by Jas Faulkner
Why do people draw in books?
A friend of mine borrowed my copy of the script for Monty Python and the Holy Grail for a scene study class. She returned it with thanks but a grumpy rejoinder about the copious scribbling along the margins. After listening to more grumbling, I finally broke it to her that the bizarre creatures were actually printed in the book. They were the handiwork of the film’s animator and co-director, Terry Gilliam.
She had every reason to believe that the artwork was mine. However, she had no idea that Gilliam, and for that matter the rest of the artists often still known as Monty Python, had been influences for decades. My father passed his adoration of the Pythons to me when I was stranded in a Tea Party Before There Was A Tea Party prep school in the midwest because his job demanded we live in The Breadbasket of America for a year. It was then that I discovered comedy was a way to stay sane. Gilliam’s adorably demented creatures gamboled across every Monty Python book I owned. Of course I copied him.