Look up futility in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Futile may refer to:

• Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, an 1898 novel
• Futility (poem), 1918 poem by Wilfred Owen
• Futile (Porcupine Tree), 2003 EP album by Porcupine Tree
• Futility (album), 2004 album of the industrial death metal band DÅÅTH

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Gavin Harrison
Gavin Harrison, performing live with Porcupine Tree
Background information
Born	Harrow, UK
Genres	Progressive rock, jazz fusion, progressive metal, experimental music, math rock
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Drums, percussion, tap guitar
Labels	Lava, Roadrunner, Atlantic
Associated acts	Porcupine Tree, King Crimson, OSI, Renaissance
Website	www.gavharrison.com

Gavin Harrison (born 28 May, 1963) is a British drummer and percussionist. He is best known for playing with the British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree which he joined in 2002. As of 2008, he also plays with the band King Crimson.

Harrison has authored two instructional drum books entitled Rhythmic Illusions and Rhythmic Perspectives. He also wrote and produced his own instructional DVDs, Rhythmic Visions and Rhythmic Horizons, at his home studio. 2010 saw the release of Rhythmic Designs, a book of transcriptions by Terry Branam, and a 3 hour DVD of Gavin's explanations and demonstrations. It won 'Best In Show' at the summer NAMM show in the USA.

In 2007 Gavin began a long term collaboration with singer/extended range bass player 05Ric which led to the release of three CDs Drop in 2009 Circles and then in 2012 The Man Who Sold Himself.

In 2008, Gavin joined King Crimson as part of a dual-drummer lineup with Pat Mastelotto. Gavin played a number of shows in the United States in August with the band.

He won the Modern Drummer magazine readers' poll for "best progressive drummer of the year" consecutively from 2007-2010. He won "Best Prog Drummer" in DRUM USA magazine 2011. He is the featured cover story on Modern Drummer January 2009. Rolling Stone Magazine polls rate him as the third best drummer in the past 25 years.

On August 23, 2011 he was a featured performer on 'The Late Show with David Letterman' as part of their second "Drum Solo Week", along with such players as Tony Royster, Jr., Stewart Copeland, and Dennis Chambers.

His influences come from his father's jazz collection and from drummers such as Steve Gadd and Jeff Porcaro. Kit Studies with Joe Hodson, Paul Brodie and Dave Cutler (Berklee '78 graduate - teacher relating to the evolving Gary Chaffee school of rhythmic concepts).

Equipment[link]

Current tour kit (2009)[link]

• Sonor SQ2 Maple Drums & Zildjian Cymbals:
• Drums Sonor: SQ2 in USA (Golden Madrone finish) and SQ2 in Europe (Tribal finish).
  • 8x7" Rack Tom (Thin Shell)
  • 10x8" Rack Tom (Thin Shell)
  • 12x9" Rack Tom (Thin Shell)
  • 15x13" Floor Tom (Medium Shell)
  • 16x14" Floor Tom (Medium Shell)
  • 22x17" Bass Drum (Heavy Shell)
  • 14x5" Birch Snare (Medium Shell)
  • 12x5" Maple Snare (Medium Shell)

• Cymbals - Zildjian
  • 16" Oriental China Trash
  • 5 Custom-Made Chimes
  • 13" K Hi-Hats
  • 18" K Custom Crash
  • 7" custom crash bell
  • 15" A Custom Crash
  • 20" K Ride
  • 18" K Custom Crash
  • 12" Oriental China Trash
  • 18" Z Custom China

(Note: All cymbals are listed in the order they appear on Gavin's kit from left to right. The five custom chimes were made by Gavin himself from some used Zildjian crash cymbals.)^[1]

• Drum Heads - Remo
  • Toms: (8", 10", 12", 15",16") Coated Vintage Emperors - batter, Clear Ambassadors - resonant
  • Bass Drum: (22") Powerstroke 3 Clear- batter,Standard Sonor Head - resonant
  • Snares (14") Coated CS or Coated Pinstripe - batter, Hazy Ambassador - resonant

• Hardware
  • Sonor Stands
  • Pearl Icon 3 Sided Rack
  • S-Hoops fitted to all Toms and Snare drums
  • Puresound Snare Wires (8 strands)
  • Tama Speed Cobra bass drum pedals^[2]
  • Tama Cobra Clutch

• Sticks - Vic Firth
  • Vic Firth Gavin Harrison Signature Model SHAR

Home studio setup[link]

• Mackie 32-8-2 mixing desk
• Apogee 2 Rosettas 800 AD/DA
• Apple iMac Quadcore i7
• Apple Logic 9
• Beyerdynamic DT-150 headphones

• Mics:
• Bass Drum (Sennheiser MKH40)
• Bass Drum (Shure SM91A)
• Bass Drum (Audix D6)
• Snare Top (Audix i5 or Shure SM57)
• Snare Bottom (Shure SM57)
• Hi Hat (AKG CK391)
• Tom1 (Sennheiser 421 or Electro Voice N/D 468)
• Tom2 (Sennheiser 421 or Electro Voice N/D 468)
• Tom3 (Sennheiser 421 or Electro Voice N/D 468)
• Tom4 (Sennheiser 421 or Electro Voice N/D 468)
• Tom5 (Sennheiser 421 or Electro Voice N/D 468)
• Overheads (Pair of Schoeps CMC5's)
• Close Ambience (Pair of Neumann TLM 103's)
• Distant Ambience (Pair of Royer 122's)

Discography[link]

See also[link]

• List of drummers
• List of jazz drummers

References[link]

External links[link]

• Gavin's official website
• Gavin's Drummerworld.com page
• Ask Gavin Harrison - Hundreds of drumming questions answered by Gavin Harrison

Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan at the Independent Music Awards, Webster Hall, New York City.
Background information
Born	(1975-07-01) July 1, 1975 (age 36)
Origin	Detroit, Michigan, United States
Genres	Indie folk, baroque pop, indie pop, electronica
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, bass guitar, banjo, piano, xylophone, vibraphone, English Horn, oboe, drums, recorder[1]
Years active	1999–present
Labels	Asthmatic Kitty Sounds Familyre Orchard
Associated acts	Cryptacize, Danielson Famile, Denison Witmer, Marzuki, My Brightest Diamond, Rosie Thomas, The Welcome Wagon, The National, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner
Website	www.asthmatickitty.com/sufjan-stevens

Sufjan Stevens ( /ˈsuːfjɑːn/ SOOF-yahn; born July 1, 1975) is an American singer-songwriter and musician born in Detroit, Michigan. Stevens first began releasing his music on Asthmatic Kitty, a label co-founded with his stepfather, beginning with the 1999 release, A Sun Came. He is best known for his 2005 album, Illinois, which hit number one in the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart, and for the song "Chicago".

