I'm sure it will surprise absolutely no one that an evening of John Cleese and Eric Idle in conversation would be hilarious…but it was even funnier than that. To promote Mr. Cleese's new book, the two men took the stage this evening and just talked for close to ninety minutes. There seemed to be professional video being shot so perhaps the whole thing will be available somewhere, sometime. I'd sure like to see it again. And again.
They didn't talk a whole lot about Cleese's book. It actually had the feel of two close friends sitting around, telling stories to each other and to a third party, the third party in this case being a packed audience at the Alex Theater in Glendale. Given some of the rumors that have made the rounds, it's probably worth reporting that the two did seem like very close friends and that many compliments flew between them. Cleese was especially effusive about his fellow Python's skills at musical performing and at programming and supervising the big O2 stage show they did as a Farewell Performance.
The funniest thing said will not seem nearly as funny when I type it here but basically, Cleese told about how Graham Chapman — for some ungodly reason — was invited to participate in a debate at Oxford about nuclear proliferation. Chapman, who knew next to nothing about the topic and had zero to say about it, cheerfully accepted the invite and showed up for the debate dressed as a giant carrot.
Cleese and Idle discussed how they met and how Python came to be, pretty much agreeing on all the details. Both made the point that they always thought of themselves not so much as performers but as writers who got up to perform their own material. Both agreed that while they argued a lot about scripts and what was funny, they never argued over casting and who'd get which roles to play.
Cleese's book, which was available signed but unpersonalized outside the hall, contains the text of several sketches that were written in his pre-Python days. To the delight of everyone, the two men read/performed two of them, which I believe were for At Last, the 1948 Show, a series Cleese did before Python. They had not rehearsed and Idle did not seem terribly familiar with the material but it was very funny and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought, "This must be a lot like how the first reading of a new Monty Python sketch sounded around the table."
Saw a lot of friends there including Paul Dini and Misty Lee, Maurice LaMarche, Billy Riback, Lee Aronsohn, Steve Stoliar, Robert Spina, Jeff Abraham, Howard Green, Arthur Greenwald, Mike Carlin, Eric Goldberg and others I'm forgetting. Kim "Howard" Johnson, who as I mentioned here is traveling with Mr. Cleese, only had a moment to say hi but he did move me and a friend to seats in the third row. I stole the above photo from Kim's Twitter feed which I highly recommend.
About a half-hour after the show let out as I headed for my car, I walked to the back of the Alex and there, not far from my parking space, Mr. Idle was still cheerfully signing autographs for folks and bantering with his fans. I couldn't help but think, "What a nice man."