The comedy legend on Monty Python’s legacy, political correctness, and the funniest joke he ever told.
“I want to murder this thing,” says John Cleese, fiddling with a medical contraption that’s attached to his leg. The 77-year-old founding member of the Monty Python comedy troupe — arguably humanity’s greatest comedic endeavor — and the star and co-creator of perennial best-sitcom-ever contender Fawlty Towers, is in his office on a cool London summer morning, going about things with what I suspect is his usual air of amused irritation. “I’ve got a leg infection and now have a fucking cube” — Cleese, sitting in a brown leather chair, pulls up a leg of his jeans and taps on a pump with his index finger — “sucking out the scunge. It’s quite annoying.”
So, it seems, are a great many things for the charmingly cantankerous Cleese, who still performs regularly, both onscreen and onstage, the latter typically as a one-man show. “We’re living in the age of assholes now. It’s breathtaking,” he says, eyes wide with wonder. “They’re running everything.” His leg beeps. “The cube does that when it’s been unplugged,” Cleese explains, before disconnecting the device entirely. “That’s much better,” he says, stretching out. “Now let’s talk.”
I have a bit of a morbid question.
Please.
You’re 77 years old.
I am.
You have a scunge pump attached to your leg.
I do.
Is death funny?
It is. Death is certainly present in my life, and there’s humor to be mined from it. Somebody was saying to me last week that you can’t talk about death these days without people thinking you’ve done something absolutely antisocial. But death is part of the deal. Imagine if, before you came to exist on Earth, God said, “You can choose to stay up here with me, watching reruns and eating ice cream, or you can be born. But if you pick being born, at the end of your life you have to die — that’s nonnegotiable. So which do you pick?” I think most people would say, “I’ll give living a whirl.” It’s sad, but the whirl includes dying. That’s something I accept. (...)
I don’t know much about contemporary comedy. I don’t watch any. I’m 77. I will almost certainly be dead within 10 years — maybe I’ll get 15. So to sit down to watch a sitcom seems to be a rather futile way of passing the time. It’s as simple as that. If I have a free evening, I’ll read, because there are so many things I don’t begin to understand and that I’d like to try and get a handle on before I’m dead. I’d rather do that than watch comedy.
Given your own disinterest in watching comedy, is it at all weird to you that people still want to talk about Monty Python?
The more interesting thing to me is seeing how different types of people respond to Monty Python. People always say the English have a different sense of humor than Americans, but I think America itself has two senses of humor. There are the folk in the Midwest and in the South who are much more literal-minded in what they laugh about, and then once you go to the coasts you get an audience that’s totally at home with irony and absurdity.
What accounts for that difference?
To be perfectly honest, the people on the coasts and in the big cities are a lot smarter. Whenever you’re out in the sticks with a slower audience, it’s not that they enjoy the comedy less, because they’re still laughing, it’s that they don’t enjoy it as quickly. It’s always a bit disconcerting when people are laughing three seconds into the next joke because they just got the last one. (...)
There’s wonderful humor everywhere. I’ll give you an example: I was in Miami, only about four or five months ago, and I had a massage in the hotel spa. Afterward they called me: “Mr. Cleese, you left your shoes in the spa. Can we send them up to your room?” I said, “Oh, how nice of you.” So, five minutes later, knock knock, someone opens the door. “Mr. Cleese, here’s your shoes.” “Thank you.” “Could I see some form of identification?” “Now, you know I’m Mr. Cleese because you just called me Mr. Cleese, and you know the room that Mr. Cleese was in because you came to my room number. So what are we doing asking for identification?” And the guy said, “Well, I’m sorry, I still need to see some form of identification.” So I went over and I got a copy of my autobiography and I said, “That’s me there on the cover. And down there it says ‘John Cleese.’” You know what he said to me? He said, “I’m sorry, that’s not good enough.” You couldn’t write something as wonderful as that.
Does comedy have any surprises for you anymore?
