3 Takeaways - John Cleese of Monty Python: On Creativity and How Everyone Can Be More Creative (#16)

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

John Cleese opens up about how he gets his best ideas and how everyone can be more creative. He also provides insights on comedy and humor.

Welcome to the Three Takeaways podcast, which features short, memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, scientists, and other newsmakers. Each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers. And now your host and board member of schools at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, Lynn Thoman. Hi everyone, it's Lynn Thoman. Welcome to another episode. I'm delighted to be here with John Cleese. John is an actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. He co-founded Monty Python, also co-wrote and performed in Fawlty Towers, and wrote and starred in A Fish Called Wanda.

He's won too many awards to list, and he has also turned down a life peerage. His latest book is Creativity, a Short and Cheerful Guide. It is both short, a one-hour read, and cheerful because he believes that everyone can be creative. John, thank you for making us all laugh, for teaching us how we can be more creative, and for being here today. Thank you. How long did it take you to read the book? It really took just under an hour. Exactly. Now, I love that.

You see, that was my aim. And I know it sounds slightly odd, but you know that, I think it was Mark Twain who said, I'm sorry this is such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write a shorter one. I think that's very profound, because if you really think about something and really examine it and kind of chew it over, you start boiling it down to a smaller number of simple principles.

And that's what I did with the book. I had the time to write a short book. I didn't put anything into it that was not key to learning how to be more creative. And that's why you could read it in an hour. And I'm proud of that. It's a great read. What does creativity mean to you? I think it means the ability to have ideas about how you could do anything better. I mean, just as much to do with business as the arts. I mean, the arts is a creative people. Well, some of them are creative. I think there's a lot of visual artists who aren't creative at all. People would make unmade beds and all that kind of thing.

It doesn't seem to me like a very interesting idea, but I think creative artists are obviously creative. People in business are hugely creative. Scientists are hugely creative. Teachers, everyone's creative if they're trying to learn how to do their job better. Because people don't understand somehow that just doing the same thing time after time after time doesn't teach you anything unless you're trying to learn. And the moment you're trying to learn, the moment you're thinking why am I not so good at that? Think of a

professional tennis player who realizes he's got a weakness on his backhand and the moment he starts practicing very specifically on his backhand he becomes a better tennis player. Well, people tend not to do that in their lives. Very few people really want to get better at what they're doing. And I have a speech called Why There Is No Hope that is based on the basic idea that only 10% of people really know what they're talking about. What is the favorite of all your work, your comedies, and why? I think I look back on Life of Brian. It was a very happy event.

God smiled on that one. There were no terrible problems. Everybody got on well, and we were confident we'd written a very good script. It was later it was voted best British comedy ever. So we weren't right about the script. But also we made it in Morocco, or rather Tunisia. And in Tunisia, the sun was out when you got up in the morning instead of being dark and rainy. So there was something wonderful about sitting on the hotel balcony, sipping fresh orange juice,

and then shaving and going off to work about 300 yards away. It was a very happy experience that. Then Fish Call Wonder was, God smiled on that one too. Everything went well. The team was very, very strong. They liked each other. We all helped each other with it. And we had a great director pointing the cameras, Charlie Crichton, who was 77 years of age when he directed the film. And both of those were joyful. But of course, making movies is very difficult. And a lot of them, there was no great unpleasantness on any of the movies I was with, but people get anxious and they tighten up. And sometimes you're working with a director who doesn't really know what he's doing. And sometimes you're working with a script that isn't really that good.

And you're sort of saving the script rather than savoring it. So the experience can be very, very different. How do you think about comedy and humor and what are the different kinds of comedy and humor? I suppose if you arrange them on a spectrum, at one end, you have very, very verbal comedy. And at the end, you have largely visual, physical comedy. And then comedy can be anywhere on that spectrum. I mean, Fawlty Towers has got a lot of physical comedy in it. But Fawlty Towers isn't really silly. The character is silly. Basil is silly. But if you talk about silliness, then that's another more of a Python thing. Absurd ideas, a sketch where a couple walk in to buy a mattress for a bed and when they say the

word mattress the salesman puts a brown paper bag over his head and the man who is manager of that floor explains that he'll have to sing a verse of Jerusalem before he takes it off that's nothing like faulty tires you know that's what we call technical term is silly. So there's many, many different types. And I kind of enjoy them all. I like elegance. I think Joe Orton was a great English playwright. And he wrote an odd combination, quite physical, farcical comedy,

but with everybody spouting epigrams. It was very odd and it didn't quite work sometimes because there was two different styles that didn't necessarily come together. But there's all kinds of humor. In America, the main difference is that in the Midwest and the South, there's no real understanding of irony. I think a lot of the people there are literal-minded, which is why they interpret the Bible literally, which seems to me an odd thing to do because Jesus Christ taught in parables, which were not stories of actual historical incident. They were stories that he made up in order to illustrate a certain point. So how could you possibly interpret those literally?

