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Wall Street Journal

Coconuts Still Clopping, ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail' Turns 50

After a week of shooting 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' in 1974 the results were clear. Graham Chapman, who starred as King Arthur because nobody else wanted to play the straight man, 'said what a complete disaster we were making,' co-director Terry Gilliam later recalled for David Morgan's book 'Monty Python Speaks: The Complete Oral History.' Neither Mr. Gilliam nor the other director, Terry Jones, had any experience in making a movie, the main camera broke on the first day of shooting, the budget was laughable (roughly half a million dollars), and Jones and Mr. Gilliam kept contradicting each other's orders to the crew. 'What egomaniacs, megalomaniacs, useless pieces of s— we were,' was Chapman's assessment, according to Mr. Gilliam. But like the purportedly dead peasant in the movie ('I'm getting better'), the production wasn't quite so dead as all that. When the six Pythons began showing footage at the Stirling, Scotland, hotel where everyone stayed for the shoot, locals (many of whom served as extras) laughed heartily. And thanks to the debut of the 1969-74 BBC series 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' on American public television in the fall of 1974, fans were primed by the time the movie was released in the U.S. in April 1975, with a marketing strategy that included having a man clop together coconut halves on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Theaters are celebrating the 50th anniversary with screenings on May 4 and 7.