John Cleese answers audience questions with Eric Idle at Live Talks Los Angeles

a glass of white wine is immense yes and question oh thank you very much questions for your good health everybody yes your help I'm not sure what they spit for diesel [Laughter] [Applause] you can shuffle these off alright alright do you get tired of people asking you to do all Python bits such as the Ministry of Silly Walks yes when you do the Ministry of Silly Walks once right now no there have been several attempts to adopt Fawlty Towers to American television why in your opinion have they not succeeded because they didn't listen to me they always said they knew how to do it and they were all absolute disasters all through and man should say that when we've been doing Monty Python for very little time a bunch of American producers came over and said they'd like to buy Monty Python for American television and we said well I said no no we just want to buy it and we said well what and they said well we want to buy the format we don't have a format [Applause] so I said yes let's sell it to them all right this is for you as you're interested involvement with psychology and therapy changed your creativity or creative output and if so how oh sorry yes okay good that's right you win a fridge Oh [Laughter] I'll tell you something which i think is very profound I think if you have therapy can have the effect of making you less productive but more creative I always think giving interviews and doing book tours is like bad therapy in your ask questions but you don't get any answers that's all I got I hear that at Cornell University you are professor Cleaves and have taught college classes what are your lectures like what kind of homework do you assign says Stephan in Stockholm Tiffany in Stockholm what do you teach I teach I've done a sermon there because I have weird ideas about religion I did a sermon in a great big church from pulpit and I worked with all have taught a bit with a fella called David Dunning who is a social psychologist who my door has come up with a theory that explains the world better than any other theory he says he's discovered that he's been fascinated by how good people are at knowing how good they are at doing things self-assessment he's discovered that in order to know how good you are at something requires almost exactly the same skills as it does to be good at it in the first place so that if you're absolutely no good at something you lack exactly the skills that you need to know [Applause] that's very good that's really good I was asked to be to teach in Canada but I was gonna do the Sermon on the Mount II met Terry Gilliam being the only American in the Pythons how did he fit into the group that relies so much on predominantly British humor what happened to him Terry Gilliam yes I don't understand him at all I kind of liked him I think he's a good-natured guy but I've never yet agreed with anything he's ever said he has a quaint way with the English language on one occasion we were having a read-through when we arrived we also have to say oh let's have some coffee and he said yeah why doesn't somebody boil up a whole bunch of water and by the way he's no longer American Thailand in his american-ness and has become a Brit he's a Brit he's a Brit Brit yeah mmm I think it's to do with tax overseas tax yeah because he lived in England you know and Americans that greedy bastard tax authority oh really if you so much as fart in Newfoundland oh wait a minute you have to declare that in America whereas now he can fart all over the world and their buddy gives a here we are they'll do this one from a nineteen year old visiting from Tennessee but doesn't say where her name is melody shaver melody shaver melody shaver is that an anagram let me just with Trumpy shall be an anagram for be a palindrome Reavers Edelen would be the melody what shaver Shiva yes she's one of the leg shavers she's a she asks what artists influenced your comedy the most also want up-and-coming comedic talents do you admire who influenced your comedy who did you love The Goon Show you know the I think everyone is influenced by that because we were all about 15 except him who was 11 Peter Sellers Harry cecum and Spike Milligan who was a genius writing comedy and also he did a show spike just before we started called q3 I think it was and I remember watching it was a sort of feeling of horror and I then rang up Terry Jones and I said to Terry did you watch that he said I just did he said I thought that's what we were going to be doing so he was enormous ly influential but other people I don't know who do you think we were influenced by well I said that I was saying and Beyond the Fringe for me yeah it's my life when I get all there - Ben but then they were doing very literate satirical comedy and we we did I loved all the old comedians I loved Tommy Cooper I loved Frankie Howard I was a big tradition because we we didn't get televisions until we were 12 so we didn't grow up with television we grew up with radio so I think it's one of the secrets of Python radio is really good for writing you know brain sketches so that so the radio is very very strong you know I always say that but what people find it very hard to understand about pythons and I promise you it's true is that we were basically six writers or five writers who used to perform our own mum Thiru and there were lots of squabbles and fighting in arguments they were always about the material was the material good enough we never squabbled about who was gonna play what role a strange you know if we've been actors primarily that's