Still Completely Different

IFC Celebrates Monty Python's 40th Anniversary With Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut)

By Karl J. Paloucek

If you haven't seen them, chances are you've at least heard their sketches parroted by friends or bar patrons enough times that you likely have no trouble recognizing the humor of Monty Python. Well, by now you should — they've been around for 40 years. In honor of this milestone, IFC presents Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut), a six-part documentary series on the Pythons and their work, directed in part and coproduced by Bill Jones, son of Python Terry Jones, along with his collaborator and coproducer Ben Timlett. We caught up with the pair to discuss the film and what it was like to "grow up Python."

So tell us a bit about this project and how it came to be.

Bill Jones: It's a six-part documentary that's going on IFC. We've split off, obviously, the life of the Pythons as a team into chunks, and each chunk represents a portion of their life. ... [The first covers] from their early childhoods up until just before they start doing the Flying Circus series, so just before they start working on the programs. And then you've got the second one, which is about their starting Flying Circus. The third one's sort of what the programs [were like] internally, called Python on Python, where we've just got all of the Pythons talking about each other. And then the fourth one is about [Monty Python and the] Holy Grail. Fifth one's about Life of Brian. And the sixth one's about Meaning of Life, Live at The Hollywood Bowl, Graham's death and then a little bit of Spamalot.

Ben Timlett: Episode 4, for me, is more about them breaking America, really. America was the key to their real success. Obviously they were successful in the U.K., but we're only a small country, and their success in America is really part of that episode. And then, Episode 5, we just thought we had to devote an entire episode to Life of Brian. Everybody — certainly in the U.K. — feels it was the best film they ever made. Although, our experience is that Americans, they seem to all love Holy Grail more. But you know ...

They don't often seem to take themselves seriously, but with six hours to fill, do we see much of that serious side in this documentary?

Bill: I think it's actually a mixture of both.

Ben: They are incredibly honest. They don't really care about what they say about each other — which is quite amazing as a group, that they've sort of held together, even though part of it is that they'll say horrible things about each other.

Bill: They all do it — they don't get upset by it, because they're all like, "Well, it's probably a bit true."

The Pythons obviously have had an impact on this side of the Atlantic, but there's still a distinctive divide between British and American humor that persists.

Ben: Some people just don't like sketch comedy, I think. Essentially, that's what it is. I think in terms of what the influence is on new comedians ... I think the problem for new comedians, if they're doing sketch-based stuff, is trying to do something that Python didn't do. I mean, a lot of comedians that we spoke to said it's very difficult — they would write a sketch and then go, "Oh, hang on — that's sort of half a sketch. It's actually a Python sketch."

Bill: I think all new comedians take a bit of what they enjoy, and a good comedian will put a bit of themselves in it and make it funny in their own way. It's not bad being influenced by anything and everything. Just before [Monty Python] were about to start shooting Flying Circus, in [the U.K.], a program called Q came out, which was done by this guy called Spike Milligan. He was part of a band who used to do comedy on radio, called The Goons. And the Pythons were all massive fans of The Goons. So when they came on television, you could have gone, "Well, the Pythons are just doing The Goons on television." ... But it's quite interesting to see why Spike's comedy is not remembered — his Q series isn't really remembered — but the Pythons' is.

Next: The obvious question to you, Bill — what was it like growing up "Son of Python"?

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