Comedy legend John Cleese speaks about Monty Python, a Fish Called Wanda and why nudity is so funny.
Daniel Ziffer, The Age, reports
JOHN Cleese has made the world quake with laughter for more than four decades.
The shorthand is enough to set people off: Dead Parrot, Cheese Shop, the Minister for Silly Walks, the Spanish Inquisition. As part of the Monty Python group, on TV's Fawlty Towers, in films such as A Fish Called Wanda and even as a James Bond sidekick, he's honed his skills: his wit, persona and comedic timing.
To find out that wasn't what audiences wanted at all.
With his one-man show, An Evening with John Cleese, the 72-year-old is shifting around some large slabs of his scripted routines to make room for a free-form discussion with Melbourne audiences. "They love the interactive part. And it used to piss me off!" he said. "I would go out and do this material that was very carefully written and quite carefully polished and edited . . . and then at the end I'd traipse around the stage and they'd insult me and I'd insult them and they all said: "Oow, the Q&A was the best bit!"
So Cleese is giving people what they want. His head on a plate.
"It's a manifestation of the celebrity culture, that what people want now is . . . to get as real a sense of you as they can," he said. "God knows why, but they do. In the old days a star would come out and do a performance [as though] in a glass case, now they want to find out: 'What's he actually like?' "
It is not hard to tell what Cleese thinks. The tall comedian who has co-written books on psychology and is moving to Monte Carlo will happily discuss whatever you like.
Hear his thoughts on America — "It has become the laughing stock of the world"; the democratic system — "It doesn't work because people are worried about tomorrow's headlines"; and his idea for the London Olympics opening ceremony — a man walking out and saying, "Come back in 20 years when we've sorted our problems out" — and you might be concerned that Cleese's wit has been hardened by time.
Yet he positively giggles when asked about why so many of his famous roles have him, a pale Englishman, naked as the day he was born.
"People's attitude to nudity is funny," he says, struggling to finish his sentence, "just because, it's a fairly natural state after all."
Cleese famously stripped, while lustily reciting Russian, to inflame the character played by Jamie Lee Curtis in . . . Wanda. But his nude comedy career started even earlier. In 1974's Romance with a Double Bass he had to strip down in front of a camera crew.
"It was like going through a sort of emotional sound barrier," he said. "Could hardly do it. And two days later I remember the director saying to me, 'OK John, let's do the next shot'. And I remember glancing down to see if my shorts were on or not. It was so harmless."
So can we expect another look on this tour? "Well," he said wryly. "It's the best way to get people into the theatre."
Something that clearly amuses him is the battering the Murdoch family has taken during Britain's Leveson inquiry into newspaper culture, practices and ethics.
"There are really disgusting creatures there," he said. "I mean the guy who was recently put in charge of the theatrical criticism of the Daily Mail is a man — like most critics he's never written, never directed, never acted, never done anything like that — and on his website he describes his main job as 'character defenestration or assassination'. He describes himself quite proudly."
Cleese has been hounded in recent years. His marriage to third wife, Alyce Faye Eichelberger, ended with a $24 million settlement and a world-trotting carpeting called The Alimony Tour. Then he began his relationship with Jennifer Wade, 31 years his junior.
"They will write completely unsubstantiated things and they don't bother to check anything . . . that's upsetting," he said. "It's much, much harder to run a relationship when you have a press that is as unscrupulous as the British press. I've got off very lightly because they've never really got me for anything. But people have had their lives utterly ruined by these people."
So, Melbourne Life has to ask, why do so many people profess a desire to be famous?
"I think it's to have a sense of significance and, almost worse than that, to have a sense of meaning in their lives," he said, deeply and with some regret.
"Now most people do not want an ordinary life in which they do a job well, earn the respect of their collaborators and competitors, bring up a family and have friends. That's not enough any more, and I think that is absolutely tragic — and I'm not exaggerating — that people feel like a decent, ordinary fun life is no longer enough."
However for Cleese, his advancing age has given him the clarity that things might just be all right. "I think one of the things I've discovered is — and I'm being completely serious — as I've got older is that almost nobody knows what they're talking about," he said. "Of course we're still talking and we're having fun but you have to realise that in terms of truth or reality, most of it is completely valueless."
Completely valueless fun. Sounds like laughter to me.