I don't understand it, but there are literal minded people and they tend not to be awfully funny or terribly good company, in my opinion. Very earnest and probably very, very good people, but sort of missing out of a lot of mental life that I think gives people pleasure. How do you think about the left and right brain, what you call the hare and the tortoise brain? Yes, well, I've been thinking about it for years. First of all, I used to talk about open mode, which is when you're looking for feedback and seeing whether you're getting it right, and the closed mode, which you have to go into if you're attacking a machine gun post.

If you're attacking a machine gun, this is not the moment to admire the scenery or to see the funny side of what you're doing. You just do it. You want to get it to close mode. And if you've come to an open mode, you've come to a plan that you like, then you've got to try it out and not immediately think, well, should we be doing this? You've got to give it a good shot to see if it works or not. So that I started out. Then I read a book,

which is superb by Guy Claxton, C-L-A-X-T-O-N, Hairbrain, Tortoise Mind, which was just about fast, ordinary, purposive, logical thinking, very verbal. And a Taurus mind, which is much more thoughtful and meditative and playful. We need them both, but they solve different kinds of problems. If you've got a mathematical problem, you don't need to be creative to solve it. Logic will do that. But if you're trying to figure out how a scene and a play should continue or how you should manage a difficult group of people, then being more meditative about it allows the unconscious with all its observation of people's behavior to come up and help you come

to a conclusion about how to try and solve this problem instead of giving you a little written instruction like speak louder. Then I have been carrying this idea of the two halves of the brain for a long time. I think Roger Sperry got his Nobel for it in the 70s. And then it got rather cheap and to the point where it really didn't mean anything. And then I read a most fantastic book, the best book I've ever read in my life. And it's by a Scottish genius, I think, called Ian McGilchrist. And it has a very strange title, which is The Master and His Emissary. And that's a reference to a Middle Eastern folktale. And he was an extraordinary man. He taught English at Oxford,

and he decided you shouldn't try to explain poems. You should experience them. Well, you can't pass exams by experiencing the things. You have to explain things. So he gave that up. He became a doctor, qualified as a doctor. Then he qualified as a psychiatrist. And then he spent a long time at Johns Hopkins, working on neuroimaging of the brain. And then

he wrote this about the two hemispheres, which he points out, and I never knew this, that they're not symmetrical. He said, although the interaction between the two hemispheres is infinitely complicated, you can say basically the hemispheres have different ways of living. The left hemisphere is about manipulating, it's about power, it's about exploiting, and it's about control, especially control. And the right hemisphere is much more about emotion and particularly about a sense of meaning or what really means something to you, which is why I think so many highly intellectual people don't strike one as being terribly happy. And it also explains why critics always think

that they're better than the people that they're criticizing. You know, Oscar Wilde said about critics that they're like eunuchs. Do you know this? He said they watch it every night, but they can't do it themselves. But critics always feel they're rather superior to the people whose work they're criticizing. Yet without that work, their job wouldn't exist. So everybody says that nobody ever put up a statute to a critic, but the critics seem to take a kind of superiority, and that's because they're

dominated by the left brain, and that left brain always wants to exert control. So I think that this book has explained things to me that I've been puzzled by all my life. And I met Ian about five years ago, and we correspond now and again. And that book's the most important thing. And I see now that our society, I believe, particularly the people in power,

are much, much too left hemisphere dominated. And that's why the world, although we're very clever at technical things, I don't think it really works very well for people, most people. What role does the unconscious play in creativity? Huge role. I think people find this a surprising thing, but I'm quite sure that it is true, that no matter how intellectually gifted you are, no matter how logical and precise and perceptive you are in terms of intellectual intelligence, you will never come up with anything really new unless you know how to play. There was great research done by a guy called McKinnon at Berkeley in the 70s and he looked at a lot of professions, not artistic professions,

but engineers, journalism and architects. And he discovered that it was the people who could play who were described by their colleagues as the most creative ones. And the people who couldn't play, they were very good at certain things, but they weren't very creative. And how can we all be more creative? By realizing that it's about play, because in a state of play, you're very open. You have no idea what you're going to do next. And that means that ideas from the unconscious, these breakthrough ideas, can come up into your more conscious mind.

They don't come up as neat little messages. They come up as feelings or, oh, yes, or something. It's very touchy-feely stuff. But that's how they express themselves. It's in the language of dreams. You don't get sentences. You get images and you get feelings. And Einstein actually said that muscular tension played a part in his thinking and that when he was thinking, he couldn't tell anyone in words what he was thinking.