Stevens has released albums of varying styles, from the electronica of Enjoy Your Rabbit and the lo-fi folk of Seven Swans to the symphonic instrumentation of Illinois and Christmas-themed Songs for Christmas. Stevens makes use of a variety of instruments, often playing many of them himself on the same recording,^[2] and writes music in various time signatures. Though he has repeatedly stated an intent to separate his beliefs from his music,^[3][4] Stevens also freely draws from the Bible and other spiritual traditions, incorporating mystical elements into his music often.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Stevens was born in Detroit and lived there until the age of nine, when his family moved to Petoskey, Michigan. In Petoskey he attended the Petoskey High School, the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy and graduated from Harbor Light Christian School. He went on to attend Hope College in Holland, Michigan and earned a Master of Fine Arts from The New School in New York City.^[5]

Sufjan is an Arabic or Persian name^[6] meaning "comes with a sword".^[7] It predates Islam and most famously belonged to Abu Sufyan, a figure from early Islamic history. The name was given to Stevens by the founder of Subud, an inter-faith spiritual community to which his parents belonged when he was born.^[8]

A multi-instrumentalist, Stevens is known for his use of the banjo, but also plays guitar, piano, drums, and several other instruments, often playing all of these on his albums through the use of multitrack recording. While in school, he studied the oboe and English horn, which he also plays on his albums. This multitude of instruments, including string and horn orchestrations, figure prominently in his compositions, giving his music a symphonic sound.

Stevens currently lives in Kensington, Brooklyn, in New York City,^[9] where he makes up the Brooklyn staff of Asthmatic Kitty Records.^[10] His brother Marzuki Stevens is a nationally recognized marathon runner.^[11]

Career[link]

Stevens performing at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee

Stevens began his musical career as a member of Marzuki, a folk-rock band from Holland, Michigan. He also played (and continues to play) various instruments for Danielson Famile. While in school at Hope College, Stevens wrote and recorded his debut solo album, A Sun Came, which he released on Asthmatic Kitty Records. He later moved to New York City, where he was enrolled in a writing program at the New School for Social Research.

While in New York, Stevens composed and recorded the music for his second album, Enjoy Your Rabbit, a song cycle based around the animals of the Chinese Zodiac that delved into electronica.

Stevens followed this with the first album to be released as a part of his "Fifty States Project", a collection of folk songs and instrumentals inspired by his home state of Michigan. The result, the expansive Michigan included odes to cities including Detroit and Flint, the Upper Peninsula, and vacation areas such as Tahquamenon Falls. Melded into the scenic descriptions and characters are his own declarations of faith, sorrow, love, and the regeneration of Michigan.

Following the release of Michigan, Stevens compiled a collection of songs recorded previously into a side project, the album Seven Swans, which was released in March 2004.

Next he released the second in the 50 states project, titled Illinois. Among the subjects explored on Illinois are the cities of Chicago, Decatur and Jacksonville; the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, the state's observance of a holiday in honor of Casimir Pulaski, the poet Carl Sandburg, and the serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

Over the 2005 winter holidays, Stevens recorded an album with Rosie Thomas and Denison Witmer playing banjo and providing vocals. In April 2006, Pitchfork erroneously announced that Stevens and Thomas were having a baby together, but were forced to print a retraction.^[12][13][14] Witmer and Thomas later admitted it was an April Fools' prank.^[15] In December 2006, the collaborative recordings were digitally released by Nettwerk as a Rosie Thomas album titled These Friends of Mine. The album was released in physical form on March 13, 2007.

On September 11, 2006, in Nashville, Tennessee, Stevens debuted a new composition, a ten minute-plus piece titled "Majesty Snowbird".^[16][17] On November 21, 2006, a five CD box set Songs for Christmas was released, which contains originals and Christmas standards recorded every year since 2001 (except 2004). Stevens undertook in the project initially as an exercise to make himself 'appreciate' Christmas more.^[18] The songs were the work of an annual collaboration between Stevens and different collaborators, including minister Vito Aiuto; the songs themselves were distributed to friends and family.

In April 2007, in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, Stevens made unannounced appearances on Thomas's tour in support of this album. In 2007 he did a Take-Away Show acoustic video session shot by Vincent Moon standing on a roof in Cincinnati.^[19] In 2007, he played shows sporadically, including playing at the Kennedy Center to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Millennium Stage concerts.^[20] He was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to create a "music and film work" titled The BQE, described as "a symphonic and cinematic exploration of New York City's infamous Brooklyn-Queens Expressway".^[21] It premiered at BAM's Next Wave festival on November 1–3, 2007.^[22] Stevens has also worked as an essayist, contributing to Asthmatic Kitty Records' "Sidebar" feature and Topic Magazine.^[23] He wrote the introduction to the 2007 edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading, a short story about his early childhood education and learning to read titled How I Trumped Rudolf Steiner and Overcame the Tribulations of Illiteracy, One Snickers Bar at a Time.^[24][25] That winter, he hosted an "Xmas Song Exchange Contest" in which winner Alec Duffy won exclusive rights to the original Stevens song "The Lonely Man of Winter." The track has never been uploaded, and can now only be heard by attending private listening parties at Duffy's home in Brooklyn.^[26][27]

Stevens has contributed to the music of Denison Witmer, Soul Junk, Half-handed Cloud, Brother Danielson, Danielson Famile, Serena Maneesh, Castanets, Will Stratton, Shannon Stephens, Clare & the Reasons, and Liz Janes. In 2007 alone, Stevens played piano on The National's album Boxer, produced and contributed many instrumental tracks to Rosie Thomas's album These Friends of Mine, multiple instruments on Ben + Vesper's album All This Could Kill You and oboe and vocals to David Garland's new album Noise in You.

