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Silly Walks,” with their in-jokes and memorable catchphrases, are now
firmly ingrained into the contemporary pop cultural lexicon.
The six Pythons, all aged under 30 in 1969, helped foster the evolution
of the television writer-performer, an artist who has “the intelligence of
the former and the authority of the latter” (Hewison, 8). Cleese is often
seen as the spokesman of the group, but he regularly extols their innovative
style of creative collaboration, referring to it as “Democracy gone
mad” (quoted in Hewison, 13). Idle describes this unique collaborative
process, an early incarnation of the now standard “writing meeting,” in
similar terms: “Everybody was mad, but in a slightly different way, each
had his own element of madness. But together we made this perfectly
mad person” (quoted in Cleese et al., 136). The Pythons revealed a strong
interest in contemporary critical commentary in their choice of subject
matter, with figures of political and cultural authority serving as frequent
targets of their goads and parodies, yet Jones characterizes the Pythons’
comic method as more progressive and less heavy-handed than earlier
satire: “We weren’t lampooning, we weren’t actually tying it to people of
the moment or events of the moment, so it was hopefully kind of zoning
in on human nature more, but it was still defined by the society we found
ourselves in and rebelled against” (quoted in Cleese et al., 188). Monty
Python quickly became a cult phenomenon, especially among college
students, young people, and other hipsters.
During the four-series run of the television show (from 1969 to 1974),
which reached over four million viewers at its peak, Python Productions
branched out with books, record albums, and even live stage shows. So it
was only natural for the Pythons to turn their attention to films, and their
growing popularity at home and abroad guaranteed a successful transition
from the small to the big screen. The Pythons’ first film, And Now for
Something Completely Different (1971), was a simple collection of the best
sketches from the first two series of the television show, reshot on 35mm
for this film, and aimed primarily at broadening their appeal in the American
market (Cleese et al., 192–9). But the Python approach really came
into its own with their second feature film, Monty Python and the Holy
Grail (1975), a much more ambitious project, both financially and artistically
(Hewison, 38–9). Since British movie studios were not interested
in producing an original film by the unproven and unpredictable Pythons,
most of the financing came from an unlikely group of supporters and
celebrity fans, including members of the rock bands Led Zeppelin, Pink
Floyd, and Genesis. This was not surprising, since the Pythons’ comedy
records had been issued on rock and roll labels, so as Palin notes, “we
182 MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)