Tis a Silly Place: Fatherhood and Finding the Holy Grail, 50 Years On

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Your parents are people. This notion, both obvious and confounding, is one that can take years to fully settle in, if it ever really does. When we are young, there is something comforting in believing that them to be something else, something closer to forces of nature than nuanced human beings – faultless, emotionless, steadfast. This is especially true of fathers, who are often forced to play a role that does not allow for subtlety or range, becoming, more often than not, the most serious and unerring thing a child can imagine. Of course, time makes the absurdity of this idea more and more obvious. If we are lucky, as I will admit I am, the relationship with your father becomes far more complicated and rewarding the moment you begin to realize they are, like everyone else, just a guy doing their best. Whether we know it or not, though, I think we are, even in our earliest days, looking for chinks in the armor we ourselves construct, flesh wounds that may reveal something behind the dark gaze of the black knight we have created in our heads. And sometimes, that can come from the silliest of places.

White text on a black screen. This is where the absurdity of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, released 50 years ago this month, truly begins. Subtitle gags, multiple sackings, moose humor, llama jokes. All this serves as a backdrop for one of the earliest memories I have of watching my father, red-faced and teary-eyed, giggling uncontrollably. I must have been 7 or 8 at the time, with essentially no knowledge of the film that was set to begin when this nearly 5-minute credit bit finally concluded. And yet I was in, whole-heartedly and completely, if only for the fact that I knew it was supposed to be funny, because my Dad told me it was funny, because, well, look at him, he can barely keep it together. As we well know, this is just the beginning of the deluge of silliness that was to follow; loose, goofy, unwieldy sketches that run the gamut from the vaudeville physicality of the dismembered Black Knight to arcane discussion of the “airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow” to the most ingenious solution to a nonexistent horse budget in movie history. It all hit, working like gangbusters on both me and my younger brother, as my Dad did his best not to beat the knights to the various punchlines, which had clearly been lodged in his head for decades.

My father had been a fan since he was a child. It wasn’t till a bit later, but we eventually made our way through the definitive Monty Python box set, which included all 45 episodes of the comedy troupe’s original sketch series, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Like the film that was to follow, many of these sketches remain etched in the deep recesses of my comedy brain thanks, once again, to my father’s insistence on their hilarity (a quick survey revealed “Upper Class Twit of the Year” to be both of our favorite sketches). By the time the gang, which included Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam, set out to make Holy Grail, they had more than established themselves as the princes of a particularly brand of surrealist humor, exploring the corners of absurdist comedy that continue to delight, confuse and bewilder fans today. Put simply, there’s very little chance we would have a show like I Think You Should Leave without Flying Circus. Still, no one was positive a feature length movie with a semi-comprehensive narrative throughline would work. On Flying Circus, sketches running only minutes would frequently run out of juice, so how would they expand their formula into a full-length feature?

The answer is to simply stretch the limits of what sketch comedy can be, to wonderful and preposterous results. After a series of sight gags, which includes Terry Gilliam knocking two sides of a coconut to mimic the sound of a noble, galloping steed, the first proper bit involves the pompous King Arthur (Chapman) involved in a heated discussion regarding the migratory possibilities of said coconut and the sheer impossibility of its presence in Dark Ages England. Meta, goofy, and irrational, this scene is a wonderful litmus test as to whether Monty Python and the Holy Grail is going to be your thing. Is it stupid? You betcha, but if it’s your particular brand of stupid, then boy do the Pythons have a movie in store for you. That’s not to say the gang is always searching for the lowest common denominator. Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ filth-covered class diatribe is not only hilarious but timeless in its rambling, furious brilliance (“come and see the violence inherent in the system!”) It’s the kind of thing that surely went over my head sitting cross-legged on my living room floor all those years ago, but has quickly become one of the most quotable scenes in a film chock-full of them.

That last point is particularly important when considering the legacy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There’s the extremely online joke that goes around every few months about the male propensity to boil their friendships down to a series of reference points, naming, say, ‘90s baseball players as a form of connection. It’s a tendency ripe for mockery, but there’s something to be said, I think, about mining arcane specificity as a stand-in for something more emotionally meaningful. Half a century on, quoting Monty Python and the Holy Grail remains a wonderful shorthand, a way to recognize and acknowledge a shared love of the ludicrous, a willingness, perhaps, to be silly beyond measure, to say “Ni!” in the face of life’s many hardships.

It’s a strategy that became especially useful as I worked to foster yet another paternal relationship, one with far different parameters than the one established with my own father. Perhaps even more than the father-son dynamic, the father-in-law relationship is one steeped in very specific and cliched formality. Aside from the obvious – asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage – there are the subtler attempts to prove a certain level of reliability, worth and kindness. Many of our early meetings came in the basement of my soon-to-be wife’s childhood home, a melange of Miller Lite, darts, and classic rock. Like my own father and so many others, my future father-in-law is a quiet man, one who prefers to observe, to sink into his recliner and leave small talk to others. Until, that is, we begin quoting a 50-year-old sketch comedy troupe’s first proper film, establishing a love language that baffles his daughter and delights two fully-grown children, chortling as we recall flesh wounds, carts carrying away the very nearly dead, and the buoyancy of very small rocks. To surprise him with my knowledge of goofy British humor felt far more validating than any sturdy handshake could hope to muster. This was not only me proving I can take care of his daughter, but a way of beginning our relationship as two men, hapless knights in the silly round table of our own design.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is not a perfect movie, it’s nonsense running a bit thin by the film’s end, a fact that seems as obvious to the performer as the viewers. Still, its cultural staying power cannot, at this point, be disputed. I like to imagine that my story is not unique, that many generations of fathers of all kinds have found a way, over these past 50 years, to pass down the joys of Monty Python, finding solace and meaning in watching six grown men being goofy as hell, reminding each other that this is a silly place, and that’s okay.

Sean Fennell is a culture writer from Philadelphia attempting to listen, watch, and read every single thing he can get his hands on.

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Tis A Silly Place: Fatherhood and Finding the Holy Grail, 50 Years On