what we would have been fighting for to get the best part it's true that Fawlty Towers Basil Fawlty was based on an actual hotel owner and I think we can back from that thank you yes Eric stayed at the same hotel him when all the others left Eric and I stayed on tell them about the briefcase yeah well it's just like nowadays it doesn't seem so weird but I had a little on my football gear in a little case and I left it in the lobby and went the Lewin came back it was gone that's my big case so I put his over in the back of the car park said why soon well I thought it was a bomb his name was Donald Sinclair and when I wrote for dieter's I took the set designer down to the hotel and Sinclair had left and sold it and the guy there was was disappointingly Pleasant and competent but when they went out of ten years after I made the series I actually mentioned the very first time about Gleneagles hotel talkie and DA and and what does he owe to Sinclair and the the Daily Mail tracked the poor man down to his retirement home in Miami and he wouldn't speak to them but they managed to persuade his daughter to watch two episodes she'd never seen it before and at the end of the second episode she just turns them and said that's dad oh it is a brilliant series and it is quite interesting because it is the only series I believe to being written by a husband and wife while divorcing well let me just be a little pedantic here we we we wrote the first series when we were married okay then we got divorced okay and then we wrote the second series after we got divorced because we always liked each other we just couldn't lived and you are very very sweet to her in the book it's - it's very nice you're very nice about quite a few people you love your father who's which is very nice you quite rightly disdain your mother who was a nightmare even even when we knew back in the day you would always tell stories about how yeah john was a big star on english television on the frost report and it's on television he'd go home and he'd fall asleep and he'd wake up and his mother was cutting in the back of his head she was that controlling a strange person right the very first time I took Connie down we had a particular show that we wanted to watch so we said at breakfast that day there's a show on television at 9 o'clock and Connie and I watched the other episodes could we watch it and they said fine my dad and mum said well fine we'll eat a little bit earlier and then we'll go to bed so Connie and I sat down to watch the show and during the following hour my mother came into the room on 13 different okay you're very nice about Connie which is why she's a lovely lady and you're very nice about Graham which is also lovely to read about because I know hit certain stages he irritated you oh and I know that irritation is the one thing that really gets to you because irritation seems to be something about weston-super-mare and mothers and fathers is it just that that's we can't get angry because that would be losing your temper which would be a loss of face and that the irritations as much as you're allowed you think it's nice but what was it what when did great irritate me most because was it after he he became alcoholic oh yes oh yeah well after that yeah yeah that did piss me off because the trouble was that he couldn't remember his line so we would write funny sketches and sometimes they just had to be scrapped there was a studio one when he was sculpting me remember me I do I need and we had this very nice sculpture of me and it looked exactly like me except the nose was about three inches to now and when he finished Scout to me said to me what do you think of it and I came round you know and I saw the nose and I said geez I wonder I'm sure do you think no maybe not what do you think maybe the nose is a little bit too long he said what are you talking about I said well you know I was sort of trying to suggest that maybe he needed to take a bit more off and he absolutely couldn't see it at all him became very angry with me and I thought it was a wonderful sketch when we never did it because he couldn't get the lines right in the end we literally abandon the sketch and that's very annoying when you spend a week on something you know well but he was magnificently mad I mean I tell I tell him the book a story about when he was he was asked on one occasion God knows why but they asked him to go to the Oxford University Union which was famous for its political debates and they asked him to speak in a debates about nuclear disarmament and it was it was a very serious thing and there were a couple of cabinet ministers or you know somebody in the cabinet someone in the opposition and there were a couple of big stars in a pundits and television and Graham turned up to debate nuclear disarmament dressed as a carrot [Applause] I think it was rather relevant all right question quick question yep five people dead or alive all this recreations would you most like to have dinner with dead or alive who would I most like to have dinner with I would like to have dinner with WC Fields yes I would love to have I would like to have dinner with Cary Grant I would like to have dinner with Plato and Christ I think that and not Socrates because the drinks are [Applause] so I've got plato price WC Fields carry God oh and you oh that's very nice thank you John thank you well next time we're all in town we'll do that and we'll all have dinner together and we'll charge people to come and watch you see suppose Eric's idea that we should take the o2 over and just have dinner there people could come and