Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam (/ˈɡɪliəm/; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor, comedian and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.

Gilliam has directed 12 feature films, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Time Bandits (1981), Brazil (1985), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The Fisher King (1991), 12 Monkeys (1995), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), The Brothers Grimm (2005) and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). The only "Python" not born in Britain, he became a naturalised British citizen in 1968 and formally renounced his American citizenship in 2006.

Early life

Gilliam was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Beatrice (née Vance) and James Hall Gilliam. His father was a travelling salesman for Folgers before becoming a carpenter. Soon after, they moved to nearby Medicine Lake, Minnesota.

The family moved to the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Panorama City in 1952. Gilliam attended Birmingham High School where he was class president and senior prom king. He was voted "Most Likely to Succeed", and achieved straight A's. During high school, he began to avidly read Mad magazine, then edited by Harvey Kurtzman, which would later influence Gilliam's work.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus (known during the final series as just Monty Python) is a British sketch comedy series created by the comedy group Monty Python and broadcast by the BBC from 1969 to 1974. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines. It also featured animations by Terry Gilliam, often sequenced or merged with live action. The first episode was recorded on 7 September and broadcast on 5 October 1969 on BBC One, with 45 episodes airing over four series from 1969 to 1974, plus two episodes for German TV.

The show often targets the idiosyncrasies of British life, especially that of professionals, and is at times politically charged. The members of Monty Python were highly educated. Terry Jones and Michael Palin are Oxford University graduates; Eric Idle, John Cleese, and Graham Chapman attended Cambridge University; and American-born member Terry Gilliam is an Occidental College graduate. Their comedy is often pointedly intellectual, with numerous erudite references to philosophers and literary figures. The series followed and elaborated upon the style used by Spike Milligan in his ground breaking series Q5, rather than the traditional sketch show format. The team intended their humour to be impossible to categorise, and succeeded so completely that the adjective "Pythonesque" was invented to define it and, later, similar material.

Monty Python's Flying Circus is the first album produced by the Monty Python troupe, released in both the UK and US in 1970, with the US version featuring a back cover slightly different from the original UK version. It features new versions of sketches from the Monty Python's Flying Circus television series.

Next to the television show itself, the album was the first piece of media the Pythons released. It is noted that Terry Gilliam was not included as a member of Python on the album's cast listing (in spite of his brief appearance in the sketch "The Visitors") and Graham Chapman's name is misspelled "Grahame".

It is the only Python studio album to have a laugh track, having been recorded in one day in front of a live audience at Camden Town Hall. Eric Idle stated in the book The Pythons, "They were a particularly dead audience."

The copyright to the record is still owned by the BBC, making it one of the few pieces of material the Pythons themselves do not own. This is also the reason why it did not gain a 2006 special edition release. One of the tracks makes specific mention to the album being in stereo, and Chapman demonstrates it by walking from one speaker to another. The effect was totally lost as the album was recorded in mono, which the Pythons did not know at the time. They felt disenchanted by the BBC's album producing methods, and for their remaining albums sought very different approaches.

Monty Python's Flying Circus is a British comedy sketch television series originally broadcast by the BBC between 1969 and 1974.

Monty Python's Flying Circus may also refer to:

This is a list of all 45 episodes from the television series Monty Python's Flying Circus:

The original air dates do not all apply to BBC Scotland, which took a different approach to airing the series.

Series 1

1. Whither Canada?

(episode 1; aired 5 October 1969; recorded 7 September 1969)

2. Sex and Violence

(episode 2; aired 12 October 1969; recorded 30 August 1969)

Graham Arthur Chapman (8 January 1941 – 4 October 1989) was an English comedian, writer, actor, and one of the six members of the surreal comedy group Monty Python. He played authority figures such as the Colonel and the lead role in two Python films, Holy Grail and Life of Brian.

Chapman was born in Leicester and was raised in Melton Mowbray. He enjoyed science, acting and comedy, and after graduating from Emmanuel College, Cambridge and St Bartholomew's Medical College, he turned down a career as a doctor to be a comedian. Chapman established a writing partnership with John Cleese, which reached its critical peak with Monty Python during the 1970s. Chapman left Britain for Los Angeles in the late 1970s, where he attempted to be a success on American television, speaking on the college circuit and producing the pirate film Yellowbeard, before returning to Britain in the early 1980s.

Chapman was openly homosexual and a strong supporter of gay rights, and was in a relationship with David Sherlock for most of his adult life. He suffered from alcoholism during his time at Cambridge and the early Python years, quitting shortly before working on Life of Brian. Chapman died of tonsil and spinal cancer on 4 October 1989, on the eve of Monty Python's 20th anniversary, and his life and legacy were commemorated at a private memorial service at St Bartholomew's with the other Pythons.

John Marwood Cleese (/ˈkliːz/; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.

In the mid-1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures, both of which he also wrote. He also starred in Clockwise, and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films as Q, two Harry Potter films, and the last three Shrek films.

With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films. In 1976, Cleese co-founded The Secret Policeman's Ball benefit shows to raise funds for the human rights organisation Amnesty International.