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Terry Jones on the first episode of "Monty Python's Flying Circus": "We had an audience of old-age pensioners who thought they were coming in to see a circus. Graham and I were doing the first sketch - the flying sheep sketch - and there was not a lot of reaction to it. Just bewildered pensioners. We were also terrified that nobody would laugh when we did '(Monty Python and the) Holy Grail' (1975). We showed it to an audience of investors. They laughed for the first five minutes, then absolute silence for the whole rest of the film. It was one of the worst nights."

During one of the first screenings of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in front of a live audience, co-writer and co-director Terry Jones noticed that when music was played during the jokes, there was a marked reduction of laughter from the audience. He went back and edited the music out whenever a punchline was delivered. At subsequent screenings, he noticed a dramatic increase in the audiences' positive reactions to the jokes. From that point on, whenever he directed, he remembered to stop the music for the funny parts.

According to Jones, the scene with Launcelot and Concorde required twenty takes. While the second take was perfect, the cameraman noticed that there was a lot of smoke in the background. At one point, an annoyed John Cleese quipped, "Well, was the smoke funny enough?"

"Comedy is a dangerous business. If people find something funny, you're okay. But the moment you do something that's meant to be funny and someone doesn't find it funny, they become angry. It's almost as if they resent the fact that you tried to make them laugh and failed. Nobody comes out of a mediocre performance of 'Hamlet' seething with rage because it didn't make them cry. But just listen to people coming out of a comedy that didn't make them laugh." (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Terry Jones!
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