20 Questions: John Cleese

When the phenomenally popular "Monty Python's Flying Circus" folded its television tent more than a decade and a half ago, John Cleese, arguably its most visible member, went on to even more video success, solo, as spokesman for a variety of good-natured products and as his own creation, Basil Fawlty, the overbearing proprietor of the hilarious, forever-repeating series "Fawlty Towers." Now 48, Cleese has limited his TV activity to commercials and the odd appearance in order to concentrate on other projects, including the film "A Fish Called Wanda," which he wrote and in which he stars with Jamie Lee Curtis and fellow Python Michael Palin.

During a recent, rare visit to Southern California, the most well-known Python allowed himself to be cornered in his hotel suite by free-lance writer Dick Lochte. "The phone never stopped ringing," Lochte recalls. "Friends dropped by, including his current co-star Jamie Lee Curtis. A waiter arrived with lunch but had forgotten the entree. And as the action ebbed and flowed, Cleese remained surprisingly unruffled. The man who was once the apoplectic owner of a dead parrot, the Minister of Silly Walks and the irrational Basil Fawlty seemed at peace with the surroundings and with himself."

1.

[Q] Playboy: What's the story behind the name of your film A Fish Called Wanda?

[A] Cleese: I felt it was time I did something for fish. They're so special, but people just don't appreciate them. They take them for granted, and it's not fair. Fish are so underrated these days. Especially sand dabs. All of them, really. I could go on and on about it. I do, actually. People say to me, "Don't go on about fish today, please, Jack." And I say, "Just tell me one thing: Can you breathe under water?" And, of course, I have them there. Then I say, "Do you know anyone who can breathe under water?" All these so-called great men—Napoleon, Caesar, Alexander the Great, George Bush—could any of them breathe under water? I mean, the Gautama Buddha himself couldn't and he had astounding control over his bodily functions. And with the greatest of respect, even our Savior, Jesus Christ, who could walk on the stuff, couldn't inhale it. Yet every single fucking fish can. And what credit do we give them? It makes me sick. I tell you, if I could breathe under water, I'd be a proud man. I bet if people were to begin breathing under water, they'd be having award ceremonies within 12 months.

[A] As for the Wanda part, that's because of a stripper I saw at the Crazy Horse in Paris. She was a truly wonderful human being and I shall never forget her. I wouldn't be surprised if she could breathe under water.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Is the barrister you play in the film like the lawyer you hoped to become when you attended Cambridge?

[A] Cleese: No. He's much more upper-class. In England, barristers—the ones who wear wigs and gowns and stand up in court and get all the limelight—come from the upper-middle class. I was only lower-middle class. People from that class become solicitors, the kind of lawyers who sit in offices and delay the buying and selling of houses. So I was studying law at Cambridge with a view of going into a firm like that and—after eight years, say—killing myself. I was saved from this fate by the BBC. At the end of my three years at Cambridge, they saw me in a Footlights Club revue and offered me a job in jokes.

3.

[Q] Playboy: The Footlights Club produced Peter Cook, David Frost and several Pythons. How did you get in?

[A] Cleese: The very first day in Cambridge, you went to this big building that housed a thing called the Societies Fair. And you wandered round it, and everybody from the chorale to the Rugby Club and the Paranormal Society would drum up members. For some reason, I was always drawn toward comedy. I can even remember when I was about nine, staying home from school one day and writing a script—which is a very bizarre thing to do, when I look back on it. So I went up to the Footlights Club desk and said, "I have a sort of interest." And they said, "Oh, good. What do you do? Can you sing?" And I'm the worst singer in western Europe. I mean horrendous. I was in Half a Sixpence on Broadway in 1965 on the condition that I mime. Literally. So I said, "No, I don't sing." And they said, "No problem. Do you dance?" Now, to ask a public school boy whether he dances is plain silly. I got embarrassed and said no. And they said, "Well, what do you do?" And I blushed bright red and said, "I try to make people laugh." And I fled from the stand. Six months passed before a friend of mine said, "Do you want to come along to Footlights and do something?" And I went along and did something and it went down quite well. So I was in the club.

4.

[Q] Playboy: Do you remember the first time you made people laugh?

[A] Cleese: In large numbers, yes. It was at Clifton College, when I was 18. I had never liked my housemaster, and he was retiring that year. In the big speeches at mid-term, everybody had been saying how wonderful he was, so at the school entertainment at the end of that term, I did a very wicked parody of the speeches, being as rude about my housemaster as was humanly possible and finishing up by wishing him every success in his renewed attempt at a happy marriage. At which point the classics professor actually fell off his chair laughing. It sounds pretty mean in retrospect, but it all came out of a kind of joy that I was leaving the school and didn't have to stick to the rules anymore. Also, of course, I am mean. And there was something about that particular evening that I haven't recalled for 30 years, but as I talk to you now, I remember a kind of excitement, a kind of power. It was the feeling that you get sometimes when you make a large number of people laugh. But there's a feeling of control in it, too. I once performed at a pop concert with Terry Jones and Michael Palin in front of more than 35,000 people, and when you got a laugh, you began to see why Hitler liked his Nuremberg gigs.