Not many. Jesus is said to have never laughed in the Bible, and I think it’s because laughter contains an element of surprise — something about the human condition that you haven’t spotted yet — and Jesus was rarely surprised. I still laugh, but many of the things that would have made me laugh 30 years ago — paradoxes about human nature — wouldn’t make me laugh anymore because I just believe them to be true. They’re not revelations.
by David Marchese, Vulture | Read more:
Image: Bobby Doherty
“I want to murder this thing,” says John Cleese, fiddling with a medical contraption that’s attached to his leg. The 77-year-old founding member of the Monty Python comedy troupe — arguably humanity’s greatest comedic endeavor — and the star and co-creator of perennial best-sitcom-ever contender Fawlty Towers, is in his office on a cool London summer morning, going about things with what I suspect is his usual air of amused irritation. “I’ve got a leg infection and now have a fucking cube” — Cleese, sitting in a brown leather chair, pulls up a leg of his jeans and taps on a pump with his index finger — “sucking out the scunge. It’s quite annoying.”
So, it seems, are a great many things for the charmingly cantankerous Cleese, who still performs regularly, both onscreen and onstage, the latter typically as a one-man show. “We’re living in the age of assholes now. It’s breathtaking,” he says, eyes wide with wonder. “They’re running everything.” His leg beeps. “The cube does that when it’s been unplugged,” Cleese explains, before disconnecting the device entirely. “That’s much better,” he says, stretching out. “Now let’s talk.”
I have a bit of a morbid question.
Please.
You’re 77 years old.
I am.
You have a scunge pump attached to your leg.
I do.
Is death funny?
It is. Death is certainly present in my life, and there’s humor to be mined from it. Somebody was saying to me last week that you can’t talk about death these days without people thinking you’ve done something absolutely antisocial. But death is part of the deal. Imagine if, before you came to exist on Earth, God said, “You can choose to stay up here with me, watching reruns and eating ice cream, or you can be born. But if you pick being born, at the end of your life you have to die — that’s nonnegotiable. So which do you pick?” I think most people would say, “I’ll give living a whirl.” It’s sad, but the whirl includes dying. That’s something I accept. (...)
I don’t know much about contemporary comedy. I don’t watch any. I’m 77. I will almost certainly be dead within 10 years — maybe I’ll get 15. So to sit down to watch a sitcom seems to be a rather futile way of passing the time. It’s as simple as that. If I have a free evening, I’ll read, because there are so many things I don’t begin to understand and that I’d like to try and get a handle on before I’m dead. I’d rather do that than watch comedy.
Given your own disinterest in watching comedy, is it at all weird to you that people still want to talk about Monty Python?
The more interesting thing to me is seeing how different types of people respond to Monty Python. People always say the English have a different sense of humor than Americans, but I think America itself has two senses of humor. There are the folk in the Midwest and in the South who are much more literal-minded in what they laugh about, and then once you go to the coasts you get an audience that’s totally at home with irony and absurdity.What accounts for that difference?
To be perfectly honest, the people on the coasts and in the big cities are a lot smarter. Whenever you’re out in the sticks with a slower audience, it’s not that they enjoy the comedy less, because they’re still laughing, it’s that they don’t enjoy it as quickly. It’s always a bit disconcerting when people are laughing three seconds into the next joke because they just got the last one. (...)
There’s wonderful humor everywhere. I’ll give you an example: I was in Miami, only about four or five months ago, and I had a massage in the hotel spa. Afterward they called me: “Mr. Cleese, you left your shoes in the spa. Can we send them up to your room?” I said, “Oh, how nice of you.” So, five minutes later, knock knock, someone opens the door. “Mr. Cleese, here’s your shoes.” “Thank you.” “Could I see some form of identification?” “Now, you know I’m Mr. Cleese because you just called me Mr. Cleese, and you know the room that Mr. Cleese was in because you came to my room number. So what are we doing asking for identification?” And the guy said, “Well, I’m sorry, I still need to see some form of identification.” So I went over and I got a copy of my autobiography and I said, “That’s me there on the cover. And down there it says ‘John Cleese.’” You know what he said to me? He said, “I’m sorry, that’s not good enough.” You couldn’t write something as wonderful as that.
Does comedy have any surprises for you anymore?
Not many. Jesus is said to have never laughed in the Bible, and I think it’s because laughter contains an element of surprise — something about the human condition that you haven’t spotted yet — and Jesus was rarely surprised. I still laugh, but many of the things that would have made me laugh 30 years ago — paradoxes about human nature — wouldn’t make me laugh anymore because I just believe them to be true. They’re not revelations.
by David Marchese, Vulture | Read more:
Image: Bobby Doherty
