Lakeshore Theater

Interview: Monty Python’s Terry Jones to Appear in ‘Holy Grail’ Chicago Screening

PatrickMcD — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:59:09 -0600

CHICAGO – Monty Python member and Holy Grail co-director Terry Jones will be attending a “Meet the Maker” screening at Chicago’s Lakeshore Theater on Saturday, May 9.

Jones, a founding member of the legendary Monty Python troupe, cut his comedic teeth in 1960’s British television, working with writing partner Michael Palin on shows like David Frost’s “The Frost Report”.

‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ (1975) was born from the successful TV show, and Jones took on the director’s responsibilities along with fellow Pythoner and soon-to-be-notable film director Terry Gilliam.

Sir Robin meets the 3-headed Knight(left to right) Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman and Michael Palin in ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’
Photo credit: Monty Python, Ltd.

Besides participating in the Lakeshore Theater screenings on Saturday at 6 and 9pm, Terry Jones will also be conducting a comedy writing seminar in Chicago with Monty Python historian Kim “Howard” Johnson at the Chicago’s iO. Tickets are still available for the 1:30pm session on Saturday, May 9th.

HollywoodChicago.com spoke with Terry Jones via phone to ask about Holy Grail, his writing partnership with Michael Palin and why he is in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

HollywoodChicago.com: According to all production accounts, the filming of the Holy Grail was chaotic, dirty and depressive at times. Did you have a good laugh when the film became a success, then a cult classic, they a big beautiful Broadway baby?

Terry Jones: (Laughs) It was scary making the film. After the first day’s filming, I went around to everyone and said ‘don’t panic’, because we’d never made a movie before and we’d never directed ourselves.

Early in the process, we were up this mountainside in Scotland. We were doing the first shot and Graham [Chapman, who played King Arthur] was shaking. We didn’t know why, but it turned out he was trying to quit drinking and was going ‘cold turkey’. So he had the shakes.

And when first shot of that day took place the camera suddenly sheared its gears. The cameraman opened the camera, and all the bits just fell out. That was the only camera we had that could do sound, so Terry [Gilliam, the co-director] just figured out what we could do with a mute camera.

It turned out we were doing ‘the gorge of eternal peril’ scene, but nobody would go over the rickety bridge. So we had to walked around the gorge of eternal peril for an hour and a half to shoot on the other side.

We didn’t get much done that day, with only a five and week shooting schedule.

HC: Is the function of a writing partner, as practiced with the great Michael Palin, simply to make each other laugh? Or is it more?

TJ: Essentially you have to make each other laugh. That’s the key thing. Mike and I started writing together, but eventually we gave that up. I’d write at my place and he’d write at his and then we’d meet and read out what we had. It was really like tag team writing.

We still had an input to each sketch, but just we didn’t do it at the same time. Examples are the Spanish Inquisition sketch and ‘Every Sperm is Sacred’ from ‘The Meaning of Life’, Mike started them and I added my bit.

Renaissance Man Terry Jones Today
Photo credit: Terry Jones

HC: How did World War 2, as it effected Britain, consequently effect your generation of post war children, and how do you think it manifested itself into the evolution of the brand of humor that the Python’s created?

TJ: Well, that question certainly gets the mind working (laughs). I grew up austere, and didn’t meet my father until I was 4-1/2 years old. I remember it to this day, because he was stationed during the war in India and didn’t come back until well after it was over.

I grew up too with an anti-authority factor. The Labor Party put in a sweeping socialist agenda and I felt a change in the air, with the old guard being challenged.

In the 1960s, we did feel we were going to organize a better world.

HC: The Pythons are often compared to The Beatles when it comes to the revolutionary change they brought their particular brand of art and the divergent personalities they both had. Was there ever a time within the Python universe that you felt like the Beatles in 1970?

TJ: Not really. We always got on, even though we had our share of fights and feuds. In a way, we actually get long too well now, which is why we can’t write anything together any more, because we’re too polite and like each other too much (laughs).

HC: David Frost was recently in the film news with the movie Frost/Nixon. What memories do you have working with him?

TJ: Mike and I worked with David Frost on ‘The Frost Report’, working on CDMs – which means continuing developing monologues – we’d supply jokes for that.

Frost wanted to produce the Python shows initially and had John Cleese under contract with his company. John didn’t want him to produce it, we didn’t see it that way either, we wanted the BBC to produce it. So John said ‘he can sue me if he likes’. And I think that’s what happened (laughs).

HC: My favorite character of yours is the Straight man in the Wink-Wink Nudge Nudge sketch. What is your favorite Python character that you played?

TJ: I suppose I would say the waitress in the ‘Spam’ sketch and the harassed housewife in ‘Every Sperm is Sacred’ from ‘Meaning of Life’.

HC: You’ve performed in one of the most famous comedy troupes in show business history, you’ve directed highly regarded films, and are by description a writer, medieval historian, poet, purveyor of newspaper editorials and a man who is not afraid to take his clothes off on film. What is the encore for this heroic life?

