Cleese brings spirit of Monty Python to UB

Striding out on stage Friday night at the Center for the Arts, British comedian John Cleese noted he was not a frequent visitor to Buffalo.

“So you are probably asking yourselves: What is he doing here on the edge of the Arctic Circle?”

An energetic and appreciative audience of more than 1,000 responded with laughter and applause, welcoming Cleese, often dubbed “the funniest man alive,” as the third speaker in this year’s Distinguished Speakers Series. Cleese gave presentations to two packed houses at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

The legendary comic, already a respected comedian in Britain, went on to achieve international success as a founding member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, beginning in 1969. 

He has written, produced, directed and starred in some of the greatest comedic hits of the past 40 years, receiving an Oscar nomination for best screenplay for the film “A Fish Called Wanda.”

Cleese began his talk by telling the audience that, “I come from humble roots.

“I was born in Uphill, which is a tiny village in the parish of Weston-super-Mare in North Somerset, England,” he said. “It is comprised of faded Edwardian gentility — nothing posh.”

He told the audience, “Very little of note ever took place in Weston. It was a very quiet place. Decorum was everything.”

Which made it very surprising, he said, when the German Luftwaffe bombed Weston in 1940 during the early stages of World War II.

“There was nothing in Weston as valuable as the bombs. I suppose the Germans did it to prove that they really do have a sense of humor — or perhaps it was out of some sort of Teutonic joie de vivre.”

Cleese said his family made it through the bombing of Weston, “including my mother, who, having been born in 1899, eventually lived to the age of 101.

“Which means that she not only lived through that bit of attention from Hitler, but the entire 20th century, as well — and without noticing any of it, as best I could tell.”

He said his early childhood was characterized by a sense of rootlessness.

“We moved eight times. At least,” he said. “This, combined with the fact that I was already 6 feet tall and very thin by the time I was 13, resulted in a lack of social skills. Which resulted in the inevitable bullying.

“But I felt I could make my classmates laugh. I reasoned if I made them laugh, then the bullying would fade away.”

Cleese said he followed that strategy right up through his university years.

“I was not good at much, which left me with a stark choice between two subjects I could start from scratch: economics and law,” he said. “I chose law and was pleased that I was accepted at Cambridge Law School.”

While attending English public school, Cleese recalled being told about Footlights at Cambridge, and that it had something to do with humor.

“So I joined the Footlights Theatrical Club,” he said, “and eventually met Graham Chapman, with whom I would develop a writing partnership that would last more than two decades.”

He said that following their success writing for Footlights, he and Chapman began writing professionally for the BBC.

“We initially wrote for David Frost and for comedian Marty Feldman,” he said. “Marty was enormously talented and would go on to work with Mel Brooks. David would become the single strongest force shaping my career.

“And at that point, I went on to work briefly in the U.S., but eventually returned to Britain.”

By 1965, Cleese and Chapman began writing for “The Frost Report,” where they met a number of writers who would go on to make a name for themselves in comedy — including future Python members Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

“So that made five future Pythons working together,” Cleese said. “We developed our writing styles, which would, in the future, make our collaborations significant. Which, of course, none of us knew at the time.”

Cleese told the audience an unexpected benefit of working for David Frost was having the opportunity to write film scripts for Peter Sellers.

“He was the top comedy actor in the world then,” he recalled. “He played three different characters in “Dr. Strangelove,” one of the greatest comedies of all time, while also creating the role of Inspector Clouseau in the ‘Pink Panther’ movies.

“As young as we were, we were thrilled to work with someone of his talent.”

Cleese said that while they were writing for The Frost Report, he and Chapman would stop work on Thursday afternoons to watch a children’s show — “Do Not Adjust Your Set.”

It featured Palin, Jones, Idle and Terry Gilliam, who was developing his animation features.

“It was the funniest thing on the BBC, so I said to Gra, ‘why don’t we get together with them and see if they want to do a show with us?’” Cleese recounted.

“Well, we did. But we soon found out we hadn’t the slightest idea of what we were going to do. Even when we had a meeting with Michael Mills, the head of BBC comedy.

“‘Will you have guest stars?’ he asked us. ‘Music? Singing? Maybe some film?’”

Cleese told the audience, “We hadn’t discussed any of that, so we sat there looking clueless and very unprofessional.”

He said Mills then told the group: “‘Oh, go ahead and do 13 programs.’”

But, Cleese said, the Pythons got nowhere very quickly.

“We couldn’t agree, so we all just went home to write. We would meet at Terry Jones’ house and we instinctively started to write silly stuff.

“Then we started to write even sillier stuff: interviewing a duck, a man with three buttocks, a nun with a tape recorder up her nose.”

On one occasion, Cleese said someone had written a sketch that took place in a drab, moth-eaten dormitory, with an additional suggestion that it be lit by a Louis XIV chandelier.

“‘No, by a dead stuffed farm animal with a light bulb in each hoof,’” Cleese said someone else added.

“Then, an argument ensued,” Cleese recalled, “about whether the animal should be either a sheep or a goat.

“Goats have horns. The horns make it funnier.”

“But sheep are stupid. That’s funnier.”

“But goats look more ridiculous.”

“It’s funnier with wool.”

“What’s funny about wool?”

“Wool is soft and shapeless.”

Cleese told the audience that, after 20 minutes, he stepped in to end it: “Five Oxbridge graduates fighting over a choice between a goat chandelier or a sheep chandelier is absurd and utterly ridiculous.

“Especially when anyone with even an average intellect knows it was funnier with a goat.”

Cleese said that lively — and often protracted — arguments over jokes and the wording of scripts would regularly take place among the Pythons.

“Terry Jones and I would go at it, for example, with him believing he was always right about everything and me becoming more and more irritated and impatient. We would become exasperated rather than angry.”

But the group never argued about casting, Cleese said.

“If you want to know how we operated, you need to understand one essential fact,” he said. 

“All of us in the group were primarily writers, not performers. If we were actors at heart, we would, of course, have been fighting for the best roles.

“But we never did. Because it was obvious to us who should play which part in order to get the best out of it and not muck it up.”

Throughout his presentation, Cleese treated the audience to video clips of his early career sketches and various Python sketches, as well as clips from films such as “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “A Fish Called Wanda,” which Cleese made with acclaimed English director Charles Crichton in 1988.