I'd like an interview, please.

March 10, 2006 4:41 AM

Lost Monty Python interview from 1975 Dallas TV station unearths interview with four of the Pythons from 1975, just as they were hitting it big in the states. Love the hair! Love the armadillo!
posted by darren (14 comments total)

Awww. No John Cleese or Eric Idle.

Still, a cute little bit of business, hearing them talk about how they have this new film they're anxious to plug, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and how they haven't found an American distributor yet. And the censorship stuff, too, heh.

Thanks.
posted by Gator at 5:01 AM on March 10, 2006

That must have been so strange for them. They were basically plugging stuff they'd recorded 5 or 6 years earlier and done to death on stage and record. They'd also finished with the TV series altogether in Britain by that stage, if I remember correctly. Interesting stuff.
posted by Decani at 5:43 AM on March 10, 2006

Very cool, downloading now, thanks.
posted by fungible at 5:44 AM on March 10, 2006

Too bad they taped over at an abrupt end. But it brings to mind Cleeses' "And now for something completely different"
posted by hal9k at 5:51 AM on March 10, 2006

Wow, what a great find! On a more bitter note, Graham Chapman was in the throes of alcoholism at the time and seeing him in this footage pretty blatantly shows (at least to me) that he was in pretty bad shape. He looks pretty buzzed and I'd bet cash money that that's not water in his cup...
posted by lazywhinerkid at 7:01 AM on March 10, 2006

Excellent. Monty Python are cool, man.
posted by mokey at 7:25 AM on March 10, 2006

Thanks for the link!

I found it amusing that they were plugging Holy Grail and hadn't found a distributor in the States yet.

*waves to Decani*
posted by terrapin at 8:02 AM on March 10, 2006

God Bless George Harrison.
posted by spock at 8:16 AM on March 10, 2006

At the end, Terry Jones gets cut off in the middle of saying that one of the other names considered for the show was (iirc) "Owl-Splitting Time".

Cool stuff.
posted by jiawen at 9:36 AM on March 10, 2006

My god. TV was still so innocent wasn't it? Can you imagine how that would be done now? The interviewer would do an onstage Dr. Phil style intervention with Chapman - and he sure as shit wouldn't be alowed to light up a pipe on camera.

great find.
posted by tkchrist at 9:37 AM on March 10, 2006

That must have been so strange for them. They were basically plugging stuff they'd recorded 5 or 6 years earlier and done to death on stage and record.

Ah, that's pretty common. You ever notice that actors on talk shows are kind of weirdly uninterested in the movie they're plugging? That's because they shot it three years ago and did two others after.


Great footage. I only wish the rest of it had been saved...

And was that some kind of proto-James Lipton doing the interview?
posted by lumpenprole at 10:18 AM on March 10, 2006

jiawen - Haven't been able to download the video, but I'm pretty sure the name was "Owl-Stretching Time."
posted by soyjoy at 10:42 AM on March 10, 2006

Please God spare me from any more Monty Python. I grew up with it in the UK, and now I live in the US, BBC America seems to run saturaion re-runs ad nauseum. It's old tired humour now. Let's move on.
posted by marvin at 2:27 PM on March 10, 2006

Thanks for posting this! That's me introducing the clip... if you're a Python fan, check out the radio show/podcast, you might like it. Many of our guests come from the "alternative" and sketch comedy worlds. Also, Terry Jones is due to appear in a few weeks.
posted by YoungAmerican at 6:36 PM on March 10, 2006