Since this is a why isn’t John Cleese funny anymore thread, nobody mentioned his classic American Express ad. One of my favorite commercials of all time.
“You howled Sir?”
The only comedians who stayed lean and edgy until they died died young. With age comes perspective, and it tends to mellow. Especially in comedy.
He was the best Daily Show guest in a long time.
I recall seeing a long one-on-one interview with Cleese a few years ago on PBS, it looked like it was a BBC piece from the early or middle 80s. He talked about his experiences with therapy and how they had impacted his life, releasing much of his early anger and insecurity. At one point, the interviewer asked directly if he thought that by relieving this tension he had also lost some of his creative drive. Cleese said he thought this was probably true and it didn’t bother him a bit. One line I remember distinctly was “My life is infinitely more important than my work.”
I believe that was the same episode where Kilborn asked him to name all of Charlie’s Angels. If I recall correctly, Cleese actually managed to come up with two of them and then named Noam Chomsky as the third.
Cleese also appears to have Got Religion along with his therapy.
Not of the Born Again variety, thank Og. But according to his shrink/guru, more psychologically healthy people have more nuanced beliefs about the nature of God. He grew up being taught about the Anglican God (typified by the “Oh Lord, you are sooooooo big, so really really big . . .” skit in Meaning of Life) and but has now come to beleive in something greater, something less easily typified. He is also heavily into the direct experience of the divine, though prayer, meditation, ecstatic rites, etc., but still linked very directly to the “true” teachings of Jesus Christ (what He really taught the apostles, which isn’t even recorded in the Gospels.)
He strikes me as a very smart, incisive person who has gotten a bit carried away by a religious notion. He is still funny, but in a more gentle way, and also extremely sweet and earnest when he gets off on the God stuff. I don’t buy it at all, but he makes me want to buy it. 
Probably one of the ten funniest movies ever made, and he should have gotten an Oscar nomination.
The golfing scene. With the air horn. A simple, silly scene, but it was done so well!
This man can say anything, anything, no matter how retarded, and keep a straight face. One of the funniest men ever.
I don’t think the problem is that he’s not funny, but that he seems to accept just about any part folks will offer him, (and, I assume, he gets paid handsomely for it), and said parts aren’t always as humorous as they can be. You can’t get blood out of a stone, you know.
I’m not denying that his work isn’t as funny as it was, though, but I think he does his best. Perhaps we do get a little too much of him these days.
I get the sense that’s all he gets offered these days. I don’t know why.
Murcielago has it right. Cleese’s life fell apart (the book Monty Python Speaks offers some pretty painful stories of what he was like to work with in the mid-70s) and he started seeing a therapist who helped him to exorcise most of the insecurities that drove his humor. Cleese now has no need to prove himself to anybody, and he admits he only takes jobs that offer only the most minimal inconvenience (along with the biggest paycheck—Cleese has been pretty frank about how his own avarice has driven his career decisions).
I would argue that on a good day, Cleese can still knock it out of the park: his performances in 3rd Rock, wherein he had a truly worthy foil in John Lithgow, were gold. Most of the time, though, there is a definite air of “Where’s the check then?” to his appearances that make me sort of wish he would just retire.
Murcielago’s recall of that particular BBC interview is also spot-on. The interviewer’s circumlocution in posing the simple question “Has therapy made you less funny?” was so pronounced you would swear it was the same who tried to interview Arthur Frampton, the man with three buttocks. (“Whereas most people have two … two … you, Mr. Frampton have … have … What I’m getting at, Mr. Frampton …”)
Foul!
If you saw Palin’s performance in the George Harrison Tribute Concert, you’d retract that. The reprisal of the Lumberjack Song coming in the middle of his tribute speech was perfectly done. Granted, it was an old Python skit he could probably do in his sleep, but he wasn’t phoning it in. The skit left tears streaming down my face.
Michael Palin irritates me. He’s cornered the market in funny men who travel the world, and good luck to him. But I find and have always found him boring. When someone thinks their funny, that’s fine - so long as they really are. When they’re not, and they still think they’re funny, then they grate on my nerves.
All the Pythons (except Gilliam) commented on each others work in weekly meetings while they were writing the show. What you may be thinking of is that Cleese normally *wrote *with Graham Chapman, but has since claimed that he did 80% of the writing while Chapman lay around drinking champers and lossing off a few lines here and there for Cleese to write down.
John Cleese claims comedy bores him. In one interview I saw, he said “It only uses a tiny portion of my brain”. Mind you he’s been saying this sort of thing since at least “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again”, which pre-dates Python, and it was the ostensible reason for him leaving MPFC. He’s one of the few people I’m aware of who are really good at something but don’t enjoy doing it (or so he claims).
Mmmm. This reminds me of a comment made by the founder of the Samaritans, Chad Varah. He said his belief in reincarnation (a little unusual for an ordained minister of the C of E) was based on the fact that his nurse told him that he could read before he could walk. This meant of course that he had learned to read in another life. Though, if, on the off-chance, someone happened to draw the conclusion that Chad was a child prodigy, one got the impression that he wouldn’t have been incensed.
Not in this life, anyway.
Man, if the OP lives is a world where A Fish Called Wanda isn’t “convincing evidence that this guy is funny,” then I’m very glad I live in my world.
I remember quite enjoying Terry Jones’ documentaries on the Crusades (as well as Palin’s various travel shows).
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Yeah, him and Leslie Nielsen. His career peaked sometime around Airplane! and “Naked Gun” and has been quickly sliding ever since. He should have retired long ago.
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I’ll second Green Bean and everyone else who loved Fish Called Wanda. Certain parts still crack me up.
Cleese is marvelous–still is. Is his style different now? Of course. Frankly, I don’t want to see the funny young guys doing the same schtick when they are fast approaching old age. Their humor should change.
Wanda was a thing of beauty. He also did some nature show about the golden rhesus monkey (or some damn thing) and he went all this way and never saw the damned thing–his rxn to this is hysterical. I liked his series on the face or human beauty. I cannot imagine him in any way as being a fervent or devout religious anything–he is fairly self-deprecating, from the interviews I ahve seen. I ahve not read the book, so perhaps I need to. (I have taken to not reading about these kind of people, so many of them turn out to be total shits, that I would rather just enjoy and admire their work).
I saw him on Letterman (or maybe even JohnnyCarson–it was that long ago) and it was awful. But I blame the American audience, who plainly did not know him or MPFC well.
As for the others, I assume they are all doing well–Spamelot is due to open soon and all the Pythons will be there. Eric Idle was immensely funny on the Daily Show.
I think they all moved on, sorta like the Beatles. I am glad of it–nothing is worse than having a comedian or celeb keep doing the one thing that made them “stars”–it gets creepy after awhile. I am thinking of Rose Marie, Ali McGraw (ok, so she was never funny), Liza Minelli (who still looks like she is channeling Arthur), and even Robin Williams, to some extent.
I, too, was surprised to find that he’s not an atheist. But I definitely wouldn’t use the words “fervent” or “devout” to describe him.
It is very clear that a lot of thought, research and study has gone into what he believes. His has a lot of humility, I think. He’s a very, very smart guy, as you well know. He has some very interesting things to say about how his beliefs changed over the years, and he can tell you a heck of a lot about the history of religion theology. He seems to think he’s found his way to a good thing, something bigger than himself, but not that he’s discovered the be-all end-all; he’s just on a journey like everyone else. shrug And, really, I’m probably not doing his beliefs justice in describing them in such a half-assed summary. I dunno, he just seems very comfortable but humble about what he believes, which is probably why so few people know about it.