Iain Johnstone

Keanu Reeves teaches Python magic

As Spamalot opens, Iain Johnstone recalls his experiences with the Monty Python team over the years, and hails their enduring legacy

Some years ago I was writing a script with John Cleese in Los Angeles and we went for dinner at a buzzy brasserie called Chaya. When the waiter brought our steaks he also brought a $200 bottle of St Francis Cabernet Sauvignon. We hadn’t ordered it; the waiter said it was a gift from some anonymous diners. John suggested to the waiter that they come by our table as they were leaving the restaurant.

It turned out to be Keanu Reeves and a couple of chums. They joined us for a drink and then the most remarkable thing happened: they started to re-enact scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, from the knights who say ‘Ni’ changing their name to ‘the knights who say Ekki-Ekki-Ekki-Ekk-PTANG. Zoom-Boing. Z’nourrwringmm’, to Keanu doing a perfect rendering of John’s French soldier: ‘I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.’

In another part of the city that same night, Eric Idle was putting together a one-off performance for the Getty Museum using Python material. It was so successful that he took it on tour — twice: ‘Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python’ and ‘The Greedy Bastard Tour’. There is an exponential American appetite for Python in general and The Holy Grail in particular. Hence Eric’s musical adaptation of the film, Spamalot, which has played to sell-out audiences on Broadway for the past 18 months and looks set to do the same in London when it opens on 16 October.

American students first got to know about Monty Python through records which were smuggled into the country by their English cousins like samizdat artefacts. Then in 1975 PBS broadcast the TV programmes and the Holy Grail film hit the campuses. The cult status in which the troupe is still held is borne out by the fact that there are more than 32,000 largely home-made Python videos on YouTube.

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