It was going on at a different level from where the words come from. Edison used to sit in a comfortable chair because he thought he got his best ideas somewhere between being very awake and being fast asleep. He liked to drowsy states, so he used to sit there with ball bearings in his hand and if he dozed off to sleep, they would fall out of his hand as it relaxed and land on a metal plate,

and the noise would wake him up, and he'd pick up the ball bearings again, and then go off into this drowsy state. And people think, well, Edison, this is the Edison who had more patents than any other scientist in history, and yet he liked to be in this dreamy state. So people think, oh, he's waffling on, it's all touchy feely. And the answer is, that has a very important place, particularly if you're being creative. So I look at you the same way. To me, you are so brilliantly creative. And it came as just a shock to me that you could be staring at a blank white sheet of paper and that you could just decide to put it away

and go to sleep for the night without having written anything that you considered terrific and that your unconscious then would come to help you. I was fascinated by that. Well, yes, I would write a sketch and I would often find I couldn't have a good way of ending it. I couldn't find the punchline. And I'd get frustrated but go to bed.

And in the morning, I made a cup of coffee and I was sitting down to my academic work. I'd look at the sketch and suddenly I'd see how to do it. The first time it happened, it didn't pay any attention. But after it happened again and again and again, I thought, well, why can't I think of it last night and think of it this morning? And I realized that it's only because my mind, my unconscious mind, had been working on it while I've been asleep. And you see, people don't like this because people like to think they're in control, even if it's just in control of their own lives. And anyone who knows a bit about psychology knows that's rubbish. Most of us have no idea why we're doing things because we're

prompted by the unconscious. And by definition, most people don't really know much about their unconscious, unless they're the sort of people who do spiritual exercises or go into therapy. Schools, as you have said, seem to teach almost exclusively the logical, critical, and analytical thinking. And you yourself didn't discover you were creative until you were in your 20s. How can schools and parents teach creativity? There's two reasons we've become less playful. One is that we're told by educational establishment what is right and what is wrong. The funniest example I know was Peter Ustinov. I knew him a little bit, and he told me once he'd taken an exam when he was young,

and the question was, name one Russian composer. And he wrote Makmaninov, and the teacher said, no, it's Tchaikovsky. The point is you learn right and wrong you learn not moral but this is right and this is wrong and then you try not to be wrong and the way not to be wrong is to keep on doing what you've always done that was right. Of course you never come up with anything new but you keep doing it and you're rather a dull person and you probably find your work quite dull, but you never make a mistake. Meanwhile, the people who had better ideas

are careering past you into the distance. So I think a lot of education is about, like I wrote an essay when I was 15, I had to write an essay on time. And I wrote the whole essay about the fact that I hadn't had time to write the essay. You smiled. It's quite neat. It is very neat.

My teacher said, please, this isn't a proper essay. Now, he didn't curse me. He wasn't mean to me, but he just said, no, this doesn't count. So I don't think many teachers, in my experience, were terribly creative. I hope they are now. But if they're not creative, how can they encourage creativity in someone else because they don't know what it's all about. So you did your A-levels in what Brits call maths, physics, and chemistry, and then you went to Cambridge and studied law. So you know the sciences. How does creativity differ in the arts and sciences? Well, I think in the sciences, you have to know an enormous amount about what has already been discovered and agreed. The chances

of you're coming up with something really new before you've really studied the subject for a long period of time are quite small. It happens sometimes. Stories of schoolboys who've discovered stars or minor planets that no one else has spotted. But by and large, you've got to know in the sciences a huge amount. Now, I don't think that necessarily applies to the same extent. I mean, the classical training for painters

was to copy great paintings, just copy them. But that was technique, you see, it was nothing to do with creativity. then they could become more creative later on and of course the history of art I think is the history of growing creativity I mean the Matisse is much more creative than anyone before 1850 before before somebody like David. So they become more and more. Then you have Picasso, who's very difficult to understand, if you're like me, a bit literal-minded, which I apologize. He was extraordinary, extraordinarily brilliant and unexpected. Are you working on anything now that you could tell us about? Yes, I'm working on a

light comedy about cannibalism. And it's called Yummy. And it's absolutely outrageous. And I think it's one of the funniest things I've ever written. But the trouble is, will I ever find anyone to back it? It's not hugely expensive. I mean, it's not for people in a room. It takes place at a big sort of hotel spa somewhere out in the countryside, and it probably got about six quite big parts in it. I think we're looking for a really feisty, interesting American woman, a bit like Jamie in Fish Caught Wanda, but Jamie's almost, well, I'm going to say she's as old as I am.

She's quite old. I was trying to think who would be wonderful. I saw Sharon Stone came to my attention today because she said she's fed up with dating or something. I read the story and I thought, that's the kind of feisty American woman we need. And I play a really horrible British press baron. I can't wait to see it. It sounds terrific. Well, do you know anybody rich who will let me make it? They can be a producer, they can be in the movie.