5.

[Q] Playboy: Rock stars are always either bragging or grousing about the way their female fans besiege them wherever they go. Are there hordes of beautiful women who get turned on by comedy?

[A] Cleese: Hmmm. Once, and only once, that I can remember, I did nearly get picked up by a girl at the stage door of the Hippodrome Theatre in Bristol after a Python stage show. This was in 1973. It was the only time I'd ever had someone wait for me with carnal intent. It's rather ironic that she was the only woman I'd ever met who was larger than I was. I'm 6'5" and weigh 210 pounds, and she made me feel positively dainty. I was very frightened. And that was it, I'm afraid. Otherwise, the fans in America—the Python fans, that is—have always followed the same pattern. They write you the most delightfully witty letters, and you exchange correspondence with them for two or three years. And when you finally meet, they always weigh more than 200 pounds and come from New Jersey. Which doesn't make them any less witty, but it does dissipate fantasies rather fast.

6.

[Q] Playboy: Were you born with the name John Cleese?

[A] Cleese: To be more honest than I usually care to be, my grandfather was John Cheese and my dad was Reggie Cheese. But only until 1915, when he joined up for World War One. By then, he was fed up with the fermented-curd jokes, so on the form, he changed the H to an L. Then he did it legally when he came out of the army, before he married. So I was always a Cleese, never a Cheese. The confusing thing for me as a child was that Dad always pronounced it to rhyme with cheese, while Mum pronounced it to rhyme with fleece. I remember thinking at the time that if your parents couldn't agree on how to pronounce their name, they weren't likely to agree on much else. Mum also had difficulty with my first name. She sometimes called me Bill, who was a cousin who'd stayed with them before I was born. I think I looked a bit like him. She also called me Reg, and sometimes Roy, who was Bill's father. But I didn't mind at all. John is not a racy name. It's distinctly turgid. So I've changed it to Jack. In fact, I wanted to be Jack Cleese in the film, but MGM didn't like the idea. They thought it would confuse their vice-presidents. Now I am thinking of changing the family name back to Cheese and going to live in Monterey. But as that doesn't make you smile, maybe I won't.

7.

[Q] Playboy: What got you into television?

[A] Cleese: Not what—who. David Frost. It all came out of the friendship with Frost that started back at Cambridge and the fact that when I was working in New York, he used to telephone me. Always called, always from the airport, and we'd always get to talk about 22 seconds before his flight was called. But he was friendly and interested in what I was doing. Just as I'd finished my 15-month stint in America—this was at the end of 1965—he came onto the phone one day and said, "Hello!" I said, "Oh, hello, David." He said, "Super! Super! How are you? Ahh ... oops! My flight's being called. Listen, do you want to do a television series in England starting in March?" I said, "Yes, please." And he said, "All right. Super. I'll call you about it. "Bye!" So the one man in England who knew really everything about my work and who was in a position to give me an interesting job just handed it to me ... out of the blue. I've been very lucky professionally. Things always dropped into my lap without my having to try.

[A] And by March 1966, I was doing The Frost Report with, among others, two people who would play a large part in my life afterward: Tony Jay, now the chairman of my company, Video Arts, and dear Marty Feldman, who was the show's head writer.

8.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you and Marty Feldman in another series?

[A] Cleese: Yes, At Last the 1948 Show. It was kind of—I would claim—a precursor to Monty Python. Had some very funny, weird material in it. Dappy, dappy stuff. And a lot of good sketches with Marty. We developed a particular type of sketch in which I would play Mr. Bland-Middle-Class-in-Control Englishman and Marty would play Mr. Pest. I would be in a solicitor's office, or a railway carriage or a posh bookshop and Mr. Pest would arrive, talk in a Marty nasal voice and dement me. We would finish with me driven hopelessly insane.

9.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you perform a song about a weasel on that show?

[A] Cleese: A ferret, actually. I appeared dressed in white tie and tails, singing, "I've got a ferret sticking up my nose./It starts wriggling when I wear my formal clothes./How it got there, I can't tell,/But now it's there, it hurts like hell./And what is more, it radically affects my sense of smell."

[A] Oddly enough, I just recently wrote a few more lyrics. "I can see a bare-bottomed mandrill/Slyly eying my other nostril. /I really don't know what to do,/But if he jumps inside there, too,/I shall be the proud possessor of a kind of nasal zoo.

