6 Facts About ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ That You ‘Ni’ to Know
If you know the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow, if you’re familiar with the Knights Who Say “Ni,” and if you wouldn’t take offense if someone said your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries, you’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grailin the last 50 years.
The Monty Python troupe’s farcical take on Arthurian legend clip-clopped into U.S. theaters on April 28, 1975, and soon became legend itself — as one of the best comedy films of all time. But do you know these fun facts about the film?
1 Rock stars financed the movie
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In a 2021 tweet, Monty Python member Eric Idle said that Led Zeppelin invested £31,500 for the filming of Holy Grail, Pink Floyd put in £21,000, and Jethro Tull singer Ian Anderson put in £6,300.
The rest of the £175,350 budget came from money from producer Michael White (£78,750), Island Records (£21,000), (Chrysalis Records £6,300), Charisma Records (£5,250), and the Heartaches cricket team (£5,250), according to Idle.
2 Budgetary constraints made the filmmakers creative
Even with the above investments, the Pythons had to get creative to film an epic story on a shoestring budget. One recurring bit in Holy Grail is that instead of riding a horse in the film, King Arthur (Graham Chapman) only mimes riding horseback while squire, Patsy (Terry Gilliam) claps coconut shells to make the clip-clop sound of a horse walking. But that comedic stroke came along because the filmmakers actually couldn’t afford real horses on set.
“That is why Michael Palin, bless him, came up with the idea of the coconuts, you see,” Monty Python’s John Cleese said on Late Night With Seth Meyers in 2018. “You know, it is that necessity is the mother of invention. Sometimes you don’t have much and you have to improvise. That’s sometimes when the very best ideas come through.”
3 The Rabbit of Caerbannog’s owner didn’t want the rabbit dirtied
The Rabbit of Caerbannog scenes were filmed partly with a real rabbit and partly with a rabbit puppet. The real rabbit’s owner didn’t want it to get dirty during production, but the filmmakers covered it in red, blood-like liquid anyway… and then had a devil of time getting the red out of the rabbit’s fur, according to DVD commentary cited by Know Your Meme.
4 University of Stirling students were recruited as extras
While filming at the Doune Castle, the Pythons used students from the nearby University of Stirling students as extras, according to the campus newspaper. To entice potential extras out of bed at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning, the call for extras advertised a pay of £2, free transport, food, refreshments, and “an added attraction… of an abundance of crazy antics.”
5 The film was intended to end with a big battle sequence
In the finished cut of Holy Grail, a battle is stopped before it even begins when modern-day policemen arrest King Arthur for the murder of the historian at the beginning of the film. But draft scripts show that the film was originally meant to end with the knights of Camelot warring against the French.
“There was an idea that there should be a battle and that everyone should be involved,” Michael Palin told The Times. “Then the idea came up to follow through with the historian, who was in there quite early on. In the end, we thought, let’s carry that through. We had this idea that at the very end, before we get into an expensive battle which we had no money for, that the police should come on and arrest Arthur.”
6 The Black Knight sketch came from a story about ancient Roman wrestlers
Cleese recalled in a 2014 episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast that he once heard a story about ancient Roman wrestlers from an English teacher of his.
“There was a particularly tough contest in progress, and one of the wrestlers, his arm broke — the difficulty of the embrace was so great that his arm broke under the pressure — and he submitted because of the appalling pain he was in,” Cleese recounted. “And the referee sort of disentangled them and said to the other guy, ‘You won,’ and the other guy was rather unresponsive, and the referee realized the other guy was dead.”
The teacher’s takeaway from that story, according to Cleese, is that you can’t lose if you don’t give up. And thus Cleese had his inspiration for the Black Knight character in Holy Grail, who refuses to admit defeat even after losing his limbs.
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1974 (50 Years Ago)
January 2024
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