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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio. Well,

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Speaker 1: let me just double check the resume if I could, David,

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Speaker 1: because I always like to make sure I'm giving updated information.

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Speaker 1: It's the journalist in me too. So you are still

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Speaker 1: an active senior producer for cbsnews dot com. Yes, i am,

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Speaker 1: and CBS is an Emmy Award winning morning news magazine

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Speaker 1: Sunday Morning. Yes. Oh great, okakay, well then we are

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Speaker 1: we are current. I like that. Sometimes I'll get a

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Speaker 1: buyout and then I'll read it and find out, Oh,

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Speaker 1: I retired last year or something, so I didn't have

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Speaker 1: a chest to talk before we went on. But at

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Speaker 1: the same time, David Morgan is also a writer on

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Speaker 1: culture and on film and on entertainment, and it's been

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Speaker 1: featured and published in many places across the country, which

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Speaker 1: you would all know, including now we can add Coast

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Speaker 1: to Coast AM. On top of that, I'm a big

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Speaker 1: Monty Python fan. Did you start off a Monty Python fan, David, Oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: when I was in Shorthands as a kid. It debuted

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Speaker 1: here in the States in nineteen seventy four, but even

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Speaker 1: before that a little bit it became popular on radio stations,

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Speaker 1: particularly college radio stations, because the record album sort of

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Speaker 1: preceded the series Monty Python's Flying Circus, And that's how

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Speaker 1: I first heard of it. And in the and the

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Speaker 1: months before it actually played on public television here, bits

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Speaker 1: of it were incorporated into a summer replacement series on

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Speaker 1: NBC called Dean Martin's Comedy World. It got the rights

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Speaker 1: to use a few bits in that in that series,

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Speaker 1: so that was the first time it was really seen

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Speaker 1: here in the States. Yeah, I kind of lived that too.

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Speaker 1: I was a freshman in high school and there was

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Speaker 1: a kid in my neighborhood who had who had the album.

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Speaker 1: He had come back from England and so he was

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Speaker 1: we were in his bedroom and he was playing cuts

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Speaker 1: of this and there was like two or three of us,

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Speaker 1: and we circled that night that it was going to

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Speaker 1: debut on the PBS affiliate in Chicago. And what was

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Speaker 1: true about that experience for me is there was this

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Speaker 1: small group of US cultists from the very beginning that

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Speaker 1: were just like went crazy about the show, mostly because

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Speaker 1: I think in the first episode we saw here there

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Speaker 1: was a topless woman in it. So that was enough

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Speaker 1: for us at fourteen we were booking that every week.

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Speaker 1: We were booking that every week, but the but then

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Speaker 1: then we saw it grow and so like at the

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Speaker 1: beginning of the semester that was just this little private

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Speaker 1: little thing. But before the year was over, suddenly everybody

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Speaker 1: was talking about Monty Python and we felt like we

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Speaker 1: felt like we were away ahead of the curve on that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it started here in the States in seventy four on

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Speaker 1: maybe a dozen PBS stations in the year, was in

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Speaker 1: a hundred markets and by that time the movie Monty Python,

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Speaker 1: the Holy Grail had opened, So it really exploded in

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Speaker 1: terms of a fan base, and it was a much

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Speaker 1: larger fan base than they ever had in England. They

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Speaker 1: initially thought Python Humor would never play in the States,

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Speaker 1: and that it became their largest audience. You know, its

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Speaker 1: inially when they're reading the book again, David's book Money

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Speaker 1: Python Speaks the Complete Oral History revised an updated edition.

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Speaker 1: You see how early on, though, as they recount their history,

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Speaker 1: how much they valued the fact that there was one

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Speaker 1: American in the group and that their humor was playing

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Speaker 1: with him, and that they liked the edginess of having

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Speaker 1: an American as part of the original Python set. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And one of the things that stands out by with

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Speaker 1: the shows now, and it's been fifty years since it

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Speaker 1: debuted on the Crazy was that they rarely dealt with

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Speaker 1: topical humor or mentioning people who were in the news

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Speaker 1: at that time. Every once in a while they'll be

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Speaker 1: a mention someone like Markus Thatcher, right, but you didn't

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Speaker 1: you don't have to know what was going on in

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Speaker 1: England in the nineteen sixties. In order to get their humor,

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Speaker 1: to get any jokes, they dealt primarily with archetypes, you know,

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Speaker 1: police officers, military figures, people in positions of authority, and

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Speaker 1: that's something that's recognizable in any culture, in any country

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Speaker 1: at any time. So that's why the humor is timeless

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Speaker 1: and it's it's still funny today even fifty years later.

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Speaker 1: You know. While yes, that's true, there were also a

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Speaker 1: couple of people that they did mention who I kind

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Speaker 1: of filed away even as a kid. They would use

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Speaker 1: some recurring media personalities or politicians as punchlines. You know.

