| Monty Python and the Holy Grail | |||
| from The First 28 | |||
| **** | |||
| The true turning point for Python was the success of Holy Grail in 1975. By that time, the TV series had ended for good, and the members of the group were preparing to go their separate ways. Had Holy Grail been a failure, they would have likely drifted apart permanently, despite the return of John Cleese for the filming and the success of the TV shows in America. | |||
| But for the first time, the Pythons were about to make some significant profits for their work, and discover just how widespread their popularity had become. | |||
| The group had toyed with the idea of writing a full-length feature since the beginning of the third series of shows, and they had all begun writing with an eye in that direction. | |||
| "I was very keen to do a movie," recalls Terry Jones, "and John really wasn't at that time. John had been very keen on And Now for Something Completely Different, and Victor Lownes had been very close to John about that. I think John thought we were going to make a lot of money out of that movie, and we didn't. So, he wasn't that interested when we were setting up Holy Grail, but everybody else seemed to be keen on the idea. | |||
| "With the first script, Holy Grail was just going to be another Python mish-mash again, half in modern-day, half medieval. We had some time off, and during that time I thought to myself 'I'd much rather do it all medieval'- I was in my Chaucer period at that time. When we all met again, I said 'Let's make it all medieval.' I thought everybody was going to object. I was surprised when everybody went along with that." | |||
| The Palin/Jones team in particular was turning out material dealing with the Middle Ages, although many of the sketches were set in modernday Britain, as well. The original idea had been for the knights to buy a grail in the Grail Hall at Harrod's in London, because Harrod's had everything. The Pythons had to watch their budget carefully, which also restricted their possibilities. | |||
| The lack of money, however, didn't restrain their creativity during the writing process. "We've never really restricted ourselves in writing, even in Holy Grail," Michael Palin observed years later. "We never said 'We can't do this.' We wrote it, then pared it down if someone said we couldn't do it. We'd been very heavily financially controlled in the TV series, and after that, Python has always been spreading our wings to come out into films. Rather than make economics that ruin sketches or scenes, we write the scenes first, then find a way of doing them." | |||
| In fact, it was the idea for the coconuts (knights accompanied by squires clapping coconut shells together, making a sound like horses' hooves) that marked a turning point. They were able to perform without real horses, and decided to set the entire film in the Middle Ages, which Terry Jones had been studying extensively anyway (in preparation for his Chaucer's Knight book). | |||
| As the creative aspects were being assembled, the business side was hammered out as well. Theatrical producer Michael (Rocky Horror Show) White put together a group of investors for the lowbudget project that included members of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and three record companies. The result was a movie made for the astonishingly low cost of 229,000 pounds. The Pythons performed virtually for free in return for the (hoped-for) profits. | |||
| While on the set of Meaning of Life, Michael Palin reflected on the changes in less than ten years of Python films. "With Grail, we had to do everything ourselves. We only had a budget of 500,000 dollars, and here, we have about eight million, so it makes things a bit easier. I get driven to the studio in the morning, instead of having to drive myself and three other Knights of the Round Table in a pickup truck." | |||
| The writing proved first rate and very funny, with all of the group turning out some of their best material. Although the Cleese/Chapman team usually wrote most of the verbal material, one of funniest visual jokes was written by them as well, involving the killer bunny rabbit attacking knights. | |||
| "John and Graham wrote that very early on," says Terry Jones. "They got more visual Mike and I got less visual, and that's one best examples, actually.... It was one of those things that we were dying to do - it sounded like such a funny idea, and it looked so good." | |||
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| The team wanted to retain as much control as possible, and opted to direct their first original feature themselves; Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam shared the duties. "From the beginning, I was very involved in the shape of the shows when we did the TV series, and I was always involved in the editing of them. I felt a very strong commitment to the finished product, and actually seeing the thing right through to the final edit," explains Terry Jones, who says they really were only concerned with protecting what they had written. | |||
| "I don't think there was any desire to direct in the first place. It was just a result of seeing things get screwed up that we knew should be done a better way." | |||
| Still, it proved difficult for the group to have the two Terrys calling the shots. In fact, it actually created divisions within the group. | |||
 Dressed as King Arthur, Chapman comtemplates his greatest real-life battle, as he resolves to quit drinking. Photo copyright Python Productions Ltd. |
