I just read on Wiki that apparently when Graham died Cleese had to be lead out of the room because he was in such a state. Something about that makes this so much better. He probably wanted to express how heartbroken he was but instead sacrificed it for something he felt Graham would appreciate more. That's a true friend
He was absolutely distraught, yes. I agree that Cleese did this the way he did mainly for Graham, but I don't think he sacrificed his authenticity. He did express his true feelings, just in an unorthodox way. I have always felt that the "fuck!" at the end was the most sincere uttering of that word ever spoken.
I mean, I think he's absolutely right that Chapman would never have forgiven him for playing it straight. It's a much more fitting memorial than a staid rendition of the usual platitudes about grief. Everyone knew it, too.
Cleese wrote what partly amounts to a novel length eulogy to "Gra" as his book, "So, Anyway". You can tell Chapman was an incredibly important part of his life
About 10 years ago our friend died in a tragic car crash. At gatherings he would often get a bit too drunk and pass out on the couch. During his viewing, my two friends and me were solemn during the funeral when the one friend leaned in and whispered, "How many times have we seen him like that?" We laughed and cried at the same time.
I will never forget when Mr. Chapman visited my university to speak to a full house, and we gave him a standing ovation as he entered the stage. He immediately chastised us all, made us sit down, pulled out stop watch, and insisted we give him 60 seconds of abuse. We did and enjoyed every second. He was and always will be brilliant. RIP.
Graham really did that. He invited audiences to abuse him and often encouraged them to get more abusive. He did it during an appearance on the Tonight Show as well as other places.
As far as I know, Cleese has had a very sad crying about Graham's death. He was broken about it. This eulogy is like a resurrection, for both Cleese and Chapman. Their final sketch together, with Graham appearing as a ghost haunting him to say "f*ck" at the memorial. And even though Cleese refuses to do that, he does "quote" the word and, in case it went past unnoticed, also his own "sh*t".
I've always heard that when bob hope (or some comedian) died, just before his death, his wife asked where he wanted to be buried and he replied "surprise me"
Except maybe Tom Hanks. I love Monty Python and have always appreciated the way John Cleese helped send off Graham Chapman, but Tom Hanks telling a story at Michael Clarke Duncan's funeral was awesome. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DsQhB4tJRxw.html
@@vaderetro264 That is the most narrow and ignorant comment I've read recently. It has no basis in fact and displays a complete lack of awareness. Either that, or it's the dumbest troll comment on RU-vid today. And considering that it has nothing to do with my comment (aside from mentioning the two people involved), it also shows you didn't pay attention to the point of my post.
@I Love You I'm sorry your reading comprehension isn't up to the task of this thread, but I didn't "boast" of anything, and I never said or implied that I knew "of something better". The original post states that "only John Cleese" could make people laugh like that at a funeral. I stated (with link to an example) that it was not true. How that is not relevant to the original post, I'm curious to know. His response was only to denigrate Tom Hanks with patently untrue comments. If he'd had anything to back them up, he's had almost a week to respond without the need for you to white knight for him with additional idiocy. As far as my account, when you pay my fees, you can determine when my account gets canceled. Otherwise, tend to your own.
RIP the two members of Monty Python Graham Chapman (January 8, 1941 - October 4, 1989), aged 48 Terry Jones (February 1, 1942 - January 21, 2020), aged 77 You both will be remembered as legends
@@ZarkowsWorld It's a matter of option. No ignorance here. No matter whether a person is offended by bad language or not, it really never is appropriate to be vulgar.
Loved John’s line, “He would never forgive me if I didn’t take this opportunity to shock you all” That’s what the pythons were all about, taking a normal, respectful, reverential situation and twisting it to shock us. That’s why they were so unique and so funny😁😁😁😁
They all NEEDED that laugh too. Memorial services are not only sad, they're tense, with everyone wondering if someone's going to say the wrong thing. John did but he gave them all the release they needed.
I love the look on the kids face at 1:06. He's privileged to discover at a very young age that irreverence has its time and place--always and everywhere.
There are many who dislike John because he is brash and overconfident. He may be those things. But what he really is is courageous enough to be the one who got up there and said what needed to be said, in the way it needed to be said, with the humor, honesty,, and compassion deserved...to eulogize a man who lived unabashedly at the edge of "good taste". This was a man they all respected, loved, and called friend. He deserved nothing less than this send-off. Just beautiful.
