Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Terry Gilliam

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Terry Gilliam is the creative, comedic mind behind some of cinema's most imaginative and thought-provoking films. The only American member of the legendary British comedy troupe Monty Python, Gilliam���s contributions to cinema include gems like Time Bandits (1981), Brazil (1985), The Fisher King (1991), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), and The Brothers Grimm (2005).  ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra ------ House of Macadamias https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/tetra

Tetragramatine. This is the house of Bracho, Forte Bracho, who was in my day's royal family, let's say 14th century. He was king of his kingdom, this kingdom with all the way to the Adriatic. It was big, he was very powerful. I like all powerful people, they suffer from hobris. I think he took on the Pope once to often bingo. This is his house, and it's his town. And it's an important town because it's between Perugia and Giototic

Estelo. So, and it sort of changes its allegiance over the centuries back and forth. How did you end up coming to this town? There's an English connection, and I was told about it, and he excused to come to Italy, especially by then I had my house. I bought a ruin in 1990, was it in 1991, something like that, it saw. And I was invited at the festival, and all I knew is that the previous year Donald Sutherland would be there, so I thought, okay, it's a class festival. And it was great, it was wonderful. And got to know the people in particular, Buddy Sabherna, who was central to the thing.

And when I bought this house, there was the ride TV. I decided ours was the perfect place for our repetatore, because ours is, we've got a bit of a ruin of a castle. I mean, it's the kind of a castle with no upkeep. It just falls down. But it was, it dominated the valley and controlled the valley. And there's a film festival here. And this festival, how long has this been going on?

Well, it's been now, it's probably 20, it's 27 years. Now here in Montenegro. Wow. And it's just beautiful because there's the piazza down there with the great bell tower that goes up and there's the clock on it. That's where we used to project. We've now moved up to the flat area by the church, the San Francisco, which is technically and probably better for watching movies, but it's not quite as interesting

because the square would be packed because there were two taverner bars, they're competing for business because everybody came, they would sit around, we'd be eating, the children would be playing. I remember it with Munchaus, and when we projected it, it was on the side of the building, across the square from one of the bars.

And the people in the bar, of course, great film lovers were busy drinking and talking and not watching the film. But their silhouettes were on the wall amongst the film, they were in the film. This is fucking wonderful. It just was great. So it's a beautiful town and to be part of it, because it's now, it's 25 years since I was given the keys to the city. And then I think it's, is it 12 years?

I became the first and only honoree citizen of this little town, which is one of the great proud moments in my life. Absolutely. Absolutely. How much time do you get spent here? Not much. That's the thing. The only thing I don't like a lot of the festival, it's in July. It's a time I don't normally want to come to Italy, spring, autumn, I mean heaven.

But it's here and it's been great, I suppose, this English connection is good because also the people Colin Firth got the keys to the city of Re fine. It's been wonderful to see this collector Peter Mullen. It's been great to see them all coming. The people, what happens in the festival, actually, is the week of the festivals you suddenly discover all the Stranieri that's living in the hills here,

English, German, Dutch, you never see them, because I obviously see the local people. And suddenly for the festival, they descend. And so suddenly, this world of accents and language is fantastic. I'm so happy you're here. Like this is just such a beautiful experience

to come to such a great place. It's a beautiful, I mean, it's almost, I keep saying it's almost two-board games. It's so beautiful. Everything is done beautifully. Great carers taken. And that's, I mean, that's the pride of the citizens. It's wonderful.

When you're working on a project, do you see it as a series of interesting moments or does there have to be an overall theme or story? No, that's not it. It's what they come on. It leaves the morbid fluid. No, but I'm asking you in general, though. No, in general.

You can do anything. Anything can general though. No, in general. You think it can do anything. Anything can do anything. Yeah, pretty much. That's it. What I love about it is there's the ceremonies here in this town. We have a sakraspina here, one of the crowned thorns that was pressed to Jesus's head. I just found out yesterday reading a book about the city I thought I'd learn a bit more.

Is that apparently it's supposed to be miraculous and every year, somewhere around Easter, the thorn turns green and the blood liquefies. It's a bit like Sen Genero in Naples. I didn't know that, but then I know the procession, which is very serious. They come down, there's a reliquary where it could be a nail. I'm not sure. But there it is. And they come down in Renaissance costumes. Medieval Renaissance doesn't matter. And it's serious and it's wonderful.

That's what I like. And yet, at the same time, they're incredibly playful. It's a serious and it's taken with a sense of humor. And that's the combination of both. Did you grow up with a religious background? Well, I was gonna be a missionary, really? No, I was, okay, we were in Minnesota where I was born. We were surrounded by Swedes. It's very interesting, because the Swedes,

when they made this huge exit from Sweden with times of rough, they ended up in a place many Minnesota, which looks exactly like Sweden, but on the other side of the world, and so it was all these Scandinavians around this, and so at that point we were Lutherans, and then when I was 12, we moved to California and became a Presbyterian. That just happened to be the local church. And that was it. And I went through college on a Presbyterian scholarship that got me through. So I was very much involved in the church until, as we were getting around the college time, when my jokes weren't found to be funny anymore. And I thought, what kind of God can you believe it?

You bick with us all powerful God that can't take a joke? Come on, give me a break folks. And that was kind of my separation from serious religion. Is there any too far in humor? Can humor go too far? Can you make a joke about anything? You should. And especially the most sacred things.

Yes. You test them. Yes. You find out just how important they are. To me, there is no limit on humor. Unfortunately, we're living at a time where the limitations are getting more and more rigid. People are frightened of humor.

They're frightened of interesting or odd or not normal thoughts, especially in universities. It's really frightening and breath-matter at all what it's like in the States. There was just recently, it was probably a couple of months ago, in some university, a lecturer came, and this lecturer had ideas that shocked the students. The students went into their safe room,

held hands with 40-Oigins, to calm down. Now, that's one thing. What bothered me was the administration of the college said, we want our students in college to feel comfortable. That's the death of universities. Universities are not about comfort, it's about expanding your mind, your knowledge, learning all the other ways of perceiving the world. And the universities are saying, no, we want our students to be comfortable. This is a bad time. Well, having every new idea has always been met with throughout history.

They've always been shut down. The people have been murdered. The person who said that the earth wasn't the center of the universe was, I think, hanged. Good old Galileo, you know, it was actually Copernicus who got the idea, but Galileo took the blame. He just took on the church, the Italian church, and remember the Catholic church, the Roman Catholic church, was the first great multinational organization. They were everywhere. It's extraordinary. There's a book I was reading, a story takes place in Hong Kong in the 19th century. And somebody gets cholera there.

And they needed quainine to cure the cholera. Quainine only existed in South America somewhere. And they went to the local bishop, and he got the church to work. And the church had a huge fleet of boats. We were very fast. They zipped down to South America. Got the Kainan and came back, saved the guy. That's power. I mean, that's the arms of the church stretched everywhere.

And I loved how the Portuguese got to Japan. They were in India four years before Columbus left Spain for India the wrong way. And they moved through the east and they weren't like the Spanish, they weren't conquistadores. They were businessmen. They were in the business of trading, they were actually trying to put Venezuela

to business, what they were doing. And they got first to India four years before Columbus left Europe. And then they made their way up to Japan through China China everything. The effect was extraordinary just doing business and not being threatening. Of course they defended their businesses when the local people blah, blah, blah. But things like in Japan, Nagasaki was created by the Portuguese.

It's originally a Portuguese town. Anagato, which is Obrigado, is Portuguese. They taught that word. Also, Tempura cooking, Portuguese taught the Japanese. This is what's interesting about history. How different groups, I mean, Portuguese doesn't get much credit for anything, but because they became in the 20th century, Salah-Sahir became a dictator, and Portuguese became the poor man of Europe with one of the last dictators of Europe. So he was like, oh, nice play for holidays, but boy, you don't want it. In fact, particularly during the time of Louis XIV, the France, as he's building Versailles,

they were building bigger things and richer things in Portugal. Portugal was the richest nation in Europe, but it's been forgotten. Wow. What era is that? Well, this is all we're talking, they got going in the African slave trade in the 15th century. So now we're talking the 16th century and 17th centuries where we are. 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And he got to the wrong place where 1492.

So we're ready, 1488. The Portuguese made the real India and they started drinking. Here's a, oh, I read another book called Born in Blackness. It's about slavery. From African, we're talking African, not Roman slavery or Greek slavery or all the slavery that's gone on through. Ever since mankind has been wandering there. It's a beautiful book.

It's written by a guy whose name I can't remember. He comes from, now the modern term would be a mixed-race family. What I love is the old term mulatto. It's a beautiful word. And that's who he is. So he's both sides of the black and white battle, if there is a battle going on. And the book is brilliant about how interesting it is enough in retalking when the the Dutch because they were empire growing very quickly. They had started doing business on transporting Indian cotton. Now the African sheep, the nobles, the rich loved it because they were so much lighter and more comfortable than raffia or whatever they were, or animal skins that they were making. or more comfortable than raffia or whatever there are animal skins that they were being used to go.

And so this became the new thing. So the rich and powerful were, and they were buying their nice Indian cotton with slaves that people they had in slaves. So I wish people would take history serious or at least take it with a sense of humor because the more I've read the more bizarre wondrous amazing and Horrible it becomes all of those things. Yeah, none of it necessarily makes sense if you try to make sense of it Yeah, it only confuses the issue. Yeah, I mean what I hear people say you're gonna be on the wrong side of history How the fuck do you know what side of history is going to be in in 2030? And it keeps changing.

