John Cleese Interview
I find it easy to trust the hard-earned truths of a successful comedian. For example, here’s an excerpt from a recent A.V. Club interview with John Cleese:
A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people. There’ve been two or three examples where, just really laughing, it all goes away. I remember David Niven taking me out to dinner with Connie [Booth], my first wife. And we were sitting in the open air, drinking pinot grigio in the middle of Rome. There was an editor there, a really nice editor, but being British, he had terrible teeth—Americans have never seen teeth that bad, unless they read National Geographic. And David told us, “He’ll smile a lot, but he’ll never laugh.” Every time David made us howl with laughter, we glanced at the editor, who was roaring with laughter, trying to keep his lips together. Um, so what I’m saying is that when you’ve laughed like that with someone, it connects you at a humanity level.
Some great stuff in the full interview, if you have the time.