An Evening with John Cleese at the Comedy Theatre, March 12-17; and the Princess Theatre, March 19-24. For tickets, visit: ticketmaster.com.au
JOHN Cleese has made the world quake with laughter for more than four decades.
The shorthand is enough to set people off: Dead Parrot, Cheese Shop, the Minister for Silly Walks, the Spanish Inquisition. As part of the Monty Python group, on TV's Fawlty Towers, in films such as A Fish Called Wanda and even as a James Bond sidekick, he's honed his skills: his wit, persona and comedic timing.
To find out that wasn't what audiences wanted at all.
With his one-man show, An Evening with John Cleese, the 72-year-old is shifting around some large slabs of his scripted routines to make room for a free-form discussion with Melbourne audiences. "They love the interactive part. And it used to piss me off!" he said. "I would go out and do this material that was very carefully written and quite carefully polished and edited . . . and then at the end I'd traipse around the stage and they'd insult me and I'd insult them and they all said: "Oow, the Q&A was the best bit!"
So Cleese is giving people what they want. His head on a plate.
"It's a manifestation of the celebrity culture, that what people want now is . . . to get as real a sense of you as they can," he said. "God knows why, but they do. In the old days a star would come out and do a performance [as though] in a glass case, now they want to find out: 'What's he actually like?' "
It is not hard to tell what Cleese thinks. The tall comedian who has co-written books on psychology and is moving to Monte Carlo will happily discuss whatever you like.
Hear his thoughts on America — "It has become the laughing stock of the world"; the democratic system — "It doesn't work because people are worried about tomorrow's headlines"; and his idea for the London Olympics opening ceremony — a man walking out and saying, "Come back in 20 years when we've sorted our problems out" — and you might be concerned that Cleese's wit has been hardened by time.
Yet he positively giggles when asked about why so many of his famous roles have him, a pale Englishman, naked as the day he was born.
"People's attitude to nudity is funny," he says, struggling to finish his sentence, "just because, it's a fairly natural state after all."
Cleese famously stripped, while lustily reciting Russian, to inflame the character played by Jamie Lee Curtis in . . . Wanda. But his nude comedy career started even earlier. In 1974's Romance with a Double Bass he had to strip down in front of a camera crew.
"It was like going through a sort of emotional sound barrier," he said. "Could hardly do it. And two days later I remember the director saying to me, 'OK John, let's do the next shot'. And I remember glancing down to see if my shorts were on or not. It was so harmless."
So can we expect another look on this tour? "Well," he said wryly. "It's the best way to get people into the theatre."
Something that clearly amuses him is the battering the Murdoch family has taken during Britain's Leveson inquiry into newspaper culture, practices and ethics.
"There are really disgusting creatures there," he said. "I mean the guy who was recently put in charge of the theatrical criticism of the Daily Mail is a man — like most critics he's never written, never directed, never acted, never done anything like that — and on his website he describes his main job as 'character defenestration or assassination'. He describes himself quite proudly."
Cleese has been hounded in recent years. His marriage to third wife, Alyce Faye Eichelberger, ended with a $24 million settlement and a world-trotting carpeting called The Alimony Tour. Then he began his relationship with Jennifer Wade, 31 years his junior.
"They will write completely unsubstantiated things and they don't bother to check anything . . . that's upsetting," he said. "It's much, much harder to run a relationship when you have a press that is as unscrupulous as the British press. I've got off very lightly because they've never really got me for anything. But people have had their lives utterly ruined by these people."
So, Melbourne Life has to ask, why do so many people profess a desire to be famous?
"I think it's to have a sense of significance and, almost worse than that, to have a sense of meaning in their lives," he said, deeply and with some regret.
"Now most people do not want an ordinary life in which they do a job well, earn the respect of their collaborators and competitors, bring up a family and have friends. That's not enough any more, and I think that is absolutely tragic — and I'm not exaggerating — that people feel like a decent, ordinary fun life is no longer enough."
However for Cleese, his advancing age has given him the clarity that things might just be all right. "I think one of the things I've discovered is — and I'm being completely serious — as I've got older is that almost nobody knows what they're talking about," he said. "Of course we're still talking and we're having fun but you have to realise that in terms of truth or reality, most of it is completely valueless."
Completely valueless fun. Sounds like laughter to me.
An Evening with John Cleese at the Comedy Theatre, March 12-17; and the Princess Theatre, March 19-24. For tickets, visit: ticketmaster.com.au
No comments:
Post a Comment