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Speaker 1: They were sort of like in the old days where

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Speaker 1: people used to say Tommy newsom you know, got was

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Speaker 1: always getting referenced on The Tonight Show. And so like

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Speaker 1: Reginald Maudling right, there was so the would just be

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Speaker 1: a name that I remember later on asking like who

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Speaker 1: is this guy? Why is that funny? You know, because

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Speaker 1: well he benefits from the fact of having a somewhat

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Speaker 1: humorous sounding name, even exactly a man of power in

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Speaker 1: England at that time. Yeah, so let me pick it up.

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Speaker 1: I'll get I'll drove back into that little bit later on.

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Speaker 1: But let me also ask you though about with a

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Speaker 1: state of comedy in the seventies in America when money

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Speaker 1: Python went viral. M how would you describe it? Pretty sad? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: In terms of American television, it was very much fitcom

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Speaker 1: and there was a sort of opening up of a

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Speaker 1: loosening of the rules when Norman Lear started things like

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Speaker 1: On the Family and maud Right, And that's when TV

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Speaker 1: censorship started to get rolled back a little bit. I mean,

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Speaker 1: the shows were so popular so the censors couldn't really

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Speaker 1: argue against it when Archie Bunker would say, really filed rum.

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Speaker 1: But the forms of the television shows were very, very conventional.

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Speaker 1: The sitcoms, they had characters every week, they would have catchphrases,

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Speaker 1: they would have set plots, and if it were a

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Speaker 1: comedy show, like a sketch show, a variety show. They

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Speaker 1: would be setups and punchlines. It was all very tame

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Speaker 1: and standard. And Python really broke all those rules. They

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Speaker 1: broke all those conventions. They didn't for one thing, they

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Speaker 1: realized they didn't need a punchline if they had a

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Speaker 1: really good setup. They just used the setup and then

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Speaker 1: then they went on to the next thing. So for

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Speaker 1: something like Ministry of Silly Walks, it's a it's a

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Speaker 1: hilarious concept of a government agency devoted to silly walks,

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Speaker 1: and they have fun with that and then they're off

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Speaker 1: onto the next thing. They don't have to worry about

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Speaker 1: what is the punchline of this of this concept. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and and that's and that's something you didn't see

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Speaker 1: on television, right, No, I agree, But since you brought

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Speaker 1: up all in the family, and I think that the

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Speaker 1: observation is as kind of the gold standard for American comedy.

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Speaker 1: And it was funny. Um Sandford and Son was also funny.

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Speaker 1: And both of those were American interpretations of British shows.

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Speaker 1: So we were we were importing British comedy. We were

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Speaker 1: just you know, heavily stamping it with, you know, into

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Speaker 1: our culture using a you know, a kind of a

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Speaker 1: different lens, Monty. Python was the first time, you know,

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Speaker 1: other than as you mentioned, it had gotten included in

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Speaker 1: a couple of little bits earlier in that summer, but

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Speaker 1: those the first time people, i think in America really

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Speaker 1: got a look at what other people who speak our

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Speaker 1: same language found funny, and it was different than what

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Speaker 1: we were laughing at. Yeah. Um, there was the import

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Speaker 1: of the British of the BBC radio series Bagoon Show

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, and that was running in the

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Speaker 1: seventies and that's sort of the grandfather of Python in

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Speaker 1: terms of their humor because that also it used no

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Speaker 1: standard conventions. It was just wild and because it was

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Speaker 1: a radio show they weren't showing anything, the humor got

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Speaker 1: really wild, like they would do shows about how somebody

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Speaker 1: had eaten the mountain, you know something right, It could

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Speaker 1: have done television, very slar, but now that would be

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Speaker 1: a reality series. Yeah, there wasn't. There wasn't much in

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Speaker 1: the way of British I mean, there was British drama theater,

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Speaker 1: that's what people thought of as British television. And then

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Speaker 1: something really silly like Python comes on and it proves

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Speaker 1: to be even more popular on PBS than Masterpce Theater. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, and I think that again, we're talking with

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Speaker 1: David Morgan. The book is Monty Python's Weeks. It's a

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Speaker 1: revised oral history, and we'll do open lines coming up

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Speaker 1: later on tonight. But I've been looking forward to this

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Speaker 1: because I love I love oral histories in general, because

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Speaker 1: I think it's uh, it's it is. There's nothing, there's

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Speaker 1: nothing more insightful than the people who experienced it, and

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Speaker 1: sometimes it's interesting to see them talk about it in

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Speaker 1: a reflective mood, which is what I liked a lot

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Speaker 1: about what you have here, is that had you interviewed

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Speaker 1: them all in the same context forty years ago, it

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Speaker 1: would have been a little more flinty, it would have

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Speaker 1: been a little more chirpy because they weren't getting along.