Of course. It keeps changing. It's just, it's, I mean, again, it's like, when I get caught in some, I'm very much against so much of quote, I got modern not thinking. Like, the great unwolking is it? And, re-appropriate, the inappropriate. Because it's, I'm finding so much of the current thinking

that is getting news, I refer to this neo-Calvinism, very narrow, it's not about discussing, it's not about arguing, it's about, I am right, you are wrong. Ideology. Ideology exactly, closed-minded, ideal. Ideal logs. And they're making so much noise, the press love it, because the back and forth goes on.

But I just find it absurd because when they talk about cultural appropriation, we've been doing everybody's, that's what makes the world wonderful. They'll go on, they'll say, okay, the Rolling Stones, people like that. They took black music and, yeah, the Rolling Stones, people like that. They took black music and who's the happiest people, the black musicians that nobody knew because now they're music is live, and they're alive and famous again and working. It's what we do.

We learn from each other, we steal from each other. If you're doing something that someone else does, it's not because you wanna take advantage of them, it's because you love it. You wanna celebrate it, always. But that's the word that isn't used celebration, it's because you love it. You want to celebrate it, always. But that's the word that isn't used, celebration. That's what life should be.

And it's about learning, being surprised, finding the joy, the human, but that's why I say, our most important sense is not our sense of touch, hearing, it's our sense of humor. It's how do you get through this absurd world that has been a constant reality of humanity? How do you get through it without humor? I guess the alternative is to get a sword or a gun in sword killing all the people that you don't agree with.

Is comedy always a reaction to the arrogance of the ruling class? I wouldn't limit it just to the working, I mean, to the ruling class, we go from all. There are no bars for, I mean I don't like this term about punching down. We don't do it to be cruel. We do it to point the absurdities, the oddness. It's like me being a caricaturest. I've seen things a couple years ago when Viennese or Saraita, our name is playing tennis. A guy did this very funny cartoon and he was vilified because he made her darker than she made her lips bigger than the,

it's what cartoon we do, we take. It's a caricature. We take things and we extend them. And they've got to be believable. Otherwise, we've failed in our job. But the grotesque has always been fascinating for me, because it is about not treating things in a literal, naturalistic way.

It's taking them, and that's probably what God did, if there is a God, remolding. Oh, I don't like that shape. Let's make another one. It's basically what nature has done from the beginning. When you were doing animation, would you collect images that you liked and then figure out the story or would you have an idea of a concept

and then find images to tell that story? It's actually both, because mostly it's an idea first and how do I portray the idea. What do I do? And what can I get cheaply and quickly? It's always time and money. And that's how it starts, but on the way, things will just hit you and you're, wow. And then I suppose not trying to make sense of it, is trying to find a way of say what I experienced when a thing hit me, an image.

I have never analyzed how I do what I do. I go, void of that, I'm not Woody Allen. I don't wanna know, it's a miracle. It's all I know, my lady is magic. Either way it's magic, whether you analyze it or not, it's still magic. The people who analyze are very good, because they use their analysis as a way of finding

the humor, the interest, the surprise. I don't want to know how I do it. I'm just happy to be walking along doing it. Do you ever consider what the audience reaction will be when you make something or are you only making it for your own entertainment? No, I'm always thinking of the audience. I just want to be admired. LAUGHTER As we all do.

That's what I think, it's very fun how we grow up. So the takeaway today is that you've been unsuccessful at what you've been doing. It's plenty of time where people take it the wrong way, where I've failed miserably. It all happened. But I'm always aware of an audience. I want to reach people. I'm not going to limit the audience to, if I'm working for the studio, they think, okay, there's that group of people. That's the audience, it's a fuck off.

That's not, it could be all this. This happened with time bandits. The studio all turned down the script. They turned out to finish film because it didn't fit into one little box. And I mean, I parents and I came up, I think it was Mike that came up with this. We wanted to make a film that was intelligent enough for children

and exciting enough for adults. And the studios were completely dumbfounded because they had passed on the script, they had passed on their finished film. And we ended up only thanks to what you need in your life is a beetle. And we had one George Harrison. And George had saved Monty Python's life of Brian when the studio pulled out. He came in, he mortgaged his house,

and we made the film. Yeah, I know. That's what's George is an incredible human being. He never gets the credit for being as funny as he is. He's always, oh, he's the religious one. The spiritual one. No, George was really funny and great. He gave us the money and then as a result of life of Brian, the success, which it wasn't supposed to be a success, but it was. And it was supposed to be a tax charge. Not really, but I think some of our investors thought so because Pink Floyd led Zeppelin Elton John, Ireland records, other Christmas records, all were making vast sums of money as pop stars.

And at that point in the UK, taxes had reached as high as 90%. And some tax relief, we didn't help them and we were there at home, but they were all delighted to be part of the fun. And as a result of that connection of George and Python, we created handmade films. And that's how time bandits got made. We were actually the first original hand made films. And that's how Time Bandits got made. We were actually the first original

film in Handmade Films. We also bought a film that had been made long good Friday with Bob Hussin, a billion film. But that wasn't sort of handmade or homemade. And so Time Bandits was. And it was because the studios turned out and George just kept backing it and then they found a small distributor called Avko Embassy which hadn't had a hit in 10 years and Avko at least had the machinery to just distribute a film and time bandits went out and it went to number one and stayed there for five weeks. Wow. And then I suddenly became a holy man to the studios, a guy who can make money out of nothing. Yes.

And it's nonsense, but it happened. Yes. And again, it's thanks to George Harrison. And I said, it's because I spent so much money buying beetle records that finally it paid off. When did you first meet George? Actually, it was when we were promoting Monte Python and Holy Grail. And Eric, Idle and I were out in LA.

Holy Grail was a big hit, wasn't it? Yes. So you think based on that big hit, you get to make another one. Funny. The rule of the ring. You think that way, right? You think?

Rational, holy... These guys know something, we don't know. They made a hit, but I was only one of the guys. Once you pull them apart, I see. It's like George Harrison, you know, what is all things must pass? Yeah. That's the biggest selling beatle album ever,

and it was not a beatle album. It was a George Harrison album. Yeah. So the world is wonderful, it keeps turning on itself, upside down, backwards and forwards. And you take the ride or don't, enjoy the ride. But anyway, Eric and I were out in LA promoting the film. Anyway, it was great.

We got it. I remember getting in the queue, is it westward at the Bruin, I think, is the cinema. And we just got joined the queue. It was a very huge long crew outside. As just coupled with nobody's, and it was very funny, it was growing. But anyway, Eric was having dinner with George that night and said, come on, so that was it.

So in the sense, we started with Holy Grail and just carried on. And it was a great dinner with George, Olivia, his wife, Jim Keltner. Now it was wonderful about Jim Keltner. He went to high school with Carol Cleveland from Monty Python. Wow. In that away the odds. What are the odds? And that's one of the things I discovered in that dinner. It was just wonderful. And you like that, and that's that kind of thing, that connection or those connections are the surprising things in life. So much of today's life happens on the web.

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Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website. Visit squarespace.com slash tetra and get started today. How did you end up in England? I had to get out of America. Why? Well, I became totally disillusioned with the country, the war, Vietnam War. So it's 1968, 1969, why?

1967, it was. I had actually served my time in the National Guard. I had been in New York. Does the name Harvey Kretsman mean anything? Not here. Mad magazine or Mad Comics does. Yes. Harvey was the creator of Mad Comics.

He was, to my generation of cartoonists, Robert Crone, Gilbert Shelton, he was God. And I graduated, well, actually, when I was in college, me and another group, we took over the arts magazine of the college and turned it into a human magazine, lowered everything. And Harvey was doing at that point a magazine called Help. And they used to do Fumetti, which is Italian for puffs of smoke, actually, like in comic, people talking, a little bubble there.

But rather than drawings, they were photographs. So it was basically movies without movement. And I became Harvey's assistant editor after college, and so we would do these things and we had a story of me written in Harvey with then storyboarded. And then I would do these things and we had a story of the written and however we would then storyboard it. And then I would go out hiring actors who would work for fifteen dollars a day, big money at locations.

So it was like learning to make movies. And it's also where I met John Cleese. Because he was in New York with a group called Cambridge Circus, it was called, it was the humor group from Cambridge Circus. They were there on the coattails of Beyond the Fringe. Do you remember it? The On the Fringe, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Donaldson Miller, and that had been a big success in New York.

And so they, after University had ended up coming to New York and they, I found them in this little place down in the village. And they weren't doing very well, but John, as always, stands out from any crowd. He's 165. No, I don't think he's that tall. He only pretends to be that tall. He's much, probably 62.

I don't know if he's 63. But he consumes a lot of the space. That's what John does. And I got him to be in one of these Fumetti. And it turned out to be another press. I have a life full of prescient moments. This was one. It's a story about a man who has an affair with his daughter's Barbie doll. He falls in love.

And yes, it works as a sort of fume media. You couldn't make a film of it. But and the press in part is he's then been married four times. All of his wives looked like an American barbitol. They were American for the first three. All blonde. So these are the weird things. That's why I find life so utterly fascinating.

Yeah. Because I couldn't have planned any of it. And I've never had a thought of a career. I just do what interests me. And I've been very lucky to survive and make a living doing it. And so that was John and I. The magazine was actually in trouble. It was failing. So I hitchhiked around Europe. I took off for Europe. I hitchhiked around for five months, I think it was. I got, I was down in Morocco, I got to Turkey, and I just loved Europe, I thought. America has, I loved Disneyland, but this is real, here in Europe.

