E-mail a friendEric Idle
original airdate April 18, 2005
An alum of the groundbreaking Monty Python troupe, Eric Idle writes, acts, directs and produces. He's also an accomplished guitar player and composer. Idle was born in England and attended Cambridge, where he belonged to the prestigious Footlights Club. He began his own TV series, Rutland Weekend Television, and has written several books, including Spamalot, on which Broadway's hot new musical is based. Idle was voted one of the top 50 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
Eric Idle
Tavis: I am pleased to welcome the very funny and multitalented Eric Idle to this program. The former 'Monty Python' star has brought the Pythons' most famous film to Broadway. As if you didn't know, the result is the smash hit 'Spamalot,' which sold a remarkable $20 million in advance ticket sales before opening last month. His latest book is called 'The Greedy Bastard Diary: A Comic Tour of America.' And speaking of America, back in 1974, a British series premiered right here on PBS called 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' a show that quickly became a cult classic.
Michael Palin: Can't we do something else for a change?
Eric Idle: Like someone who attacks you with a pointed stick.
John Cleese: Pointed sticks? Oh, oh, oh, we want to learn how to defend ourselves against pointed sticks, do we? Getting all high and mighty, eh? Fresh fruit not good enough for you, eh? Oh, oh, oh, oh. Well, I'll tell you something, my lad! When you're all walking home at night some homicidal maniac comes after you with a bunch of loganberries, don't come crying to me!
Tavis: Eric Idle, nice to have you on the program.
Idle: Nice to be here. Thank you.
Tavis: Welcome back to PBS.
Idle: Thank you.
Tavis: You recall those days in 1974?
Idle: Well, we were over by then. You know, we'd finished all the BBC shows, and then we were sort of resuscitated by PBS. Dallas, of all places, broke it. Which was fantastic for us. And we were really grateful to PBS, because it meant that it was accessible all over America, and several times. So people could find it, you know. It wasn't like being once on the network and then not on again. It was always on PBS throughout those years, so...
Tavis: Did you discover, given that reality, that there was, um, something different that Americans found funny as opposed to Europeans?
Idle: Well, it had only played in England, and we were always convinced that Americans will never get it. We thought they will never, ever understand 'Python.' There's no chance, so we even turned down selling the rights.
Tavis: Let me stop you right quick. Tell me why you thought Americans wouldn't get 'Python.'
Idle: Because it seemed so local. It seemed so about England. It seemed to be just about vicars and policemen, and, 'Funny people talk like that,' you know. And we thought, what will Americans possibly understand about that?
Tavis: Hey, I thought Benny Hill was funny when I was a kid growing up.
Idle: Well, Benny Hill's about breasts, really. Ha ha ha!
Tavis: Ha ha ha ha!
Idle: And 'Python's' about breasts and violence. So we added that extra, and that's 'cause we have an American animator, Gilliam, who put all that element in.
Tavis: Uh-huh. Um, so '74, being on PBS resuscitates--resuscitates 'Python.' Tell me--Take me back to the very beginning, even before the BBC days. How did you all come together, the six of you?
Idle: Well, we're sort of out of--We're both out of--We're out of Cambridge or Oxford, with the exception of the American, who's out of Orient--Occidental College...
Tavis: Right. Right.
Idle: locally. And we sort of met up in the milieu of David Frost Shows and writing for television. We'd all become television writers, and we had our kids show for a little while, which is very good training, called 'Do Not Adjust Your Set.' And then they gave us our own grownup show in 1969. The BBC said, 'Well, go on. Just do 13, and we-- Don't bother us.' And they didn't look at what we were doing. They didn't want to know, and we just were able to play with the toys.
Tavis: Tell me what you think resonated. I want to stay with this Python thing just for a second before I move to some of the other projects, and you've got so many projects you're working on. What made 'Monty Python' work so successfully in England?
Idle: Well, it didn't. It was very much a cult thing. It was on late at night, on Sunday nights, and people were supposed to be asleep or getting up for work next day, and it just snuck in. And sometimes they'd take it off. It was one of those things that people discovered for themselves. So it wasn't like a raging ratings hit. If we'd ever had to deal with ratings or executives we'd never have been on television.
Tavis: How would you describe the humor? I was talking to somebody today, a younger African-American who was unaware of 'Monty Python.' I was trying to explain what the humor was, and I wasn't sure that I captured it exactly. How would you describe the humor?
