And Now For Someone Completely Different Essay, And Now For Someone Completely Different 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).
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As poets go, Frost (1874-1963) was no longer young when he published his first book of poems, A Boy's Will, in 1913. Though born in San Francisco, he came of a New England family which returned to New England when he was ten. Like many other writers, he had a brief brush with college and then supported himself by various means, ranging from shoe-making to editing a country newspaper. However, he ...
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 (TRUMPS).
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 Crichton. 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.
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In every field of endeavor, in every activity known to Man, whether sailboarding or physics, hairdressing or chipmunk catching, there are people who excel, people who go far beyond the rest. They reach the epitome while we mere mortals look up from below and marvel. So, when you have read the 526 pages of Womack Jr.'s book [not counting the appendices], you can tell yourself that you have read THE ...
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.
