15. YOU TOO, SHALL PASS: …If the gatekeeper permits.

During the time between seasons 3 and 4 of their show, the Monty Python group decided to make a movie. Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones had never made a movie before, as And Now for Something Completely Different was a collection of sketches from the show. They got the movie for the movie from a variety of sources: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, Elton John, co-producer Michael White, Tim Rice’s cricket team and several record labels, including Charisma Records, who released Python’s early comedy albums. No movie studio would have funded them and rock stars were paying huge taxes in the UK, so it was a great write-offs. All of these groups would get a percentage from Spamlot, the musical that came from it nearly thirty years later.

When someone asked Eric Idle on Twitter, after he revealed who gave money to the movie, if he would reveal the profits, he replied, “Do I look like a fucking accountant?”

How to even go into this movie? I’ll try. King Arthur (Graham Chapman), his squire Patsy (Terry Gilliam), Sir Bedevere the Wise (Terry Jones), Sir Lancelot the Brave (John Clese), Sir Galahad the Pure (Michael Palin), Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot (Eric Idle) and Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Film (a young William Palin) are ordered by God to find the Holy Grail and keep getting blocked, whether that’s by the Black Knight (Cleese), the French taunters (Cleese), a carnivorous rabbit, a three-headed knight (Chapman, Jones and Palin), the Legendary Black Beast and the Bridge of Death over the Gorge of Eternal Peril, which requires them to answer the questions of the bridgekeeper (Gilliam), which ends up claiming the lives of most of the knights.

For a movie where the camera broke during the first shot and where Chapman had the DTs and could barely walk, much less climb on his first day of shooting, things worked out OK.

Gene Siskel said, “Too many jokes took too long to set up, a trait shared by both Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.” I guess Siskel and I saw different movies.

Unbelievably, this premiered on U.S. TV on the CBS Late Movie on February 25, 1977. So much was cut that the Pythons would only allow it to ir on PBS and cable afterward.

I watched this movie daily as a kid. My wife, who is 12 years younger than me, has no interest in watching it and didn’t grow up idolizing Monty Python. When I was two, I asked if I could start speaking like John Cleese and tried for a long time to have a British accent. At that time, it felt like knowing Python felt like a secret club, one beyond Saturday Night Live and maybe at the same level as SCTV.

Today, there’s a licensed slot machine.

Thanks to the DIA crew — Bill, Mike, Jenn and AC — for helping me figure out what movie to write about.