Idle: Well, we used to call it silly.
Tavis: That's one way to describe it. I should have tried that.
Idle: I think the other thing about it is it's very intelligent people being stupid, which is kind of a very attractive quality, where we're much dumber than we are, and that's kind of nice, I think. Because you're suddenly dealing with Proust, but you're being asked to summarize Proust in 20 words. So, it's going from high concept to stupidity and sight gag, too.
Tavis: I just want to stay with the line of questioning for a second only because it's occurred to me over the last few years, certainly, there have been any number of series out of England, specifically that American television has adopted. So I find that nowadays--maybe it wasn't the case back in 1974-- but I certainly find nowadays that there are more programs, not a long list, but certainly more programs that are being adopted now by American television that they're stealing from your neck of the woods.
Idle: Well, that's a result of cable, you know. There's just much more to fill, and we're cheap in England, as CBS discovered quite early on. But I think we were quite early. I don't think there had been any other television show from England that had caught on in such a way that we did. We were kind of the first of that. So we were lucky. We were fortunate.
Tavis: speaking of being fortunate, this Broadway hit is just that. It is a huge hit on Broadway. Did you expect this?
Idle: You know, I spent three years doing it, and I felt it would be successful. Otherwise you'd stop, you know what I mean? It's like you're gonna go, 'Somewhere along the line somebody's gonna find this funny.' And on my tour I was doing bits of 'The Holy Grail,' and they would laugh and we'd do the taunter, you know, the French taunter:
Tavis: I was about to ask you: What surprised you about the show? What did you not think that you were going to see that you did see or vice versa?
Idle: Well, we got a lot of visual stuff in it. We got a lot of costume and wardrobe. I mean, there's $12 million onstage. It's an extraordinary experience. And, you know, it ranges from the silly, throwing cows, to girls in very lovely costumes, which is always very attractive to me.
Tavis: I don't want to jump ahead. But are there other pieces of the Python routine that you think could also work well on Broadway now that you've seen what 'Spamalot' is doing?
Idle: I think it's possible, yes. I'd like to explore something else, just because it was a fun thing to do. I mean, we spent six months doing it, and that whole process is really exciting: to get very funny people like David Hyde Pierce and Hank Azaria and Tim Curry and to work with them and to make it better every day as you go in. You know, rewrite it overnight and come back in with some more stuff. That's what I live for. I love that, making shows.
Tavis: You mentioned that you're on tour a lot these days still. Tell me what your tour is like. If I came to see you do your standup, what is your tour like?
Idle: My tour is I tend to go and just talk to people, do some funny stuff as I come out, and then I'll do bits of old material, like I'll do 'Nudge, Nudge,' saying, 'You know what I mean? Nudge, nudge...'
Tavis: 'Wink, wink.'
Idle: And so I'll slip into character, and then I'll talk about it, and then I'll play guitar and play some songs. I have a band. And we'll sing some of the Python songs. Sometimes I put the words up and have the whole audience join in. It really-- It's vaudeville, really. It's like a revue tour.
Tavis: When did you know that you were funny?
Idle: Last week.
Tavis: No, I suspect it had to happen long before then.
Idle: I don't know that you know you're funny. You know that it's peculiar. You just do what you do. I think at boarding school I was quicker at saying things that made people laugh. And I think that's a defensive mechanism to stop them hitting you. It's a very good defense against bullies, because if they're laughing, they don't hit you.
Tavis: Exactly.
Idle: And so I think that's where it comes out of for me. And then after that, I just love making audiences laugh. I love standing onstage and seeing them go and having a good one-liner up your sleeve to knock them flat.
Tavis: Other than the guys hitting you and keeping the bullies off of you, when did you know, though, that this was your calling, that this was your vocation, something you were actually put here to do? To make us laugh, which is wonderful.
Idle: I think quite late on, actually. I think when I came to America I still was unsure about being funny 'cause you're in a group and in a group, nobody is going, 'Oh, you're really funny.' Everybody is going, 'No, I'll do that bit,' you know what I mean? So there's competition in a group. I think when I got here I found that I had a lot of comedian friends who really loved Python and said nice things about it and how it changed their lives and things. So I think about then, I realized, oh, we must have been quite funny then.