And each country spoke a different language. They had different culture, They had different food. I was blown away by the richness of Europe. And so I came back to the States because I basically had run out of money. I had run out of money in Turkey. And I got back to Paris. And I don't know if Pilote magazine means anything to you. It was a very popular human magazine in Paris. And it was Astrid's and Obelix, comic strip that Rene Gossidi wrote. And he was the editor of the magazine.

I got to Paris and I had met Rene when he was in New York with Harvey. It's all about connections, so along the line. I was broke. I said, ready. I don't have any money to get back to America. Can you help me out? And he said, here's two pages.

Do funny things about snowmen, and if you want. So I'm sitting in this freezing little left-back hotel garret room and drawing snowmen while I'm freezing to death. And it gave me enough money to get back to America, which then the only place I really had to stay was Harvey's attic. So I lived in this attic for a bit, and eventually then went back to LA.

And via a friend Joel Siegel, do you remember Joel Siegel used to be a good morning of America, he was the critic, the film critic. Oh, yeah. Well, Joel was an old friend, again, coming from College Human magazine, because he was doing that for UCLA, and I was doing mine for Occidental, and his weird connections, and he was at that point

working in advertising. And it got me a job being a writer and... Copywriter? Like, what was and copywriter like what was a copywriter and a designer all I did the whole thing for print ads. Yeah, well for all sorts of guys print primarily. Do you remember any of the ads you did? There was one for a soup and I can't what was the name of the soap? Something soup. With a funnier were they serious? They're all funny. And whatever the soup was, it was what they were selling was soup

that you didn't have to add water to. Yeah. Unlike hines and all this. And that was a thing. And so I wrote this very silly thing about water addicts who couldn't stop. They wanted to put water in the soap. a guy with a great sneaking down at night when his wife was asleep, adding water to this loop, his wife found him, all of his nonsense

I was doing. Can you make fun of the product that you're actually selling? You're going to do this tap dance. Yeah. Because you've got to make it humours without denigrating the product. On the other side, the other thing I was supposed to be doing was coming up with ads for universal pictures for films. And I had absolute contempt for the stuff they were doing in the films.

And that's kind of where I lost my job. Because I was, you know, it was like when I it? Madigan, there was a film called Madigan. And I kept my big line was once he was happy, but now he's mad again. Exactly. Did they use that as? No, of course not. They fired me in fact. But it was, it was, it was just ridiculous.

I hated it. At one point it was kind of funny. But once you're thrust into a situation where you're having to fool people into buying this crap product, I couldn't do that. Even when I was younger, when I was working my way through college, I was selling encyclopedias at one point. And I think it was the Britannica. And how it worked there, got some company to come up with a pitch, that all the salesmen

would use this pitch. I'm here, I'm in your neighborhood tonight, I'm looking on doing some research on social blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and get in the door. It was all this stuff. And some were making real big money. And what they would do, the group I was with were all college students. They put you in the car, you take, take you out and drop you around different territories, different, and then you were left there for an hour, hour and a half, two hours to do your work. And I was impossible

because I couldn't, I knock on somebody's's door and I looked there and there's the family sitting around the table having their dinner. The guy had been working his ass off for eight, ten hours and he was home with his family and I was interrupted. I couldn't do this. It was only one house that I actually get past the door and it was two old people who had nothing else in their life. And there was a perky young get past the door and it was two old people who had nothing else in their life. And there was a perky young kid at the door.

Come on in. And I got to the point where I'd convinced him to buy this huge raft of encyclopedias. And I didn't know how to do the paperwork. And I then had to talk my way out of their house. And I failed to sell a single book. Wow. I think that's again, it's what you do when you're younger, what it leads to later in some strange, it doesn't mean you will go upwards, but you learn all the things you don't

want to do. And Jack got older, I just do, well that door is closed, that's, I've closed those doors, I'm not going, so it narrowed my focus, let's say. I mean, again, working my way through college, I was on the assembly line at the Chevrolet plant in Van Aize, California, on the night shift. Unbearable. Also, because I wasn't allowed to use anything

involved, colored recognition. It turns out, the test or you know where you get a circle with Dodd's in it and you can see a number. I can't see the number. And yet my whole life has been working with color. Yes. Amazing. Amazing. So after a month and a bit on the night shift, horrible. And I find it quit. And I said, that's it. So I've had a lot of terrible jobs, which limits my choice because as a kid, I just wanted everything. I wanted to do everything.

And you waste your life wanting it all. And the more you can narrow down to all the things, at least get all the things you don't want to do. Now you're left with a choice of two, three, maybe, if you're lucky. And only one of those doors would go up and that's it. Did you ever want to make a full animated feature? No.

No, I think I backed into animation on the Python stuff was it wasn't my intention. Do you think yourself as a comedian first or an ordinary? No, not even that. A comedy writer? No, I think a creative person. I can draw some comic images. I don't actually think of myself.

I don't know what I do. I understand. I keep learning to make films. I'm still a student. Yes. It's that. That's why they're good. You're kind of similar.

Same thing. There's nothing you really do that you can say. I do this. Absolutely not. Yes, I know I do. And yet you have a vision of the world or an idea what the world or you react to things and maybe Your past is developed your sense of the world for sure which is unique for sure And that's what I think it's about yeah, we're not so wonderful. We're just a bit unique Because nobody did the road that we've traveled.

And that's true for everybody, by the way, it shows to do it. But they don't. I understand. It was like, I graduated from college with no fucking idea what I wanted to do. And my friends were all getting jobs and advertising. They planned their lives out. And off they went, they were making money. And I mean, when I got the job at Help Magazine, I was being paid $2 less a week that I

would have got on the dole. But I was... But you were working. I was doing showbiz. Exactly. With great people learning. And that was what was... I was doing exactly with great people learning. And that was what was, and I had all these friends who graduated,

were making big bucks for years. And as I got older and more successful, they got older and more bored with the trap they had found themselves in. No, that's it. How do you gauge which ideas are worth pursuing? I'm guessing you have a lot of ideas. Less and less with each year as I get older.

It's just closing it. It's like, no, I pursue the ones that obsess me. I become the victim. I am actually the victim of these ideas. And I am completely in their thrall. And I can't get out. I mean I've got a script at the moment. It may it'll never get made because why do you say that? It's a satire over the world we're living in now and it'll

push all the buttons of all the people. I've actually sub-titled it's called Carnival at the end of days. Anyway and it's fun for all those who enjoy taking offense. That's what I've done, and that's why I don't know where I'm going to get the studios won't touch it. The studios are tiptoeing. Everybody's tiptoeing around the activists, which are a very small group of people, but they're just very good at what they do.

So I've just gotten gone for it. I teamed up with a young playwright, 33-year-old guy, because I thought I wanna work with somebody younger rather than my generation, just, because I know what my attitude to the world is. I wanna know his and how, and we've done it. And it's very funny. And everybody who I respect, I've said,

I wanna see this film. And at who I respect, I've said, I want to see this film. And at the same time, I think deep down, I'm not going to get the money. If I can do it for five quid, it would be different, but it costs. That's the thing with films. They're expensive things. Yeah.

And it's not like writing a book. Does it have to be with today's technology? There's no way to hand make that film? I keep trying to see if it's possible. I think maybe I've been lucky for too long working with the real stuff. But it may come to that. I may have to get down my little claymation. I might have to. I don't know. But that's it. I, the last, okay, don't kill the film. It only took me 30 years to make. But there's, and I think that's worn me out.

That's the point of that kind of perseverance takes its toll. L-M-N-T. Element electrolytes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? You want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add element electrolytes to your daily routine. Stay in the sun. You want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add element electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function.

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reached fruition? There's a wonderful one called the defective detective. And I wrote it with Richard Lagravenaise who wrote Fisher King. And we did it after the film was a success. And it's actually stuck in the bowels of paramount pictures. They're sitting on it. And they're not going to do anything with it. But the way studios work is they don't want

to a script that they own to go out and be made by somebody else and possibly be successful. So it's just languishing there. And it is making me crazy because I think it's a brilliant script, not just because we were involved. It is a good tale. I mean, I think at least I can tell what a good story is. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Let's use that script as an example. If you were able to make it, how different would the finished film be than the script? I'd become a living thing, is what? But the script is a seed. You stick it in the ground and you start, they're all, I can say every film I've made is, in a sense, it's told the tale that I wanted to tell, but

the tale was told in a different way. We get to the magical city at the end of it, but the getting there is where, and you're surprised along the way. Well, that's what makes it interesting, because films are hard work and if I spend a lot of time writing it, uh, co-writing it, I don't write on my own, co-writing. I'm just an extension of somebody else's world. But if I spend a lot of time, I'm almost trapped in that vision. And the minute you start bringing designers in, actors in, it starts shifting, because I want their input. I'm not the kind of direction, this is

mine. You do what I want. I'm completely opposite of that. It's the collaboration that makes it exciting. And you start getting lost occasionally as you're going through the forest of ideas. But I know where I'm heading in the long term. And I'll take little deed tours. So it is a different film that it would have been if I just stayed the course on doing what I want.

