From Fade In magazine, Vol. VI, No. 4
The Holy Grail started with us just throwing out ideas. Everyone just grabbed the part of the legend that appealed to them and started writing different things. Then, Terry Jones and I said that anyone named Terry gets to direct. We were ambitious and foolish in equal measure. Because both of us were desperate to be film directors and frustrated with the way in which the television series was being done... We wanted to make real movies and steep the audience into the feel of the Middle Ages. But one thing we couldn't have was horses, unfortunately. We didn't have the money. If we had had our way we would have had horses. It's one of those moments when you realize that not having enough money saves you from mediocrity. And it's extraordinary how one just accepts it in the film. One doesn't think about it. One just enjoys it. Everybody thought the Pythons were dope smokers, but we weren't. They just couldn't believe we were doing this stuff without the aid of chemicals. But that's what we did. I mean, I don't remember any funny things happening on the set - that's the problem. I only remember tragedies and awfulness [laughs] - because it was a nightmare. Literally, two weeks before we started shooting, the National Trust, who basically own the castles in Scotland - at least all of the ones that we had chosen - decided they didn't want a group of comedians because...I think the phrase was, "They won't respect the dignity of the fabric of the buildings." [laughs] These are buildings where the most awful atrocities, battles and tortures had taken place and a few comedians were going to bring the walls tumbling down! So we were caught without any castles. That's why you see cut-out castles. Again, these things are there in response to the problems confronting us at every moment. We made the film in four or five weeks and it cost $460,000. And if we hadn't known any better, we wouldn't have done it. I look back at it and have no idea how we physically did it. We were just crazed people, running madly, doing whatever it required to keep going. I don't think I could do it now. I know too much.
That's me - with Brian - in old makeup and this is obviously the first couple of days of the shoot. You can see how much I age in the first two days. [laughs] I started as a young thirty-year-old and I ended up as an old seventy-year old, half-blind lunatic. This is up in Glencoe, Scotland. The bridge was built by Hamish McKinnis, who was the warden of Glencoe, and he brought a team of mountaineers up there to build that bridge for us. So Terry and I, as directors, felt we had to walk across the bridge to make sure the rest of the cast knew that we weren't asking them to do anything that we wouldn't do. It was terrifying. [laughs] Then the funny thing is Graham Chapman playing Arthur - we'd always known that he was an amateur mountaineer, and he was the one person we could count on to go across the bridge. In fact, he was so terrified, he wouldn't do it and we ended up doubling him with the first assistant director who walked across the bridge as Arthur. [laughs]