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Speaker 1: But now they can look back on their disagreements with

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Speaker 1: a certain amount of perspective. And I think that that

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Speaker 1: that too, is very entertaining, because it sounds like a

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Speaker 1: bunch of old guys sitting around still kind of making

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Speaker 1: up to each other a little bit for times before

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Speaker 1: they went over the edge on each other back in

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Speaker 1: the old days when we made comedy. Right. But but

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Speaker 1: let's let's take a look at from a different standpoint. Two,

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Speaker 1: is that Monty Python. As as much as you are,

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Speaker 1: you correct in saying that, you know, it blew bigger

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Speaker 1: here than it did in England. It was still a

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Speaker 1: sensation in England. And it was a sensation immediately in

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Speaker 1: the sense that you know, John Clees, the uh you know,

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Speaker 1: who was just a cast member, was suddenly spinning out

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Speaker 1: into his own show, and you know, everybody recognized it.

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Speaker 1: It was a It was a hit in England. And

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Speaker 1: and I think that part of the reflection, as they

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Speaker 1: talked about was they weren't sure how this was going

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Speaker 1: to work on television there either, and they it wasn't

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Speaker 1: It wasn't a guarantee. It wasn't like they're going like, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: this is everybody's waiting for this show. They didn't. They

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Speaker 1: didn't know it was gonna last more than than, you know,

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Speaker 1: ten episodes, and they couldn't predict it based on what

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Speaker 1: they had done on Bush Television prior to Pithon. They

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Speaker 1: were all familiar faces working on David Frost series. Uh,

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Speaker 1: John Clees did a show with Marty Feldman for a while.

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Speaker 1: The others Michael Allen, Terry Jones, Eric Idol, they were

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Speaker 1: also in a series Do Not Adjust Your Set, and

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Speaker 1: so they were familiar but they but they were again,

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Speaker 1: you know, kind of typical series in a way where

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Speaker 1: they would have sketches or they also wrote sketches for

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Speaker 1: other TV shows. So why when they were invited to

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Speaker 1: do their own show, the six of them, they were

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Speaker 1: given free reign by the BBC. They didn't really quite

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Speaker 1: know what they were going to do, and they went

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Speaker 1: to the BBC and the BBC s and well what

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Speaker 1: do you want to do and they're like, well, we're

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Speaker 1: not really sure, but the BBC gave them thirteen half

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Speaker 1: hours to fill and so they came up with this

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Speaker 1: very anarchic approach where they would just throw a lot

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Speaker 1: of comic ideas onto the screen and they would be

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Speaker 1: linked by these animations by Terry Gilliam into this sort

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Speaker 1: of stream of consciousness flow of comic ideas, and there

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Speaker 1: might be a scene to the ideas, there might not,

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Speaker 1: but it didn't matter. It was just like a bombardment

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Speaker 1: of all this silliness in it, and it was it

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Speaker 1: was incredibly fresh and it was unlike anything that was

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Speaker 1: on television at the time. So yeah, it was a

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Speaker 1: tremendous hit in England, but the BBC didn't quite fully

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Speaker 1: appreciate it because they couldn't quite understand it. They were

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Speaker 1: looking at it through the lens of something like Dad's Army,

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Speaker 1: which was a very sort of stodgy sitcom. They weren't

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Speaker 1: looking at it as something new, and so they didn't

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Speaker 1: really appreciate. They'd put it on really late at night.

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Speaker 1: At the beginning. It wasn't even accessible in all areas

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Speaker 1: of England. Some areas stations wouldn't carry it. They carry

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Speaker 1: something else. But that's probably better for it. I mean

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Speaker 1: that scarcity creates demand. And it's just like when they

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Speaker 1: release a movie, right that's only in six theaters across

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Speaker 1: the country, but it's getting great reviews. Got to drive

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Speaker 1: to see it. Yeah, yeah, you know, but let's I'm

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Speaker 1: not I don't want to put to find a point

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Speaker 1: on the whole nudity thing. But that was unusual in

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Speaker 1: American watching on an American television, especially on PBS. I

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Speaker 1: mean it would be as though in upstairs, downstairs, you know,

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Speaker 1: some woman took off her top walking down the stairs

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Speaker 1: or something, but it didn't happen. And so in that uh,

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Speaker 1: you know that that sketch, that memorable sketch of the

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Speaker 1: you know, the life of a chartered accountant, when there's

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Speaker 1: nudity shown for the first time, Do you have any

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Speaker 1: I mean, I've always curious was there a public reaction?

