Spent a lovely evening at a special seminar at the Museum of TV and Radio in Beverly Hills — a show about the early and late days of Monty Python, with Eric Idle present to intro and answer questions. They ran an episode of Do Not Adjust Your Set, a show he did, pre-Python, with Terry Jones and Michael Palin. He described it as a "kids' show," as perhaps it was based on its time slot. But the sketches therein — and in other episodes I've seen — would not have been outta place as prime-time Python. This was followed by a documentary about the guys' later work, shot on the set of Life of Brian.
In the pre-screening Q-and-A, Mr. Idle was charming and very funny, even in the face of one or two geeky questions. (One lady asked, "Would you sing for us?") He said that his sequel to the Rutles — All You Need is Lunch, which I saw at a previous screening in the same room — will air soon, as will a program made up of concert footage from his touring show, Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python. He politely dodged questions about The Men of Python ever reuniting for anything but gave the impression that he isn't expecting it to happen.
He opened his little talk by quoting a line of George Harrison's — "If we knew at the time we were going to be The Beatles, we would have tried harder" — and said (approximately), "At the time, we all just thought of Python as just our next show and we had no idea it would become what it's become." Later, he said that he thought it was a fortunate thing that all 45 episodes of the TV show were completed before the series reached America and their fame exploded. Success, he said, changes a show…as witness what happened to Saturday Night Live once (another approximate quote:) "everyone in the cast became Chevy Chase."
He's an enormously witty, bright man. The only thing that could have made the evening better would have been if they'd chucked the films, good as they were, and had Eric Idle talk about an hour longer.