This interview with Python troupe member and Oxford alum Terry Jones was conducted by Alyce Wilson on February 18, 1992, as part of her undergraduate honors thesis at Penn State University, The Oxbridge Mafia and The Second City Players: Two Comedy Schools and How They Interacted with the Media. Previously excerpted in the pages of Completely Different, it appears here in its entirety with the author's permission.

[preliminaries]

A: ...theatre club going about putting a review together?

T: The Oxford Experimental Theatre Club? Well, what did we do, I seem to remember going along to auditions and now I suppose they said whoever wants to write so I think that was the first time I ever started writing actually and we would just write and rehearse the next week. We set them up and did one review in a tent, first review I did was in a tent, it was called "Loitering With Intent" and in that show we did one scene, it was a slapstick number, sort of doing slapstick jokes as if they were a serious lecture, and academic lecture--which we later on did in Python, as a matter of fact.

A: In the Amnesty International Concert...

T: That's right, yeah. I think we did in the Python show, as well, used to close the first half with it, I think, anyway we did it in Oxford and we did the review up in Edinburgh Festival, yeah.

A: Do you think the process of putting those reviews together influenced your later comedy writing at all?

T: Yeah, well what happened was we used to do cabaret as well. That was really the starting ground--it was you and a mate. In Michael's case it was Mike Palin and Robert Hewison, they used to get together and do cabaret, and they would do it at the Union and they would do it at Balls and things--May Balls and things. And I used to do cabaret with a chap called Mike Wynn Jones (?) and so that was a kind of training ground and the review at the end of the year was where all going together and doing things as a group. It certainly meant, you know, we were doing traditional sketches with beginnings, middles, and ends--sort of concept sketches--and occasional quickies. Sometimes there would be a song thrown in as well.

A: So it was basically a musical review?

T: Yeah, not much, we were very much influenced at the time by Beyond the Fringe--Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennet, Dudley Moore, and Peter Cook.

A: So was that your major influence at the time?

T: Yeah, although except I had never seen them, but that was the style we were doing. It was always a sort of four minute or five minute a go kind of thing.

A: What about what the Cambridge Footlights were doing, did that have any affect on what you were doing?

T: Well, not really, because we didn't really have much cross fertilization except at the Edinburgh festival where we sort of occasionally might see each other. Certainly one festival we all got together and we staged what we called rejects night and after our review, which used to be late at night, the Cambridge Footlights did their earlier I think, and we all got together on the stage with another group from another review and read out sketches that we'd written but hadn't been able to finish. We had a big dustbin in the middle of the room and we'd all go up and read these things in turn and when we got to the end when it ran out of steam or when the audience stopped laughing we'd just scrumple them up and throw them into the dustbin. That was sort of an extra show we put on very late at night and didn't charge anybody.

A: What about American comedy? Would you say you've been at all influenced by anything that has been done in America?

T: Oh, yes. My sort of hero, I suppose, is Buster Keaton, who is as American as you can be, and Preston Sturgess is a great hero of mine, too, as a writer and a filmmaker. His, that kind of fast dialogue comedy is something I dearly love to do. And now Woody Allen, and all that. But in those days I hadn't seen Woody Allen, going right back to the early sixties. I don't know really. As a kid I used to watch Danny Kaye films and think it was watching Danny Kaye that made me sort of think, "oh wow, I want to go into movies."

A: So it was back then when you pretty much decided that you were interested in that...?

T: I can certainly remember sitting and watching Danny Kaye films and Abbot and Costello. (Cannot understand) Danny Kaye's something and this is what I want to do.

A: Would you say, from your experience, that the people who come from Oxford and Cambridge Universities at about the same time as you did had a particular philosophy of comedy?

T: No, I don't think there was a particular one. Certainly the first review I did in Oxford, and I think that it was similar in Cambridge at that time, was very much influenced by Beyond the Fringe as far as it tended to be rather satirical--it was based sort of on observations of current trends and what was happening. But then, by that time, by the next year when Mike Palin and myself and a chap called Doug Fisher did a review it was much more absurdist, and I think our, there was a change from being a satirical type of review to becoming much more absurd. Which was sort of my year, really, was that change over--so it was changing at the time, you know.

A: From the angry young men movement to a more broad...

T: Yeah, you can say that--from a satirical thing to more sort of a fantastic, absurdist comedy.

A: So would you say that this philosophy of comedy, however undeveloped it was, changed when you started writing for television?

T: No, I think it was, well I mean, it changed as far as the kinds of things we were originally writing were different. The first things that Mike and I, the first things we were writing were scripts for Vos Conway, the Billy Cotton Batton show, Ken Dodd. They were just like the Ken Dodd show kind of thing. By the time we got to writing our own stuff, no, no, the kind of stuff we enjoyed writing was the sort of fantasy stuff.

A: What about the rest of the troupe of Monty Python, do you think there was any vaguely defined group philosophy--what made it unique, according to you?