watch it there wouldn't be able to hear what we were saying but they could take the bring sandwiches we might still do it John doesn't give it away could be a reunion it would be a reunion lunch yes somebody is being a gonna be funny here the biggest headline on your book tour seems to me appearance on the Graham Norton Show with Taylor Swift mmm in which an insult was made about her cat oh that clip now has over 2 million YouTube views it was absolutely wonderful I thought you know oh I know nothing about music I mean this man is brilliant at music I on the other hand I am the worst I mean I was actually in a Broadway musical once where I was not allowed to say he knows this dog when it went along to the audition because they asked me if I would go a lot of auditions it was called half a sixpence it was with Tommy Steele and I just thought it was so funny being asked to audition because I'm the worst singer the one beyond hopeless so I went out and I read the pages of you know the dialogue and I made them laugh and then they said to me will you sing and I said no and they said well just just sing anything and I said I don't know anything I can't remember a cure and they said well sing your national anthem but I said all right how does it go [Laughter] and I went home giggling and thinking I'll be able to tell my and my grandchildren that I was once audition for a Broadway musical in two days later the phone rang and they gave me the part I was kind of rattled I thought I turned up to rehearsal on the first day and I went up to this lovely little round guy called Stanley Lebowski the musical director I said Stanley I told them at the audition I want you to notice that I can't sing and Stanley said can I beat up Broadway 40 years everybody can sing and then he took me over to the piano and 20 minutes later he changed his mice so I just mind the songs I came out three [Laughter] how do we get on to that it was a question was a question what was the grid is there anything in life you've always wanted to do that you haven't yet yes I would love to strangle Rupert Murdoch with my hair [Applause] I think that means something in Australia stranded in the Murdoch is there anybody you'd like to meet you haven't had the chance to yet must be somebody I'd like you met the Dalai Lama Dean I met the Dalai Lama I liked the Dalai Lama he's operating on a different level from us he's extraordinary I asked him about by white Buddhists laughs so much which is lovely because it was giggle a lot they just think everything is ridiculous what you did and he said what I like about laughter is that when people laugh they can have new ideas and I think that was very interesting because the creativity is allied to relaxation and that's allied to play and that's not like Eric and I play together you know we just have fun we just relax and play we don't know what we're going to say next I think that's very the essence of creativity it's not a left brain activity and I think why you did say you couldn't sing we did write a classic song all together that was so pre-wrote a song called Eric the half of being in its own way is a classic I'm not going to sing in that because we don't have to get stuck just oh I don't mind you've using it I just don't want to see either way but we wrote that under the influence of snaps we were filming in Bavaria and you were dressed as Little Red Riding Hood which is a totally unforgettable sight one of my favorite things ever John varanese walking through the forest chewing on a chicken bone knocking over trees fabulous but what is so strange about that is when you put the costume on in the morning you giggle a lot but it cost by lunchtime you just forgotten you know and I I did I was in this Bavarian restaurant up in the hills you know fir trees everywhere and I after lunch I went to have a peek into the men's low and past this tiny little Bavarian and later hosel who was coming up his expression was yeah when I was doing a sketch with you once when we were doing enough something completely different the film and we were doing a sketch where I come in with a mask and a striped jersey in a big bag saying swag you remember that and I can't remember what what do we do in this case you know I don't know anyway afterwards it was lunchtime and I needed to cash a cheque and I went I stood in the cube and when I finally got to the cashier he Bing English he looked up not the slightest reaction of doors and what can I do fusion we'd always be somewhere and it was lunchtime we dived in full drag and you go I'll have a pint and feel what you're gonna have mate one you would always be like that yeah always anyway I think we should control this because these good people need to drink yes I think maybe I would recommend that you read this book it's a really interesting book and a nice book seriously and it shows a very sweet side to John's nature which isn't always immediately apparent but which is very much there and this very dear and sweet and I want to thank him having known him for 52 years it's fairly extraordinary it was lovely have our comeback and Beyond in public in doing this good wonderful goodbye and I think you should say something to sum up the evening and say good night to these young people or not you treacherous bastard [Laughter] nice too [Applause]

Channel: LiveTalksLA

Views: 221,594

Rating: 4.9309311 out of 5

Keywords: John Cleese, Eric Idle, Taylor Swift, Rupert Murdoch, memoir, Penguin Random House, Live Talks LA, TED Talks, TED, Live Talks Los Angeles

Id: xSvAzKIHpLs

Length: 24min 45sec (1485 seconds)

Published: Sun May 17 2020