He has contributed covers of Tim Buckley ("She Is"), Joni Mitchell ("Free Man in Paris"), Daniel Johnston ("Worried Shoes"), John Fahey ("Variation on 'Commemorative Transfiguration & Communion at Magruder Park"), The Innocence Mission ("The Lakes of Canada"), Bob Dylan ("Ring Them Bells") and The Beatles ("What Goes On") to various tribute albums. His versions of "Free Man in Paris" and "What Goes On" are notable for only retaining the lyrics of the original, as Stevens has taken his own interpretation on the melody and arrangement. His rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" has a similar rearranged melody and arrangement as well as a whole new verse.^[28]

His song "The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders" was featured in the 2006 British comedy-drama Driving Lessons, starring Harry Potter's Julie Walters and Rupert Grint. In 2008, he produced Welcome to the Welcome Wagon, the debut album of Brooklyn-based husband and wife duo Vito and Monique Auito, The Welcome Wagon.

In February 2009, Stevens contributed "You Are the Blood" to the AIDS benefit album Dark Was the Night produced by the Red Hot Organization. In April 2009, Stevens uploaded a song about director Sofia Coppola online.^[29] This song was written while Stevens was in college, from a series of songs about names.

Stevens recalled:

"[...] A few weeks later, our dog got hit by a snowplow and I forgot all about the problem of names. Until college, when I learned to play the guitar, and, as an exercise, started writing songs (very poorly executed) in the same way that Henry Ford produced the automobile: assembly-line-style. I wrote songs for the days of the week (poor Monday!). Songs for the planets (poor Pluto!). Songs for the Apostles (poor Judas!). And, finally, when all else failed, I started a series of songs for names. [...] Each piece was a rhetorical, philosophical, musical rumination on all the possible names I had entertained years before when my parents had given me the one chance to change my own. Oh fates! I sang these songs in the privacy of my dorm room, behind closed doors, pillows and cushions stuffed in the air vents so no one would hear. And then I almost failed Latin class, my grades plummeted, my social life dissolved into ping pong tournaments in the residence halls, and, gradually, my interest in music (or anything divine, creative, fruitful, enriching) completely waned. I turned to beer. And cigarettes. And TV sitcoms. And candy bars. Oh well! A perfectly good youth wasted on junk food! That is, until a few months ago, when I came across some of the old name songs, stuffed onto tape cassettes, 4-track recorders, forgotten boxes, forgotten shelves, forgotten hard drives. It was like finding an old diary, or a high school yearbook, senior picture with lens flare and pockmarks, slightly cute and embarrassing. What was I thinking? [...]"^[30]

In September 2009, Stevens began performing four new songs while on his Fall tour, "All Delighted People", "Impossible Soul", "Too Much" and "Age of Adz".^[31] That year Stevens contributed to an album with his step father, Lowell Brams, entitled Music For Insomnia. The album was released December 8, 2009.^[32]

In November 2009, Stevens admitted to Exclaim! Magazine, in regard to the fact that he recently called his fifty-state project a joke, that "I don't really have as much faith in my work as I used to, but I think that's healthy. I think it's allowed me to be less precious about how I work and write. And maybe it's okay for us to take it less seriously."^[33]

In June 2010, The National's Bryce Dessner claimed Stevens is currently at work on his next full length album and stated the band is playing on the new album.^[34]

The Fifty States Project[link]

Beginning with Michigan, Stevens announced an intent to write an album for each of the fifty U.S. states.

Stevens spent the second half of 2004 researching and writing material for the second of these projects, this time focusing his efforts on Illinois. As with Michigan, Stevens used the state of Illinois as a leaping-off point for his more personal explorations of faith, family, love, and location. Though slated for general release on July 5, 2005, the album was briefly delayed by legal issues regarding the use of Superman in the original album cover artwork. In the double vinyl release, a balloon sticker has been placed over Superman on the cover art of the first 5,000 copies. The next printings had an empty space where the Superman image was, as with the CD release.^[35]

The widely acclaimed Illinois was the highest-rated album of 2005 on the Metacritic review aggregator site, based on glowing reviews from Pitchfork Media, The Onion A/V Club, Spin, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, KEXP, and The Guardian.^[36] The 2006 PLUG Independent Music Awards awarded Stevens with the Album Of The Year, Best Album Art/Packaging, and Male Artist Of The Year. Pitchfork Media, No Ripcord, and Paste Magazine named Illinois as the editors' choice for best album of 2005 and Stevens received the 2005 Pantheon prize, awarded to noteworthy albums selling fewer than 500,000 copies, for Illinois.^[37] In April 2006, Stevens announced that 21 pieces of music he had culled from the Illinois recording sessions would be incorporated into a new album, called The Avalanche,^[38] which was released on July 11, 2006.

The next states to be taken on in the project have been reported as Oregon and Rhode Island.^[39] In late 2005 and early 2006 Stevens played a new instrumental track titled "The Maple River". There are various Maple Rivers in the U.S., in Minnesota, Iowa, North or South Dakota. There is also evidence to suggest the possibility of a New York album. Not only is Stevens's current residence in New York City, but at the footnote of his writing piece titled "Friend Rock", Stevens stated that he was reading a biography on Robert Moses, who is a notable New Yorker.^[40] In late 2007, Stevens debuted several new songs about New York, including "BQE", a track about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, one of many urban developments designed and spearheaded by Robert Moses.

Stevens made brief mention to a possible collaboration with Asthmatic Kitty labelmate Rafter on an album about California.^[41] Stevens also recorded "The Lord God Bird"^[42] about the reported sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct, in Arkansas (known as the 'lord god' or 'great god' bird because of its breathtaking appearance). This was in connection with a National Public Radio piece in which "independent radio producers Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister were curious about how Stevens writes his songs."

"Sufjan Stevens is not going to write a record for each of the 50 states after all" was the original text included on the online liner notes for their Mews Too: An Asthmatic Kitty Compilation disc released on February 7, 2006.^[43] This statement was possibly included as a joke, as the text has since been removed and the current liner notes related to Stevens reads, "18. Sufjan Stevens can fold a fitted-sheet (he once worked as a professional folder in a commercial laundromat)."

In an article published on February 24, 2008, in New York Magazine, Stevens implied that New Jersey could be the target of his next state project. After he gave a brief quote about the New Jersey Turnpike, he was asked, "So is this the next musical project?" Sufjan joked, "New Jersey, the musical—an ode to the turnpike."^[44]

The Guardian published an interview with Stevens on October 27, 2009, in which he stated in relation to the Fifty States Project: "I have no qualms about admitting it was a promotional gimmick".^[45]

[edit] The BQE

On May 31, 2007, Asthmatic Kitty announced that Stevens would be premiering a new project titled The BQE in early November 2007. The project, dubbed a "symphonic and cinematic exploration of New York City's infamous Brooklyn-Queens Expressway", was manifested in a live show. The BQE featured an original film by Stevens (shot in Super 8 mm film and standard 16 mm), while Stevens and a backing orchestra provided the live soundtrack. The performance used 36 performers which included a small band, a wind and brass ensemble, string players, horn players, and hula hoopers. There were no lyrics to the music. The BQE was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of their Next Wave Festival and performed on three consecutive nights from November 1–3, 2007.