[A] "I've got a ferret sticking up my nose./It's all right when it is in repose,/But when it starts to move about,/There is really not the slightest doubt./It tends to irritate the mucous membranes up my snout."

[A] I thought I'd actually sing it at the next Amnesty concert. If they can get hold of a ferret.

10.

[Q] Playboy: Whose idea was it to create Monty Python's Flying Circus?

[A] Cleese: I claim it was my idea. I imagine that all the other Pythons claim it was theirs. Our recollection of the past shows very little consistency. Michael Palin has the great advantage of having kept a diary. So that's regarded as definitive. Also, his perception of reality is a good deal less questionable than one or two of the other Pythons'.

11.

[Q] Playboy: How did the various Python members get together?

[A] Cleese: Graham Chapman was a member of Footlights when I was there. Eric Idle came into the club in my last year and was immediately noticed, as he was far too funny for his own good. Graham and I wrote together all through the Sixties, but we hadn't performed for about two years and were getting an itch to do so. And we took to knocking off an hour early in the afternoon to watch this show called Do Not Adjust Your Set, which had Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Idle on it. Although it was nominally a kids' show, it was much funnier than anything else on television. We knew them because every one of us had written for Frost. And one day, I rang them up and said, "Let's do a series together." And they got slightly snotty about it. They were talking about doing one of their own. But after about two weeks, they came back and said OK. Terry Gilliam had been an old friend of mine from New York, and I'd introduced him around when he arrived in London. So when they said, "Well, he's done some animated stuff for us, let's have him in the group," it was like a completion of the circle. Once Terry proved to the BBC accountants that animation was not as prohibitively costly as they thought, we were under way. That was in late 1969.

12.

[Q] Playboy: We've heard about a fifth Beatle. Was there a seventh Python? Someone who didn't quite make it?

[A] Cleese: Well, it's a matter of public record that Woody Allen was always trying to get into the group the first couple of years. He would telephone and say he had a sketch. But his material was always so ... depressing. One might almost say nihilistic. And he didn't seem to want to join us in dressing up as chickens and throwing old ladies into vats of calf's-foot jelly, which is really what the Python philosophy was all about. And I was very sorry for him, actually, because I felt he had some sort of talent. As far as I know, he went back to New York. I think he works there, and somebody saw him recently (continued on page 164) John Cleese (continued from page 130) and said he was, you know, doing OK. And there was that band-wagon jumper, Olivier.... And Camus tried to get into the group at one stage, and when we said no, he stamped his foot and jumped into his car and drove off very fast. Also, to our considerable surprise, U Thant. We gave him a chance. We had to. Several. He wasn't a strong comedic personality. I mean, he got laughs at the United Nations, but that's an easy audience.

13.

[Q] Playboy: Why did the Python series end?

[A] Cleese: We did three series of 13 shows each. I had the problem I always do of getting bored. Not with the people, though they are fairly boring. Actually, I have a high level of tolerance for boring people, which may explain the nature of my social life. But workwise, if I'm learning, I'm happy. And when I am working on a sausage machine, turning the handle and churning it out, I'm not. By the time we got to the second series of shows, I felt we were repeating ourselves. The others were very keen to do more, because they enjoyed the process much more than I did. By the time we got to the third series, I resisted and said I'd do six or seven. Then I was pressured into doing the full 13. And I didn't enjoy it very much. Also, there were a lot of fistfights.

14.

[Q] Playboy: What are the other Pythons up to these days?

[A] Cleese: Well, several of them are quite old now. Terry Jones is in an elderly persons' residence in Eastbourne, and he's a little embarrassing to visit, because ... well, he's lost control of his bodily functions. He always had that sort of trouble, but visiting him now is quite a risky business. It's best to wear old clothes. Michael Palin is in a home in Bath for people who've damaged their mouths by talking too much. Sadly, in his case, it's irreparable. He's completely deaf now, too, though fortunately, he hasn't noticed it. I go down once a week and take him out for tea. It's like visiting a radio. This year, he talks mainly about doors. But at least he's happy. And that's the main thing, isn't it? Chapman is in great shape, though he has become rather vague. In fact, he's writing a book about it called The Art of Vagueness. Or, rather, he thinks he may be. Eric Idle has retired now that he has the biggest collection of pop stars' thumbprints in the world. We don't see much of him, because he's trying to accumulate as many miles as possible on his frequent-flier plan. And then, of course, there's Terry Gilliam, a film maker. A remarkable guy. A painter, a skiing Olympic gold medalist, an archaeologist, a poet, a film director and an explorer all live in his neighborhood. Some call him a renaissance man. Personally, I'd put it a little earlier. Upper Paleozoic. The sloping forehead, the prognathous jaw, the unmistakable lope.... I said to him the other day, "Terry, which do you reckon is more developed in you, the visual or the verbal?" "Nnnnnarrrgggh," he replied. "Uuuurrrrfff nnnnggggoooommpph." Still, give him some crayons and a few crates of fresh fruit and he'll do the Sistine Chapel in 48 hours.

