That's what a lot of us enjoyed last night, courtesy of the Museum of TV and Radio: An evening with a member of Monty Python. The museum is having its annual William S. Paley Festival which, once upon a time, was all about classic TV shows of the past. Now, it almost exclusively honors current shows (Lost, Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives, etc.) with Mr. Palin's appearance being a notable exception. That's the bad news for some of us. The good news is that after years of poor interviewers from the museum's staff, this year's seminars have more qualified, usually famous moderators. Palin was interviewed by Harry Shearer, who did a fine job of it.
Clips were run, not just of Palin's days with Python (The Argument Sketch, the Spanish Inquisition, et al) but of his work before and after. The excerpts from his travelogues for the B.B.C., to which I paid not enough attention when they first aired, looked especially wonderful.
Palin did not offer much encouragement to those yearning for a Python reunion of some sort. There has intermittently been talk of a new stage tour but Palin is against it because, says he, it wouldn't be the same without Graham Chapman. He also thinks the probable success of the new Broadway musical, Spamalot, will fill any possible need there might be to see Monty Python on stage. He said he had been interested in a movie idea that Eric Idle proposed — a sequel to Monty Python and the Holy Grail with them all playing the same knights several decades later — but the idea has never gone anywhere.
Mostly, he told wonderful stories and to the delight of the audience, kept lapsing into characters from Python routines — although when one lady asked, "What's your favorite color?", he and Shearer both seemed to miss the reference to a key scene in Holy Grail. He impressed most of us as very humble and very, very nice. When we left, he was still there signing program books for people and he looked like he was going to stay until he'd signed for everyone who wanted an autograph. For all I know, he may still be there.