Monty Python and the Holy Grail DVD Booklet

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John Cleese

Cleese received the 1980 BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. He also starred in Clockwise and other films, including two James Bond films as R and Q, two Harry Potter films, and three Shrek films.

Eric Idle An English comedian, actor, voice actor, and author of the Broadway musical Spamalot. Idle helped close the 2012 Summer Olympics at the Olympic Stadium in London, performing the song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, from the 1979 Monty Python film Life of Brian.

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f th e R o u n d o s Cast

Micheal Palin

An English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter who wrote with Terry Jones before Monty Python on: Ken Dodd Show, The Frost Report, and Do Not Adjust Your Set. Michael Palin played the most characters in the Holy Grail (12).

Graham Chapman After graduating from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and St Bartholomew’s Medical College, he turned down a career as a doctor to be a comedian which proved to be worth it. The group agreed Chapman had the best acting skills in the group. Logically then, he took both lead roles in the Holy Grail and Life of Brian.

Directors

Terry Jones

Terry Gilliam

Welsh actor, writer, comedian, screenwriter and film director. He studied at St. Edmund Hall College, Oxford University. In 1965, with friend Michael Palin, he made The Late Show (1966) for television. Also, he wrote for many other TV shows, such as: The Kathy Kirby Show (1964), Late Night Line-Up (1964) (with Palin), Complete and Utter History of Britain (1969) (with Palin). But Jones’ greatest success was the zany Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969) (1969-74)

In 1962, Gilliam graduated from Occidental College with a degree in political science. He moved to England in 1967. From 1969 to 1974, Gilliam worked on the British comedy television series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

The only American among the cast.

Given full creative license to develop the animated shorts. He went on to work in film, directing such imaginative adventures as Time Bandits (1981), Brazil (1985), The Fisher King (1991), 12 Monkeys (1995), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), The Brothers Grimm (2005), Tideland (2006), The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) and The Zero Theorem (2014).

Executive producer:

John Goldstone His career in film began in 1961 as production assistant on A Kind Loving then seven years as PA to its producer Joseph Janni on his seminal British films Billy Liar, Darling, Far From the Madding Crowd, Modesty Blaise and Poor Cow. His first film as producer was Three Sisters directed by Laurence Olivier.

His collaboration with the Monty Python team began in 1974 with Monty Python and the Holy Grail then Monty Python’s Life of Brian as well as Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. He also produced such diverse films as The Final Programme; The Rocky Horror Picture

Show and its sequel Shock Treatment; Paul Morrissey’s The Hound of Baskervilles with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore; and six feature length Harlequin Romances for US television and video release.

In 1990 he created The Comedy House with funding from Twentieth CenturyFox to promote British film comedy talent. During his Hollywood career, he directed Paul Newman, Robert De Niro, Robert Shaw, James Garner, Richard Dreyfuss and Sidney Poitier.

In addition to his work in film and television, Goldstone was a longtime leader in the Director’s and Writer’s Guild.

Fun Facts 1. The film was made with a budget of only $365,274, an incredibly small sum for a modern movie, and was filmed in just five weeks

4. The black knight scene took about a week to shoot since by that stage in production, they had run out of budget. The producer was running the camera and lighting alongside about three other people.

2. The book scene was done to save money, and was shot in Gilliam’s living room with his wife turning the pages.

3. The group came up with the idea of using coconuts from an old BBC radio practice of using coconut halves as sound effects for horses as the group didn’t have enough money in the budget for actual horses.

5. The catapulted cow was a toy from a railway set. Gilliam said, “We dug the camera into the ground, threw the cow in Julian Doyle’s (Production Manager) back garden, put it all together and we had entered the world of Special Effects”. Explaining the tactic, the director said flinging animals in battle was not unheard of.

6. The film first debuted during the time of the Vietnam War, which resulted in many anti-violence liberals, not laughing until the Black Knight’s very last limb was cut off.

Jones and Gilliam said they enjoyed the audience coming to terms with the scene and realizing it wasn’t about violence, but rather attitude.

7. The opening credits were done at the end of filming when the budget was gone, hence why they are simply text slides. The “Swedish” subtitles were written by Michael Palin who says he used it as an opportunity to entertain the “captive” audience.

8. Part of the Black Knight scene is done with Cleese holding his arms behind his back, part by a one-legged silversmith, named Richard Burton and part with a wired puppet.

9. Eric Idle:“...and only at the end do you realise there's no plot whatsoever. We didn't know how to end it. I contributed the ending because I said, "You should just stop it. The police should come in and arrest everybody, and there's a hand on the lens.' My daughter hates that end, she says, 'Is that the end? That it? I hate that." Well we couldn't afford the battle.

We had all these university students on £4 a day and they shot them every angle they could, but there weren't many of them at all.”

Location Monty Python and the Holy Grail was mostly shot on location in Scotland, particularly around Doune Castle, Glen Coe, and the privately owned Castle Stalker.

During pre-production, Gilliam and Jones had scouted and secured a series of authentic medieval shooting locations throughout Scotland, but two weeks before production began, the filmmakers found out that the National Trust had banned the comedy troupe from shooting in any national historical sites because, according to Gilliam, “we wouldn't respect ‘the dignity of the fabric of the building’”.

Forced to scramble to find a place to shoot the movie, they secured two privately owned castles, Castle Stalker and Doune Castle, to shoot all of castle interiors and most of the exteriors. Castle Aaargh is Castle Stalker, and the rest of the castles are actually Doune Castle shot from multiple angles, or hanging miniatures. Just as the character of Patsy says, Camelot was truly only a modelit was a 12-foot high cutout of a castle that frequently fell over in the wind disrupting shots. Gilliam and Jones used forced perspective as a quick cheat during wide-angle shots to make it seem like an actual location.

Behind the Scenes