15.

[Q] Playboy: What are your current interests?

[A] Cleese: I'm getting very curious about what I'm going to be doing after I'm dead. I think this happens as you get older. For the first 35 years of your life, you're quite happy to run around and try to make your mark. Then you get to the second half of your life and, as Jung said in a totally positive way, that should be about preparation for death. And I think once you're in your mid-40s and the grave begins to loom, there's something truly fatuous about continuing to clamber up career ladders trying to become more important. Surely, you should be moving into something a bit more interesting than that. People think I'm weird, of course. I think it's weird to believe that mental health consists in pretending you're immortal. Anyway, what's so bad about death? Most of the best people are dead, you know.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Why, then, did you decide to write a movie at this point?

[A] Cleese: One reason is that I've never yet written one of the big three. That is to say, a stage play, a novel or a screenplay. So I wanted to do that. And I wanted to meet Jamie Lee Curtis before I died. Incidentally, she can breathe under water. And I wanted to be in a movie where I got the girl at the end. I've long asked myself, Who is ever, ever going to write a film in which I get the girl? Answer: Me!

17.

[Q] Playboy: What did you think of the American version of your Fawlty Towers series?

[A] Cleese: They tried it twice. I can't remember the name of the first one, but it didn't get beyond a pilot. I suspect that the reason it didn't work was that the producers feared it was too mean-spirited. Someone had put pressure on the actors, Harvey Korman and Betty White. Every time they did something mean, which was really what made Fawlty Towers funny, they kind of did something to say, "It's all right, folks. It's only a joke." They tried to sanitize the comedy. So that's, I think, why it didn't go beyond a pilot.

[A] And then, sometime later, I had the most extraordinary Hollywood experience in my life. I was at a house party in England and two Americans introduced themselves. They said, "Our company owns the Fawlty Towers format. And we're just about to make six of them." My heart leaped to the sound of cash registers, and I asked, "How nice, but would a series about a small private hotel be understood in America?" "No problem with that," they said. "Have you made any changes at all?" I asked. "Just one," they replied. "We've written Basil out." And you know, there's just this moment when you stand there smiling politely, thinking everything you've ever heard about Hollywood is true.

[A] They did it with Bea Arthur, who is very funny. But you see, the dynamic couldn't be right. What is funny about Basil's rudeness, his fury, is that, by and large, it is fueled by fear of his wife, Sybil. That's why he gets into those terrible panics, which produce his rages. Once you changed the dynamic, never mind the gender, there was no way it could have worked. And it didn't. I have always thought that they should have just remade the shows for America, keeping them very, very similar and casting Peter Boyle as Basil Fawlty. He would have been superb.

18.

[Q] Playboy: We often hear about the difference between British and American humor. What do you think it is?

[A] Cleese: I don't pretend to know. I spent two years of my life in America, and I've married Americans twice, but I still feel insecure about making jokes here. But I do suspect that Americans like gags more than the British, who seem happier to relish insane situations without needing one-liners to trigger the laughs.

19.

[Q] Playboy: In Fawlty Towers, you raised anger and irritation to an art form. What is it that really makes John Cleese mad?

[A] Cleese: Oh! I thought you were going to say what makes me laugh. What makes me mad? Let me see ... yes, people who pretend they're bandicoots. Cream-colored telephones. Arctic explorers who stutter. Bits of string more than 15 inches long. Czech organ-grinders. Square dice. All the usual things.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true that you were once named one of Britain's ten best-dressed men?

[A] Cleese: Yes. It was undeserved. In fact, when it was announced over the radio during the rush hour, three of my friends had accidents. I don't dress well, I dress disgustingly. I make a point of it, as I have never met a well-dressed man whom I liked. I went to lunch at Buckingham Palace once and discovered at 11:15 A.M. that I'd mislaid my shirt. My training-film company had it and sent it over by bike. I also have the finest collection of bad-taste ties in the free world. Most of them have a fishy leitmotiv. I choose suede socks, and Turnbull & Asser make me shirts with the buttons missing and holes in the sleeves. Incidentally, may I congratulate you on the way you dress?

The tallest python tells fish stories and reveals how david frost saved him from a life within the law

"Anyway, what's so bad about death? Most of the best people are dead, you know."