Tavis: Well, I'm glad you figured that out. The rest of us did some years ago. Speaking of being funny, this new book 'Eric Idle, The Greedy Bastard Diary: A Comic Tour of America.' Talk to me about this.
Idle: Well this is something that arose from my tour. I was on the Greedy Bastard tour. And every day-- We went across America: 15,000 miles from Boston, we went up and down Canada and around, eventually ending up back in L.A., 49 dates in all these cities. And we'd pull into a place and set the show up, and we'd do a show and make 'em laugh and then get back into these rock 'n' roll buses and drive off into the night and wake up in some darkened alley in some other place. And it was a very good way to see America, especially by night.
Tavis: I don't know how to take that as an American. I don't know how to take that--our place is great to see by night.
Idle: No, it's a different place at night. I mean, you go into a city like--no, it's true--a city like Washington, and there's a daytime Washington. At nighttime, the street life is unbelievable. I mean, the whole streets full of activity and certain kinds of people doing certain kind of activities. I had never seen that sort of life before because I'm asleep by 3:00 in the morning, you know. So it was an eye-opening tour in those respects. So what I'd do is I'd write back every morning, I'd write about 1,000 words every day and I'd stick it up on Python Online, which was a website. So people were following the tour as I went. And if I was grumpy, which I was most mornings, I'd write about how grumpy and horny I was.
Tavis: Miserable. Since you mentioned that, I don't want to forget this. So when I go back to England again, I never made the comparison until you mentioned it and made me think about it, Should I see England by day or by night? What is better?
Idle: It's very small so you can see it by both. A couple of nights, you're there.
Tavis: This is just an insider's question, but I'm curious. How was the writing of the book, which is comedy, different from the writing of a Broadway show, which is also comedy? There's music and whatnot in the other, but as a process how was it different for you?
Idle: Well, this is a different kind of book for me to write because I'm writing about myself. The diary form is very intimate. And I do a lot of reminiscences. I do a lot of things about my friends who've died and, you know, things about my life. It's close to being an autobiography. I just didn't want to write an autobiography. It's a sort of sneaky way of writing one. 'Spamalot' is, you know, a process of where you try and take a movie and adapt it for a stage, and so it has its own parameters in different ways of making it work. It's more about rehearsal and what does Mike Nichols think and what does the choreographer need here? It's a series of answering a series of demands and necessities, whereas that is its own self-created form.
Tavis: You got a new DVD out. I mentioned this guy's really busy. 'The Ruttles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch,' the follow-up your fans have been waiting for. Before I ask you to tell me what this is about... I don't know if you saw this story or not, you've been so busy on tour, maybe you didn't. But a couple of weeks ago, I think both the L.A. Times and The New York Times did pretty big features on how much DVD sales represent now for studios. Something like 60% of movie sales now come in as a result of DVDs, so you're doing the right thing.
Idle: That's because no television would buy it. I couldn't even sell it to PBS.
Tavis: But you know what, I love PBS, but you're gonna make a whole lot more money in DVD sales anyway. This is the follow-up, though?
Idle: Yeah, it is. It's just something I made for myself, again. I did it about three years ago. I just took a camera, and I'd start to interview people about the effect of the Ruttles on the world today. And I'd go to people like Tom Hanks and Gary Shandling, and then I went to rock stars like Bowie and James Taylor and Bonnie Raitt, and it was just improvised with them, you know. I'd be in character and just got them to talk about the Ruttles, you know, and Salman Rushdie. And it became about the effect of the Ruttles, how they changed the world.
Tavis: Well, if you are an Eric Idle fan--I know many of you are--there's enough of him to go around: 'Spamalot' on Broadway; 'The Ruttles 2,' the DVD; Eric Idle's new book. So there's a lot of Eric Idle to go around. This guy is not idle. Ba-da-bump. Eric, nice to see you.
Idle: Thank you!
Tavis: And I love that suit, by the way.
Idle: Thank you very much. It's English.
Tavis: It's English. I've got to get me one of those English suits. Just a reminder, starting April 29th I'm back on public radio, on PRI--Public Radio International. Check your local listings. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching. And as always, keep the faith.
Idle:
I feel good
I feel bad
I feel happy
I feel bad
I might look, ahh,
I must be in love...
Back to April 18, 2005