It takes a great person to make the audience laugh while he himself cries inside. Cleese respected Chapman enough to give the eulogy in his spirit and create light in people's hearts instead of darkness. That was what Chapman's life was all about. That was what his funeral was about.
My brother wanted to write a eulogy for his best friend's funeral, so I sent him this video as inspiration. His eulogy made people laugh at the grave site. He recounted his last time spent with his best friend where they were lost in NYC an his best friend was shouting out the car window for directions to people who didn't speak English.
Ten years ago I delivered my best friend's eulogy after he'd thrown himself under a train (rather inconsiderately, during the rush hour). Faced with about 200 of his friends and family, it was possibly the most nerve wracking moment of my life. I wish I'd watched this first...
My Grampa once told me, "you can't call yourself a true friend if you can't make people laugh at their funeral. If you can't tell the best stories while they can't defend themselves, were you really their friend?"
Goes to prove the Pythons are just simply the best. Even at something as sacredly reverent as a eulogy, John Cleese is cracking jokes and Eric Idle sings "Always look on the bright side of life".
This was a powerful eulogy, by any measure. One of the greatest, ground breaking comedy ensembles and partnerships in movie and television history. The looks on each of their faces, as John speaks, tells you everything. Well done.
I would believe it. I feel like one can actually feel the sadness as he says "Good riddance to him the freeloading bastard, I hope he frys." Something about the delivery and how he needs to read it off his paper. Like he's feeling really unhappy even as he's making an incredible joke.
Michael Palin's diary - Travelling To Work: October 3rd[1989]: Time Out is the first journal to sow the seeds of doubt in my mind over 80 Days' appeal. A humourless review which whines about the shame of having to 'pour cold water' over the programme and proceeds to do so with great glee. *Anne[James, management] rings to say Graham has had a bad night and may go back into hospital. He certainly won't be able to attend the anniversary party tomorrow.* Down to the Holiday Inn Hotel in Mayfair to fulfil a series of interview obligations. First an appearance in a documentary about Viz, defending the magazine, then a piece about Python's 20th for Australia's Channel 7. The TV crews are so typical of their countries. The Australians grin a lot, are rather like big schoolboys and seem anxious to get it done and go round the pub. Then hare off home to a longish chat with CBC - the non-aligned, apologetic, intelligent Canadians. Establishing shots of me in garden. Squirt what I think is water from one of Helen's garden sprays into my mouth as a joke. Later told it's highly poisonous! Granny G has arrived for Mary and Edward's 25th wedding anniversary party. We eat late - it's almost ten by the time we are all assembled at Mon Plaisir, Mary and Edward's favourite restaurant in courting days, now benefiting from the Covent Garden renaissance and no longer having the rather squashed, cosy, plain and unpretentious French presence it had in the bad old days. *Will rings sounding grave. He's heard from TG[Terry Gilliam], who's heard from Anne, that Graham is seriously ill in hospital. He has secondary cancers all over his body and is not expected to last the night. All this over the noise of popping corks and laughter reminds me of my father dying during the football results. There is precious little dignity around. Ring Terry J. Sal[Terry's daughter]answers. He and Alison[wife] have both gone down to the hospital.* *Back home. It's half past twelve and been a long evening. There seems no point in my rushing down to Maidstone. I'm legally too drunk to drive anyway. Phone the hospital, but can never get through. Sometime after one I give up and get to bed, expecting to be woken any time.*
Travelling To Work: Wednesday, October 4th: Anne rings at a quarter to eight. Graham has stayed alive through the night. The anniversary party this evening is to be cancelled. I agree. There will be nothing to celebrate. After breakfast I call David[Graham's partner]. Can't keep back a choke of emotion on the phone and feel rather feeble having to curtail the call, but the moment of regret for Gra suddenly so intense. Sit for a few minutes in the sunshine on my balcony. The telephone rings. Drag myself back in. It's Alison at the office. She's had a call from JC[Cleese] who has just spoken to Graham's brother, John. Gra has only a few hours left to live. John is on his way down to the hospital. I um and ah for a moment. What can I do? Will I be in the way? Consult Helen[wife], who says I should go. Suddenly the tiredness disappears and, I suppose, a shot of adrenaline revives the system as I grab whatever I may need, check the directions and leave for Maidstone. The traffic is going home all across South London and it takes me over one and a half hours to get to the hospital. It's set in fields outside Maidstone, has some bright, post-modernist pavilions at one end, and a big, heavy Victorian workhouse at the other. Around it a quiet and spectacular sunset is fading. Long walk to the Cornwallis Ward. Graham is in a private room at the end. At Graham's bedside are John - his brother, heavier, a quite different shape from the megapodal Graham - and on the other side, holding the hand above which the bandages conceal a drip feed which is keeping Gra alive, is John C. We talk a while, then they go out and I'm left alone with Graham. He breathes laboriously but regularly. I'm told that the faculty of sound is known to be the last to go and so I rattle on about everyday things. About my lousy review in Time Out, the sunset, the fountain being removed from Prominent courtyard. David comes in, smiling and relaxed. He kisses Graham's head and smoothes his sallow brow, closes the window a little, tells me that their house is the next one to the hospital, just across the field. He's happy to leave me with Gra. David says a room has been cleared where we can go. I say I'm all right ...'You Yorkshiremen', grins David. I walk round to the window then come back to his right-hand side; take his cold hand in my hot one and tell him, quite loudly, that we all love him. The regularity of his breathing is broken. A long pause, then a long inhalation. His lower jaw rises, his mouth closes and bares his lower teeth. I reach for my cup of tea. He breathes heavily. I start to talk again. A single tear emerges from his right eye and rolls down his cheek. The mouth is set. The great ridge of Adam's apple is still. There is no more noise from him. Nothing dramatic, no rattles or chokes or cries. He's not moving anymore. I don't want to leave him, nor do I want to make any noise or sudden movement. It's a moment out of time. All I can feel is that I shouldn't be here, that David and John his brother should be.
This is not only the funniest but also by far one of the most respectful and beautiful memorial speeches I've ever heard. They were true friends, and the Monty Python group truly loved Graham Chapman, and it shows in so many ways. John Cleese honors him with a grace you can't find anywhere else. Makes me proud to have grown up during their era, making their work a huge part of my childhood. There are none like them.
Well, no, not really. I doubt John would agree with you. He’s certainly talented but his contribution is rather limited. Hundred of years from now he and the rest of Python will largely be a footnote. Like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton they will be revered but that’s it.
you can hear Cleese's voice on the verge of breaking down in tears at the beginning; he soldiered on and gave the best eulogy of all time after Shakespeare's Marc Antony
What a gift of love to have a relationship where John Cleese felt so comfortable being exactly who he was supposed to be for his friend who had passed.
This is what true friendship is: when someone knows us so well as to unashamedly and unreservedly pulls this kind of nonsense in front of all one's friends and loved ones. This is how you know you are loved.
Not only are John's words so well chosen and put together, so are the wonderful comments added by people who are fans of all things Python So I say thank you to you all because I got pleasure from reading them.
I gave my little brothers Eulogy. Told a bunch of funny stories and made fun of him. Like bad. The entire congregation was rolling. When the world is falling apart all around you, laughter is what you need, even if you don't know it. It was one of the greatest things I ever had the honor of doing, even though I wish I never had to.
The love between these friends can be felt years later thru the Internet, onto a screen and into my heart. Monthy Python shaped my childhood... And one day my children will enjoy their wierd and wonderful comedy.
"Anything for him but mindless good taste" Such a good line. forming the service to what the deceased would have liked instead of doing the norm because it's "Respectful".
Graham Chapman, co-author of the 'Parrot Sketch,' is no more. He has ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. He's kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the Great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky. And I guess that we're all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence should now so suddenly be spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he'd achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he'd had enough fun. Well, I feel that I should say, "Nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard! I hope he fries." And the reason I feel I should say this is he would never forgive me if I didn't, if I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but mindless good taste. I could hear him whispering in my ear last night as I was writing this; "Alright, Cleese", he was saying, "you're very proud of being the very first person ever to say 'shit' on British television. If this service is really for me, just for starters, I want you to become the first person ever at a British memorial service to say 'fuck'!"
+MØ extras Thanks! But you left out one word, glorious, in "if I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all." I personally feel the word intensifies the Pythonness of this eulogy +herbie747 Transcripts are very helpful for non-native English speakers like me!
