John Cleese is a strange and wonderful man. He obviously has his demons. He has the demeanour of a very experienced colonial Colonel, shipped back to Blighty with all this experience and discipline to pass on. Except his experience is about making silly, silly comedy. I spent quite a lot of time on a plane recently,catching up on his podcasts and they make fascinating viewing. Some of them are meant to be funny and pointful and aren't either - he's trying to make a point, but it ends up so leaden and obvious that you can't watch any more. Some of them are just him doing Stanley Unwin. Or one of his own old sketches.
But some of them are brilliant. There's a speech he did at the National Radio Conference in Sydney in 2006 which is a textbook example of how to do a speech. (Not a presentation.) It's funny, it's clever, it's got good stories and surprising facts, it's about radio. And he plays some of his funny radio ads that he made. It's in many parts: one, two, three, four. He's a real pro. He makes sure to do a lot of stuff that's directly relevant to their audience - and he's clearly made an effort to remember people's names. But he's also not afraid to swing off into a few set-piece bits that are just entertaining. Splendid stuff.
But the really interesting things are two bits of film (here and here) of him talking to film/acting students. He talks about his rewriting his scenes in the second Steve Martin Pink Panther movie - and it illustrates the huge amount of rigour he pours into getting stuff right and believable and right. And he refers to A Fish Called Wanda and Fawlty Towers to make the same points. It's about the long hard slog of making something really good, not the occasional flashes of inspiration. I suspect the less funny podcast stuff didn't go through the same disciplined processes.
It rememinded me of the sort of thing that Merlin Mann talks about here.
Anyway.
