3 minute read
COMEDY
ARTS For comedy icon Cleese, it’s all about the writing
by Martin Dunphy
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John Cleese has a dirty little secret. The comic actor known worldwide for his work in the groundbreaking 1960s British TV comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus has starred in dozens of films and television shows, but he prefers to write them rather than show his famous face.
Python’s hilarious and dark sketches might have earned Cleese and fellow cast members Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Terry Gilliam international accolades, but it also limited his writing.
“For me, the most exciting thing is to write as well as you can,” Cleese, 82, tells the Straight by phone in advance of a May 17 Vancouver appearance. “I can’t explain it. I know I have a greater sense of accomplishment writing than performing.”
Cleese’s 1970s TV comic tour de force, Fawlty Towers, not only gave him the chance to hone his writing chops, but it also led to probably his greatest professional recognition. However, he still preferred his previous Circus act for one reason.
“Python was much, much easier,” Cleese explained in his unmistakable clipped, middle-class British accent. “There were a lot of scenes I wasn’t in. With Fawlty Towers, I was in almost every scene for 35 minutes.
John Cleese has acted in, written for, or done cameos and voice work for more than 80 films in his 60-year career, but he says his greatest sense of accomplishment comes from his writing. It was much more demanding.”
But as a writer, he preferred the episodic storyline of Fawlty Towers to the relatively choppy waters of Python’s sketch comedy. “The main thing about doing a story is that it flows,” he said of the 12 episodes over two seasons (1976 and 1979) that he cowrote with then-wife and series costar Connie Booth.
As fun as it is to watch Cleese act out Basil Fawlty’s manic shenanigans, he credited his and Booth’s writing for the show’s acclaim.
“We spent six weeks writing every episode,” he revealed. “That was why it was so successful in the end. That was why I made so much time for writing.” And though he has starred in, done cameos or voice work for, and/or written or cowritten more than 80 films in his almost 60-year career, he can still find something to prefer about TV. “There are advantages and disadvantages to both of them,” Cleese said. “Television is always a bit of a last-minute rush. Films are great fun, but they take your life over.”
Cleese has toured Canada and the U.S. with one-man shows extensively during the past two decades. He shows clips, tells anecdotes, and takes audience questions.
He first came to Vancouver when he toured with Monty Python in the ’70s.
“I adore anything to do with B.C.,” Cleese avowed. “I’d rather perform in B.C. than anywhere in the world. I adore Victoria and Vancouver.
“I can still remember the first time I came to Vancouver, in 1974, I think. We started a tour in Canada. I remember sitting in Vancouver [outdoors] on a beautiful sunny day, and I was eating a Dungeness crab, and I remember thinking, ‘It doesn’t get better than this.’ ”
Cleese also recalled our trusting nature.
“It was so dreadfully hot, and I remember I just wanted a cold beer,” he said. “After the show, I was leaving and I opened the door and there was a mob of about 200 people. I said, ‘I’m not John Cleese, I’m his brother Colin. He will be out in a minute.’ And I walked right through the crowd. I couldn’t believe it.” g
John Cleese appears at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in An Evening of Exceptional Silliness on May 17.
SARAH ROA. PHOTO BY ERIN WALLACE
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