YouSaid · the spoken record

Eric Idle

lines on the record: 63
first: 2022-11-21
most recent: 2022-11-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Less money. That's true. I think the more the fact is the Holy Grail was made for $400,000 was the budget, five weeks filming. Wow.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're writer performers. So I think we're much more close akin to caricature. It isn't a deeply thought out character that you could live with on for a long time. And I don't have no idea what the other thing was referring to. Was there a context?”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We started off in 66 writing for television and being on it in 67. And Python started in 69. It just, and it didn't take off in a big way. I mean, nobody really started to watch. And then people occasionally went, they began to really love it. And I think because we messed with the form of it, sometimes we start with 10 minutes of a pirate film to try and persuade them they were on the wrong channel. I think messing with them was a very good thing to do.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we had our own TV show, which was a very big hit at 525 for kids. So we couldn't use any filth. It was very good discipline. You know, you just had to be purely funny. And we decided we wouldn't talk down to them. We would just do our funny stuff. And then there was another show called The 1948 show, and these two shows collided Oddly, and the BBC said, you know, you can have 13 shows on a Sunday night. They were trying to find out if there was an audience on Sunday night after you saw the queen on the horse and they'd say goodnight and shut down. So they didn't really mind what we did. They didn't care. They didn't watch. They didn't even read the scripts. They just said, well, get on and do it, you know.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we were all at Oxford or Cambridge. And Cambridge is a thing called the Footlights Club, which I happen to join. And by extraordinary coincidence, I met John Cleese in January of 1963. And then the same year I met Graham Chapman. And then at Edinburgh Festival, I met Terry Jones and then Michael Palin. So by the end of like 12 months, we actually met each other. When we came down from Cambridge, almost our first job, my first job was writing for David Frost. On a show called The Frost Report, which John Cleese starred in. So there was that. We were writers. We were young. And then we got our own children's show, Do Not Adjust Your Set, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and I.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's all it was. It was like a claus joke. And it takes a while for it to penetrate. But the honest reaction like you did, stunned silence. Right, right. I mean, to be funny, we find ourselves laughing. We don't think about it. We find ourselves to be laughing.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'm supposed entirely to a lab track, and sometimes that was surprising to us. Only once do we make a big mistake, and we thought And we did it again the next week, and it was still didn't get a laugh, so we don't know. What was it? It was a very silly sketch. It was set in the trenches. And I think I was playing a harmonica. Maybe I was talking. Somebody said, hey, a sergeant, I can't wait to get back, you know, to go on blighty, you know, see the wife, have some pie and chips. You know, I'm in sergeant. He said, yes, Brigadier.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That would be entirely his own whimsy. And he come up with it at the very last minute, and we wouldn't see it often until we went recording it before a live audience. And that was the other cue. It was a live audience. So they told us what was funny and what wasn't. And we weren't always right.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because he provides the show with a sort of Victorian framework in which the whole thing plays out. And that seems to give it some link and connection, which is entirely spurious.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We wrote them, we didn't cash till after we'd written the shows so that people weren't hanging on to bits because they were in it or they'd written it. And then we tried to give it a sort of theme or we tried to link things together without using tags or punchlines. And I think that's where Gillian was important.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's sort of, and it's not satire, but it is satire, it's generic satire. It's about types. It isn't about particular people. So the references haven't dated. So, for example, it's not like SNL, where you say, oh, I remember he was the president who always fell over. So it is either funny or it isn't. And also the other thing I think is quite strange and unique. It was written by the people who did it and only by them. Right. There was no writing team. It was just by us, just what we wanted to say. And I think we'd done our Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours. We'd done other shows. We've been writers for other people. We've been on television. And suddenly the BBC gave us this complete freedom to do what the heck we wanted. And we didn't have a clue what to do. So we just did it. We made it up and did it.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we were completely wrong there. But then when I think about it more, I think it's because it's very silly. It keeps playing with the form. I think it's about television in an odd way because we were first people to do that sort of comedy on television in color in our country anyway.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'm not sure I really know, but I think it shouldn't be. I mean, for comedy to last more than 50 years is actually very, very rare. And we weren't certainly looking back 50 years when we were doing it. I try and wonder because one thing we were certain obviously would never go to America, that they would never ever get it.”
2022-11-21 · On with Kara Swisher · Where’s the Line in Comedy? Monty Python’s Eric Idle Has an Idea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT