One of my favourite Monty Python sketches takes place in a conservatory of a large country house. It’s the turn of the 20th Century and the cast is in period costume. There has been a murder. A body lies in the corner face down, with a knife protruding from his back.
Enter John Cleese in police uniform, who strides across the room demanding answers from the group present, before fixing on Michael Palin. The character played by Palin immediately confesses: “I did it, but society is to blame.”
Thereafter, Cleese runs around arresting everyone else in the room.
I could tell you why it’s funny, why every move that Cleese makes is comically overstated buffoonery or why Palin, who for mine was always the funniest Python member, who casually concedes his role as the culprit in a bloody crime is the almost exact inverse. I could analyse the sketch to within an inch of its life but that would but that would be like showing the story boards to a hundred Warner Bros. cartoons.
Details aren’t always important.
The sketch is also a razor sharp piece of satire. The perpetrator walks while the blameless around him face the consequences of his actions. It speaks of the liberal fixation that those who commit serious crimes are victims themselves, victims of a societal imbalance driven by gender, class, ethnicity, socio-economics — there’s always an excuse.
That sketch was made in 1970. A lot of comedy dates quickly but like much of the Python, this still stands up.
Perhaps Terry Gilliam has turned his mind to it over the last day or so. He hasn’t been handcuffed and carted away for the misdeeds of others. But he has been sent packing.
On Wednesday, it was announced the 79-year-old co-director of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Into the Woods will now not be performed at The Old Vic, a 1000-seat theatre in London’s south end that probably cloys at history more than it should.
Gilliam’s body of work extends beyond the Python catalogue – he co-directed Monty Python and The Holy Grail’s and co-wrote The Life of Brian – he wrote and directed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the dystopian black comedy, Brazil, and directed 12 Monkeys and The Fisher King. What is said to be his life’s work, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was finally completed in 2018.
Thought crimes and Weinstein
Gilliam’s thought crimes are twofold. Although he despised Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein, he derided the hashtag MeToo movement as a “witch hunt’. Weinstein was a sex offender, convicted of rape and sexual assaults has been put away 23 years.
“There are many victims in Harvey’s life, and I feel sympathy for them, but then Hollywood is full of very ambitious people who are adults, and they make choices,” Gilliam said. “We all make choices, and I could tell you who did make the choice and who didn’t. I hate Harvey. I had to work with him, and I know the abuse.”
That was strike one for Gilliam at The Old Vic. There was consternation and outright anger from the collective of wannabes who are either staff or freelancers working at the theatre. I could name a few but what’s the point? They have achieved little in the arts and remain objectively anonymous.
The two parties – Gilliam and the Old Vic management were busily beating out the words to an apology for Gilliam’s ‘witch hunt’ thought crime and while the two parties flipped through a thesaurus, Gilliam committed another thought crime by publicly endorsing stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle.
Chappelle has been branded transphobic for a number of years due to his mockery of trans people. His most recent film featuring his latest stand-up routines, The Closer, a Netflix production, led to protests and staff walkouts at the streaming giant.
Gilliam described Chappelle as the greatest living stand-up and the black comedian’s material “socially aware, dangerously provocative and gut-wrenchingly funny.”
Strike two, you’re out.
Old Vic ‘guardians’
In 2003, the Old Vic employed the actor Kevin Spacey as its creative director, a position he held for 12 years. In November 2017, amid a long list of allegations that Spacey had committed rape and sexual assault, 20 people contacted the management of the Old Vic with claims Spacey had sexually harassed or assaulted them during his tenure at the Old Vic.
The Old Vic released a formal apology and shortly afterwards declared it had signed up to what is known as the Guardians Programme. Today, the Old Vic has adopted the program which can only be described as a ghastly HR exercise designed to consume time and I wager, restrict creative freedom.
It’s a four step process where employees from the top down attend “OK/Not OK” sessions establishes a “safe-guarding consultant” who collaborates with others in appointing and training seven guardians who can engage and counsel staff even where a criminal offence may have occurred which surely is the role of police.
While Spacey may have behaved badly, the response from the theatre was to create a rigorous code of conduct that effectively paralyses a free exchange of words, thoughts and ideas.
A statement on the theatre’s website said, “Discriminatory remarks, attitudes or behaviour – racist, homophobic, sexist etc – towards any group or characteristic at The Old Vic are not acceptable”.
It went on to warn that “visiting performers or artists” are responsible for their “behaviour and actions” and will be held “accountable for how we speak or act.”
It is as if that 1970 Python murder sketch has come to life. Gilliam has done nothing wrong, but he is to be rounded up for the poor behaviour of others.
This is not even a freedom of speech issue. It is a case where the taking of offence has almost become criminalised. Gilliam’s major offence is that he is an old white male. Not standing in the dock but he is cast out, spurned and the recipient of abuse from his underlings – wannabes and try-hards without the profile, the experience, or the artistic runs on the board Gilliam has.
All this amazingly is occurring in a field where the sharp end of creativity comes from independent thinking where little or anything should be off limits. Instead, behaviour and the determination of what is good or bad has become flagrantly bureaucratised.
In a rambling interview in the Independent, of January 2020, Gilliam said, “I mean, you can believe whatever you want to believe, but fundamentalism always ends up being, ‘You have to attack other people who are not like you,’ and that’s what makes me crazy. Life is fantastic, it’s wonderful, it’s so complex. Enjoy it and play with it and have fun.”
Fun is over but not everyone is to blame.
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