And Now For Someone Completely Different Essay, Research Paper

When the six foot five inch man that is John Cleese is mentioned, most people

see him in their minds eye complaining about his dead parrot or as the brave Sir

Lancelot. What many people don’t think of, though, is his involvement with multiple

other productions, not all of them comedy. His involvement, too, stretches from just

simple acting. John Cleese is truly a Renaissance man of the media.

John Cleese went through school wanting to be in the legal profession and he

received his M.A. degree from Downing College in Cambridge. He soon abandoned his

plans in law, however, when he had a great success with Footlights, the performing arts

society for Cambridge. He met his future writing partner and Python member Graham

Chapman in Footlights. Cleese had an appearance in the Footlights Revue which was a

campus production that later was shown in London’s West End, and then again, as

Cambridge Circus, on Broadway in 1964 (Current Biography). He stayed in New York to

perform in the British musical Half a Sixpence.

When he returned to England he was approached by David Frost to help write and

to perform in Frost’s new weekly BBC comedy show, The Frost Report, in 1965.

Chapman was also working on The Frost Report, with other to be Python members Eric

Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones (The Life of Monty Python). Cleese went on with his

writing partnership with Chapman after The Frost Report, working on such titles as The

Magic Christian, based on the novel by Terry Southern (The Fairly Uncreative Monty

Python Site).

Cleese’s largest comedy hit came when he joined up again with Chapman, Idle,

Palin, and Jones. Together, with American cartoonist Terry Gilliam, they created the

notorious Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The whole group co-wrote and starred in this

“breakneck barrage of satiric skits, [and] surreal cartoons” (Current Biography) for

several years; drawing over ten million viewers each week. The Monty Python sextet

would later collaborate to write books, do live performances, and make movies, such as

Monty Python and the Holy Gail (1975), a spoof on the legend of King Arthur and his

quest for the Holy Grail, and The Meaning of Life (1983), which was Monty Python’s

view on the stages of life (TFUMPS).

At the emerging point of his career that was his BBC works, he met American

actress Connie Booth, who he would wed in 1968 (TLOMP). The couple would write and

star in a small motion picture in 1974 but would have great success in the television

series Fawlty Towers. Fawlty Towers was about an incompetent innkeeper and his

struggles to run his business. The show also stared Andrew Sachs and Prunella Scales.

The couple divorced in 1976 but kept working together on the series (Current

Biography).

After Towers, Cleese continued working in both writing and performing. He did

numerous television and radio commercials using his company Video Arts Ltd., which he

founded in 1976. Other works through his company were business training films, which

he both produced and acted in. Video Arts Ltd. won the Queen’s Award for Exports in

1982 (Current Biography).

His most successful movie after the Python fame was A Fish Called Wanda, co-

written by Cleese and Charles Chrichton. Wanda was a comedy that trailers described as

“A tale of murder, greed, lust, revenge and seafood.” (TLOMP) Wanda had Cleese along

with old Python member Michael Palin, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline as the main

cast. A movie called Fierce Creatures followed in 1997, Cleese was majorly involved in

the writing of this, too. Creatures contained the same cast, and had the same theme, but

was not necessarily a sequel.

Another of Cleese’s great works is a collaborative book with his former

psychotherapist Robin Skynner in 1983. The book was called Families and How to

Survive Them. The book was a serious discussion of relationships, based on taped

conversations between Skynner and Cleese over a three-and-a-half year period. (Current

Biography, TLOMP)

In conclusion, John Cleese is clearly a well traveled and experienced showman.

His travels and works in the entertainment field have brought him much fame and

fortune. All of which is especially well deserved due to his talent.