But it's more alive. When you cast someone, does that automatically change everything? Here's the question, would Brazil be different if it was Tom Cruise rather than John the Price? Different movie. Correct. And that's what happened. Different movie. Yeah, and that's always that. It's the actors are so crucial and I spend... I don't think I direct actors. I think I hire the one that's the most interesting. It was like Adam Driver was not my first choice for the Don Quixote, but I met him and I, everything we talked about, he intrigued me,

he didn't look like a movie star, which was really important for me. He looked interestingly. And he had, when 9-11 occurred, he had gone and joined the Marines to fight for his country. That is completely quixotic. Yes. And this guy's interesting. He thinks differently, he behaves differently. Let's see what happens. And I just, we had lunch at a pub somewhere in London. By the end of the day I said,

there's nobody else who could do this film, as far as I'm concerned. And it wasn't originally Jonathan Price. It was Mike Paylon, who was a big... Yeah. That'd be a whole entirely different movie. Completely, but Mike eventually, because I was involved in this producer

who didn't produce the film. And Mike got tired of waiting, pissing around. And Jonathan, who, you know, has been a very close friend since Brazil. He was pestering me constantly to play key audio, and I said, you're not all strong. I was always ducking, Jonathan. And finally, he's incredible in it.

Of course he is. He's incredible. But I couldn't see it. That was what I was about. And when he turned 70, I said, okay, now he's the right age. I don't have to spend money on Bushy eyebrows. I was like, when he turned 70 I said okay now he's the right age. I don't have to spend money on busch bushy eyebrows and I've saved money. John is that it's absolutely breathtaking. Yeah, there's no question about it. Unbelievable. I don't know. It's that weird that it was partly because we'd become too close. I knew too much about Jonathan

and that's all these days that you don't want to know everything about an actor. They have to have... See how they're missing. The mystery of... Yeah. Because once he got it, he just went... Why all of a sudden he was so excited and every moment you could see his enthusiasm, it totally jumps off the screen. And here's what's funny, because basically Adam Driver is supposed to be the main character in the piece. He creates the situation.

And so what we started shooting and the order of shooting was not the order of the script and because of the location that all ended up with Jonathan's scenes were first before Adam's big scenes. And Jonathan was so spectacular. I looked at Adam, I said, I looked at his face, they said, what the fuck, this is both my film, and this guy's walking away with the whole thing. And in the end, the balance was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

It's a funny duo, because they don't look like they belong together. They look like, for their from two different worlds. I suppose one's in America. That's really funny, you say that, because to be there only in, and they weren't so, well I think that's that's what intrigues me. What you've just said in Triggs because what you see is different than what I saw is price seems like he's in one movie and driver seems like he's in a more modern movie. Yeah.

Oh yeah. And it's just different. Yeah. But that juxtaposition makes it feel like I've not seen a movie like this before, which is great. I love that feeling. It's also the idea that Adam is the one that created this monster. Is this Frankenstein monster who he's got there?

Yeah. Because the point of the film for me, one of the key points was the dangers of filmmaking. Yeah. What they do to people. Yes. Actresses. And it's like, and here's a little local cobbler who gets dragged into play, Don Quixote. And he becomes Don Quixote. And there was more stuff that isn't in the film about him traveling around to local fairs, always acting the role of, so that wagon that you see was in is always introduction for him then turning up at a fair, being Don Quixote. There's a man in this town, his name is Walter, he's quite wonderfully eccentric, passionate

guy. He, at all the possessions, all the key ceremonies, he plays Braccio for to Braccio, the man who created this town. Yes. And he is, he lives every moment as this character. And that was a strange, I think that may have been part of the thinking in my head to see a real person in this real world. He's really living in another century. Yes. And that's it. Yes. Fascinating. Yeah. And how do you not see him? Maybe that character wouldn't be that character. But again, that's it. It's the things you bump into along the way and so I could use that. Or that's an interest in triggers. I don't know.

That's why I don't wanna know how it's done. I don't want to know how the trigger occurs. I just wanna be surprised what happens. But this is, you know. I bet it happens sometimes when we don't even know what the trigger is. You know, like something that we saw 30 years ago is in our subconscious and that impacts the choice we make. We don't know why.

We never know why. It's only just in this new script. There was something that I solved a problem. I've got some main character and a Guatemalan family trying to get across the US border. So they reached the Great Wall. That's what it was in the script. And then a friend of mine who is a very brilliant writer and successful, he had some problems with certain things. And a character that was a result of Trump's 2016 campaign. Trump used to always refer to the Mexicans.

They're criminals, they're drug dealers, they're rapists. So I've created a guy who is taking credit for being the rapist anyway. And my friend, the writer, was bothered by this. So I went back and tried to find not a preamble, but at least getting Trump speaking, so that we could use this his thing about rapists, Mexican rapists, because, and the scene was the great wall,

but somewhere around the wall were the police waiting, just on the spot, the south of the border folk, and I've now put them behind a bit of the wall, but the bit of the wall is only a hundred feet long. The rest was never built. So, is this in the middle of the desert? Is this huge fucking wall only a hundred feet wide with a hop car hiding behind it? And they're watching on their television in their cop car. They're watching Trump's greatest moments. And so we get the whole speech, Trump speech red. But what is so funny about this piece of wall just isolated on its own, is they can just walk around anywhere.

You can't, you can't. And again, this writer friend who I've solved his problem about the rapist business, he was just blown away by it. And here's why it's that way. Because years ago, there was a lady here introduced, I think she's still here. She runs a charity in Israel and the West Bank in Palestine. And it's bringing Israeli teenagers and Palestinian teenagers together to realize they are not enemies. They are very common. So much of their lives are common.

And it's called Windows for Peace. And I think, fuck this is good. This woman doing something, not talking about how you're doing it. So I was in Israel, I was doing a theater show outside of Injafa. I went and her name is Rudy and she said, you want to come into Palestine with me? You want to take a ride on the west back? I said, you got it. So firstly, we're in Jerusalem and there's Easter and there's the wall. It comes up a road. There's a road that's crossing this way. Up goes the wall and it's all its monumental horror and that it stops because there is now a lovely villa here with a wonderful garden. It stops, but then here is a cross street going there. The wall is there. The next bit is a nunnery, big garden. there. The next bit is an honorary big guard. So this one isolated bit of wall and what was intriguing, I was this the low wall around the villa where all these Palestinian women

coming to shop, shopping in Jerusalem, and they have to tightrope this wall to get past the wall. And I dragged once the Israeli teenagers, come on, we're going to the West Bank, kids. And you find them all. We tied rope to cross, I showed them. This is what it's like over here folks. Yeah. And the great growth industries were Palestinian taxis because they would bring you all the ladies. So there was almost a traffic jam of tax.

Because the taxis are the only ones that can go on the beautiful roads on the West Bank. It's the settlers and the taxi drivers. And so that was a growth industry on the West Bank. The other one was donkeys and carts because we were in a taxi going along and coming to a big band and the oncoming Palestinian taxis were flashing their lights, signals something, which means they're at that moment there's an army checkpoint around the quarter. So our taxi driver just goes right turn, boom, up a dirt road through an olive

grove over this little Palestinian village in Dalmatia, around the checkpoint. And that's why the other growth industry is donkeys and cards for the dirt roads. Unbelievable. I'm so excited to have been there to see it. And here's, I ended up at a town called Tulkaram, which was originally a refugee camp, which is now a city. And it was just a refugee camp, but it's grown over the years.

And the big posters on the walls, the big beltboards are these young kids. They were suicide bombers, pop stars, like pop stars up there. And they're the martyrs, the kids, so that's the future for the young kids in Tulkaram, be a martyr. Not a good thing. And we end up eventually with the Palestinian side of the charity with the guy who runs it. We're sitting on a nice concrete floor, his old mother, and we're just having tea. And all he talked about was despair. That's all. And so we went through it, and really these are good people. And next, from after our tea on the concrete floor in this

shabby little place, I was driven 45 minutes back to Israel to the British ambassador's house where I dined with him and his wife in the servants, bringing all the food. And I said, this is what I just seen and been through. What are you doing to emeliorate this situation? And he said, well, that's basically, it's not our job. What is the fuck your job back? It's like bringing these people together.

It's crazy. So that was it. Welcome to the House of Macadamias. Macadamias are a delicious superfood. Sustainably sourced directly from farmers. Macadamias, a rare source of Omega-7, linked to collagen regeneration, enhanced weight management, and better fat metabolism. Macadamia's, art healthy and bring boosting fats. Macadamia's, failure friendly,

ketal and plant-based. Macadamia's, no wheat, no dairy, no gluten, no ghee M.O.'s, no preservatives, no palm oil, no added sugar, a house of macadamia's. I roasted with Namibian sea salt, cracked black pepper, and chocolate dips. Snack bars come in chocolate, coconut white chocolate and blueberry white chocolate. Visit houseofmacademias.com slash tetra. You told the story of coming up with the rape joke, which your co-writer had a problem with, and then you revised it to give it context to make it work for him. Through that collaboration, do you feel like it got better?

Yeah, it's much better. It's one of the things that's so interesting and working with other people. If you're not stuck on, this is my way. And you're open to those conversations. What is it that is rubbing you the wrong way? You can actually make it better. But that's the trick. It's always been, I think it's always been like

doing the animation. When I got this job on TV show, what originally was, because I never studied animation other than a couple books and little things and I was on this TV show and this is a pre-pitheon. Yeah this is a pre-pitheon. Yeah this is where I became first an animator on television before five parties. And this is in London as well. Yeah yeah and it was cool but we've ways to make you laugh I think it was called something and I was there as a

character, a churras and I would do a little drawing of the guests that came on. It was a talk show, but there was a lot of comedy involved, sketches and things. And I would do these little drawings and they would come and go in and out and sit and we'd go on to it. And one of the writers and performers of the show had spent several months collecting off the radio. There was a guy named Jimmy Young who was a DJ, who I suppose was unique about him in between the songs.

