A Python learns to fly
“He’s so funny because he never wanted to be liked. That gives him a certain fascinating, arrogant freedom.”
Eric Idle once said this about his former Monty Python-mate John Cleese in an interview with the Toronto Star. Idle’s comment captures perfectly the air of haughty disinterest in social niceties that, along with a tendency to explode into hilarious paroxysms of impotent rage, has been Cleese’s comedic signature throughout his career.
In his most iconic performances — in Python, in the note-perfect sitcom Fawlty Towers, in the equally note-perfect film A Fish Called Wanda and in the more memorable of his many TV and movie cameos — Cleese stares down from his formidable six-and-a-half feet with barely suppressed contempt.
Even his milder characters hum with impatience. If Michael Palin gave Python its sweetness, Cleese provided the acid.
True to form, Cleese makes few efforts to charm his readers in So, Anyway . . ., a memoir about his early, mostly pre-Python days.
He’d rather focus on getting the facts down and maybe settle the odd score in the process. Of course, for his fans, that lack of ingratiation is exactly the point: he charms with chilliness.
Cleese demonstrates very little sentimentality about his small-town childhood. Or about his parents. (“Mother said that as a baby I never cried — I probably thought that if I did she might appear.”)
His first school was “a real stinker” run by a “solitary, curt, menacing old crone” who was also, according to the author, a “sour old cow” and a “heinous old bat.”
Cleese, it should be noted, spent only one day at that school before being moved to another. Clearly, he holds a grudge.
Life as a performer seemed to happen to Cleese without his doing much to chase it: he admits it was a toss-up at first whether he’d end up working in comedy or as a lawyer.
His appearances in his school’s touring satirical revue led to a stint as a Broadway bit-player, which led to writing and acting on various BBC TV and radio productions, which led to the Flying Circus.
He depicts the formation of Monty Python as very nearly an afterthought: he and Graham Chapman, his friend and writing partner, liked the work being done by Idle, Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, and so pitched the BBC on a new show created and performed by the six of them.
At that point, they had no name in mind, or even a format. Within a year, they were throwing comedic bombs through the windows of British culture.
There is no overarching theme to Cleese’s reminiscences, aside from his slow climb toward success and fame. He occasionally pauses to muse about the nature of his profession: “The fact is that it is exceedingly difficult to write really good comedy,” he writes.
“Those who can do it possess a very rare talent.”
Which sounds arrogant, until you realize he doesn’t include himself in that category — at least not always. (He admits that he has only written one good script in his life: the one for Wanda.)
Non-performing life gets a shorter shrift, though we do get the genuinely touching story of his courtship of the actress Connie Booth, who became his first wife, and who would later help create and co-star in Fawlty Towers.
Their marriage fell apart in 1978, but he writes about her with genuine affection.
Cleese references Python throughout the book, but spends little time rehashing that famous past, preferring instead to jump ahead, in the book’s final pages, to the group’s hugely successful reunion concerts at London’s O2 stadium this past summer.
True to form, he describes the shows as enjoyable, and yet describes standing onstage and wondering, “How is it possible that I’m not feeling the slightest bit excited?”
It might’ve been nice to have dug a little deeper into this inner conflict, but that would be very un-Cleese-ian. Nathan Whitlock is a writer and editor in Toronto.