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Speaker 1: Was there a moral panic about it? Um? Did PBS

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Speaker 1: have to reposition itself to say we're going to give it,

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Speaker 1: you know, we'll we'll talk to them about that in

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Speaker 1: England or something? I mean, did was there any kind

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Speaker 1: of outcry about that? Well, there wasn't an issue with

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Speaker 1: TBS so much here because they had a slightly looser

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Speaker 1: standards than three broadcast networks and still unusual get away

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Speaker 1: with it, but it was still unusual. Well, it was

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Speaker 1: certainly unusual in terms of comedy, right, I mean, I

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Speaker 1: think there had been some dramatic things on PBS at

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Speaker 1: that time where there was some nudity, but of course

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Speaker 1: it was beamed. It was dramatic, it was artistically important,

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Speaker 1: not a gag, so right, and I think we were

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Speaker 1: able to get away with it on PBS when they

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Speaker 1: when six of the Python shows were sold to ABC,

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Speaker 1: that was a different matter, and that's it. We're cut

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Speaker 1: cut to shreds. Oh, I'd forgotten about that, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: really did, I completely when we're When did ABC get

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Speaker 1: their hands on on six of them? Well, about a

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Speaker 1: year after it debuted on PBS, ABC wanted to buy

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Speaker 1: six of the shows, which was their last series of

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Speaker 1: fourth series for the bb They wanted to air them

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Speaker 1: late at night, like at eleven thirty, and so they

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Speaker 1: bought them from the BBC. And the Pythons didn't really

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Speaker 1: they weren't. They didn't really have a hand in it.

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Speaker 1: But what happened was, of course that they took three episodes,

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Speaker 1: and three episodes that's ninety minutes. But first of all,

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Speaker 1: you have to cut out like twenty five minutes for commercials, right,

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Speaker 1: and then secondly, what is it that they were cutting out?

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Speaker 1: They were cutting out? Of course, of course all the

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Speaker 1: naughty bits. They were cutting out language, but they were

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Speaker 1: also cutting out things at ABC decided was offensive or

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Speaker 1: that might cause defense. The most ridiculous version of that

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Speaker 1: is that there was an animated bit where Graham Chapman

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Speaker 1: is talking about the mount Calfier Brothers, these balloon enthusiasts.

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Speaker 1: I remember that having a staff and they're going he

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Speaker 1: washed their arms, their legs and their naughty bits. And

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Speaker 1: ABC cut out the words naughty bits because that was naughty, right,

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Speaker 1: which was the whole point of using a euphemism in

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Speaker 1: the first place. They Yeah, And then there was another

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Speaker 1: bit where Graham Chapman starts getting aroused when he talks

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Speaker 1: about erotic words and Eric Idol dumps a bucket of

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Speaker 1: water onto him to cool him off. So they cut

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Speaker 1: that section. So when you watched the sketch on ABC,

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Speaker 1: you see Graham Chapman sitting in the chair perfectly dry,

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Speaker 1: and then it cuts to him getting up out of

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Speaker 1: the chair and he's soaking wet. What happened? Yeah, When

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Speaker 1: the Python saw what they had done to their first

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Speaker 1: grouping of shows, they sued ABC to prevent them from

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Speaker 1: airing the second group of three shows, and they took

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Speaker 1: them to court in New York City, and they were

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Speaker 1: claiming that it was it was basically damaging the brand

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Speaker 1: of Monty Python, right. And the ultimate upshot of the

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Speaker 1: court case is that the Python's one control of all

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Speaker 1: their TV shows, which is something that was unheard of.

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Speaker 1: So interesting. You know, on Friday nights is when we

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Speaker 1: spend I have a little fun with culture here on

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast and I'm very much going to enjoy this,

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Speaker 1: and I will get to open lines coming up later on,

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Speaker 1: and you never know where that's going to go, but

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Speaker 1: usually people will reflect back later on on some of

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Speaker 1: the topics that we talked about previously. And I just

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Speaker 1: that I've already started getting a lot of tweets. People

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Speaker 1: have been sending me messages about their favorite Monty Python moments,

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Speaker 1: but also how you know, they keep referring to how

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Speaker 1: Monty Python changed American humor and that it also was

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Speaker 1: as the Goon Show was, you know, the voice in

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Speaker 1: the wilderness for Monty Python that was coming. Monty Python

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Speaker 1: also fertilized the ground for Benny Hill and a lot

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Speaker 1: of that, even with that nudity piece again or even

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Speaker 1: with the naughty bits and all that other stuff, that

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Speaker 1: it seemed like Benny Hill came then in American television

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Speaker 1: and apped that up one to you know, a few

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Speaker 1: degrees after Monty Python, that Benny Hill never would have

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Speaker 1: made it perhaps if if it had come here first.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

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Speaker 1: one am Eastern and go to Coast to coast am

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Speaker 1: dot com for more