He would do these terrible connections and they're full of puns and all that terrible stuff, but it was connecting that with that. And this guy from the show, he had collected a couple months worth of this stuff and nobody knew what to do with it. And I said, can I make an animated film of this stuff? And I said, go ahead, I had two wakes and 400 pounds. And the only way I could do it is cutting out other people's artwork, moving it around.

And that was suddenly me, an animator, on television, now well known, and now the device, and all this. That's unbelievable. No, unbelievable. Also, the idea that it's the first comedy group, I suppose, that's a multimedia group. I suppose, and that says, because there were great,

there was the David Frost show, there was, this is the way it was, all the comedy shows, but they never had a guy doing these animated sequences. And that, not as the way it was, all the comedy shows, but they never had a guy doing these animated sequences and that... Not as part of the group. It was like you were in the band. Yeah, no, that was it. We were a boy band without a manager. It was great. Nobody was in charge. We were completely democratic organization and it was wondrous because... Were you there from the inception of the group?

Yep. Now, what had actually happened from this show that I'd been on with the animation start? I then did a couple bits for a show that Mike Palin, Terry Jones, and Eric, I know we're doing with a couple other actors. It was a kids show. Then I became part of that.

So as Eric, Mike, Terry, and me. And then John Cleese and Graham, John was offered a BBC Do a Show and so he chose to work. I think Mike pale in his eyes been the connecting tissue. He's the nice one and we all love working with Mike. In Zon I think what work was great. And he's fantastic. And that's what happened. So the four of us and the two of them became, and we just had to complete freedom.

It was at a time when there were only three television channels, BBC One 2 and ITV. Now that's a special time. It doesn't exist anymore. So us, on the BBC, Louis K. about sort of late at night, we gathered an audience, and it grew very quickly. And that can never happen now. I think the idea, are you considered an influencer?

You're beyond an influencer. Come on, you do real things. You mean? No, but it's the idea. There's so many people out there, they're just because of the choice of clothes or whatever, become, I don't, well, fashion is never been important in my life. So that doesn't come from me, but you make music some. And that's music to me is God's voice.

Absolutely. And it's the making of things. It's always to be important. I don't care about, I only want to make things. I would say. It doesn't matter what it is, just a vehicle for the idea. Yup. And that's what we do.

But I still, and you keep claiming you don't, and that's what we do, but I still, and you keep claiming you won't pay and if you don't do anything, come on, you must. So you don't know. No, no, no, no, I'm a fan. I like it. I can see the way the pieces come together and I can feel where they don't go together

as well as they could, and can verbalize it clearly until we get to that place. How long do they take until we get to that place. How long do I take you to get to that place? Very quickly, because it's just intuitive. It's like I know, but how do they let you... Yeah, nobody let you... How do you let your opinion get the way of their work? Nobody let me, I just started.

I just started. I was in school, you know, I just started making things. Yeah. And they didn't want to start making things. No, but luckily they were successful. Well, they not been successful. Of course. We were different.

Yeah. We're the same thing. I needed to know success from both of us. Yeah. Because I didn't even know it could be a job, you know. It just turned into a job. I was, you just knew a band, some of the guys, and your opinion, they respected.

The first thing was I was in a punk rock band, so I recorded my punk rock band. That was the first thing. It was not successful. Barely, punk rock, rudimentary guitar. Boom, boom, boom. Very barely. Yeah, okay.

Barely. punk rock was more about the energy and the idea behind it than it was about the virtuosity. Yeah, exactly. And then hip hop started, and I was watching this scene come up and there were already starting to be these 12 inch vinyl records. Early days of hip hop that you would have never heard.

They were just like local things. But those records didn't sound like what hip hop sounded like if you went to the hip hop club. So more like a documentary and I started making things just as a fan of hip hop club. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So more like a documentary, and I started making things just as a fan of hip hop, the records that were coming out didn't reflect hip hop, they reflected the old values of the way people made music, and they were just having somebody rap on top of the old way.

Bing crawlsby rapping. Exactly. Exactly, that's what they did. So my feeling was, it's not that, it's punk rock. It's what they did. So my feeling was it's not that it's punk rock. It's essentially punk rock. So I started making the punk rock version of rap records and people like them and then you went from there. Yeah, that's exactly the same with me doing some animation. Somebody liked it. They gave me another thing. Yeah. People like that. You get another one. Yeah. No training. No. And every step of the way, when I would do something different than what I did before,

because you don't do the same thing over and over again, I was told that's insane. You can't do it. Terrible idea. Are you crazy? You know, you're the rap guy. How could you make a heavy metal record? And then you have a successful heavy metal record. It's like, you're the rap and metal guy.

How could you ever record with country artists? You know, every step of the way is just these barriers of small thinking. But this is like me going to the studios, you know, after time banners in Brazil, all of it, you go in there and there, there you go, I love it. As a kid, I time batch and it's changed my life. This is insane. And I've got the new idea. Yes, but this new thing you're talking about, and it's been like 20 years of it.

It doesn't change. Those people stay the same. Yes. We keep shifting. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. I think both of us like things that are at least edgy, if not offensive, that also plays a role in the resistance.

See, my problem is, I don't know what the boundaries of humor are, so I keep going to... Well, I don't think they have the clear. I don't know that there are. I know. But people... We're living in a time where people take offense before anything else. They are waiting to take offense. They're waiting at a time like that.

And it's not actually the people that are being protected from the offenders. It's the activists who are in between, because I know too many people who just are quietly getting on with their own life being who they want to be. No problem. And I think some of these activists that are beating a drum for them, they're sick. It started years ago when film, first show I go with, and these actors came up there. And they announced themselves first as an activist, not an actor. What the fuck are you talking about?

I mean, this is a virtual signal. A virtual signal thing is all it is. I'm in the right side doing the right thing. And I cannot stand when it's what is happening now. It's like, now if you're not on their side, you're phobic. And I say I'm a fob, fob. It's what it is. It's a cheap laugh as good as a clever laugh.

Not really, but it doesn't mean one doesn't go with the cheap laughs. I mean we're desperate people. People try to make people laugh, whichever it is. It's wonderful when you actually get a sublime laugh. Something is truly wonderful. And my favorite moment is in life, a Brian, when the whole crowd, when Brian says, you're all individuals, whole crowd shouts out,

we're all individuals, and one voice speaks up, I'm not. That is sublime. That's so fun. How involved do you in the writing of the of the projects you do? Well, I don't with Python. I didn't really write. I did. And in the movies. No, movies, yeah. I'm always involved. I always work with somebody who is much better at character and dialogue than I am because I'm in the big ideas, the shapes, this kind of scene, that is what I do. And then I'm lucky enough to work with more talented people who put the words in the character's mouth.

I sometimes put words, but I just know, in the case of Time Bows Mike, he's better than I am. So why should I even be trying to compete? I will write something and he'll rewrite it making it better, that's all. Often do the actors write something better? Is that a typical thing?

Sometimes, yes. I mean, so many actors are really smart. What they're not given credit for being as smart as they are, and they're funny when they're given a chance. And yes, they'll come up with a better line, this more true to the character, even. I mean, when we did Fisher King, Robin Williams, of course, how do you stop Robin? He just went for it all the time because he actually had that feeling, people are watching this movie because they're fans, and they want to see what Robin Williams does.

And I had cast Jeff Bridges, not only was a brilliant actor, but he was the anchor that kept Robin and me on the ground. And so, at any day in a scene, Robin was like, ah, I mean, just, I'd say, okay, rather than fighting, it was no point in fighting because that's just putting a cap on the pressure that's going to explode. So go for it Rob. And out of his ad li-bing, there would be moments, a couple of moments really good, so I said, keep those in.

Now, keep those but get back to the script. And that's how it worked. So that's what I do. How did the Python GV shows get put together? Well, we worked in different combinations. John Cleans, Graham Chapman worked together. Mike Pennington, Jones worked together, Eric Heidel, and I worked on our own.

And I didn't do what the others did. They were much better at words than I, much better performance. So I was, in many ways, I had the most freedom of anybody. Because everything was very democratic. When all the material would come in after everybody had been separated doing their work, they would come in and we'd vote on which stays in the show and what doesn't. And they never knew what I was doing.

They couldn't really explain anything. I couldn't explain what I was doing. It was only on the day of the show that I would turn out with the film of what I'd done. And it worked. That of what I'd done. And it worked. That's what I think has always been to me, the miracle. This monosolabic Minnesota farm boy turns up in England with all these Cambridge and Oxford educated Brits.

And somehow we share the same sense of humor. It just came out in different ways, mind visually, and there is verbally. Yeah. Did they ever write material based on them all being English where you didn't understand the joke? If you didn't grow up there you wouldn't have understood it. No, I always did. I don't, from a very early age I became an Anglo-File somehow. I mean there was the Goons show and things that were turning up on disc in America. I thought. And I just loved the humor.

And it was kind of like, with Beatles lyrics, I didn't know what Penny Lane was. It didn't matter. I sensed what it was about. And I loved the fact that eventually, I could find out what these things were in their lives. But I wasn't really interested. It was poetry to me.

And that's kind of what the rest of the Pfeifensifons were doing. How would the order, let's say they were a dozen skits in an episode, would you be the one to put them in order? How would it get assembled and how would the animations connect them? Well, very early on we decided not to do punchlines because we'd seen so many TV comedy shows and it would be this wonderful material, great characterizations and they'd have to end with a zinger and the zingers were never as good as what we'd experienced. So we said no punchlines. So what would happen as the sketches were written and as the big game assembled as we've worked them out, it was just basically said, Ed Gilliam takes over from here before the punchline and gets us to there. That's all it was.