The performance sold out the 2,109 seat BAM Opera House without any advertising.^[46] After three weeks of rehearsing the piece with the three dozen musicians^[47] involved, he presented the 30-minute composition. The BQE was followed by an additional one hour of concert by Stevens and his orchestra. The BQE won the 2008 Brendan Gill Prize.^[48]

The multimedia package was released on October 20, 2009. The release included a CD of the show's soundtrack, a DVD of Brooklyn-Queens Expressway footage that accompanied the original performance (not a film of the performance itself), a 40-page booklet with liner notes and photos, and a stereoscopic 3D View-Master reel. A limited edition version that features the soundtrack on 180-gram vinyl and a 40-page BQE-themed comic book starring the show's hula hooping wonder women, the Hooper Heroes, was also released.

[edit] Run Rabbit Run

On October 6, 2009 Stevens' label released an album of versions of his 2001 album Enjoy Your Rabbit rearranged for strings and performed by the Osso String Quartet, entitled Run Rabbit Run.^[49]

[edit] All Delighted People and The Age of Adz

Stevens returned to recording and touring in 2010 after a hiatus—he's pictured here performing in 2011

In 2010, Stevens was featured on The National's album High Violet, released in May, and sang backing vocals for the band on The Late Show with David Letterman.^[50] Following the release of High Violet, band frontman Matt Berninger mentioned that Stevens was recording a new album in the band's studio and that The National would appear on some of the tracks. In early August, Stevens announced North American tour dates across dozens of cities. On August 20, 2010, Stevens suddenly and unexpectedly released a new collection of tracks, the All Delighted People EP, for digital download. The EP is built around two versions of the title track, "All Delighted People."^[51] The EP surprisingly rose to #27 on the Billboard 200 albums solely through its digital sales.^[52] On August 26, Asthmatic Kitty announced that Stevens would release his newest full length album, The Age of Adz, on October 12.^[53] NPR streamed the album until it was released on October 12, 2010.^[54]

The two albums featured a wide range of arrangements, from orchestral to electronic. Song lengths were also extended; the track "Djohariah" from All Delighted People is 17 minutes long, while "Impossible Soul" from The Age of Adz is 25 minutes long. The albums also feature many styles from disco to folk.

Stevens has stated in interviews that in 2009/10, he suffered from a mysterious debilitating virus infection that affected his nervous system. He experienced chronic pain and was forced to stop working on music for several months.^[55] He said: "The Age of Adz, is, in some ways, a result of that process of working through health issues and getting much more in touch with my physical self. That's why I think the record's really obsessed with sensation and has a hysterical melodrama to it."^[56]

On October 12, 2010, Stevens began his North American tour in Montreal, featuring virtually all new material. The tour lasted just over a month and ended on November 15, 2010 in New York.

Stevens toured Australia and New Zealand in early 2011, featured as part of The Sydney Festival, and appeared on-stage with The National during the last of three sold-out Auckland shows.^[57] He also toured Europe and the United Kingdom in April and May 2011, playing there for the first time in five years.^[58] His shows mostly consisted of new material, but he did play many older tracks from Seven Swans and Illinois. Stevens ended the Age of Adz tour with two shows in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York.

On February 27, 2012, it was announced Stevens would release a collaborative EP called Beak & Claw on March 20th with artists Son Lux and Serengeti under the name s / s / s on the Anticon record label.^[59]

Themes[link]

Stevens' stage shows feature elaborate lighting, costumes, and choreography

Many of his songs have spiritual allusions. He says he does not try to make music for the sake of preaching. "I don't think music media is the real forum for theological discussions," says Stevens. "I think I've said things and sung about things that probably weren't appropriate for this kind of forum. And I just feel like it's not my work or my place to be making claims and statements, because I often think it's misunderstood."^[4]

Such themes are most notable on his album Seven Swans, the songs "Abraham", "Seven Swans", "To Be Alone with You", "He Woke Me Up Again", "We Won't Need Legs to Stand" and "The Transfiguration" refer to Christian themes. In "Abraham", Stevens recounts the Old Testament story in the Book of Genesis. The lyrics of "The Transfiguration" appear to follow the Biblical accounts of Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9: 1–8, and Luke 9:28–36. The title of "All the Trees of the Fields Will Clap Their Hands" is a quote from Isaiah 55:12.^[60]

During a 2004 interview with Adrian Pannett for Comes with a Smile magazine, when asked how important faith was to his music, he responded, "I don't like talking about that stuff in the public forum because, I think, certain themes and convictions are meant for personal conversation."^[3]

Sufjan's most recent music features less clear statements about religion and spirituality, arousing question of his current ideas on spirituality. In an interview released on October 12, 2010 (the same day as Sufjan's album The Age of Adz released), Sufjan confirmed he is a Christian.^[61]

Discography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (January 2011)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sufjan Stevens

• Sufjan Stevens – official site
• Asthmatic Kitty – label page
• Sounds Familyre – label page
• Purevolume – official Purevolume site
• Sufjan Stevens – Rateyourmusic
• Photos from Town Hall
• Interview with Vish Khanna
• Interview with Sufjan Stevens by Gerry Visco, New York Press, "Give Me Your Ugly"
• "All Quiet on the Midwestern Front," Cover Story by Susan Moll, Stomp & Stammer, September 2005
• Sufjan Stevens performance from Austin City Limits, September 17, 2006
• Live concert from the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, January 2011 Sufjan Stevens: "Age of Adz", Sydney Opera House, January 2011.

