John Cleese: U.S. politics are funny but ‘dangerous’

So John Cleese walks into a bar…

At 6 feet 5 inches, the “Fish Called Wanda” star and “Monty Python” mainstay would be a head-turner even if he weren’t one of the most recognizable comic writer/actors of the last 40 years. He’s in Washington to promote “So, Anyway,” 375 pages of autobiographical recollections, packed with one-liners.

But it’s not, strictly speaking, a comedy book. It’s not, to the probable dismay of “Monty Python” fans, even a thorough personal history of the absurdist, Ministry of Silly Walks-taking, Black Knight-maiming, you-sold-me-a-dead-parrot-I-want-to-return-it comedy troupe.

It’s Cleese’s life story, from childhood in the tiny English town of Weston-super-Mare onwards, through high school, Cambridge, performances in London, New Zealand (where the awkward Cleese lost his virginity), New York and ultimately the process of putting together “Monty Python.” It’s also an examination of how he used humor as a means to survive life, and what, at 75, the co-creator of “Fawlty Towers” finds funny.

In an interview with Yahoo News at his hotel bar, Cleese discussed his mother, why young comics should steal from more experienced ones, why he’s happy to give autographs but thinks selfies are “poison,” how he’s trying to turn “A Fish Called Wanda” into a musical, and his view that American politics are funny but “dangerous.”

Yahoo News has edited the hourlong question and answer session. Items in quotes were said, other material is paraphrased.

Yahoo: What is the most irritating thing that people do when they meet you?

Cleese: “They walk up to me in the street and say, ‘Can I have a photograph with you’? I say, ‘You mean, to commemorate the fact we met five seconds ago?’ I think it’s a generational thing. For me, you took a photograph with someone because you’d had dinner together, or been to a party, or a football match. There was some relationship implied by a photograph. And there is no relationship as far as I’m concerned.”

“When people ask me for autographs, that’s fine, if they want a picture of me, that’s fine. But the whole selfie culture – which I do think is poison, I think it’s literally poisonous.”

I have to be honest. I am on page 250 of the book, so I’ve only skimmed the last section.

(Laughs) “That’s all right. I’m delighted that you’ve actually read it, because I doubt that the British reviewers did.”

Why write this book now?

“I was in Barbados about – you know, it could have almost been 20 years ago. I was with Michael Caine, and he’d just finished his autobiography, and he was saying what a good experience it’d been and how much he’d enjoyed it. And I said ‘why?’ and he said ‘because you reclaim parts of your life that you’d completely forgotten.’”

You say some brutally tough things about your mother, which would make me laugh if I saw them in a novel but make me wince in an autobiography. Like: “Mother said that as a baby I never cried — I probably thought that if I did she might appear.”

“I was not sure whether I should keep that one in. But everyone thought it was funny.”

Was the book something of an exorcism?

“I spent so much of my life in therapy, such an enormous proportion, that stuff has all, I hope, been worked through. Although I would not say that I loved her, I felt affection for her and I tried to be a dutiful son. But all the exorcism, I think, had happened in the many years, previously, of therapy.”

“But you see what interests me is that you say that, at lines in a novel you would have laughed at, you were holding back on, and I’m very interested in that area.”

The stakes are lower in a novel than they are in a biography.

“You remember the third dog that was killed in ‘Wanda’? It was squashed? Originally the close-up we had there, the director, Charlie Crichton, had lovingly sprinkled some entrails into the shot. The cinema was rocking with laughter, and the moment that shot went up, [it] froze. So we replaced it with a mat and the problem was never the same again. So if you remind people too much of the reality of the pain or the physical, then they stop laughing.”

You have advice for young comics: Steal. But “good artists borrow, great artists steal” is attributed to Picasso. So did you steal your advice to steal?

(Laughs) “No!”

“When you’re trying to do something as difficult as paint, or write a good comedy script, then the best thing to do is to start by emulating someone that you admire. Just the same way that you’d learn a golf swing.”

Who are the best professionally funny people out there?

“Well, the thing that leaps to my mind is the best set of notes that I ever got given were by Steve Martin. He came to a reasonably early cut of ‘Fish Called Wanda.’ We went out to dinner afterwards. And from memory – he’d not made any notes – he went through every scene in the movie and made suggestions about this, that. And I thought it was the greatest display of expertise that I’d ever seen.”

“And [James L.] Burrows [of “Cheers” fame]. I thought he was a genius. [And the Monty Python crew, because] the criticism you got was very expert.”

Everyone talks about “The Ministry of Silly Walks.”

(Interrupts, laughing) “The day I die, it will be on (TV) screens. And the British press will say ‘Basil’s Fawlty Heart.’”

But for me, the election night special was better.

“I was never a great fan of the Silly Walks sketch. I didn’t write it, but I didn’t think it was a great bit of material. But there was something about the seriousness.”

Which is funnier, British politics or American politics?

“Oh. See, I think the trouble is, American politics is much more significant and much more dangerous – it’s a bit like your feelings about my mother. I can laugh at American politics, but I really would not want to be between Dick Cheney and a million dollars. And I don’t feel that in England. I just think they’re no good.”

“I can’t see any way, now, of salvaging the British culture. It seems to me it’s on the slippery slope. And there’s much more tolerance than there used to be and that’s an extremely good thing.”

“What characterized the culture I grew up in was a disregard of money. And now it’s all about money. Everything is about money. And it’s spoiling sports as it spoiled the NBA.”

I found your Twitter account. Do you follow @BritishMonarchy? That’s the Queen’s, Buckingham Palace’s, Twitter account.

“I don’t. I didn’t know they had one. I’ll tell you why I have one, and it’s for absolutely one reason. Stephen Fry said to me, ‘If you can get enough followers on Twitter, you don’t need to use the British Press. Now, when the Daily Mail makes a nasty remark about me, I can do a Twitter back. 'Cause I can always top them, 'cause they’re not very smart.”

What keeps you up at night?

“Reading ‘The Hack Attack.’ I actually had to put the book down, I was getting too anxious. What else keeps me up? Not much. The nice thing about this stage of my life when I’m going to be dead in a few years – that’s OK, it’ll be interesting – and there’s nothing really I want to achieve, except I want to understand a few things better. And in the meantime I’d like to make a bit more money, 'cause I’ve nearly paid the alimony off” and then buy a bigger home for myself and my wife.

“Other than that, the things that make me happy are ridiculously simple: old friends, good food, reading, taking exercise, occasionally traveling [and spending time with my wife and our three cats, who provide us] with about half an hour each evening that’s better than anything on British television.”

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

“Usually a schedule,” including the book tour, which is due to run to Dec. 21.

“I think I can do a musical out of 'A Fish Called Wanda.' My daughter and I have written the first book. What I think we need to do now, I need to earn a bit of money so that I can take a solid whack of time off like four or five months to put that on stage.”

If you could somehow reassemble the Monty Python troupe at the height of their powers, today, what would be the ripest targets?

“The problem is that we’re all gone in different directions, and we can’t agree on anything. If you’re saying what should we make a movie about, I think it’s extraordinarily difficult to write about anything contemporary because I don’t think anyone understands what’s going on.”

“I don’t understand the celebrity culture. I don’t understand why people would use Facebook. It’s hard to write for a generation that’s obsessed by Facebook when you have no idea why.”

As the interview wraps, Cleese gathers up his coat. A man walks over from across the bar. “Could I get a picture with you?” he asks.

“I’m sorry, I don’t do that,” Cleese replies with a contrite smile. “Sorry.”