Comedians From England

"[I]t took about four men to live [Graham Chapman's] life. There was the quiet pipe-smoking tweed-jacketed doctor, who could elucidate complicated medical facts to the layman while calmly diagnosing and dispensing medicines; there was the quiet pipe-smoking writer who could sit all day painting his nails with gestetner fluid, occasionally interjecting the oddest comments, squawks, shouts of 'Betty Marsden' and injunctions to sing 'Only Make-Believe' in a squeaky voice; there was the quiet pipe-smoking homosexual, who could calmly bring a party of Chinese boys down for breakfast in an extremely bourgeois German suburban hotel, causing the manageress conniptions and ending in a request that he move to a more suitable establishment; and there was the quiet pipe-smoking alcoholic, who could reduce any drinks party to a shambles by consuming half a distillery and then crawling round the floor kissing all the men and groping all the women."

"Graham was getting through two bottles of gin a day, but those were the large ones that you get behind a bar. Pretty colossal. … He never used the word alcoholic, but he knew darned well that he had to clean his act up. As I understand it anyway, Graham already knew he would be playing Brian [in Life of Brian], and had to really stop drinking with that in mind."

"[A]s I stood after coming off stage in a state of shock, a tall chap waiting in the queue … offered a few words of consolation, and then minutes later I was having coffee with my main writing partner for the next twenty years.My first impression of Graham Chapman was of physical strength. He was slightly shorter than me, but much tougher, in the lean, angular way of a sportsman. He did not surprise me when he said he was a medical student who climbed mountains and played rugby football. He was wearing a rather hairy tweed jacket and heavy brogues, and he soon lit up a pipe. He seemed dead butch, and slightly taciturn."

"The very first day of filming of The Holy Grail, in fact, we were halfway up a mountainside in Glen Coe, and I hadn't gotten my daily dose, and it was seven o'clock in the morning that we left the hotel. The bar wasn't open; I hadn't realised this, and hadn't gotten anything prepared the night before that I should have if I'd researched my drinking properly. And so I had DTs on the mountainside while having to try and remember lines and (uh) stand up. … It was then that I decided next time that I do a job like this I'm going to be clean for it. It's not fair to the other chaps in the group, it's not fair to me, it's not fair to what I've written, and it's very stupid."

"It's fear. … There's no point in it. We should just love each other, and do it in our own way. That's the only thing that's important."

"Once the decision had been made, once I decided to stop [drinking], it was easy—except for the … three days of unpleasantness, of—well, of having things crawl all over me and hallucinating. … One of the worst things was not being able to remember if I'd slept or not, whether I was dreaming, or whether I was awake. I didn't know."

"Dropped in to see Graham in Southwood Lane. He came out of hospital yesterday and is not supposed to drink ever again. He looked sallow and tense. It’s going to be a great struggle for him. Barry Cryer was there too. We sat and sipped tea and Barry and I joked rather forcibly. It seemed the only thing to do at the time."

"John rings. He’s been away in the country for the weekend. Has just returned to find a message that Graham has had a nervous breakdown."

"There was one occasion when John Cleese and myself actually felt guilty about laughing at something we were writing, because it was in incredibly bad taste. So bad was the taste that we just couldn't help laughing at it. It concerned a gentleman walking into … an undertaker's premises with his dead mother in a sack. And from there it got worse."

"[My parents] came to grips with the drinking … much more easily, I think, than [with my sexuality]. Yes. But, things are rather better now than in those days, of course. It was some time ago. And now, even the Church of England, I think, regards a homosexual as merely being handicapped."

"I think … [what attracted me to show business] was the early radio shows. I was an avid listener to radio shows like Take It from Here; before that, Jewel and Warriss, Hancock, all sorts of radio shows. And then, later—when I was around thirteen, fourteen—The Goon Show, of course. Here came a show which was not like any of the other shows. It didn't have the same kind of rules. It didn't have any rules. It didn't even like the medium that was putting it out, particularly; it didn't like the BBC. Wonderful! There was something I could relate to, and did."

"[The other Pythons all lead] boring lives, but Graham lives what we do on the screen for real. … It's constantly surprising, what he does. … Graham was at his best, usually, in very conservative restaurants when we'd be out dining, and there'd be some nice, middle-aged, middle-class couples dining, and you'd suddenly discover Graham was no longer at the table, but was underneath the table, and other people's tables, and kissing people's feet."

"Ultimately, I think writing is more … satisfying [than acting], … because if you write something, later on in the day … you can read it through again and you know that it's … good. That's a very satisfying feeling because [the work] is there, it's something you've created. … Acting is … a skill which a lot of people have. Less so with writing …. But, I'm enjoying acting now much more than I did. It was torture for me at one point, in the latter days of [Monty Python's Flying Circus]. But then, after sobering up, I really began to enjoy it again."

