Python fans will need to clear a large space on their bookshelf or coffee table for The Pythons--a big, vital autobiography of the comedy troupe. This is an oral history by the six members (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin) from birth to--in the case of Chapman--death. We get reminisces about childhood, university days, early successes, and rich details about the landmark Flying Circus TV series and subsequent films. The voices are fresh (with expectation of Michael Palin's insightful diary entries), not just complied from earlier publications. "Due to his insistence of being inconveniently dead," Chapham's voice is heard through his longtime partner David Sherlock, his brother and sister-in-law (and some archival materials). As a whole, the six impart a refreshing ability to deal honestly with the frustrations that arose over the years and it comes out in the text even when events are recalled differently. The book is not a light read (figuratively and literally), perhaps a smaller size would have been better for the amount of text; a cursory glance at the coffee table is tough. What does fill the book is an abundance of photos (over 1,000), most never published and many from the troupe's private collections. Along with concept sketches, Gilliam's drawings and doodles, and a few correspondences, this is a keepsake memento of the legendary group. --Doug Thomas


From Publishers Weekly
This massive autobiography/oral history offers a full literary meal about the irreverent Python troupe and an equally satisfying wealth of photos covering childhoods, weddings, film and TV appearances. It opens with members Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam supplying witty commentaries about their collaborators, then follows with the foursome-plus Terry Young-profiling themselves. Graham Chapman, who died in 1989, comes alive through sparkling reminiscences by his longtime partner, David Sherlock. The groundbreaking sextet first captured attention through David Frost's The Frost Report in 1966 and became comedy cult kings with the BBC series Monty Python's Flying Circus. The accounts and accompanying photographs regarding their experiences and conflicts on Circus and the subsequent motion pictures The Life of Brian, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Meaning of Life are captivatingly honest closeups of the creative process; the reprinted postcards the gang sent Terry Jones from Amsterdam are priceless. "Dear Terry," reads one, "Graham is sitting on my right. On my left is an empty chair. Opposite sits John Goldstone & to his left (not mine) is Little John. To his left & slightly in front of him i.e. at the head of the table sits a silly little man who is in charge of us." Despite inevitable skirmishes, an open attitude prevailed that allowed everyone to express themselves freely: says Idle, "You could say anything-`I think that's crap'-and nobody would punch you and get upset." By book's end, readers will feel they know each Python intimately and marvel that six such different personalities could collaborate to produce such hilarious, scathingly subversive comedy. 1,000 color and b&w photos. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
A companion to the author's coffee-table book by the same name, THE PYTHONS is a mildly madcap audio documentary. We hear noisy, off-the-cuff interviews with each surviving Python, which provide a "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" familiarity that a more formal recording might have destroyed. Host Bob McCabe apparently collared each comedian as he could, and this insider approach turns out to be entertaining, especially when peppered with short outtakes from Python shows. Needless to say, the Pythons are alternately erudite and profane as they reminisce about leaner times of virtual anonymity and their slow, rocky climb to fame. We finally learn who wrote "Eric the Half-bee" and other favorite songs and sketches. A fun listen. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
The six men who were Monty Python get billed above the guy who put together this coffee-table tome on their achievement, but this is film critic and broadcaster Bob McCabe's book. He wove together the words of the late Graham Chapman (excerpted from his writings), John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and a very few others, principally Chapman's life partner, David Sherlock. And he got the lot to share the memorabilia that decorate the book, stem to stern, ranging from baby pictures to that foot that crushed the closing credits of every episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, the British TV show that launched the six writer-performers' long collaboration. The layout of pictures and text is un-Pythonly restrained (Gilliam, the artist Python whose animation and sets have given new meaning to the word baroque, obviously had nothing to do with the book's design), and the oral history purveyed is genuinely fascinating, so that this is no mere browser's delight but a readable book. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Over thirty years ago, a group of five Englishmen and one wayward American, re-wrote the rules of comedy. Monty Python's Flying Circus, an unheralded, previously unseen and practically unprogrammed half hour of sketches, hilarities, inanities and animations first appeared on the BBC late one night in 1969. Its impact on the world has been felt ever since.

From its humble beginnings as late night entertainment on a British TV channel that went off the air before midnight, it blossomed into arguably the most influential movement in modern comedy. They found the Holy Grail, they detailed the life of the Savior-also-ran Brian, and when we were lost, they explained The Meaning of Life.

