Terry Jones looks back fondly
TORONTO – He was an integral member of an iconic troupe that redefined comedy, yet even among the oddballs of Monty Python, Graham Chapman was something different.
Gay, emotionally introverted and addicted to performance, Chapman played pivotal roles in the Python films — most notably Brian in the biblical spoof Life of Brian, and King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He is also credited with co-penning the now-legendary Dead Parrot Sketch, as well as The Meaning of Life.
His death in 1989 marked an end to all things officially Python, but a new feature film looks to resurrect Chapman’s life story, as well as the golden moments from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman premièred at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where former Python Terry Jones found himself walking down nostalgia boulevard.
“It was easy and natural to hear Graham’s voice again. It felt like he’d just walked out of the door, really,” says Jones.
“The film is really all about Graham … so I escaped,” says Jones, in response to a question about looking back and the Python legacy.
“I don’t see it as a legacy, really,” he says. “I know people talk about it. But I have no idea what impact we had on comedy. We were working … and also, we were wondering whether anyone was going to laugh.”
Jones remembers the first episode they staged in the studio. “We had an audience of oldage pensioners who thought they were coming in to see a circus. Graham and I were doing the first sketch — the flying sheep sketch — and there was not a lot of reaction to it. Just bewildered pensioners,” Jones says.
Jones says he’s still not sure how to describe the Python sense of humour, or if there is such a thing. He says the whole thing was more of an experiment than a formula. “We were very keen to make it a different format, and that’s why I came up with sketches that would flow into each other. And if we could marry that with Terry Gilliam’s animation …”
A Liar’s Autobiography attempts to pick up on the experimental essence of the Python experience using different animation techniques, as well as a Greek chorus of Python monkeys.