"We really weren't working as happily as we normally did, and there was more friction," Gilliam explained a few years later. "Where Ian MacNaughton got all the shit before, suddenly there was Terry and me to be picked on, because we were the ones who'd been doing it wrong, even though we knew we were doing it better than they could have. "The group actually started splitting internally. I mean, we'd always argued, but suddenly there were almost two groups. There was the group of four that were just acting, and the other two who were running around doing ten million jobs. Working on a film is a reasonably boring job if we're just acting, because we sit around all day waiting for the directors and the cameraman and everyone else to get their jobs together. Then we go out and do our bit, which only seems to take about a minute, whereas it seems to take about forty-five minutes to set up the shot. | ||
| "Everybody gets bored waiting, and I thought tempers went off a lot. And, I think Terry and I were trying to prove that we could direct. Actually, it was the first thing we had ever done, so we were very tense," says Gilliam. | |||
| "There were great moments, it was a great hoot a lot of times, but I still thought directing Holy Grail was very rough. I think directing is a really shitty job, unless it's my own project. Doing a group film, and having to shout at people to get something done that they wrote, gets a bit irritating. I was actually shouting, and got fed up with the whole thing." | |||
| The Pythons' first original film actually ran into problems even before they began shooting, recalls Terry Gilliam. | |||
| "On Holy Grail, just before we started shooting, we were refused admission to all the castles in Scotland that we had already chosen, because the National Trust of Scotland said we wouldn't respect the dignity of the fabric of the buildings, that we'd be making jokes about these places where people were tortured to death and having their eyes put out," says Gilliam. "So, we didn't have any castles. What you see in Holy Grail is a lot of painted cutout castles stuck on hills. And they work, they're pretty effective. Most people don't know they're cutouts." | |||
| They did find one suitable location, however, and the greatest portion of Holy Grail was shot at a castle in the Scottish countryside, and conditions were far from good. The weather wouldn't cooperate-it seemed to rain nearly every day, the crew was dissatisfied, and morale plummeted. | |||
| Carol Cleveland recalls a great many problems early in the production when she first arrived to shoot her scenes. | |||
| "When I arrived on the set a few weeks into the filming, totally oblivious to the problems they were having, the crew was near to mutiny," says Cleveland. "I arrived to hear talk of them walking off the set. There were various problems with having two directors, which is going to create problems anyway, but especially if neither director has ever directed before-which they hadn't-and especially if those two directors happen to be two loonies! | |||
| "They had a routine in which they took turns in filming various scenes on various days. The first scene I was in, Terry Jones was going to be there in the morning and Terry Gilliam was coming along later in the day. Terry Jones spent the whole morning setting up this shot, and we were all set to roll when the other Terry appeared and said 'No, no, no, it's all wrong...' And this would go on all the time! So the film crew was tearing their hair out by the roots, trying to get on with their job and finding it extremely difficult because they kept changing their minds. "Apart from that, the weather conditions were appalling. It was Scotland in the middle of winter, and it was extremely cold, so everyone was very uncomfortable. The fellows had to wear these chainmail outfits which apparently were very itchy and horrid to wear, full of fleas and things, so there was a lot of moaning, especially from John, who disliked any sort of discomfort. I remember a lot of grumbling from John." |
Crossing the Bridge of Death over the Gorge of Eternal Peril proved to be dangerous for the cast, and confesses that a professional mountaineer actually performed the stunt dressed as Sir Lancelot. Copyright Python Productions Ltd. | ||
| In addition, Graham Chapman's drinking was worse than ever. As he tells it, he made the decision to stop drinking on the morning of the first day of filming. As King Arthur, he was preparing to cross the Bridge of Death, over the Gorge of Eternal Peril. Early in the morning, out in the countryside, Chapman was disturbed to find that neither he nor any of the crew had brought any alcohol along, and he began shaking. It was then that he admitted to himself that his work was suffering because of his drinking, and decided he was going to quit (which he did, successfully, in December 1977). | |||
| Costumer Hazel Pethig also recalls that his drinking had, by this point, started to cause problems. "We were all loving Graham, he wasn't short of love, but when he was forgetting his line--well, we all cared about him so much, but it meant that getting his gloves off was a job, because his hand was shaking so bad." | |||
| "Other things I remember during that time Graham was making a big effort to dry out. It was also the following days, after my first day of filming, that Graham was in a very bad state because he had forgotten to bring anything along to drink, and nobody on the set had anything," says Cleveland. "That was the first time I'd ever witnessed him going through the DTs, which was pretty uncomfortable for him. I remember Graham just during that period making a very determined effort to change his ways, which he eventually did." | |||
