Inside dope from Graham Chapman about the creation of the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, from which the musical Spamalot is "lovingly ripped off".
Once upon a time long, long, ago in the Kingdom of Very, Very, Funny, there lived a tall, witty, scathingly intelligent, gay gentleman named Graham Chapman.
Then he died.
When Monty Python's Graham Chapman was here in North America doing the university/collage circuit circa 1987/88, I twice had the grand fortune to meet with him and his adapted son John Tomiczek. I was weaned on Peter Sellers and The Goons, and was, of course, a huge Monty Python fan (who isn't??)
Now I think of Graham in the Hereafter as His Oneness, a character discarded from The Meaning of Life. He is swinging off Terry Gilliam's Big Censuring Foot on a giant piece of aircraft carrier elastic, something he always wanted to do with The Dangerous Sports Club [substitute Foot for a bridge].
In Graham's own words, here is the secret toooooooooooooo... The Black Knight.
Graham: "We had to do that." (Graham is shaking his head) "We achieved that by employing a one-legged man, and the poor one-legged man had to hop around with his arms hidden inside the armour on his one leg, which is bad enough. But then to do the final sequence of that, we had to bury his one remaining leg, which was very claustrophobic for him and he was a brave man to do that shot, really. It affected him a great deal.
"He recovered quite quickly. He was quite a sane guy. It was a very brave thing to do, and rather cruel on our part, but it was effective."
