and we've killed him.
Taken care of him.
Let's, before we get into that,
let me, we have some videotape, I believe, of an episode of Monty Python.
Oh, yes, a very early one, yeah.
And for folks who may be just joining us
or not familiar with the television show, which was so popular in this country,
we're going to show that now.
Is there anything that Mr. Chapman needs to tell us before we see it or?
No.
Okay, it's pretty much self-contained.
Yes, I think so.
A word for, a voice from the dark telling us, no, no problem here.
That was, you said that an early, from an early episode?
Right.
1969, I think.
Yeah.
When the series was originally produced in your home country,
it was not the runaway hit of the decade, was it?
Or was it?
No, it wasn't to begin with.
No, it wasn't to begin with.
The BBC were constantly replacing us for such important things as show jumping.
They didn't like us very much at all.
Oh, show jumping, horse jumping.
Yes, horses jumping over.
Yeah.
Fences and things, not shows.
Yeah.
Shows.
We talked earlier about your seamy past and what I was alluding to was you were
a doctor.
Oh, yes.
Yes, yes.
Did you actually practice medicine or?
I did two weeks of ear, nose and throat surgery before giving up to go off and
write a movie on an island in the Mediterranean,
which I felt was a pleasant thing to do after taking my final examinations.
Yeah.
But we're going to pause here, but that's an interesting transition.
You leave surgery and a guy says we're going to the Mediterranean to write
comedy.
We'll find out, I guess.
Right.
Okay.
We're going to pause.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Thank you, Graham Chapman.
Welcome back to the show.
Graham Chapman is here.
And you, while we were watching the videotape there, you mentioned something.
You had a theory about accents that you wanted to bring up.
Yes, it's something that's only just cropped up.
And then there's a geographical connection between accent and, well, that's it,
really.
But it's, for instance, in a place like Australia, which is huge,