| Ironically, it was Chapman who came through when tensions were at their peak. According to David Sherlock, a Chapman collaborator, morale was dragging during the first two weeks. "The cast and crew were really being worked very hard, and they had lost a lot of feeling about what they were doing a week and a half into the filming. They still hadn't seen any rushes, so they really didn't get an idea of what they were doing. Terry J and Terry G were pushing them awfully hard. I don't think they realized at the time just how the crew felt." | |||
| Sherlock says that the crew had almost reached the point where they were ready to mutiny--actually walk out. | |||
| "Somehow, Graham seemed to sense it. That night, he had the whole cast and crew meet in the bar, and started buying drinks for everyone. Graham had started up a singalong, and I don't think he let anyone else buy a drink all night. Graham is really quite shy, so the whole evening was hard for him at first. But that night, the whole unit seemed to develop the unity that had been lacking; they developed the strong bond that made them keep going. | |||
| "The next night, the rushes finally came in, so everybody got a chance to see what they were working on. They saw they had a winner, so they went all out for the film from that point on," Sherlock says. | |||
 Although all the group met in New York City to promote the American opening of Holy Grail, they split up after the initial publicity pushj to concentrate on regional screenings. Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam traveled to the West Coast, while Graham Chapman and Terry Jones flew in to Chicago, appearing at the theater for its Mid-western premiere, answering questions from the audience, and handing out free coconuts to the first 500 people. Photos copyright KHJ. |
Carol Cleveland confirms Sherlock's memories and recalls the evening very well many years later. "I sensed this friction as soon as walked in on the set the day I arrived," says Cleveland. "That evening, Graham was in the bar before dinner, and said, 'Right, drinks are on me. Drinks on the house!' He just opened the bar up and got everybody plastered, and everybody just cooled down. By the end of the evening, we'd all had a lovely, merry evening, everyone was laughing and joking. The next day, everybody got on with it and it was fine. Graham really did save the day, because the difference between the morning I arrived and that evening was considerable. It really was down to Graham." Neil Innes, who composed and performed the music, also acted in a variety of roles, notably as the minstrel singing "The Ballad of Sir Robin" ("To call it acting is a bit generous," Innes laughs. "Just say I appeared onscreen."). He recalls that they had to keep each other's spirits up. | ||
| "It was pretty miserable, up on the Scottish mountainside in string chain mail, with wet feet, but we did have a bit of fun once in the car, dressed as these silly k-nigets. Filming is a very lengthy process, and when one runs out of crosswords halfway up a Scottish mountain, one tended to think of other silly games to play," Innes says. | |||
| "I said it would be fun to decline the verb 'to sheep-worry.' John came up with the future pluperfect 'I am about to have been sheep-worried.' It was the sort of thing we did to pass the time." | |||
| Even though morale improved, the filming still ranged from unpleasant and uncomfortable to grueling. The tiny budget forced them to cut corners and take chances that they would rather have avoided. John Cleese recalls that many of his most uncomfortable, dangerous moments in all of Python occurred during the Holy Grail filming. | |||
| "The toughest shot for me was swinging backwards and forwards on a rope, because I was getting tired after five or six takes," Cleese explains, describing the scene where Sir Lancelot disrupts a wedding party by slaughtering several of the bridal party and their guests. | |||
| "The other dangerous one was playing Tim the Enchanter, up on a very high mountain peak. Every time I stood up to do a take, the wind would catch my clothes, and I'd get blown backwards slightly. There was actually a drop behind me that would have killed me if I'd fallen, and I was only operating in an area of about three by six feet. That was a bit hairy, particularly as the explosives kept going wrong, and I was up there over an hour." | |||
| The only Python stunt Cleese ever backed out of was in Holy Grail, as well, and involved running across the Bridge of Death. "I had tried crossing it the previous day," Cleese says. "I walked across, to try to work myself up to running across it. I came back and said 'There's no way I can run across there!' It was slippery, and we were in those strange, knitted-string chain-mail outfits. On the soles of our feet was just a plain bit of leather, nothing on them at all--no rubber, no indentations-- so they got a mountaineer to do it. He ran across it as though it were a road. Quite extraordinary! That's the only bit I ever chickened out of." | |||
| Pethig confirms the problem. "Holy Grail was very difficult for them, wearing all that string-net armor, with wet ground underfoot, and helmets. They weren't very pleasant costumes at all. And the things they had to do - Michael had to look as though he was eating mud. It was very uncomfortable for him, lying around in the mud, cold and wet... | |||