Whenever live gets you down Mrs brown, when people are hard or tough. When people are stupid, obnoxious or daft, and you feel like you've had quite enough..... Just remember this speech.
@@markorollo. Cleese probably should have came up with the silly walk, started off by doing the parrot sketch opening again, made a silly face, mugged to people in the audience... then said one line about how sad he is Terry was dead and sit back down. Never give them what they expect.
Simply one of the funnest things I've ever seen. I come back occasionally, having alrandy seen it dozens of times, and it never fails to make me howl with laughter.
How hard must this have been for Cleese to do with such composure and perfect delivery? Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to get up and say something about someone who has died at a funeral, will appreciate this. Absolutely astonishing personal control.
OMG! French MP fan here, this is one the reasons why I'm happy to speak decent English. It's even more touching when you know the history of the Flying Circus and why Cleese left......
All of those brilliant folks from Monty Python made an otherwise sad childhood much more bearable. I will never forget any of them. From the bottom of my heart, thank you very much! 😂🤣😂❤️❗️
As only the great John Cleese can do it: make people laugh in the face of sorrow. Rest in peace, Graham. And thank you for all of the laughs. God bless.
Growing up with these comic marvels i was shocked to realize Graham was only 48yrs old, a funeral is so sad and to have laughter is a massive help to those grieving .good ole john to help MR Chapman on his way to the great comedy store in the sky// we will never see the likes off these hugely talented men together again/ 2022
I remember when my dad introduced me to Monty Python on PBS when I was pre-teen. My dad's name was ironically Monte. My life has been made better for eternity because of these guys. I will shed a tear for each and everyone when they pass on to Heaven. When I stop crying I will remember that when my time comes, Heaven will be awesome!
There is no better way of saying good bye to an old friend than what John Cleese did, I hope when I die, there will be one who will mention all my faults and roughly say: "I miss that that old sod" And it would'nt be in a Church.
Would love to have done that for my father in law, but i just cant seem to handle death and all its unfairness, top man he wouldve loved me to get a laugh on his behalf
The love Cleese and the rest of the Python gang feel and felt for Chapman is so very evident in this short video. Chapman and the rest were such a tremendous gift to us all.
Life of Brian and Holy Grail are two of few movies I'm willing to watch again and again. I had never heard of them 'till the mid 90's. I didn't know Graham was dead till just now.
I found Monty Python when I was just in Jr. High school and it was the beginning of a lifelong love for their wonderful sense of humor and talent. Truly one of the best groups to ever grace our screen.
This is the very epitome of the perfect funeral I would want. Friends n family all sharing hilarious stories of my antics and python/snl inspired comedy. Somber tear infested staleness is for constipated socialites, I want humor. Hell if I had my way I would bring Bill Hicks back from the dead and have him eulogize. Anyway, JC is a master of stuffy deadpan comedy, I sure hope he sticks around for many more years.
What an outstanding bit of comedy John Cleese's eulogy was. The composure, the timing, playing off of the audience. At the funeral of his childhood friend. In front of the departed's friends and family. And it was so simple but so profound. We pass through life seeing our loved ones in different lights, having them wear different faces. They're fathers and mothers, friends and confidants, inspirations and great influences on the next of kin's lives. And Clesse summed it up, all of it. All the words I've heard in person in funerals real or in media by that beautiful sentiment and the brilliant drop of "Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard". From romantic reminiscence to deadpan dunking on. From darkness to light. Smiles and laughter from hearts overflowing with grief. To me, this is what it's all about, comedy. Making life just a little bit lighter.
Note that this was a memorial eulogy, not at the funeral. The actual funeral was a family thing. "Freeloader": Chapman and Cleese was one of the two writing teams, and Chapman would drive Cleese crazy by not pulling his weight writing. But then, Cleese said, when they all had had just about enough of Chapman, he'd add a twist to a dialogue or come up with a performance that just brought everything to another level. I think all the surviving members sat in this room remembering Chapman's erratic nature and his brazenness, and his talent and great kindness.
If people don't laugh at my funeral, I won't have lived a good enough life. I want them to reminisce about me, "Remember when Dan did that?" and share a chuckle. If that doesn't happen it will all have been for nothing.
Poor John...you can tell he’s still really bummed out even as he does this. I could be wrong but I feel like I read somewhere that he was there when Graham died and was so destroyed that he had to be helped out of the room
