John Cleese’s ‘Holy Grail’ Tour Will Include His Alternate, ‘Better’ Ending
In order to exploit celebrate the 50th anniversary of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, John Cleese is embarking on Holy Grail-themed live tour, which will include a screening of the film, a Q&A about its production history and the regret that comes with spending $70 on a movie ticket so that Cleese can make his alimony payments.
But just because Monty Python and the Holy Grail is regarded as one of the greatest comedies of all-time, doesn’t mean that Cleese won’t be taking the opportunity to criticize it. Specifically, he isn’t a big fan of the ending.
The movie memorably ends with King Arthur and Sir Bedevere leading an attack on the Castle Aaargh, only to be arrested by a squad of modern police officers who have been investigating the murder of the film’s historical commentator. The final shot of the movie is a cop covering up the camera lens with his hand.
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The fourth wall-breaking anti-climax is hilarious, and arguably an appropriately silly ending for the movie. But Cleese doesn't see it that way.
“It stops being very funny toward the end, and the ending is the best we could come up with,” Cleese recently told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s a joke that it’s so bad.” In 2017, Cleese similarly complained that “the ending annoys me the most,” claiming that “it ends the way it does because we couldn’t think of any other way.”
Eric Idle has also blasted the final joke in recent years, which he takes credit for coming up with, suggesting that it was “crap,” and was only written into the movie because the Pythons “ran out of money.”
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As Michael Palin’s unearthed archives revealed in 2018, an early draft of the script called for the film to conclude with an epic final battle scene involving the Knights of Camelot, the French keepers of the Grail and even the killer rabbit of Caerbannog.
While the meta ending that we ultimately got may have been a cost-saving measure, the Pythons all seemed pretty happy with it at first. In the movie’s DVD commentary, co-director Terry Gilliam took delight in the fact that his ending made early audiences “totally confused.” And Palin noted that the inspired twist “seemed to work out wonderfully as an ending for some reason.”
Even Idle and Cleese praised the scene they seem to now despise. “I like this ending very much,” Cleese stated. And Idle specifically said that his suggestion that “everyone should be arrested” was more creative than financial. “I just remember thinking that would be a funny way to end a film, is (to) put a hand over the lens and that’s it,” Idle recalled. “But I think it’s kind of a neat way to end.
But now, according to Cleese, his distaste for the finale has inspired him to re-edit the ending himself. “I’m coming to America in the fall, and we’re showing Holy Grail and then answering questions afterwards. I have a version of the ending, and as far as I can see, people like it better than the original one,” Cleese argued. “It’s just pared down. The original one just takes too long to try and build up the tension, and it would be much better if it had been edited.”
Cleese obviously hasn’t shot any new footage, but he has streamlined the moments leading up to the climactic joke. Cleese first debuted his new and “improved” ending for a Q&A event in 2017, explaining that he scrapped much of the dramatic build-up, which one could argue is what makes the abrupt conclusion so funny.
“It’s as if those seven minutes are cut into Holy Grail from a completely different kind of movie,” Cleese told an interviewer at the time. “I’ve reedited the ending. I will show the audience my version of the ending. We recut it two or three times to make it rather less boring, frankly.” He also theorized that the existing cut was the result of “Terry Gilliam showing off that he can make adult movies. I don’t know what it’s about.
Thankfully, it sounds as though Cleese screens his ending as a separate clip after the film, rather than going full George Lucas.