| "Because it was their first feature, there was very little money. I worked as a wardrobe mistress, the wardrobe van driver, the costume designer, and a dresser; we didn't have any facilities. I remember dragging bags of costumes up mountainsides with no one to help us. It was never the Pythons' fault," says Pethig, noting that they suffered more than anybody. "It was their first feature, and they hadn't been backed properly ... It was challenging to manage with so little money, and it was terribly hard work. I was happy to just get through and finish it without having a nervous breakdown." | |||
| Despite all the trials and tribulations of the filming, however, the final result was most impressive. Audiences and critics alike praised it, but it meant even more than that to the Pythons. It was the group's first major success away from the BBC, so it built their confidence, and proved to them that they could contend with longer forms of comedy. | |||
| And it proved as much of a joy to watch as it was an ordeal to film. It was an immediate hit, and they all seemed to realize that the real future of Monty Python would be in movies. | |||
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| Monty Python and the Holy Grail Released April 1975 by Cinema 5/ Columbia (US) and EMI (UK) 90 Min. | |||
| The film begins with King Arthur (GC) and his servant Patsy (TG) approaching a castle, Patsy banging coconut halves together to simulate hooves of a nonexistent horse. Arthur is unsuccessful attempting to recruit knights for his court at Camelot, as the residents of the castle are more interested in where he obtained the coconuts. | |||
| A Man (EI), collecting dead bodies of plague victims, has trouble with an Overeager Customer (JC), and they identify the King as he passes. | |||
| King Arthur encounters a pair of Peasants (TJ and MP) who refuse to acknowledge his authority, citing constitutional theory. | |||
| The King encounters a fearsome Black Knight, who tries to prevent him from passing. A fierce and bloody battle leaves the Knight the worse for wear, but still belligerent. | |||
| An angry mob captures a Witch (CB), but Sir Bedevere (TJ) questions their judgment, and helps them apply logic and scientific method. | |||
| Arthur and Bedevere are joined in their quest by Lancelot (JC), Galahad (MP), and Robin (EI), and they approach Camelot, where an elaborate song and dance fest is in full swing. They see an animated vision telling them to seek the Holy Grail, and they begin their quest at a French castle, where they are taunted by a Frenchman (JC). A plan by Bedevere to attack the fortress with a giant Trojan rabbit fails. A modern-day historian lectures until he is slaughtered by a medieval knight, and the adventure of Sir Robin begins. | |||
| Accompanied by a band of minstrels (led by NI) who sing of his courage, Robin encounters a giant three-headed knight, and bravely runs away. | |||
| Sir Galahad the Chaste tries to track down the Grail at the Castle Anthrax, where 160 young, beautiful girls are living by themselves. They try to tend to his every need, but he is rescued by Lancelot, who tries to launch an attack on the girls. | |||
| Arthur and Bedevere encounter an Old Man (TG), who gives them a vital clue to the Grail, and the two of them meet the Knights Who Say Ni, and are sent on a mission to find them shrubbery. | |||
| An animated sequence finds a monk disturbed by the "bloody weather," and at Swamp Castle, an Angry Father (MP) holds his son, Prince Herbert (TJ), captive before his wedding. His two dim-witted guards (EI and GC) are instructed to keep him in the room, but Lancelot arrives to rescue the Prince, slaughtering several guests and the bride's father. | |||
| Meanwhile, Arthur and Bedevere encounter Roger the Shrubber (EI), and complete their mission. They rejoin Robin and the others, and time passes during an animated sequence. | |||
| The knights meet Tim the Enchanter (JC), and he leads them to the Cave of Caerbannog, where they have a fierce, bloody battle with the creature guarding the cave. They defeat the small, white rabbit, but do battle inside the cave with the animated Black Beast of Aarrgghhh. | |||
| The group finally makes it to the Bridge of Death over the Gorge of Eternal Peril, and have to correctly answer three questions or they will be hurled to their deaths. Some of them make it across during an intermission, and once again encounter the French Taunters, before the final climactic battle. | |||
| The film was promoted rather extensively in America; the entire group flew in to New York for the U.S. premiere, which proved extremely successful. A subsequent Variety ad showed fans lining up outside the theater beginning at 5:30 a.m. Following the New York premiere, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam flew out to the West Coast for the L.A. premiere, while Terry Jones and Graham Chapman attended the Midwest opening in Chicago, in which coconuts were given out to the first five hundred patrons. In addition, several cities featured men hired as knights, who walked around in armor passing out handbills, and carrying huge Monty Python and the Holy Grail banners. | |||
| It was subsequently sold to CBS in the States by accident, and turned up as the Late Night Movie on two occasions in early 1977, cutting it to remove suggestive words and situations, and excess blood. The group subsequently regained the rights to the film, and it was later shown uncut on PBS in America. It is now available on videocassette, and on laserdisc with a running commentary by Jones and Gilliam. | |||
