PLUME: I remember how hard it was to find a copy of Chaucer’s Knight in the days when it was out of print and right before the internet boom, so as soon as I got to NYU, the two things I did when I got there were to go to the library in order to watch Brazil on laserdisc and find a copy of that book. It was great fun to read that book and look back over my English notes from high school when I was told the Knight was an honorable character, and realize my teacher was wrong. I’ve often thought of buying him a copy and clueing him in…
JONES: It’s quite interesting, because I got more and more to think that the portrait of the Knight in the General Prologue is really based on Sir John Hawkwood. I fall shy of saying that in the book, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed to be the case. In fact, I’ve done some recent research up at the Huntington Library in San Marino, where they’ve got the Ellesmere Manuscript. The librarian there very kindly let me photograph the manuscript and some of the illustrations from the manuscript through the microscope, and we discovered that several of the portraits – the pictures – had been altered. The portrait of the Knight has been altered, and when you take away the alterations it looks very much like it was based on the picture of Sir John Hawkwood that’s hanging in the Duomo in Florence. That picture is actually a little bit later, but they’re both obviously based on the same template in Hawkwood, so it seems very clear that the illustrator of the Ellesmere Manuscript took Hawkwood’s image as being the image of this kind of a knight.
PLUME: Identifying the characteristics as being applicable…
JONES: I think so, yes.
PLUME: I’ve always wondered, especially with your most recent book on him, have you ever had any desire to do a documentary on Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales?
JONES: Well, yeah… I just published this book called Who Murdered Chaucer?, which came out this October – I think it’s being published this year by St. Martin’s Press in the States. But Who Murdered Chaucer? – yeah, we tried to get the BBC interested in that, but they said, “No, we’ve done two half-hour animations of Chaucer for this year, so we’re not really interested. That’s enough Chaucer for one year.†And then this last year they did 8 Canterbury Tales, I think it was, that they retold – so they though that was enough. They weren’t very interested in ours.
PLUME: But is it something that you still would want to do eventually?
JONES: Well yes, it would be interesting to do. I’m not terribly anxious to do TV documentary series! It’s all because I actually enjoy doing them. It’s a great excuse to mess around in front of the camera, and it also gives you a great excuse for going to places like Italy and France and things – which I always enjoy doing. But I’m not really a documentary filmmaker, really. It’s not where my heart lies. I’d rather be doing other things.
PLUME: And you don’t have the same sort of wanderlust that Michael (Palin) does…
JONES: No! Not at all! I’m a bit of a stay at home, actually. I just spoke to him about an hour ago, and he’ll just be on his way to the airport, I guess. He’s doing a thing about the Himalayas at the moment, so he’s flying to Delhi tonight.
PLUME: You would think he would have found a way to get his house converted into a terminal by now…
JONES: Yeah, I think he should do that!
PLUME: But looking back, the last fiction film you did prior to Wind in the Willows was what, Erik the Viking?
JONES: Yeah, I guess that’s right.
PLUME: Do your interests just not lie in that direction at this point?
JONES: In feature films?
PLUME: Yeah…
JONES: No, no, I’d really like to write them. I’m not really very much into directing a film, per se, but if I can write myself something to direct, then I’d really love doing it – because I really do love doing it, and I do enjoy directing films. But it’s just I have to write myself something. At the moment I’m writing something for Rob Minkoff, actually… Well, I’m just doing a treatment for him and we’ll see whether we can get it going. But I’d like to write something for myself to do, yeah. That’s one of the things I’m thinking about doing this year.
Comments: 1 Comment
One Response to “FROM THE VAULT: Terry Jones Interviews”Leave a Reply |
March 12th, 2021 at 12:50 pm
Man, I wish you had audio of these interviews. I LOVE listening to Terry Jones speak. He was a magnificent gem of a man, and I was greatly sorry when he lost the ability to speak, and even more sorry when he passed away. But also a little bit relieved for him, knowing how distressed he was at the end.
I’ve found a couple of his history series over the years, and thoroughly enjoyed them.