"Have a cup of tea when you’re feeling blue/have a cup of tea when Prince Harry didn’t choose you"

"The stories we tell, the things we do, and the memories we have - either in our heads or in our backups - are more important than any physical object."

"Anyone who tells you they're certain about how the world works is either a mathematician, or they're selling something."

""Nothing to hide" only works if the folks in power share the values of you and everyone you know entirely, and always will."

"Every time we design a system, we have to minimise the potential harm. Look at the code that you write, look at the systems you design, and think: How could this be abused? How could this fall apart? What are the failure states here? If you were a bad actor, if you wanted to use this maliciously, how would you go about it? Think about how you’d attack your own systems, explore those failure states, deliberately screw things up and see how your code copes. Because if you don't, someone else will."

"Every bit of freedom that a designer has for creativity and good is also freedom for abuse. That’s true not just on the web, but in every single aspect of the online world."

"When Stan passed away, his little desk there was awash with fan mail that had been pouring in from all over the world as it had been for most of his later life; he insisted on sitting there, at that little portable typewriter and answering every one of them, personally, and of course he was so far back—months and months behind in the answering, but he wouldn't give up. He never gave up on anything; he never gave up on life and most of all, he never gave up that God-given mirth that he had."

"Stan's a good boy, but he's got a marrying complex."

"Stan's influence decided me to go into show business in the first place, and his influence molded my point of view, my attitude about comedy."

"Chaplin, [[w:Charles Dullin|[Charles] Dullin]], [[w:Jacques Copeau|[Jacques] Copeau]], [[w:Jean-Louis Barrault|[Jean-Louis] Barrault]] and Stan Laurel have shown that it is possible to combine the best of tradition with modern and individual approaches."

"I am now in the home of the master."

"All mimes in the world owe much to Stan Laurel. To them, Stan Laurel is a maître. He is of the mime that goes back through history to the very oldest days of the juggler and the comic troubadour. In those days they did not need much of a story. What they had principally was lazzi—or comic tricks. These perhaps look simple—like bumping into someone you don't see at first and then backing off in surprise and fear—but these things are not easy to do and do gracefully and do funnily. [...] Now, there are many people who can do these things in a funny way but it is only a master like Stan or Charlie who can do these things in a very, very funny way to make us laugh out loud, heartily. Stan comes from the same school as Charlie—the music hall. And so many great artists come from there. They all speak the universal language of the movement of the body. They can be both comic and tragic, sometimes at the same moment. Both Stan and Charlie have different styles, of course, and Charlie developed more into social comedy, but they are basically the same kind of comedians if you watch them closely."

"Who are these people? What are they? I don't understand this business of their being billed as 'stars'. What are they stars of? Who made them stars? As far as I can see, they don't do anything but read some questions from cards or a machine. The terrible thing about some of them is that they think they can act or read funny lines, for God's sake. And even worse than that is the fact that the audience seems to accept them on these terms. These people aren't talents, or even bad talents. They are simply non-talents."

"About those boys, I don't care how rough you treat them. I can't tell you how much it hurt me to do those pictures, and how ashamed I am of them. We wouldn't have done them if we didn't have to eat. I kept thinking that sooner or later they would let us do the pictures in our own way, but it just got worse and worse, and we couldn't take it any more. I didn't always see eye to eye with Roach, but for the most part he left us alone, and I'll always be grateful to Hal for that. But those Fox people! You can give it to them good."

"He keeps imitating himself, but he has much talent and I think in time he will do first rate comedy. I hope so. But he he's going to have to learn artistic discipline."

"He was forever leaving home, away for two or three days at a time. He refused to explain where he had been when he returned. [...] And he frequently told me that I could not get a divorce fast enough to suit him. I decided life with a film comedian was anything but funny."

"I don't know what would have happened to the Laurel and Hardy films if it hadn't been for Stan. He was the one who usually took an idea from Roach would have and bring it to life. He was usually the one who suggested to Babe the various things that could be done. In a sense, he is the spirit behind the films—but all of it could not have happened if those three men hadn't met at the right place and at the right time."

"If they ever do a film of my life—and I hope they won't—I'd like Dick to play me. He's one of the very, very few comedians around who knows how to use his body for real.comedy."

"He could lift that eyebrow, and I'd break up."

"Stan Laurel is a slap-stick comedian who really can act, and it is not only due to the situations which are given him that the fun is raised, but by the use he makes of them. He occasionally copies little actions used by Charlie Chaplin, but he does not literally imitate him, and since he has found it necessary to copy someone, he could not have found a better model."

"I hope that the motto can be blue and grey, showing two derbies with these words superimposed: "Two Minds Without a Single Thought.""

"Ollie's projection of emotions like frustration, agitation and shyness was masterful, and so was Stan Laurel's conception of the harried, ineffectual soul."

