Inside the making of 'Spamalot' with Monty Python's Eric Idle
Host Robin Young speaks with Monty Python founding member Eric Idle about his new book “The Spamalot Diaries.” It tells the story of how the cult classic film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” became the Tony-winning Broadway musical “Spamalot.”
Book excerpt: ‘The Spamalot Diaries’
By Eric Idle
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Okay, now finally it’s real!
It was rainy and cold when I landed, but soon the sun came out and the blossoms popped; and in the five days I have been here Central Park has turned from brown sticks to pointillist green outside my window at the Essex House hotel. I remember at the old Navarro Hotel, in the height of summer, watching them spraying the park’s grass green, but this time it is purely Mother Nature, though perhaps Motherf***er Nature might be a more appropriate soubriquet for New York.
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
So to our big first meeting when we assemble in Shubert Alley off 44th and Broadway for our initial look at the Shubert Theatre, which will be our home next year. There are about a dozen people waiting outside when I arrive on the dot of ten, having limped down Broadway. Composer John Du Prez is there with Bill Haber, our producer, and Peter Lawrence, our stage manager. Wendy Orshan and Jeff Wilson, our producers from 101 Productions, introduce me to our choreographer, Casey Nicholaw; the set and costume designer, Tim Hatley; and our lighting designer, Hugh Vanstone. Mike Nichols arrives last and is hailed by all and we squeeze through the stage door and onto the stage. So this finally is it. We all wander around like excited schoolkids, chattering happily.
From the stage, the house seems much smaller than I had imagined. Seating only thirteen hundred it feels intimate compared to some that John Du Prez and I have played on our tours. Three slices, but even the high, nosebleed balcony doesn’t feel so far away. Nowhere is more than fifty-five feet from the stage. It also doesn’t seem very deep, and we discuss how to get a police car on, which is our current ending. We all look knowledgeably up into the flies, which are, of course, the bits on the front of a pair of trousers. You’ll see I am quickly learning all about the theater. For instance I notice immediately that Row C, Seat 101 is invisible from the balcony, so we will have to alter the song when the Knights discover the Grail under a seat in the audience and drag them up on stage to reward them. We will make it Row A, Seat 101.
After about an hour of this Mike and I repair to the offices of Mike’s production company, Icarus, on the corner of 57th by Carnegie Hall. An interesting choice of name. Mike must feel he is constantly flying too close to the sun and that disaster will strike any moment. I tell him I have decided to call my company Lazarus. Back from the dead . . .
Casey has the brightest eyes and a great big beaming smile and he is very cuddly and warm. He reminds me we worked together before. His last performance was as one of the dancing crows in Seussical, a musical I wrote the treatment for, and we had met in Toronto. He is so happy Mike has chosen him for his first Broadway show as choreographer, which displays enormous faith by Mike, and he is full of ideas of what to do, including one fanfare farting chorus, which actually makes me laugh, though before we can pitch it, Mike warns we may only have two fart jokes in any one production. This must be some kind of Broadway rule of thumb. Perhaps from the days of Noël Coward.
“Gertrude, darling, that is your last fart joke.”
“Oh, piss off, Noël, you silly billy.”
Thursday, April 22, 2004
As I was limping down Seventh Avenue yesterday, a passing rickshaw cyclist insisted he give me a ride. A mysterious tendon injury which had me hopping around on my tour is awaiting a final diagnosis and an operation. Being the philosopher I am and still quite lame, I hopped aboard. It was hilarious. I decided I must arrive for the premiere like that. Apart from the view, which is unfortunately mainly the cyclist’s ass, it’s a tremendous ride. Joe was a burly out-of-work actor, so I had to peer on either side of his wide rear end to see the various landmarks. As I passed down the street at pedestrian height, people kept recognizing me and doing double takes. Of course I pretended I was Michael Palin and that I was making a travel program. Around the Bronx in eighty days.
When I arrived at the theater, Peter Lawrence walked me in. I sat in his warren of an office and went through our stage directions with him for the reading. It really is a rabbit hole backstage, like being inside Nelson’s flagship H.M.S. Victory. You have to bend double. Lots of head-banging potential and warning signs. I don’t know how they are all going to cope. There are some sight-line issues at the Shubert, but the sound issues are horrendous. Last night I had gone to see Bernadette Peters perform here in Gypsy, and for the first ten minutes when she arrived on-stage there were very loud sirens, followed by the deep, angry hooting of a blocked fire engine. They promise they are going to soundproof the rear emergency doors, but it would need a whole set of second doors to achieve anything worthwhile. John and I immediately wrote a song about waiting for the Sirens to go, which our cast might launch into when appropriate.
I bump into Bill Haber outside the Shubert Theatre. He is always so jolly and so dapper and so funny. How could he ever have been an agent? We discuss putting something up outside on the wall in Shubert Alley. Currently there is a huge painted sign proclaiming Gypsy. I suggest a large Gilliam foot and the words Run Away. I feel there should be lots of flags for Spamalot.
Bill says the big issues so far are money, money, and money. The costs are rising precipitously. It was eight million dollars, then eleven, now I hear rumors of thirteen. I joked to someone the other day that our lawyers cost more than the original movie. True, by the way. The budget of the Holy Grail movie was only $400,000. Bill says it will take two years till we break even. It takes that long to recoup the costs. They even suggested we use just three chorus girls, instead of six. That’s ridiculous. You cannot have only three maidens in Castle Anthrax.
Everyone blames the theater owners who, over the years, have given more to the unions, without taking less for rent, so that incoming producers have all these built-in costs they cannot control and they simply cannot make any money. Flying is expensive, too, and I suggest we cut the proposed witch escape, but Mike is adamant:
“No young women get burned in any production of mine,” he says.
It’s probably as well Mike hasn’t tackled Shaw’s Saint Joan.
Subj: Re: (no subject)
Date: 4/22/2004, 7:00 a.m., eastern daylight time
From: Eric Idle
To: Mike Nichols
Hello, mein Führer.
Is that too formal?
I was just checking in and hoping you were as excited as I was yesterday.
This is a big dream come true for me and I can only hope and pray it all ends in tears. That after all is the fate of Icarus.
I suppose the English equivalent would be flying too close to the rain.
I am going to stand at the back of the Shubert tonight and see how it all looks. I may even yell out Ni.
Eddie Izzard just offered his services Saturday morning for the read. He is flying in tonight. I think he may be too late but I told everyone who should know and they are on to it. He wanted to come by and watch. I told him it was deeply private. Not sure how you feel about that, but best to keep it in the family, right?
Subj: Re: (no subject)
Date: 4/22/2004, 6:00 p.m., eastern daylight time
From: Mike Nichols
To: Eric Idle
right. i don’t think we should put our friends/readers in that position. we agree.
i am also excited. a little more tentatively since i am the one who mustn’t f*** up.
it’s not like your piece is untested and we will see if it is worthy. it is a little like taking on piloting the queen mary on her 10th voyage, with all speed records won already. no. it is like conducting beehoven’s ninth in salzburg. no, conducting rosenkavalier in vienna. no, more like repainting brueghel’s “the fall of icarus.” that’s not quite what i mean. it’s like . . . oh forget it.
i am excited and we will not rest till it is the best and funniest musical ever performed. xoxxm
Excerpted from ”The Spamalot Diaries” by Eric Idle Copyright © 2024 by Eric Idle. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