John Cleese
Cleese in 2008
Born	John Marwood Cleese (1939-10-27) 27 October 1939 (age 72) Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, UK
Residence	Los Angeles, California
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Downing College, Cambridge, Clifton College
Occupation	Actor, comedian
Years active	1961–present
Influenced by	Spike Milligan, the Goons, Dick Emery, William Shakespeare
Home town	London, England
Height	6'5" (1.96 m)
Political party	Liberal Democrat
Spouse	Connie Booth (m. 1968–1978) «start: (1968-02-20)–end+1: (1978-09)»"Marriage: Connie Booth to John Cleese" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/John_Cleese) (divorced) Barbara Trentham (m. 1981–1990) «start: (1981-02-15)–end+1: (1990-10-11)»"Marriage: Barbara Trentham to John Cleese" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/John_Cleese) (divorced) Alyce Eichelberger (m. 1992–2008) «start: (1992-12-28)–end+1: (2008-02)»"Marriage: Alyce Eichelberger to John Cleese" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/John_Cleese) (divorced)
Partner	Barbie Orr (2008–2009) Jennifer Wade (2010–present)
Children	Cynthia Cleese (b. 1971) with Connie Booth Camilla Cleese (b. 1984) with Barbara Trentham
Website
TheJohnCleese.com

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 became a member of 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, 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. He also starred in Clockwise, and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films as R/Q, two Harry Potter films and three Shrek films.

With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films.

Early life[link]

Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, the only child of Muriel Evelyn (née Cross) (b.1899), and Reginald Francis Cleese (b. 1893), who worked in insurance sales.^[1] His family's surname was previously "Cheese", but his father changed it to "Cleese" in 1915 upon joining the Army.

Cleese was educated at St Peter's Preparatory School, where he was a star pupil, receiving a prize for English studies and doing well at sports, including cricket and boxing. At 13 he received an exhibition to Clifton College, an English public school in Bristol. He was tall as a child and was well over 6 ft when he arrived there. While at the school he is said to have defaced the school grounds for a prank by painting footprints to suggest that the school's statue of Field Marshal Earl Haig had got down from his plinth and gone to the toilet.^[2] Cleese played cricket for the first team, and after initial indifference he did well academically, passing 8 O-Levels and 3 A-Levels in mathematics, physics and chemistry.^[3][4]

After leaving school, he went back to his prep school to teach science, English, geography, history and Latin^[5] (he drew on his Latin teaching experience later for a scene in Life of Brian in which he corrects Brian's badly written Latin graffiti^[6]) before taking up a place he had won at Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied Law and joined the Cambridge Footlights. There he met his future writing partner Graham Chapman. Cleese wrote extra material for the 1961 Footlights Revue I Thought I Saw It Move,^[7][8] and was Registrar for the Footlights Club during 1962, as well as being one of the cast members for the 1962 Footlights Revue Double Take!^[7][8] He graduated from Cambridge in 1963 with a 2:1. Despite his successes on The Frost Report, his father would send him cuttings from the Daily Telegraph offering management jobs in places like Marks and Spencer.^[9]

Career[link]

Pre-Python[link]

Cleese was one of the script writers, as well as being a member of the cast, for the 1963 Footlights Revue A Clump of Plinths,^[7][8] which was so successful during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that it was renamed Cambridge Circus and taken to the West End in London and then on a tour of New Zealand and Broadway, with the cast also appearing in some of the revue's sketches on The Ed Sullivan Show in September 1964.^[8]

After Cambridge Circus, Cleese briefly stayed in America, performing on and Off-Broadway. While performing in the musical Half a Sixpence,^[8] Cleese met future Python Terry Gilliam, as well as American actress Connie Booth, whom he married on 20 February 1968.^[8]

He was soon offered work as a writer with BBC Radio, where he worked on several programmes, most notably as a sketch writer for The Dick Emery Show. The success of the Footlights Revue led to the recording of a short series of half-hour radio programmes, called I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, that were so popular that the BBC commissioned a regular series with the same title that ran from 1965 to 1974. Cleese returned to Britain and joined the cast.^[8] In many episodes, he is credited as "John Otto Cleese".

Also in 1965, Cleese and Chapman began writing on The Frost Report. The writing staff chosen for The Frost Report consisted of a number of writers and performers who would go on to make names for themselves in comedy. They included co-performers from I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and future Goodies Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor, and also Frank Muir, Barry Cryer, Marty Feldman, Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, Dick Vosburgh and future Python members Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. It was while working on The Frost Report, in fact, that the future Pythons developed the writing styles that would make their collaboration significant. Cleese and Chapman's sketches often involved authority figures, some of which were performed by Cleese, while Jones and Palin were both infatuated with filmed scenes that open with idyllic countryside panoramas. Idle was one of those charged with writing David Frost's monologue. It was during this period that Cleese met and befriended influential British comedian Peter Cook.

It was as an actual performer on the Frost Report that Cleese achieved his breakthrough on British television as a comedy actor, appearing as the tall, patrician figure on the classic class sketch, contrasting comically in a line-up with the shorter, middle class Ronnie Barker and the even-shorter, working class Ronnie Corbett. Such was the popularity of the series that in 1966 Cleese and Chapman were invited to work as writers and performers with Brooke-Taylor and Feldman on At Last the 1948 Show,^[8] during which time the Four Yorkshiremen sketch was written by all four writers/performers (the Four Yorkshiremen sketch is now better known as a Monty Python sketch).^[10] Cleese and Chapman also wrote episodes for the first series of Doctor in the House (and later Cleese wrote six episodes of Doctor at Large on his own in 1971). These series were successful, and in 1969 Cleese and Chapman were offered their very own series. However, owing to Chapman's alcoholism, Cleese found himself bearing an increasing workload in the partnership and was therefore unenthusiastic about doing a series with just the two of them. He had found working with Palin on The Frost Report an enjoyable experience and invited him to join the series. Palin had previously been working on Do Not Adjust Your Set with Idle and Jones, with Terry Gilliam creating the animations. The four of them had, on the back of the success of Do Not Adjust Your Set, been offered a series for Thames Television, which they were waiting to begin when Cleese's offer arrived. Palin agreed to work with Cleese and Chapman in the meantime, bringing with him Gilliam, Jones, and Idle.

Monty Python[link]

Monty Python's Flying Circus ran for four seasons from October 1969 to December 1974 on BBC Television, though with only limited participation of Cleese in the last six shows. Cleese's two primary characterisations were as a sophisticate and a stressed-out loony. He portrayed the former as a series of announcers, TV show hosts, and government officials (for example, "The Ministry of Silly Walks"). The latter is perhaps best represented in the "Cheese Shop" and by Cleese's Mr Praline character, the man with a dead Norwegian Blue parrot and a menagerie of other animals all named "Eric". He was also known for his working class "Sergeant Major" character, who worked as a Police Sergeant, Roman Centurion, etc. He is also seen as the opening announcer with the now famous line "And now for something completely different", although in its premiere in the sketch "Man with Three Buttocks", the phrase was spoken by Eric Idle.