TJ: Well, currently I’m in Kalamazoo, Michigan (laughs), attending the world’s largest academic medieval conference and in three hours time I’m going to talk about the dating of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. Which is actually very interesting.

I’ve been lucky enough from the films and TV shows to have just enough income coming where I can do things that don’t necessarily make money. Like coming to Kalamazoo.

HC: Which sketches in Holy Grail did you and Michael Palin write?

TJ: It’s hard to remember. The whole concept started with something Mike had written, with Patsy and the coconuts. Did we write the swallow stuff? I can’t remember.

HC: What do you want to tell the audience at the screening on Saturday that you’ve never told anybody about the filming of Holy Grail?

TJ: I hope I can think of something (laughs). I’m sure it will be a revelation.

HC: Care to comment on this statement regarding my experience with watching Monty Python as a kid: If it wasn’t for Monty Python I never would have understood the revolution beyond my small town Indiana roots…

TJ: I’m flabbergasted.

’Comedy Writing with Terry Jones’, May 9th, 1:30pm at the Chicago iO, 3541 N. Clark, AND ‘Meet the Maker’ with Terry Jones and a screening of ‘Monty Python and The Holy Grail’, May 9th, 6pm and 9pm, at the Lakeshore Theater, 3175 N. Broadway in Chicago.

By PATRICK McDONALD
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

Voice of Homer Simpson Pedals With ‘The Bicycle Men’ For Chicago Tour de Force

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:57:26 -0700

CHICAGO – Frantic and fantastically funny, the musical-comedy play “The Bicycle Men” invades Chicago again for a limited run at the Lakeshore Theater this time featuring the man – Dan Castellaneta – who is best known as the voice of TV’s Homer Simpson.

“The Bicycle Men”.
Photo credit: The Lakeshore Theater
The show, which originated with Castellaneta’s co-stars (Mark Nutter, John Rubano and Joe Liss) as “Le Comedie du Bicyclette” at the Los Angeles ImprovOlympics in April 2003, had a long run in Chicago that same year.

Loosely structured around a nebbish American (Castellaneta) and his bicycle tour of the French countryside, Nutter, Rubano and Liss play multiple characters designed to insanely disrupt the journey.

Set in a bicycle shop, youth hostel, restaurant, movie theater and most weirdly a talent show cabaret, each location inspires another surreal sketch with a musical number. Accompanied on piano by the multi-talented Nutter, Castellaneta and company sing a “Cynic’s Lullaby” and odes to “Fake Breasts,” “White Guys” “Church Barn” and most succinctly “Musical Hetero”.

Castellaneta – with his everyman demeanor – is perfectly cast as the ugly American content to play the straight man around the mad swirl of the other three crazies. Liss shines especially as a Marcel Marceau-type mute (in a Dana Carvey wig), a Dutch traveler who sings himself to sleep and an expert in the subtleties of dog poop.

Rubano is the glue of the show as the metaphoric bicycle god, and with his other characters, he steals every scene he chews.

His Texan-American ways with a happy physical abnormality would make George Bush proud while his turn as a puppet competes with Pinocchio. Playing a force of nature named Chester Manchester, he had the audience in paralyzing laughter and produced more gales with each characteristic expression.

Dan Castellaneta.
Photo credit: IMDb
The songs and choreography have a valid musical theater quality with standouts being the “White Guys” number with a boogie-woogie movement that is best described as spastic.

The brilliant song “Musical Hetero” – in which Castellaneta pleads that he is a straight man in a gay song-and-dance world – farcically manages to skew both ends of the orientation spectrum with several high kicks thrown in for added measure.

For fans of “The Simpsons,” it was also interesting to listen to Castellaneta’s natural speaking and singing voice and detect the familiar rhythm behind so many voices in that legendary series.

This play is outrageously off-kilter even down to the scene transitions where the players use broad physical comedy to transcend time and space. The men on stage have great fun with a loose, improvisational style that buries the laugh meter in the red zone and takes the audience along on their audacious bicycle ride.

As Homer Simpson himself once said: “I love legitimate thee-ay-ter.”

“The Bicycle Men” has a limited run through Dec. 16 at
the Lakeshore Theater in Chicago at 3175 N. Broadway.
Phone 773-472-3492 for tickets or click here.

By Patrick McDonald
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com

Changes on Horizon For Chicago-Native Conan O’Brien Writer Kevin Dorff

HollywoodChicago.com — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 09:25:11 -0700

CHICAGO – Kevin Dorff spent his Sunday in Chicago kicking back and watching the Bears game.

Jim Zulevic and Kevin Dorff (on right) at Second City.
Photo credit: Second City
A Chicago native and Emmy Award-winning writer for “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” for seven years, the current WGA strike has shut down production and provided him something of a forced vacation.