Now, those purveyors of dead parrots and silly walks are going to tell us something more: Their story. In their own, intimate, never before heard words.

The Pythons by The Pythons is the definitive word on all things Pythonesque (the only word invented by a modern comedian which is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary.) 30 years of insight, hindsight, and bad sight - now told for the first time. Stuff they're never remembered before alongside stories they'd forgotten to say, coupled with things they couldn't say then and even more things they can't pronounce now (with a healthy dollop of things they would never have said in the first place if any others had been in the room at the time.)

The Pythons by The Pythons is a unique look at arguably the most important comic team of the modern age, lavishly illustrated with 1000 photographs and illustrations, many culled from the teams' own personal collections, many seen here for the first time. A tome, a tombstone, the definitive word on all things Python, as told by all things Python - do you want Spam with that?



About the Author
Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, were all lifelong (so far) members of Monty Python.
Bob McCabe is a writer.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Over thirty years ago, a group of five Englishmen and one wayward American, re-wrote the rules of comedy. Monty Python's Flying Circus, an unheralded, previously unseen and practically unprogrammed half hour of sketches, hilarities, inanities and animations first appeared on the BBC late one night in 1969. Its impact on the world has been felt ever since.

From its humble beginnings as late night entertainment on a British TV channel that went off the air before midnight, it blossomed into arguably the most influential movement in modern comedy. They found the Holy Grail, they detailed the life of the Savior-also-ran Brian, and when they were lost, they explained the Meaning of Life.

The Pythons by the Pythons is a unique look at arguably the most important comic team of the modern age, lavishly illustrated with 1000 photographs and illustrations, many culled from the teams' own personal collections, many seen here for the first time.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Plenty of the anecdotes here have been told before, but the Pythons are such entertaining talkers that it doesn't really matter. And the book comes loaded with a thousand photographs -- so many that you can only wonder why the publisher included so few pictures of the boys' magnificent sidekick, Carol Cleveland. — David Kelly

The New Yorker

Eric Idle recalls that when publishers approached Monty Python to do their first book, in the nineteen-seventies, “nobody was very interested.” Little seems to have changed, and this book was put together by Bob McCabe, a film critic, who interviewed the Pythons about life before, during, and after the TV show. The result could easily have felt warmed over, but in fact it’s consistently absorbing. The principals have obviously told their story too many times to bother with concealment, and are disarmingly frank about their frequent disagreements and rows. Accompanying the text are hundreds of photographs, including many unfamiliar ones from private collections—backstage shots and shots of school plays, cricket teams, and university revues. Such is the legacy of the show that the pictures of the Pythons’ schools and touchingly ordinary-seeming parents look as if they had come out of Monty Python sketches.

Publishers Weekly

This massive autobiography/oral history offers a full literary meal about the irreverent Python troupe and an equally satisfying wealth of photos covering childhoods, weddings, film and TV appearances. It opens with members Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese and Terry Gilliam supplying witty commentaries about their collaborators, then follows with the foursome-plus Terry Young-profiling themselves. Graham Chapman, who died in 1989, comes alive through sparkling reminiscences by his longtime partner, David Sherlock. The groundbreaking sextet first captured attention through David Frost's The Frost Report in 1966 and became comedy cult kings with the BBC series Monty Python's Flying Circus. The accounts and accompanying photographs regarding their experiences and conflicts on Circus and the subsequent motion pictures The Life of Brian, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Meaning of Life are captivatingly honest closeups of the creative process; the reprinted postcards the gang sent Terry Jones from Amsterdam are priceless. "Dear Terry," reads one, "Graham is sitting on my right. On my left is an empty chair. Opposite sits John Goldstone & to his left (not mine) is Little John. To his left & slightly in front of him i.e. at the head of the table sits a silly little man who is in charge of us." Despite inevitable skirmishes, an open attitude prevailed that allowed everyone to express themselves freely: says Idle, "You could say anything-`I think that's crap'-and nobody would punch you and get upset." By book's end, readers will feel they know each Python intimately and marvel that six such different personalities could collaborate to produce such hilarious, scathingly subversive comedy. 1,000 color and b&w photos. (Oct. 7) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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