And I was the freest of all. And I just did it and I could never explain what I was actually doing. Sometimes I had, oh I could say, it's gonna be like this. Most of times I would just sit at home late at night because when I were doing the shows I would probably have two all-nighters a week. So my brain was just free, floating around, and the pieces of paper on my desk would start informing me what we were doing and things that's how it was.

That's why when I look back at some of the shows I can't believe I was the guy doing that because it seems How did I ever come up with that Ridiculous idea or brilliant idea whatever it was And it worked because this one foreign element in the group became Very much the signature of the part of the signature Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely again. It made it modern It was different than any other thing we'd seen before, because the animation, it wasn't just the intro and the outro.

It was the connective tissue of the whole episode. It connected tissue. It really came from one animation I did for this children's show that Mike, Terry, and Eric involved. And it was just a stream of consciousness. And Terry Jones loved that. That's how we've got to do the show. It's this weird kind a stream of consciousness. And Terry Jones loved that. That's how we've got to do the show. It's this weird kind of stream of consciousness.

Things unrelated, things somehow are connected in some way. And we fell through it. And I was the connecting tissue. Let's talk through each of the stages of making a film quickly. First is the idea. Do you have lots of ideas? And how do you know which is the one to pursue?

I don't know. I really don't know the process. How one thing becomes the thing I'm trying to say. I mean, the current thing I'm working on, I was here in Umbria on my own for the first time in many years. My wife got here, my children got here. And I was sitting in my house and I suddenly gained confidence. There was nobody to say what, and I was sitting in my house, and I suddenly gained confidence.

There was nobody to say what an idiot I was, what a complete waste of time I was. It was a weirdest thing, and suddenly my brain just started dancing out. It's okay, let's destroy humanity. It's a good start. And then work out why, and how you avoid ultimately doing it. What happened? Is it helpful to have someone to say, stop thinking about that, you're an idiot?

Is that a good, uh, Well, obviously not, because my wife does that all the time. No, but having that barrier could also, you'll dig in when you dig in and you won't dig in when it's less important. It could also be like a filter. Well, that's very important. Usually it's the budget when it's less important. It could also be like a filter. Well, that's very important. Usually it's the budget, it's the filter. The time and cost becomes a thing.

But there is, that's why I like working with a co-writer. Somebody else who will question why that's a good idea. Now, I've got to either defend it or not. Describe the writing process. From the first day you show up, you have an idea of what you want to do, what happens. Well, I've kind of written a story first. This is the story I'm trying to tell.

Is it like three pages or? To be in the case of Brazil, it was 94. Okay. And most of it was thrown out. Okay. But you start. There's something. There is something.

There is something. And now, what do you think? Well, that's really stupid and why that? The question is, why are you doing that? How could you justify having that horrible idea? You put things in context and how, the script is about, when you read, send a script to the studio,

they'll always say, oh, this doesn't work, that doesn't work. And they're always wrong, because what isn't working is something that takes place in the script 15 minutes before You have to set the scene for that thing down there and that's how it works and they don't Studios don't understand this simple thing in music because it's it must be Latin music if you set a chord or in the mix You'll be doing something and plant a solid a major chord in the middle of miners

And that sort of hangs in the air. And then you develop it later on. I don't know if it works that well. We always make either a demo in advance or we don't show it to anyone until it's the finished version. But it's working on a much smaller scale. It's a couple of people. It's not 100 people on a set. And that's the difference.

So it's like, from the films you've got to put it in a written form. But the film is not about the written form. Well, that says the words, but it's the imagery and what the imagery is expanding from the words. So somebody's saying that this word, whatever he's saying, in one location, you put them in a different location, it means something completely different possibly. And until the film is been shot, and the film you shoot and you're making mistakes every day, and then you're trying to fix them, and time and budget are the determiners, ultimately, of what you've made, and I rail against, I don't have time to do that, but then it makes me angry, which gets

the adrenaline going, and the adrenaline comes up with clever ideas, just to do that, but then it makes me angry, which gets the adrenaline going. And the adrenaline comes up with clever ideas, just to fuck up, basically. It really is, that happened on Munch House, and we had a schedule of 21 weeks. In the sixth week. It's a long time. That's a, oh my, this is what all of them are.

Brazil was nine months. Wow. From beginning to end of shooting. Wow. Yeah, I know. You have to end of shooting. Wow. Yeah. I know. You have to be young to do that. Yeah, yeah.

But so, Munchhausen, we had to think, at all the budget, all the money was gone in the sixth week of a twenty-one-week shoot. And then the bond company, the insurers, come and say, well, you can't do this, you can't do this. And they all said, the Baron cannot go to the moon. Because what was in the script? The Baron, it is, friends, go to the moon and on the moon is a king and queen and there's 2,000 people all who during the lunar eclipse, their heads detached from their bodies and they or may not get back to the right body.

And the king of the moon of these 2,000 people is Sean Coddry. Now they say you can't go to the moon and I said hold on the Baron will go to the moon my first idea was the film would be going along and we reached the point when he arrived at the moon and basically we walked into the office with me and my co-writer and we just are reading the script. Yeah we're going to the moon fuck you it was my first reaction and then it was Eric Eidl, who suggested maybe Robin Williams could play the king of the boot. And I thought, well, now we're in a different world here. And we didn't have the money for 2,000 people.

And it was down basically to two people on the boot. I removed three zeros. And Sean Carter said, that must point of being a king of two people. And so he was gone. And that's how Sean went before Robin appeared. And then Robin appeared, and we did it with two people on the moon. So much of the moon sequences, Robin ad libbing. There's a lot of stuff that was not scripted.

He was on great form, and we had a wonderful time. If five different great directors had one of the scripts that you start from, how different with those five movies be? They'd probably be better. But between the five guys. I don't know because that's what's, it's always intrigued me. What you're asking is something I've always wanted to know. Here's a script handed to five different well-known directors. Go for it. And they would be five different films.

I mean, mine always have sort of twisted endings. Spielberg doesn't do that. Spielberg is the Norman Rockwell of cinema. He makes warm, cuddly films. I don't. I'm trying to shock people into looking things in new ways. Surprise them. Somebody like Michael Bay would be all action,

big technological things. We all have different skills. Who do you think of as peers? Cohen brothers. I love the cones. I think they're the only ones really out there still expanding the boundaries of what you can get away with. And getting away

with is the key to everything. How many times can you get away with murder? How do you think we parse surreal material? Is it intellectual or is it something else? I don't think in that sense, I just react. It's really where I can't explain what surrealism is, but all I know is it makes me see the world in ways I haven't imagined. It's like the brain is all about trying to make sense of things, is what the brain. So you put to completely a conflicting ideas in front of the brain and it starts working overtime trying to make sense and you may never make sense of it, but it gets your brain active and struggling

and that to be is wonderful. Yeah, and that juxtaposition can create a feeling in the viewer where they don't know why, but I feel this. And it's almost impossible to explain why I'm feeling this or exactly even what the feeling is. It's just getting neurons buzzer around. It's a cheap drug surrealism. How important is it for the audience to

understand what they're seeing? To me, I'm trying to communicate to an audience. I want to tell a story. I want to bring them along with me and I want to play with them while we're going there. So it is important. At the end of the film, I don't care if what you saw was a different film than the one I thought I made. I don't care, but you saw a film. And it made sense to you when we finished 12 monkeys. There was some woman who suddenly got my email and she had worked out a whole cosmic religious film there, the 12 monkeys, the 12 disciples. James Cole, Bruce Willis's character, J.C. Jesus Christ. And it was elaborate and it was totally convincing that this is what we had done.

It is not at all what we did, but it's what she made out of what we had done. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, we can never know how someone else received something. Have you ever come back to something and had an insight about it that you didn't know for years? With time bad, recently I've heard a lot of people who said, when there were kids, they were frightened. They thought it was a horror film.

They said, no, why are you talking about it? It wasn't meant as a horror film. It was just a good adventure. So I don't know if they really felt that then or they have now changed because as the world has changed, we've come much more delicate that something is challenging. For me, time bad is what's interesting. It was a kid's film and it was an adult.

It was for all ages. And what happened at the end of end, because there was a big fight with me and Dennis Bryan, the producer, about the ending of the parents being blown up because they're not listening to their son. And I said, this is what the film is about. Parents listen to your children, they're often wiser. And what happened at the end, the boys came out of the film,

say, yeah, no problem, Kevin's on his own without his parents. We can handle it. The girls came out like mothers. I mean, they were so worried about what happened. So I, right from the very beginning, there was this distinction between the young boys and the young girls. The boys were full of testosterone.

Wow, we can do it. Parents, fuck that. The girls were very concerned about the boy. And I thought that's fantastic. That made sense to me. Those very different views, it's all. You described the initial factions, I'll say, within Python.

Did those factions remain the same throughout the duration? No, it was weird, because we were all learning from each other. We were changing in different ways. I was picking up the things from them. They were picking up the... We all... That's what... It was such a good time because we had to keep producing these shows, films.

We were just clicking. We didn't have time to intellectualize what we were doing. We were just doing it because it came out and we made each other laugh. That was it. And the fact that it reached a larger audience was a delight. But we all became, I was finding, I was writing things that were more like something Eric was doing. He was picking up things from John and Mike. It was a wonderful experience, just where he liked that. Big-sick, matching.

