PLUME: With animation something that you experimented with beforehand?

GILLIAM: Yeah. Living in New York, we used to go outside film studios and get reels of blank film – anything they threw out – and we used to draw on blank film. I used to do flipper books – that sort of thing. So I knew the principles. I’d seen in New York – somewhere in the ’60s – something by underground filmmaker Stan van der Beek, and he had done a pretty funny cartoon using cut-outs. The image I remember was Nixon with a foot in his mouth, and it really stuck with me. That was the thing that got me thinking, “I’ve got to do cut-outs.” So that’s what I did. Marty Feldman saw it and he wanted me to do some stuff on his show, and then there was another series of Do Not Adjust Your Set. Eric said, “Come on… Do some animation for us.” Which I did. Basically, at the end of that series – Mike, Eric, Terry, and myself – were all more and more a team wanting to do something more. Cleese had a standing invitation from the BBC to do a show if he ever wanted to, and he was keen to work with Mike Palin. So John and Graham – who wrote together – came together with us and we took up the offer with the BBC… and that was Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

PLUME: At that time, did you feel in any way pigeonholed in doing animation?

GILLIAM: No, no… at the time, it was exciting – because it was new. I had incredible freedom – more than the others, in a sense, in the show – because what I did was completely different from what they did, so I didn’t have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.

PLUME: Was there any envy amongst the other members of the group?

GILLIAM: No, no, no… it was a pretty good time. We respected each other – that was what was interesting. It was like, there was no star – the show was the star, and we all just were working for that. It was a really good time. I mean, constantly there were fights going on, but we were fighting over the right things – the quality of the material… whether it was good, whether it was funny, whether it worked. Nobody was career-oriented – that was what was so nice about it. Everybody was group-oriented and show-oriented.

PLUME: Do you think that dynamic owed more to the personalities involved, the lack of time you had to get shows prepared, or just the times in general?

GILLIAM: It was all of those things. The BBC was very laissez-faire in those days, and once you got going, they left you alone. There weren’t executives in there, there were no Standards & Practices people – none of that. The combination of the six of us is still quite extraordinary chemically – there couldn’t have been a better combination, because everybody balanced everybody else in some way. That was a bit of luck. And there was a mutual understanding of each other’s skill. The times were open for wilder and more bizarre comedy. I look at stuff now – there’s some very good comedy out there, but it’s quite straight. We were very off-the-wall, but – at the same time – we were very disciplined. People used to think we just faked all that stuff… no, it was all written, it was rehearsed, it was all planned. The fact that it looks as cobbled together as it does is just that we weren’t very good.

PLUME: In comparing today to then, do you think to some extent nowadays people don’t challenge the audience as much? Python would just throw things out and then move on, whereas today shows will belabor a point for 15 minutes…

GILLIAM: I think most shows now have so many people overseeing them that it’s a problem. The whole process is much more aimed at making a “successful” show – whatever that is – and once you start thinking like that, you start limiting how you approach things. Our attitude was, “Did it make the six of us laugh?” If it did, it went in. There was no thinking, “Oh, what is the audience going to make of this?” There was no thinking about, “Are we going to offend somebody?” or “Is somebody going to criticize us?” We didn’t care. It’s so interesting how un-career oriented we were – we just did as we pleased. It was very selfish, in that sense, but I think that’s what was honest about it. It wasn’t anything other than what we thought was good, or what we thought was fun, or what we thought was going to be shocking, or what we could do to irritate people. There were all these different members of the group pulling in different ways. I was always keen to shock people and shake them up; Eric was probably a little bit more traditionally motivated in really being just funny all the time…

PLUME: I would never think of Eric as trying to please people…

GILLIAM: But he does… he fails miserably, mind you. Because there were the six of us, we were like a mutually supporting group, and there was nobody who could take as on. The BBC literally isn’t like that now. No other organization around the world was as loose as that was then. Even after the fourth series – when ABC bought the fourth series and they immediately started bastardizing it and cutting it down… they thought they were doing us a favor because we were going to reach a larger audience. We said, “We don’t give a s*** about a larger audience. We want it going out the way we made it – with all its flaws. It goes out with our signature on it and that’s it.” ABC couldn’t understand that, because they thought, “But, you’re limiting the size of your audience…” We said, “We don’t give a s***.”

PLUME: In today’s atmosphere, do you see that kind of dynamic being allowed to play out?

GILLIAM: I think it’s much more difficult, because the system – the bureaucracy – is just tenser. What was interesting when cable began and when at Fox things like The Simpsons took off – that was fantastic – but even Fox now has become more bureaucratic. Matt Groening and company just came in at the right time. The Simpsons is still one of my favorite modern comic television shows – they’re brilliant. I’m actually very pleased that South Park are doing as well as they have, because I think they’re closer to us than most others in their pure offensive manner.

PLUME: Do you think it’s a natural progression for something to go from being able to operate in and everything and anything manner, to eventually being co-opted by the system?

GILLIAM: Not necessarily. I think it has to do with the fact that a longer living system becomes more complex. Again, South Park came out of something that was still forming itself. I think there are moments when television systems – or any system for that matter – are young and haven’t formed properly, and there’s room for lots of interesting and original stuff. Then things become more and more top-heavy with executives who are trying to guarantee the success of things.

PLUME: It’s before they realize that nobody is closing the door behind them…

GILLIAM: Yeah. When I did the Marty show – which was during early Python – it was for ABC television. Larry Gelbart was the producer, Marty Feldman was the star, and it was for ABC Television. I was contracted to do 25 or 30 minutes of animation on the show, and I had complete freedom to do what I wanted, until I did something that was going to be about fat. I wanted a classic painting – I wanted a Ruben’s nude to illustrate something, and they said, “Whew… nude… we better check it out with the censor.” And the censor turned out to be a very fat, frustrated young woman, and she said, “No, you can’t do that.” I said, “But it’s a painting… it’s in museums… it’s all over the place.” She said, “Nope.” I said, “Well, can I do a rear view?” “Well, I don’t know…” So I then got another painting with the rear view of a reclining nude, and I said, “That must be OK…” It was sent in, and then it came back and the crack of her ass was circled, and they said, “If you can cover this, you can use it.” I, at that point, said “F*** this”, and I got a Victorian nude photograph that I had of a girl sitting cross-legged with her arms in the air, and I cut her out. Then I cut out circles where her breasts were, and then I cut a sort of a fan shape from her crotch – and put her on a background so you could see through all the naughty bits. I said, “There, I got rid of all the naughty bits.” And they said, “No… now you’re drawing attention to the fact that they’re naughty bits.” That was the moment that I said “F*** you” and I started doing animation that involved no action – I started doing “radio animation.”

PLUME: It must been even more painful to be doing that and being able to contrast it with the freedom you had on Python…

GILLIAM: Yeah. And there I was back in American television with all of the restrictions, and this was supposed to be a really invented show, because it was Marty Feldman – a British comedian – Larry Gelbart – a great comic writer – and this is supposed to be putting a breath of fresh air into American comedy… But nope, the door was closed again. At that point – having left America and suddenly having to come up against this stuff once more – I just went crazy and said, “No no no no no.” I managed to finish my contracted animation, but it was radio animation… people would run into a room and turn the lights off, and the rest would be done with sound effects.

Continued below…

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