For nearly a week, he has been back in the city that started his career when he first began taking classes in the early 1990s at what was then called Improv Olympic (now iO).

Within a few years, he was performing on Second City’s main stage.

On Tuesday night, Dorff will be performing alongside Horatio Sanz, Matt Walsh, Ed Furman and others at the Lakeshore Theater for “Horatio Sanz and the Kings of Improv,” which is presented by the Upright Citizens Brigade.

“These guys just love to play,” Dorff said – speaking of the ensemble – in an interview with HollywoodChicago.com.

He has performed with them all many times in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago over the last decade. Dorff added: “Matt and Horatio would just upend some milk cartons and perform on them. That might be a new show we’re working on. I don’t know.”

All of the performers have a connection to Chicago and originally were seen on the stages of Second City, iO, the Annoyance and other comedy clubs around town. In New York, the players can be seen regularly at the UCB Theatre as part of Sunday night’s ASSSSCAT Improv show.

Horatio Sanz.
Photo credit: iO West
Tuesday’s show will closely follow the Armando Diaz Experience format for improvisation made popular at iO.

Originally created by Adam McKay, David Koechner, Dorff and the namesake Armando Diaz, the “experience” is an improvised long-form show based on a performer’s personal monologues. Who will be doing the monologues on Tuesday has yet to be decided.

“It’s not very structured,” Dorff said. “We’re really good at working together. We’ll rely on what we’re feeling at the time. We might do a shared monologue experience and bring a lot of order out of that.”

He bases everything on what he learned training with iO founders Charna Halpern and Del Close. Dorff finds himself working with a lot of the same people again and again.

When Tina Fey was casting the pilot episode for the hit show “30 Rock,” she called on Dorff for a role in the cold opening. Robert Smigel knew Dorff from working together on Conan O’Brien’s show and cast him in an episode of “TV Funhouse”.

Even some of the other writers on “Late Night” were on Dorff’s first improv team in Chicago. Other work comes the old-fashioned way: auditioning. Last summer, Dorff called in to meet with famed comedy casting director Allison Jones for this season of “The Office”.

The result was a role as an ex-client of Dunder Mifflin who was unimpressed with character Michael Scott’s gift basket. Writing for “Late Night,” however, takes up 50 to 60 hours a week and the majority of Dorff’s time. He’s not complaining.

Frank Caeti (MADtv, on left), Armando Diaz and Kevin Dorff (on right).
Photo credit: ImprovMatchGame.com
“We love what we do. We’re happy to go in early and stay late. We’re happy to sleep on couches in our offices,” explains Dorff of his life before the writer’s strike, which began on Nov. 5.

He admits to only having an anthill view of the complex currently between the WGA and the major studios.

Dorff added: “What some people forget is that nothing going on. Nothing is being made and it’s affecting everyone down to the PAs and interns who are trying to learn about what it’s like to work in this business.”

Of the more than 10,000 members of both branches of the writer’s guild, only a few hundred are comedy writers.

“It’s weird how serious these [comedy writers] are taking this,” Dorff said as he became more dynamic on the subject. He says the frustration comes from not being able to do what you love.

“It has been a long time since the contract has been updated,” Dorff said. “It’s based on a VHS-rental model. They need to bring it in line with the current generation of media. I can’t even find a Blockbuster [any more]. Can you? I hope [the strike is] as short as however it can be.”

WGA negotiations are set to resume on Nov. 26. Beyond that, there are changes on the horizon for Dorff’s career at “Late Night”.

Matt Besser and Amy Poehler.
Photo credit: iO West
Ever since it was announced that Conan O’Brien would be taking the reigns of the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” when Leno steps down in 2009, it has spawned questions about changes in everything from the content and location.

“You’d have to ask [NBC Universal President] Jeff Zucker about that,” Dorff said while explaining that all the decisions are to be worked out with the producers of the show. The writers are only more concerned with the day to day.

Dorff added: “We do shows five nights a week. When we go in on Monday, we have no idea what’s happening on Thursday much less in 2009.”

Dorff instead puts his faith in Conan O’Brien. He added: “Conan’s instincts are great,” Dorff said as he described his admiration of the host and executive producer as a comedy writer. “His work ethic is infectious. He makes people motivated.”

Right now, though, he is more concerned with being back in his hometown and performing with old friends. Last week, Dorff, Rachel Dratch and Tim Meadows sat in on an improv set at Second City after doing a panel at the Chicago History Museum.

When the rest of the kings of improv are in town and they meet up for dinner, they might decide to make an impromptu appearance at iO. After all, these are people who just love to play.

“That’s the best thing about being in Chicago,” Dorff said. “People just pull up their sleeves and get to work.”

Kevin Dorff will be performing with “Horatio Sanz and the Kings of Improv” on Tuesday, Nov. 20 at the Lakeshore Theater in Chicago. Tickets are available here or by calling 773-472-3492.
By Dustin Levell
Senior Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com