Partnership with Graham Chapman[link]

	The Dead Parrot sketch performed on Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1969 noicon listen to a clip from the sketch.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Along with Gilliam's animations, Cleese's work with Graham Chapman provided Python with its darkest and angriest moments, and many of his characters display the seething suppressed rage that later characterised his portrayal of Basil Fawlty.

Unlike Palin and Jones, Cleese and Chapman actually wrote together—in the same room; Cleese claims that their writing partnership involved his sitting with pen and paper, doing most of the work, while Chapman sat back, not speaking for long periods, then suddenly coming out with an idea that often elevated the sketch to a different level. A classic example of this is the "Dead Parrot" sketch, envisaged by Cleese as a satire on poor customer service, which was originally to have involved a broken toaster and later a broken car (this version was actually performed and broadcast on the pre-Python special How To Irritate People). It was Chapman's suggestion to change the faulty item into a dead parrot, and he also suggested that the parrot be specifically a Norwegian Blue, giving the sketch a surreal air which made it far more memorable.

Their humour often involved ordinary people in ordinary situations behaving absurdly for no obvious reason. Like Chapman, Cleese's poker face, clipped middle class accent, and imposing height allowed him to appear convincingly as a variety of authority figures, such as policemen, detectives, Nazi officers or government officials—which he would then proceed to undermine. Most famously, in the "Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch (actually written by Palin and Jones), Cleese exploits his stature as the crane-legged civil servant performing a grotesquely elaborate walk to his office.

Chapman and Cleese also specialised in sketches where two characters would conduct highly articulate arguments over completely arbitrary subjects, such as in the "cheese shop", the "dead parrot" sketch and "The Argument Sketch", where Cleese plays a stone-faced bureaucrat employed to sit behind a desk and engage people in pointless, trivial bickering. All of these roles were opposite Palin (who Cleese often claims is his favourite Python to work with)—the comic contrast between the towering Cleese's crazed aggression and the shorter Palin's shuffling inoffensiveness is a common feature in the series. Occasionally, the typical Cleese-Palin dynamic is reversed, as in "Fish Licence", wherein Palin plays the bureaucrat with whom Cleese is trying to work.

Though the programme lasted four series, by the start of series 3, Cleese was growing tired of dealing with Chapman's alcoholism. He felt, too, that the show's scripts had declined in quality. For these reasons, he became restless and decided to move on. Though he stayed for the third series, he officially left the group before the fourth season. Despite this, he remained friendly with the group, and all six began writing Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Cleese received a credit on episodes of the fourth series which used material from these sessions, and even makes a brief appearance in one episode as the voice of a cartoon in the "Hamlet" episode, though he was officially unconnected with the fourth series. Cleese returned to the troupe to co-write and co-star in the Monty Python films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python's Life of Brian and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, and participated in various live performances over the years.

Post-Python[link]

From 1970 to 1973, Cleese served as rector of the University of St Andrews.^[11] His election proved a milestone for the university, revolutionising and modernising the post. For instance, the rector was traditionally entitled to appoint an "Assessor", a deputy to sit in his place at important meetings in his absence. Cleese changed this into a position for a student, elected across campus by the student body, resulting in direct access and representation for the student body.^[12]

Around this time, Cleese worked with comedian Les Dawson on his sketch/stand-up show Sez Les. The differences between the two physically (the tall, lean Cleese and the short, stout Dawson) and socially (the public school, and then Cambridge-educated Cleese and the working class, self-educated Mancunian Dawson) were marked, but both worked well together from series 8 onwards until the series ended in 1976.^[13][14]

Cleese achieved greater prominence in the United Kingdom as the neurotic hotel manager Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, which he co-wrote with his wife Connie Booth. The series won three BAFTA awards when produced and in 2000, it topped the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes. The series also featured Prunella Scales as Basil's acerbic wife Sybil, Andrew Sachs as the much abused Spanish waiter Manuel ("...he's from Barcelona"), and Booth as waitress Polly, the series' voice of sanity. Cleese based Basil Fawlty on a real person, Donald Sinclair, whom he had encountered in 1970 while the Monty Python team were staying at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay while filming inserts for their television series. Reportedly, Cleese was inspired by Sinclair's mantra, "I could run this hotel just fine, if it weren't for the guests." He later described Sinclair as "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met," although Sinclair's widow has said her husband was totally misrepresented in the series. During the Pythons' stay, Sinclair allegedly threw Idle's briefcase out of the hotel "in case it contained a bomb," complained about Gilliam's "American" table manners, and threw a bus timetable at another guest after they dared to ask the time of the next bus to town.

The first series was screened from 19 September 1975 on BBC 2, initially to poor reviews,^[15] but gained momentum when repeated on BBC 1 the following year. Despite this, a second series did not air until 1979, by which time Cleese's marriage to Booth had ended, but they revived their collaboration for the second series. Fawlty Towers consisted of only twelve episodes; Cleese and Booth both maintain that this was to avoid compromising the quality of the series.

Muppet Show[link]

In December 1977, Cleese appeared as a guest star on The Muppet Show. Cleese was a fan of the show, and co-wrote much of the episode. He appears in a "Pigs in Space" segment as a pirate trying to hijack the spaceship Swinetrek, and also helps Gonzo restore his arms to "normal" size after Gonzo's cannonball catching act goes wrong. During the show's closing number, Cleese refuses to sing the famous show tune from Man of La Mancha, "The Impossible Dream". Kermit the Frog apologises and the curtain re-opens with Cleese now costumed as a Viking trying some Wagnerian opera as part of a duet with Sweetums. Once again, Cleese protests to Kermit, and gives the frog one more chance. This time, he is costumed as a Mexican maraca soloist. He has finally had enough and protests that he is leaving the show, saying "You were supposed to be my host. How can you do this to me? Kermit – I am your guest!". The cast joins in with their parody of "The Impossible Dream", singing "This is your guest, to follow that star...". During the crowd's applause that follows the song, he pretends to strangle Kermit until he realises the crowd loves him and accepts the accolades. During the show's finale, as Kermit thanks him, he shows up with a fictional album, his own new vocal record John Cleese: A Man & His Music, and encourages everyone to buy a copy.^[16]

This would not be Cleese's final appearance with the Muppets. In their 1981 film The Great Muppet Caper, Cleese does a cameo appearance as Neville, a local homeowner. As part of the appearance, Miss Piggy borrows his house as a way to impress Kermit the Frog.

