Oct. 28--Comedian John Cleese, the former Python (Monty), former Fawlty ("Towers"), former defense minister in British Prime Minister John Major's cabinet (according to press materials; must verify), has added to his credits book writer. "So, Anyway ..." (2014, Random House) is the title of his autobiography; Cleese will be in Chicago on Nov. 5 and 6 at the Athenaeum Theatre to discuss the book and take questions from the audience.
"And if I could make a request," he said during a recent phone interview, "if you do ask a question, please don't make it 'oh, we love you so much.' It's boring. If the questions are a bit rude it goes better. Such as, perhaps, 'why can't you stay married?' "
The evenings will be moderated (let's hope he's up to it) by Roe Conn from WGN-AM radio. And as Cleese halfway acknowledges in his request, they'll likely be largely attended by his fans. Cleese is perhaps the most recognizable of the six Pythons from the original Monty Python British comedic troupe, and Python fans can be on the devotional side. In the decades since "Monty Python's Flying Circus" aired on the BBC from 1969 to 1974, for instance, a computer language has been named Python; a woolly lemur (Avahi cleesei) has been named after Cleese; "Pythonesque" has become a term for a particular style of humor. If you have someone in your home or workplace who can (and will) quote long passages at you from Python movies like "Holy Grail" ("strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government ..."), you're not alone.
For the record, Cleese, who is 76, has been married four times. His first wife was Connie Booth, who became his co-star on the late-'70s British TV series "Fawlty Towers." He spoke from his hotel in Richmond, Va., where he was staying under an assumed name, not an unusual step for a celebrity. The instructions were to ask for the room of Sergeant Betty Volestrangler.
Cleese has always considered himself a writer, never an improviser, and a live performer initially with trepidation, he says. "I had such anxiety that I'd always want everything planned out in advance."
The Athenaeum sessions will be more open-ended and unplanned.
Some of the original "Flying Circus" sketches have the free-flowing feel of being improvised, but they were always scripted. Cleese notes in "So, Anyway" that the writing sessions, though, often did feel like improvisation. His skills as a physical comedian -- see "The Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch (since turned into an app; www.thejohncleese.com) -- also came later.
"But take something like 'The Fish Slapping Dance,' " he says, another sketch from the "Flying Circus" days. In this one, Cleese and fellow Python Michael Palin are wearing pith helmets. In the style of a traditional folk dance, Palin dances up to Cleese, slaps him lightly in the face with two small pilchards and dances back, and repeats several times. The music pauses. Cleese pulls an enormous halibut from his pants and knocks Palin sideways.
"It's maybe 20 seconds," Cleese says. He and Eric Idle play a video of that sketch for another tour he's just wrapping up, a "Python" retrospective titled "Together Again at Last ... For the Very First Time."
"And we laugh at it every night," he says. Physical comedy can be funny over and over, he says, whereas once you've heard a written joke, you've heard it. "I think it's like this, if you see a juggler, or a skilled conjurer doing some very good sleight-of-hand, or even some great moment in sport, it can bring a laugh, just from the sheer pleasure of seeing it."
Cleese and Idle have nonetheless discovered that a lot of written material from decades ago can seem fresh again. There's a little-known sketch called "The Bookshop" that actually comes from a Python precursor called "At Last the 1948 Show," that Cleese wrote with Graham Chapman, who died in 1989. What begins as a pleasant exchange between a bookseller (Cleese) and a customer (Idle) becomes ever more strained as Idle's customer makes more and more difficult requests. Such as for "Olsen's Standard Book of British Birds," the expurgated version.
Cleese: "I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."
Idle: "The expurgated version."
Cleese: "The expurgated version of "Olsen's Standard Book of British Birds"?
Idle: "The one without the gannet ..."
Cleese: "The one without the gannet? They've all got the gannet! It's a standard British bird!"
Idle: "Well, I don't like them. They wet their nests."
Cleese cites another one about a memory-training school. "It gets terrific laughs and I think it's from 1967, that's going back 48 years ago," he says. A fellow teaches memory using word associations, he says, "only he doesn't have a very good memory, is the thing. Also he tends to make some strange associations."
He laughs. "Eric and I get it right most nights," he says. "One night we had to refer to the script -- which got laughs all the more."
Readers of "So, Anyway" might be thrown by one thing. Cleese carefully covers his years of comedic development, including his first real taste of show business with the Cambridge Footlights group while attending the university, but the chronology of the book ends just about where Python begins -- the years ahead and later projects such as the 1988 movie "A Fish Called Wanda," which Cleese co-wrote and starred in, get only occasional references.
Cleese says he's writing a sequel. "Not just yet though," he says. He has a few other current projects -- including a stage version of "Fawlty Towers," "though why anyone would get up and go out to the theater to see something they've got in a DVD at home escapes me," he says, and he's translating and adapting a French farce by Georges Feydeau. But there will be a next book about the Python years, when, he says, his agents tell him he can make the most money from it.
About that term -- "Pythonesque" -- if he had to explain it, does he have a definition?
"Oh yes," he says. "People used to ask me that a lot. And I'd say, 'It's about this long,' and hold up my hands about the size of a good-sized fish. And I think it's orange, and diamond-shaped, roughly." He laughs. "Really I don't know. It was just our way of being silly."
In any case, his fans know what it means.
A last word about those fans: He says people do often say things like, "Oh, we love you," he says. "What am I supposed to do next? Sometimes I say something like, 'Oh, I know I'm wonderful,' and send it up."
But "I do rather like my fans," he says. "They're always rather bright, and well-mannered. They're nice people. I think their sense of ridiculousness gives them a nice perspective, it doesn't allow any pomposity. I'd put my fans up against anyone else's, you know."
dgeorge@tribpub.com
'Not Dead Yet: Life Laughs from So, Anyway'
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Nov. 6
Where: Athenaeum main stage, 2936 N. Southport Ave.
Tickets: $56.75- $126 (VIP tickets) at athenaeumtheatre.org