"Laurel is now one of 's stars, and his comedies have given him plenty of room in which to sparkle. The Laurel brand of screen nonsense is a combination of fine burlesque and pure [[absurdity]. In three of his recent two-reel subjects he built up screamingly funny travesties of well-known feature productions and appears to have entered into a field in which he has no competition. Laurel's keen sense of values has made possible a new and welcome type of motion picture comedies. From time to time burlesques of current screen successes have been brought out, but no comedian but Laurel has seen the possibilities in this line of work. For general all-around nonsense Laurel easily wins the palm. It may not appear strikingly original to hitch a horse to a sulky, wrong end to, but as it is done on the screen in a comedy to be released soon [Wide Open Spaces] it is a high point of fun. Laurel's personality and his utterly inane grin have much to do with "putting over" such bits of business and it is to these two possessions that he undoubtedly owes his success."

"So terribly funny. He can still make me laugh like crazy after all these years."

"We never tried to use funny clothing. Of course, there were times when we would wear odd garments for a special humorous effect, but as far as our two characters were concerned, we never tried to get very far from what was real. We always wore a stand-up collar but there wasn't anything unreal about them, especially in the twenties and early thirties. Stand-up collars were formal and slightly different, but never too obviously so. They gave us, together with our derbies, a something we felt these characters needed—a kind of phony dignity. There's nothing funnier than a guy being dignified and dumb. [...] The derby hat to me has always seemed part of a comic's make-up for as far back as I can remember. I'm sure that's why Charlie wore one. Most of the comics we saw as boys wore them, so I guess you'd say that's one item that's strictly in the public domain."

"Another 'great,' and I use that word very carefully, not the way Milton Berle uses it. One of the reasons I love Buster so much is because he lives comedy as well as practices it. Some of his things are better than Chaplin's."

"I suppose we had very little of what you'd call family life. We were very seldom all together. I was almost always either in boarding school or living with my grandparents in were I was born, but still, strange as it may seem, we were always a close family."

"If anyone at my funeral has a long face, I'll never speak to him again"

"The only thing worth remembering about it, I guess, is that the part of the whimpering butler that I played in it gave me the first real mannerism that definitely became a part of my later character when I was teamed with Hardy. In the film, I was a very timid chap, running around and reacting with horror to everything that went on around me. To emphasize this, I cried at one point, screwed my face up—and have used it ever since. Funny thing about that cry, though; it's the only mannerism I ever used in the films that I didn't like. I remember years later when we would be improvising something on the set and we came to a pause where we couldn't think of anything to do—or had a dull moment—Roach would always insist that I use the cry. It always got a laugh, and it sure became a part of my standard equipment, but somehow I never had any affection for it."

"He and Jolson were wonderful entertainers the like of which you don't see anymore. They weren't comedians really, but funny singing entertainers of the kind I used to see and love in the English music hall. It's a shame that young performers these days aren't remotely like them."

"It has to be visual stuff. Too many radio writers are writing radio gags for television, which is a visual medium."

"It's a strange thing, but we really only got to know each other in the last years of his life. When we were making pictures together, we never saw each other off the set. As soon as the picture was finished, he'd go his way and I'd go mine. We both had our own circle of friends and our own interests. [...] After we were out of pictures, we did a lot of touring in Europe together and that's when we got to know each other intimately. You couldn't help it—you had to be together much of the time at theatres, in hotels, at press parties and on trains."

"[He can't stand to watch their old comedies on TV because] because they're so cut up. [...] I wish I could have edited them. They seem too slow nowadays. That was because we had to leave time between the gags for the audience to laugh. You don't need that spread in TV."

"I don't see many people anymore. It's a long way out here to . And I can't go any place. I have and still haven't completely recovered from the stroke I had in 1955, so all I can do is stay in the apartment here and watch the ocean and television. About the only visitor I have, except for my family, is Jerry Lewis. He's been after me to work as a comedy consultant on his movies. Once he came out here and stayed seven hours. We had a lot of laughs. But, as for working again, I can't. I'm all washed up in this business."

"We had different hobbies. He likes horses and golf. You know my hobby—and I married them all."

"I remember one time Charlie [Chaplin] and I were walking over to the theater all dressed up, hanky up the sleeve, spats, double-breasted coat, carrying canes—and on the way there we became aware of Nature's urgent call. Now, public conveniences are a regular part of English life, but they certainly aren't in America. We searched high and low and couldn't find accommodation. Finally, in desperation, we asked a cop where the nearest public convenience was. "The nearest what?" the cop yelled. We asked again, very politely. He finally got our drift and said very loudly, "Aw, hell, you'll have to go to a saloon, mister!" Mind you, we were now in a pretty anxious state. We got to a saloon and started down the aisle, as it were, when we realized that we hadn't purchased anything to warrant our use of the facilities. These polite Englishmen. So, tortured as we were, we marched up to the bar very bravely, ordered a beer and sipped it for a few seconds before we flew away."

"A real craftsman. He knows what consistent comedy characterization is. The only criticism I have is that once in a while he holds after his laughs too long. He milks those holds on occasion and he shouldn't."