Awards[link]

Cleese won the TV Times award for Funniest Man On TV – 1978-79.^[17]

1980s and 1990s[link]

During the 1980s and 1990s, Cleese focused on film, though he did work with Peter Cook in his one-off TV special Peter Cook and Co. in 1980. In the same year Cleese played Petruchio, in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in the BBC Television Shakespeare series. In 1981 he starred with Sean Connery and Michael Palin in the Terry Gilliam-directed Time Bandits as Robin Hood. He also participated in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982), and starred in The Secret Policeman's Ball for Amnesty International. In 1985, Cleese had a small dramatic role as a sheriff in Silverado, which had an all-star cast that included Kevin Kline, with whom he would star with in A Fish Called Wanda three years later. In 1986, he starred in Clockwise as an uptight school headmaster obsessed with punctuality and constantly getting in to trouble during a journey to a headmasters' conference.

Cleese at the 1989 Academy Awards

Timed with the 1987 UK elections, he appeared in a video promoting proportional representation.^[18]

In 1988, he wrote and starred in A Fish Called Wanda, as the lead, Archie Leach, along with Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin. Wanda was a commercial and critical success, and Cleese was nominated for an Academy Award for his script. Cynthia Cleese starred as Leach's daughter.

Graham Chapman was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1989; Cleese, Michael Palin, Peter Cook and Chapman's partner David Sherlock, witnessed Chapman's death. Chapman's death occurred a day before the 20th anniversary of the first broadcast of Flying Circus, with Jones commenting, "the worst case of party-pooping in all history." Cleese's eulogy at Chapman's memorial service—in which he "became the first person ever at a British memorial service to say 'fuck'"—has since become legendary.^[19]

Cleese would later play a supporting role in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein alongside Branagh himself and Robert De Niro. He also produced and acted in a number of successful business training films, including Meetings, Bloody Meetings and More Bloody Meetings. These were produced by his company Video Arts.

With Robin Skynner, the group analyst and family therapist, Cleese wrote two books on relationships: Families and How to Survive Them, and Life and How to Survive It. The books are presented as a dialogue between Skynner and Cleese.

In 1996, Cleese declined the British honour of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). The follow-up to A Fish Called Wanda, Fierce Creatures—which again starred Cleese alongside Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Palin—was also released that year, but was greeted with mixed reception by critics and audiences. Cleese has since often stated that making the second film had been a mistake. When asked by his friend, director and restaurant critic Michael Winner, what he would do differently if he could live his life again, Cleese responded, "I wouldn’t have married Alyce Faye Eichelberger and I wouldn’t have made Fierce Creatures."^[20]

In 1999, Cleese appeared in the James Bond film, The World Is Not Enough as Q's assistant, referred to by Bond as "R". In 2002, when Cleese reprised his role in Die Another Day, the character was promoted, making Cleese the new quartermaster (Q) of MI6. In 2004, Cleese was featured as Q in the video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, featuring his likeness and voice. Cleese did not appear in the subsequent Bond films, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

2000 to present[link]

Cleese is Provost's Visiting Professor at Cornell University, after having been Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large from 1999–2006. He makes occasional, well-received appearances on the Cornell campus. He sold his home in the town of Montecito, California in 2008^[21][22] and planned on moving to Bath in the UK where he has a home on the Royal Crescent. In 2011 Cleese was quoted as saying that for tax purposes he might have to live in Switzerland or Monaco.^[23][24][25]

In 2001, Cleese was cast in the comedy Rat Race as the eccentric hotel owner Donald P. Sinclair, the name of the Torquay hotel owner on who he had based the character of Basil Fawlty.^[26] In 2002, Cleese made a cameo appearance in the film The Adventures of Pluto Nash in which he played "James", a computerised chauffeur of a hover car stolen by the title character (played by Eddie Murphy). The vehicle is subsequently destroyed in a chase, leaving the chauffeur stranded in a remote place on the moon. In 2003, Cleese appeared as Lyle Finster on the US sitcom Will & Grace. His character's daughter, Lorraine, was played by Minnie Driver. In the series, Lyle Finster briefly marries Karen Walker (Megan Mullally). In 2004, Cleese was credited as co-writer of a DC Comics graphic novel titled Superman: True Brit.^[27] Part of DC's "Elseworlds" line of imaginary stories, True Brit, mostly written by Kim Howard Johnson, suggests what might have happened had Superman's rocket ship landed in Britain, not America.

From 10 November to 9 December 2005, Cleese toured New Zealand with his stage show, John Cleese—His Life, Times and Current Medical Problems. Cleese described it as "a one-man show with several people in it, which pushes the envelope of acceptable behaviour in new and disgusting ways." The show was developed in New York with William Goldman and includes Cleese's daughter Camilla as a writer and actor (the shows were directed by Australian Bille Brown). His assistant of many years, Garry Scott-Irvine, also appeared, and was listed as a co-producer. It then played in universities in California and Arizona from 10 January to 25 March 2006 under the title "Seven Ways to Skin an Ocelot".^[28] His voice can be downloaded for directional guidance purposes as a downloadable option on some personal GPS-navigation device models by company TomTom.

In a 2005 poll of comedians and comedy insiders, The Comedians' Comedian, Cleese was voted second only to Peter Cook. Also in 2005, a long-standing piece of Internet humour, "The Revocation of Independence of the United States", was wrongly attributed to Cleese. In 2006, Cleese hosted a television special of football’s greatest kicks, goals, saves, bloopers, plays and penalties, as well as football’s influence on culture (including the famous Monty Python sketch “Philosophy Football”), featuring interviews with pop culture icons Dave Stewart, Dennis Hopper and Henry Kissinger, as well as football greats including Pelé, Mia Hamm and Thierry Henry. The Art of Soccer with John Cleese^[29] was released in North America on DVD in January 2009 by BFS Entertainment & Multimedia.

