Not that he has some fatal disease, he's not dying right away ... but he is dying. Eventually. Some day. And perhaps there will be another chance to see him. He may do another show some day. Eventually. But still, he will die .. eventually .. so we went to see him
For someone who is dying (eventually) he looked, as he may say say "rather splendid". Alone on the stage with a projection screen hanging behind him, Cleese spent two hours regaling us with stories of his remarkable life in that concise, precise, perfectly modulated deliver that makes him One of the Funniest People on Earth
Cleese, as he informed us several times, is a writer. His entrance into show business was through his writing for comedy reviews while studying "maths" at Cambridge university. He wrote for David Frost's early comedy shows in Britain, he wrote of great deal of the Python stuff, he co-wrote Fawlty Towers, he wrote A Fish Called Wanda ...
All very impressive indeed. But none of that allays the fact that John Cleese walking through a door can make me fall down on my face giggling like an idiot .. which he once did on a British skit show from the 80's; the actors were doing some kind of Elizabethan sketch and Cleese walked on to the set, stood there in a door way, ate most of an apple then turned and walked away. To this day, one of the funniest things I've ever seen
OK maybe I have issues, like this should be a shock to anyone
Cleese's writing skills are certainly of an extremely high level. He talked extensively about "black humour" and humour that breaks taboos and crosses boundries. His experiences of 1950's England was that of an extremely conservative society whose focus was to never be seen to be controversial. He recalls seeing the Beyond the Fringe comedy troupe with Dudley Moore and Spike Milligan and feeling the liberation of satire, something Cleese would himself come to master.
He searched for the origins of his own fondness for dark humour. His mother was a self obsessed, perpetually depressed person who would list her fears and worries and go through them with her son point by point. Cleese noted that his mother lived through the entire 20th century and has witnessed both world wars, the Great Depression, the arms race, the space age ... and really didn't note any of it.
One of the times his mom was intoning her oft heard phrase "Maybe I should just die" Cleese suggested that he would call a "little man" in Fulton who he knew and the chap would come and kill his mom ... upon hearing this his mom paused for a long moment then broke out in laughter. From that point on when his mom got carried away with her moaning he would simply intone the the Little Man in Fulton and they would both break out laughing. He learned, from this, that making fun of the serious was the best way to survive it
Cleese liked to downplay his abilities as an actor. He talked about meeting Peter Sellers, who Cleese claimed to be the greatest comic actor he'd ever known, and described Seller's ability to mimic, not just mimic to become someone else. Cleese stated that when he tried to mimic someone it always sounded as if "that person was actually mimicing me"
But there is not doubt that Cleese not only possesses a talent for accents but has some of the best comic timing of anyone I've ever said. Coupled with his precise, clipped way of speaking, it makes him able to evoke laughter without seeming to try at all.
He also talked about the importance of luck in his career. He told the story about how Monty Python got to have their TV series. All of them had worked together in Cambridge then gone their separate ways. Graham Chapman and Cleese were working for David Frost along with Marty Feldman. Feldman was a writer on the show and Cleese told Frost that Marty should be on the show, as an actor. Frost's reply was "Put Marty on TV? Have you seen the way he looks?"
Indeed
At that time the other Pythons, Eric Idle and Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones were all working on a kids' TV show. Graham and Cleese decided they should all reunite and pitch their own skit comedy show to the BBC. Everyone agreed and off they went to see the man Cleese describes as the "god of BBC Light Entertainment" They all knew they were funny, they all had some idea of the kind of show they wanted to make but what they did not know was what the show would be about.
They were asked: "Will the show have sketches"
"Oh yes, sketches, lovely idea, we'll have sketches"
"Will there be music?"
"Music? Oh yes, well certainly, yes there will be music .. of some kind"
Cleese thought they were done for. They couldn't even describe what kind of show they would make or give one salient idea of what would be in it. But the "god" waved his hand and told them "Fine, we'll give you 13 episodes" And with the wave of a hand, the first show about nothing, and something completely different, was born
A good deal of the show was dedicated to discussing A Fish Called Wanda, a movie that Cleese not only wrote but starred in and, in my opinion, one of the funniest movies ever made. One thing I never knew about Cleese is besides doing "math" in college he also read for law at Cambridge, which probably explains his character in Wanda, a solicitor.
He explained that when he decided to make the movie he approached old school Brit film director Charles Crichton (Cleese also has co director credit on the film). When Crichton asked him what the film would be about, Cleese admitted that the only thing he had in mind was a scene that someone with a terrible stutter would have to tell someone else, something terribly important. Crichton said "Fine, as long as we have a scene where someone is squashed by a steamroller" And that was how one of the funniest movies of all time was born
He used Wanda as an example of his black humour. As they were making the movie a few concerns were raised: Would people rebel against using someone with a stutter as a focus of laughter (he explained that Michael Palin based his character's stutter on his own father) and the killing of the little dogs. After a test screening which Cleese was not allowed to be in the theatre, an old woman marched up to him and announced "The stuttering was bloody funny. And you should have killed more dogs"
Cleese told his stories, with the aid of clips from TV and movies, for two hours which was quite shocking to us, it barely seemed half that time. When I first read that Cleese was appearing in Toronto as part of a six city tour my first reaction was "I wonder why he's doing this." No, that's a total lie, my first reaction was "Holy crap, I'm going to get to see the funniest man alive!" But I still wondered why he was doing the tour. Cleese provided the answer with one word "Alimony. My ex wife got a settlement of 22 million dollars. I have two million left to go" And he glowered at us. I damn near threw money up on to the stage
So we sat through two hours, laughing to the verge of tears, as a dead man told us his life story. Thank you John Cleese. Long may you die
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