I would think you have so many fans of all your work. They can be a producer, they can be in the movie. I would think you have so many fans of all your work. But I don't think the fans are going to put the money up. No, it'll mean going to a studio and trying to convince somebody there who has some idea that they know what they're doing, which most of them don't, and then trying to convince them. The funny thing is once you're in that room, then the person on the other side of the desk knows more than you. Outside that room, no one in the world would think that he knows more than you

or she knows more than you. Interesting. One of the worst experiences I had was with a woman who gave me a lot of ideas for how to change a script. And I said, I really can't do that. And she said, why not? And I said, because I don't know how to make the script worse. How do you compare British and American senses of humor?

Very similar. Most of the misunderstandings are just because we either use different languages, particularly about concrete objects. The more abstract English, English and American English comes, the more it comes together. But when it's down to names of products and that kind of thing, it's very different. And there are certain social things.

I think on the whole, when American men go wrong, they become more psychopathic. And when British men go wrong, they become more psychopathic. And when British men go wrong, they become more nerdy as a general. And there's a great English writer who's not very well known in America. He wrote some fantastic comedies, but all the men were rather ineffectual. And I think American men are frightened of being ineffectual because it's so important to be masculine. Are there any last comments you'd like to make? Is there anything that you'd like to talk about that you haven't already touched upon?

Well, I think that I have learned a lot in the last 30 or 40 years about human psychology. And I think what interests me most is the realization of just how little we really know and understand. People don't like that. They like to feel that they know and that they're in control. But I started some years ago asking people who I thought were particularly smart. I used to say, how many people in your business really know what they're doing? And a great friend of mine who was an eminent psychiatrist said to me about 10%. And I was quite shocked.

And then I started talking to other people. And anytime I met someone who was quite obviously exceptional, I asked them. And I never got an estimate of above 15%. Two months ago, when I was in LA, I went to see a most extraordinary body worker who looks after the clippers, the LA clippers. And he's quite the best I've ever been to. It's like being attacked by a very friendly polar bear. He's so strong. He just pulls you around and he doesn't hurt you but you do feel you'll be pulled apart and I said to him how many people in your business know and he said less than 10% so I think what we need to

realize is that very very few people really know what they're talking about and very new few people really know what they're doing but they don't know that they think they do so that makes of course, much more vulnerable because they're likely to blunder along and not knowing what they're doing and not listening to feedback that would indicate to them they could learn something new. They're so sure that they're right. I'm thinking at the moment of Trump and Boris Johnson, who's a sort of mini Trump, and they're just hugely self-confident in an extraordinarily stupid way, so they never learn. Because in order to learn, you have to say there's something I don't know. And neither of them

could ever admit that, because it would make them look weak. Whereas I'm delighted to look weak. There's almost nothing I really understand and almost nothing that I'm completely sure about. But it does mean that I'm learning the whole time. I think you're learning the whole time, but you are also laughing the whole time and getting pleasure out of every minute from everything around you, which I think is wonderful. Yes, that's right. And it's because I do laugh at everything. And I am lucky enough to have a wife with the same sense of humor. And we just, we laugh at the stupidity of it all. And it's everything is stupid. We laugh when we stay in a hotel because the maids come in and they want the room to look tidy so if there's something and they don't know what it is they put it in a cupboard so that it looks tidier then you have to

spend 45 minutes trying to figure out where they might have put it no one's explained to the maids that it's more important to be able to find things than it is to have the room look completely tidy. But no one will ever tell them that. And if they did, they wouldn't really believe it. So you're in a situation where the thing is never going to work properly and there's nothing we can do about it. I think to me, that's what makes you special, that you find the humor and the joy in things that other people would get angry about. Well, possibly. But, you know, you had a great political commentator called Will Rogers, right? He started out in Vaudeville doing rope tricks, like W.C. Fields, a great comedian who started out juggling.

And then they both got bored with rope tricks and juggling and started ad-libbing to audiences. And in the end, that's what they did. And Will Rogers said something I treasure. He said, I don't make the jokes. I just point them out. Isn't that lovely? That is terrific. John, what are the three key takeaways or insights that you'd like to leave

the audience with today? I would say very few people know what they're talking about. We are crippled by the idea that all thinking has to be verbal and logical and purposeful and we need to learn also a slower more meditational way of thinking third point i would say cricket is a much much more sophisticated game than baseball i don't even know what to do with cricket versus baseball. I have no clue. Do you want to explain that, or is there simply no explanation? No, it's just to annoy Americans. There we go. John, thank you for all your wonderful work, for making us all laugh, for giving us pleasure,

and thank you also for your comments today on how we can all be more creative. This has been great. Lovely. Well, the next time we get together, I hope the virus will have abated and that I can come and visit you at the Harvard Club. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can listen or subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you would like to receive information on upcoming episodes, be sure to sign up for you can listen or subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.

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