T: Well, I suppose it was kind of we liked what each other was doing, we all wanted to work together, and we all had a quite lot of respect, I think, for each other's stuff. So as the six of us got together and wrote together and when we sort of offered up something that we'd written if somebody else said no, they didn't think it was funny you'd kind of tend to accept the criticism or if somebody said look it would be funny if we did this, so there was a sort of an intense, critical, criticism that went on within the group and it gave us confidence as a group. We thought what we came up with would be a synthesis that was pretty strong. If we all six found something funny then it was going to be stronger than otherwise. At the same time there was cross-fertilization, I think, because John, his writing was always much more geared to the observation of human nature and character and, I suppose in a way, you can say that it was slightly more satirical although he was very sensitive to the absurdist line, as well. Mike and I tended to write things that were much more sort of milder and sort of zanier. John and Graham would give our stuff teeth and we sort of tried to make theirs zanier. But Graham was always tended to be way out. He was a good influence on John like that. Otherwise John would have been still writing more satirical stuff, but Graham sort of made it, kept it silly.

A: In this production, putting Monty Python together, how closely did the BBC monitor it?

T: Well, to begin with, not at all. When we did the first series they offered it to John first of all since he had a track record and John came to Mike and me and wanted to work with us. And they just said Well do thirteen shows and we didn't do a pilot of anything, we just did thirteen shows. But after about the fourth show the head of comedy got hold of our director and said look this just isn't funny, there's nothing funny about a man coming out of the sea and saying "it's", you've got to do something about this. But by that time we were starting to get sort of audience reaction and the beginnings of a sort of cult following kind of thing.

So, however, by I think the second series (I think it was the end of the third series we had the mother in the sack in the undertaker's sketch and there was a great outcry in the BBC about that). By the second series they started sort of wanting to see the shows before they were put out, and then by the third series they were wanting to read the scripts before we did them. So censorship suddenly grew actually in a way. That ought to be...not censorship though there was a certain amount. They got more and more sort of jumpy but that was partly because of the way the BBC was changing anyway.

A: Do you think Monty Python could have been produced on American television?

T: Oh, I don't think I know enough about American television. I wouldn't have thought that--not from what I saw when ABC bought the fourth series we did, the short series without John and cannibalized it and cut out all the jokes. I mean, that was disastrous.

A: I was just wondering if you think Monty Python's relationship with the BBC was typical of other comedy shows of the time.

T: We always had a sort of love/hate relationship with the BBC. You see, they always seemed so`rt of...the BBC never seemed particularly pleased with Python. They were always kind of embarrassed by it. It was almost on despite the BBC. And yet they gave us all this sort of freedom to do what we wanted. On a very small budget I have to tell you.

A: Just like with the Holy Grail.

T: Yeah.

A: Would you say that the BBC, the atmosphere there, was what made it possible to do the program?

T: I think it was in a way. I mean, I think there was a feeling that we could do anything. There was nobody sort of saying "well, will this get an audience? You can't do that, you can't do that, you can't do this." After the first four shows the head of entertainment might said this isn't funny, do something about it. But in those days the producer was his own boss really and we had 13 shows to do. And by the end of the 13 we had our following. But I can't imagine it happening in this more commercial era now.

A: So even in England you think it's getting more commercial?

T: Yes, I think it is.

A: How is it different producing a film in England and producing one in Hollywood?

T: Well, I've never done one in Hollywood.

A: Erik the Viking was produced in England then?

T: Yes, it was. We had a bit of funding from Orion. They put in 6 million dollars. But the rest, the whole film cost 15, and the rest of the money came from all around the world, really. Actually Senske film, a Swedish films put in 6 as well. And we filmed it here in London mostly and in Malta, in Thrumsau north of Norway.

A: I'm interested in how you think that American comedy is different from British comedy.

T: I'm almost tempted to say nothing, really. I mean I didn't...I find it very difficult to generalize...

A: Well, Saturday Night Live, then. Monty Python and Saturday Night Live.

T: Well, I haven't seen enough of this...Saturday Night Live. (laughs)

A: Okay.

T: I mean, I think comedy is...it is funny, I think comedy is comedy, the same for the world over, really. I mean, I look at it...Woody Allen and I think, "Well, it's very Woody Allen." I don't sort of think, "Well, it's so American" or something. I don't know. I'm not very good at generalizations.

A: Well, that's fine, too. Specifics are always better. So...really, I guess I've covered most of what I wanted to talk to you about. I was interested in knowing how you think the Oxford and Cambridge influence affected comedy in general.

T: Well, I suppose it was kind of...What you got started really with Beyond the Fringe was kind of a slightly more cerebral kind of comedy and it was kind of...With before, British comedy particularly always came out of the music gall, which was...You had this kind of comedy that was coming from a slightly more literary sort of background, if you like. And so you assumed people knew who you were talking about if you talked about Kant and Heidegger and things like that. So I suppose that was a kind of slight change in terms of vocabulary or areas of jokes. But then again, the actual kind of humor, I mean...it's the fantasy humor. For absurdist humor, you go back to the Goons, in our case, or back to (?) or something like that, Tristan Shandy...the same sort of absurdist humor, going right the way through.

A: Do you think the current comedy in Britain is at all influenced by that? I know most of them are coming out of the comedy clubs now rather than out of the universities.

T: Yeah...I think there's a heterogeneity. There's a lot of different things going on, I think. In comedy, I see some really funny stuff around. I'm very fond of Spitting Image...Barry Infield, and stuff like that.

A: That's again in the satirical line, more than...Well, also the absurdist line...

T: It's all mixed up together, in a way, isn't it?

A: Well, thank you for talking to me.

T: If you need anything else, just ring me up.