Been watching Monty Python for years, had always just taken it for granted that I was watching all six of them on screen.
Then a while back it hit me. I couldn’t think of any characters to attribute to Terry Gilliam. As I pondered this, I was satisfied to tell myself that when I see Terry Gilliam I must always think that I am watching either Terry Jones of Michael Palin.
Now saying to myself, “Self, I am no longer satisfied with that explanation.” I know full well what Terry Jones looks like. I know full well what Michael Palin looks like. I know full well what Terry Gilliam looks like.
Still, I can’t connect Terry Gilliam to a single Monty Python character at all ever.
So, what’s the deal? Did he just write and animate? He had to have appeared in front of the camera sometimes, didn’t he?
He’s shown up in at least one of his cartoons. (In Holy Grail, where he keels over before finishing the animation.) I think he regularly did the voices in the cartoons.
His on-screen appearances have mostly be quick bit parts to fill out the scene, or to add another quick gag when the rest of the troupe were doing other parts in the bit.
Being the animator was probably enough work for him.
Read the biography of the Pythons, and it is revealed that he always felt that he wasn’t an actor and so didn’t really want or expect to be in any sketches, though he filled in when they needed an extra character or a crowd scene or whatever. As did Neil Innes and Connie Booth (who were just as part of the core team as any of the others but aren’t really considered as ‘Pythons’).
Gilliam’s job was meant to be solely as an animator. That’s how they met him, and that’s what they hired him as. They considered him a part of the main team because his animations were part of what made the show distinctive, and they contained sometimes twice as much humour as any of the live sketches.
He was the fifth writer/yes-man to Graham Chapman’s “Mr. Saltzberg” hollywood film-producer charactor in the “20th Century Vole” sketch of Episode Six.
He was also the Hindustani Man that was rigged with a remote control. He stood by the TV, when they wanted to change the channel, they pressed the remote control, he received an electric shock, and would then reach over and change the channel. Much funnier than my description.
Satch
He also appears in The Meaning of Life as one of the corporate executives raided by The Crimson Permanent Assurance. You can also spot Matt Frewer in those sketches.