Why did it only last the four seasons? It was enough. I think the sense was we weren't being original anymore. We wanted to be original and we were becoming repetitive. And very successful, thank you very much, but that was not the purpose of what we were trying to do. Have you ever had a job on a movie besides directing the movie? Yeah, I have. I began very early on when I was in New York working for two dollars less than the doll,

and I got a job working for free in a little stop-motion action studio, got him Ted Nemeth, A.D. dancing cigarette packs, it all for commercials. And his wife was a director, and she was directing her version of Finnecans Wake, and I was on there as just a nobody to help out. And I remember one day, I was setting up a shot in this bar at closing time, and the circular table had upturned chairs, so it looked like a crown. And they were trying to do this shot with the cabaret all.

And I said, that's just wrong. What they're doing is never going to achieve what they're trying to do. And I said to the director, wait, that's just wrong. What they're doing is never going to achieve what they're trying to do. And I said to the director, wait, that's not going to work. Because then, in particular, I had a really good spatial sense of how they really didn't work. And I said, that ain't going to work. What you need to do is, and they paid no attention to me.

And I said, good night. And that was the end I walked off the set. And I said, I may be the lowest of the low, but ideas I have. And if you can't be bothered to listen, and that has been my way on sets ever since, because I listened to people. I don't care who they are, and I try to make sure that everybody can speak to me. I try to break down the hierarchy when we were doing munchows. It was very funny in Italy, Catholic country.

The Pepino Roututo, the celebratory for brilliant, brilliant man. Now, his English was not great, and I had an assistant who was translating. He didn't like it because he had done a barbed-fawse movie and thought his English was great. It was it, and I said, Pepino, it's not, you're not the problem. My English is in very good. It's the problem. And I said, and it wouldn't stop. And it became more and more

difficult. I said, you're a Catholic. I'm a Protestant. As a Catholic, you have God, the Pope, and then you. And I'm a Protestant. Anybody can speak directly to God. I'm God. And I'm a pro, I'm a pro, anybody can speak directly to God. I'm God and I don't want to poke. For sure, for Pedro, you are. I want them all to speak to me, not to come through you, to speak to me. And I was my big fight. Do you remember the Broadway show? Which one?

The Mighty Python. Oh yeah, that's whatever that was. On Broadway. No, no, no, no, no, the original, with the original no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no unexpected in a more straight performance situation. I don't have really any great memory of it all. It was just fun being on stage and being applauded. My biggest memory is one of the nights we finished the show with a lumberjack song and George Harrison was there and Harry Nilsen was there. We all take the bow and as the curtain is coming down, Harry steps forward upstage to the edge of the stage over the orchestra pit and some fan reaches up to shake his hand and pulls him into the orchestra pit. Last we saw was Harry's feet in the air as he disappeared.

And that's my memory of the show. Ha, ha, ha. Are you superstitious? Not really. I try to be because it's more interesting, but I'm not very good at convincing myself, but I look for signs. I'm always looking for signs, and at a certain point certain things are happening, and that's forming my view of what is going on. As I fall down that day, I crash my car the next day, my dog was sick that. I think something, the reverberations are not good.

The energy is not good, something is wrong. I believe that, but I don't understand any more than that. Yeah. What did you believe when you were young that you don't believe anymore? The God is omnipotent. And it's worth begging down and bowing to him. And if you pray, you will get the returns you're hoping for.

I think nature is what it is, it's extraordinary, it's brutal, it's wonderful, but it doesn't respond, except I do actually believe there's energy out there. If you somehow can feel it in sense of the world, you might be more in tune and have better luck than if you're fighting that. That's all it's about. I don't know. God will just have to get on his own without me.

Prayin' for you. Have you ever made a creative choice because you imagine the audience would prefer it instead of what you prefer? I've never actually done that. That's a weird one. That's, if there's enough of them, add enough in the audience that are really smart,

people I admire or respect, and they say, I'm wrong, I listen. But as a general thing, my assumption is the audience is unknowable, and it's much larger than studio executives thinks it is. So if the current thinking is all of this, I will go and feed the other bit of thinking and see just how big it is. Almost everything I do is trying to find out the edge of civilization. Did you watch TV as a kid?

No, I watched. I grew up on radio because we didn't have TV until I was like 13. And radio was wonderful because you have to do all the work. You have to, the costumes, every set is like reading a book, same thing. You do the work and I convinced it was books and radio that developed my visual sense. It was that because those muscles needs exercise. Tell me about the place you grew up in. It was medicine like outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and we were on a little hill dirt road out there,

a house that had been a summer cottage, and my dad, he was a carpenter. My mother was a virgin also, so you know what this goes. And it's, you know, my dad is a carpenter and he restored this little, little, subbershack into a house that we grew up in. And for the first 10 years of my life, the toilet was at the end of the garden. In a biffy, it was called the biffy, it was what we called it out in the out in the blue. And this is what my memories are, the snow in the winter,

14 degrees below zero. And it was just beautiful and freezing and having to go and spend an hour in the biffy, you go out and you're shoes at a bathrobe. That's all. And I have no memory of how freezing cold that must have been because it was normal. And the things that weren't normal in my life was the radio. Let's pretend it was a show. There was the fat man. And there was the shadow, Le Mans crowds

and only the shadow knows. And so he lived these wonderful voices, the timbre of the voice, the sound, the footsteps, the sound effects, and your brain is invented all the visuals. And that was to be... There was also Johnny Lujak. Johnny Dosek was a quarterback for Notre Dame University, a Catholic quarterback. This is fast. There were the Hardy boys as well, who were, you know, boy detectives.

These were the things I used to listen to. That's it. How would you describe your taste? My taste. I don't have any taste. I'm happy when I get a hot pepper. I'm happy when I get a hot pepper. I'm happy when I get particularly sweet things. I want it all.

Quentin tells a story of you mentoring him at Sundance, Porsfer's movie. Do you have any memory of that? I do. Tell me about it. What they did at Sundance, they had a group of professionals. They were the youngest spiring ones there. My group was Stanley Donan. Oh, great. And so Stanley Donan, me and Walker Slodov, who directed the Tin Drama, a great German

director, and we had all these young hopefuls in there, and this script turned up, and it was a reservoir of dogs. I read it, I was utterly blown away by just the outrageousness of the boldness, the complete commitment that quiteentin was like, and neither Stanley or Volker, they didn't understand this, this is great, you got to understand this. And I met Quentin, now the previous group of professionals, because he overlapped by one week, the previous group has shat all over him. They were just completely unresponsive, unhelpful, and I said, Quentin, this is great.

And he had actually shot a scene. Well, he was there at Sundance with Tim Roth, a scene that ultimately Harvey Coutel did the scene. And he's talking to himself in the mirror. And Kevin had ten different angles on his scene. He said, you don't need a lot of kid. Just do it simply directly. And I said, but your work is great.

And apparently that solid took, and gave him a little bolt of confidence. And so I get a credit on Resvard Talks. Wow. He speaks really highly of it. He talks about it as a pivotal moment. And well, that's it, because he had been shatter upon. And confidence is such a delicate thing. It's so easy to make somebody unconfident, which they had. And I just said, this is fucking wonderful

go for it. And I said, listen, don't try to do everything. Surround yourself with good talented people to respect. Listen to them. That's it. Did you stop doing animation when we stopped seeing it from you or have you done any animation since? When I stopped, I stopped. I think enough of you decided you'd had enough of me. Now I just, I got to do what I'd always want to do, direct movies. Yeah. And I was holy grail, and off we went.

How would you describe each of the Python members? John is the tallest, the most strange, and in some ways the most intellectual, but he doesn't understand humanity. And his complication, I think, is that he generally feels he needs to be in control of the world around him. So he surrounds himself with a lot of professionals, but he's never yet to control it. And that's his great sense. His brilliance is, and Faltetower is a perfect example of it. A man trying to control this world and failing.

And John is at his best when he's like that. So he doesn't understand me because I'm very instinctive. I don't intellectualize. So where the opposite ends in the process? It in between Mike Paylon is not just the nicest person to the group. He's also, I think, he's the best actor. I think he's brilliant. His sense of comedy, his sense of character is so honest and brilliantly funny. And the great writer, and he, T. Ruphteri Jones, it's interesting because Terry was a bit like me, a bit monomoniacal.

We believe we're right. But he's, Terry was wealth, which makes him feel even more that he's right, because he's oppressed by the English. But he's, Terry was passionate, wildly passionate, and excited because of that. Eric is the cleverist in many ways because he can dance. He's the tap dancer. He can dance with words, music. He, in some sense, he knitted much of the group together

because what he did was taking what another member of the group did and found his way to knit it in there. And he, unfortunately, is the successful famous python in the Hollywood. So he bearers the brunt and both the fame and the pain of being a well-known comedian. And Graham Chapman was from another planet. Graham was just strange. He was a wonderful balance to John who is so precise and intellectual argumentative. I can never words which is the right brain and the left brain is the right brain more open. One of the half the brains is the rigorous one, the language, mathematics. John is that. I'm the opposite and Terry Jones was the opposite as well. But Graham was from

kind of another planet. He was also the only gay python. That was his great claim to fame. So when the lot of the gay rights began, he became very active and very funny. And out of rage and Graham, I never knew who he was, but he was there with us all the time, coming over with an odd word, an idea that just popped out of some other cosmos, and it became a connecting bit that would work. So, the chemical combination of the six of us, I think, was totally unique individually where, whatever we are, but chemically, together we were just, can I say the word brilliant? I think we were.

I think you can. Were there ego clashes? Always. Yeah. How were you? How were you resolved? How were you like that? Well, it's because.

Okay. There's six egos at work there. Or six talented people with different skills. And there would be huge battles, but somehow democracy won. And there was, the basis of all the differences was a deep respect for each of us, for each other. That was it. We disagreed with the other guy, but I respected him and his talent, so you couldn't dismiss anybody.

And we just were big battles occurred. Now, it's sad because we've all gone our separate ways. Everybody's done reasonably well. But it's not the joy, the thrill that it was when we were a multi-stallular creature. When you speak to any of them is the vibe good. We're fighting over all sorts of very pathetic things. But when you're old and out of work, what can you do? Did you design the album covers, the Matching Time Anchor Chiff? Yeah, that was fun. And also the three-sided

record was my idea. Oh, that's so cool. It is. I think it's the only time I've ever experienced that. I mean, of course, I didn't get the idea. I've ever experienced that. I mean, just me, of course. How did you get the idea? I don't know why. I was watching how it works. So, why I mean spirals. I've always loved spirals. Well, you have two spirals, one just inside the other. They go around together.

So, where the needle drops, you don't know what spiral you're going to be on. And we did it, and it worked. And I loved the fact that nobody knew we had done it. So, when we began people, oh, you gotta hear this. There's one of a sketch, and it worked. And I loved the fact that nobody knew we had done it. So, it became people, oh, you gotta hear this, this wonderful sketch. And it wouldn't come up, another sketch. That was wonderful.

So cool, yeah, random. What you got was random. And that's what was, I mean, it was so much fun being pithin' back then, because there was such a fan base, and there was enough money to do what we wanted to do. That was a good take, sir. Was it huge out of the box?

Like people refer to Python as the Beatles of Comedy, but the Beatles, the explosion was immediate. Was that the case with Python too? It was kind of, because again, it was this period where there were only three channels in Britain, BBC1, BBC2, and ITV. And we were BBC One. When the show, and we were given the free hand, that's, the organization was a very,

I wouldn't say laissez faire organization, but it allowed the people in charge to make choices without having, it wasn't committee work. And so John Cleese was wanted by the BBC to do a program and so he brought in his five friends and they said, okay, I think it was seven shows we were given. Go, make seven shows. We'll see how it works out. And I think I remember is after the fourth show, because when it started, the BBC thought Monty Python's flying circus.

Oh, it's a circus. And of course, it wasn't a circus in the way they thought of circus. There's a couple of shows where nobody knew what the fuck this was. It was just what is this? But it caught on very quickly. It was there because you only had three choices on a Sunday night and we were the one the most interesting choice available. So they stumbled off and very quickly we became hot. But the funny thing is as we were rising very quickly on the fourth show, we were taken off and replaced by the horse of the year show. It's just an annual event where people riding their beautiful horses over this, that and the other thing. And the funny thing about it, we were taken off a yet during one of the exercise

of the horses. They played da, yum, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, the John Sussah marched and we had our breath. And so there was no way of stopping Python. We were just spewing. And then Nancy Lewis was this woman who is a PR lady for Buddha Records in America. And she got wind of Python. She is responsible for bringing Python to America. She's not credited anywhere, which is a crime against Nancy. But she got a guy named Ron DeVillier from Texas. He was working one of the TV channels there. And it turned out that the TV channel he was working for, the boss band, was Owen Wilson's father. And they had to gather together 11 pay-per-view channels, whatever they were, and they got

it. Ron got it, and off we went, and we hit it right from the beginning. Boom. I think it was after the first couple of shows, I think in Des Moines, Iowa or somewhere in the Midwest, they pulled the show off. And a couple of thousand people were demonstrating on the street to get the show back on.

Is it pulled off because of, it was being censored or banned? I know I did. No idea. I suppose the big break was when we were on National Public and PR. I said that's where we were. And I just love the idea.

The PBS in the US. Yeah, it was PBS. What it was called, yeah. And's what we were. I just love the IBS. The PBS. The PBS. The fact there were no commercials. The show went out as we made it. And then we were preparing to do the Python New York show. And ABC TV had got very excited about the show. And a guy whose name I've forgotten had decided ABC would take it. All we had to do was change, edit the show. So they did their baudelerized version of the show. And we were very late in waking up to the fact that the

show was going to go out with all these ridiculous cuts in it. And we took them to court. And the court case was in New York, the big federal building there, where the previous Attorney General, John, who was under Nixon, had been held in court. And we were there, ABC versus Python. And Mike Payton and I were the witnesses for Python. Wow.

And this is a huge building. 44 high ceilings, oh, oh, paddles. There's the John John is highly. And Mike and I had an individual turns in the witness box. That was quite wonderful. Now the stupid things about the ABC lawyer, they were saying it was all a publicity stunt

for the upcoming New York show, which it wasn't. No. And the fact we had been so long after it come out, it was only purely a publicity stunt. It wasn't. We were just very slow at thinking about legal. We just didn't think about this. So we're up there.

Now the moment when they ABC lost was very simple. We sit in the jury box, the judge and Mike and I on either side of him and the ABC lawyers. And they showed our uncut versions first. And everybody laughed wonderful. And then they showed the Bauderoy's version. Nobody laughed because old material. It wasn't as funny. That's how stupid the ABC lawyer was. He didn't understand comedy. And we blocked it going out. We didn't win originally. It took more appeals, but it stopped ABC.

Because ABC didn't understand, because they loved the show. And they were just trying to make it available for more people. So we'd be loved by more people. We didn't care about more people. We just wanted to go out the way we made it. And we would suffer if it didn't. And in the end, the appeals went back and for it eventually. The BBC, who had been central to selling it off to ABC, lost. And we own the shows. Wow. Incredible. Happy ending. Happy ending.

At what point in the success did you realize this is really having impact? Like it's not regular success because it's something different. I think it was the New York shows that really kind of made a live audience was there. And they were trying to leave at the end. You know, they were banging at the gates. It was like, if that kind of frenzy, which was what the Beatles, I mean, are smaller version of it,

but it was like, gigantic. And this was already after the show was done. The TV show was finished. I mean, we knew we had succeeded. We knew it was working, but it wasn't the first time the experience. But you actually get mobbed than you're at a different level.

What was the ratio of the skits filmed to the ones that made it into the show? I don't know. Let's say three-quarters got in. The quality of writing was really good. It was the business of trying to organize which sketches would go in that show, how we could relate them if anyway. And so some good thing is we're just lost because I wasn't the way of fitting them in as far as we were concerned, yeah. Any inspirations from when you were young? I tried to be a magician. My dad built me a beautiful stall, the work from behind, and I would try to do my magic tricks to impress the local kids. And I always fucked them up.

So I became known as Terry the Clown, because my failures made them laugh. I was a failed magician, but a pretty decent clown. It's what you're all anybody involved in comedy, or even I'm sure in music is where the guys that were maybe less popular at school and how do you how do you get the girls look at you how do you get people to notice you're interesting. So comedy is the best thing and especially if you have to be smaller than the other guys who would like to beat the shit out of you it's

and you better get funny quickly that's how you survive. Its survival techniques is what brings comedians alive, I think. Do you remember how and now for something completely different came about? No, I don't. That's what's wonderful with, as you get older, great holds in your memory appear. You're the Swiss tree, cheese of memory is what I got up to. And certain things stick and other things don't. And what normally sticks are the bad things. Because they're the most shocking, the most I suppose you'd say traumatic. Yes. But as they don't kill you, I think I think on Nietzsche's right, you know, humor

failed, humor makes you strong, right? He didn't say it quite like that. It is the nox that are important. The nox are because you've got to keep picking you and that's one. I mean, that's one reason Kihori is such an important character to me. It's about failure. He gets knocked down because his view of the world is noble and beautiful. The real world kicks him in the ass every time he's down on the ground, he's flat, but he gets up again and goes off trying to live in this world of nobility, which doesn't really exist. That is inspiring. Failure is his ability to constantly get up again.

Is to me a great inspiration. I wish poor people appreciated that. Is making things now as fun for you and interesting as it's always been? Just more difficult. I want it to be fun. Yes, because I know when I get into it, whether writing something or trying to make it, or what I really do, my real job is making birthday cards for my family. Beautiful. And each birthday comes along. It's a specific age and I've got to come up with an idea that is about whatever is going

on in their life at that age. And it's really hard work and I spend a lot of time thinking and then suddenly the idea is, when the idea, I got it, now I've got to do it. And I realize I haven't been spending what I should've been doing all the time up to that, practicing my drawing skills. And suddenly I can't draw properly anymore. Each thing is a battle, but the end of it,

I've done something, I've got all these birthday cards, Valentine's cards for my wife, even our anniversary cards, that's what I do, that's my art these days. And is it, I imagine, cracking the code of the card, is every bit as exciting as putting together a Python episodes. Like, you get to make something and you get to have that, aha, look, there it is. But that's it, it's always, is that Archimedes, Eureka? It's Eureka moment, whatever,

and an idea, when a good idea hits you, it feels so brilliant because I don't even know where it came from. Somewhere in the psyche, deep down, in the bowels, maybe it's, I don't know, it comes out of my house as far as I know. I don't know. Well, thank you so much for talking to me.

It's been a pleasure and I feel like we've been like long friends. Yeah, we are. We met another guy who talks out of his ass. Thank you, sir. Great. It's good to join. Thank you. Same. 1.5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1,5-1-1,5-1,5-1, you