Cleese lent his voice to the BioWare video game Jade Empire. His role was that of an "outlander" named Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard, stranded in the Imperial City of the Jade Empire. His character is essentially a British colonialist stereotype who refers to the people of the Jade Empire as "savages in need of enlightenment". His armour has the design of a fork stuck in a piece of cheese. He also had a cameo appearance in the computer game Starship Titanic as "The Bomb" (credited as "Kim Bread"), designed by Douglas Adams.^[30]

In 2007, Cleese appeared in ads for Titleist as a golf course designer named "Ian MacCallister", who represents "Golf Designers Against Distance". Also in 2007, he started filming the sequel to The Pink Panther, titled The Pink Panther 2, with Steve Martin and Aishwarya Rai. On 27 September 2007, The Podcast Network announced it had signed a deal with Cleese to produce a series of video podcasts called HEADCAST to be published on TPN's website. Cleese released the first episode of this series in April 2008 on his own website, headcast.co.uk.

Cleese collaborated with Los Angeles Guitar Quartet member William Kanengiser in 2008, on the text to the performance piece "The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha". Cleese, as narrator, and the LAGQ premiered the work in Santa Barbara. 2008 also saw reports of Cleese working on a musical version of A Fish Called Wanda with his daughter Camilla. He also said that he is working on a new film screenplay for the first time since 1996's Fierce Creatures. Cleese collaborates on it with writer Lisa Hogan, under the current working title "A Taxing Time". According to him, it is "about the lengths to which people will go to avoid tax. [...] It's based on what happened to me when I cashed in my UK pension and moved to Santa Barbara."^[31]

At the end of March 2009, Cleese published his first article as 'Contributing Editor' to The Spectator: "The real reason I had to join The Spectator".^[32] Cleese has also hosted comedy galas at the Montreal Just for Laughs comedy festival in 2006, and again in 2009. He had to cancel the 2009 appearance due to prostatitis, but hosted it a few days later.^[33] Towards the end of 2009 and into 2010, Cleese appeared in a series of television adverts for the Norwegian electric goods shop chain, Elkjøp.^[34] In March 2010 it was announced that Cleese would be playing Jasper in the video game "Fable III".^[35]

In 2009 and 2010, Cleese toured Scandinavia and the US with his Alimony Tour Year One and Year Two. In May 2010, it was announced that this tour would extend to the UK (his first tour in UK), set for May 2011 – The show is dubbed the "Alimony Tour" in reference to the financial implications of Cleese's divorce. The UK tour started in Cambridge on 3 May, visiting Birmingham, Salford, Liverpool, Oxford, Leeds, Edinburgh and finishing in Palmerston North, New Zealand.^[36]

In October 2010, Cleese was featured in the launch of an advertising campaign by The Automobile Association for a new home emergency response product.^[37] He appeared as a man who believed the AA could not help him during a series of disasters, including water pouring through his ceiling, with the line "The AA? For faulty showers?" During 2010, Cleese appeared in a series of radio advertisements for the Canadian insurance company Pacific Blue Cross, in which he plays a character called "Dr. Nigel Bilkington, Chief of Medicine for American General Hospital".^[38][39]

In 2012, Cleese was cast in Hunting Elephants, an upcoming heist comedy by Israeli filmmaker Reshef Levi.^[40][41]

Admiration for black humour[link]

In his Alimony Tour Cleese explained the origin of his fondness for black humour, the only thing that he inherited from his mother. Examples of it are the Dead Parrot sketch, his clip for the 1992 BBC2 mockumentary "A Question of Taste", the Undertakers sketch, the Vomit episode in The Meaning of Life and his eulogy at Graham Chapman's memorial service.

Personal life[link]

1960s to 1980s[link]

Cleese met Connie Booth in the US during the late 1960s and the couple married in 1968.^[15] In 1971, Booth gave birth to Cynthia Cleese, their only child. With Booth, Cleese wrote the scripts for and co-starred in both series of the TV series Fawlty Towers, even though the two were actually divorced before the second series was finished and aired. Cleese and Booth are said to have remained close friends since.^[42]

Cleese married American actress Barbara Trentham in 1981.^[43] Their daughter Camilla, Cleese's second child, was born in 1984. He and Trentham divorced in 1990. During this time, Cleese moved from the United Kingdom to Los Angeles.^[44]

1990s on[link]

On 28 December 1992 he married American psychotherapist Alyce Faye Eichelberger. In January 2008 the couple announced they had split. The divorce was settled in December 2008. The divorce settlement left Eichelberger with £12 million in finance and assets, including £600,000 a year for seven years. Cleese stated that "What I find so unfair is that if we both died today, her children would get much more than mine".^[45]

In April 2010, Cleese revealed on The Graham Norton Show on BBC One that he had started a new relationship with a woman 31 years his junior, Jennifer Wade.^[46][47][48]

Cleese has a passion for lemurs.^[49][50] Following the 1997 comedy film Fierce Creatures, in which the ring-tailed lemur played a key role, he hosted the 1998 BBC documentary In the Wild: Operation Lemur with John Cleese, which tracked the progress of a reintroduction of Black-and-white Ruffed Lemurs back into the Betampona Reserve in Madagascar. The project had been partly funded by Cleese's donation of the proceeds from the London premier of Fierce Creatures.^[50][51] Cleese is quoted as saying, "I adore lemurs. They're extremely gentle, well-mannered, pretty and yet great fun... I should have married one."^[49]

Political views[link]

Currently a member of the Liberal Democrats after previously being a Labour party voter, Cleese switched to the SDP after their formation in 1981, and during the 1987 general election, Cleese recorded a nine minute party political broadcast for the SDP-Liberal Alliance, which spoke about the similarities and failures of the other two parties in a more humorous tone than standard political broadcasts. Cleese has since appeared in broadcasts for the Liberal Democrats, in the 1997 general election and narrating a radio election broadcast for the party during the 2001 general election.^[52] In April 2010, Cleese tweeted his support for the Lib Dems after Nick Clegg performed strongly in the first leaders' debate on ITV1, stating: "Well, well, well. First leaders debate, and LibDems do so well. Good luck to them."^[53]

In 2011, Cleese declared his admiration for Britain's coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, saying: "I think what’s happening at the moment is rather interesting. The Coalition has made everything a little more courteous and a little more flexible. I think it was quite good that the Liberal Democrats had to compromise a bit with the Tories." He also criticised the previous Labour government, commenting: "Although my inclinations are slightly left-of-centre, I was terribly disappointed with the last Labour government. Gordon Brown lacked emotional intelligence and was never a leader." Cleese also declared his support for proportional representation.^[54]

In April 2011, Cleese revealed that he had declined a life peerage for political services in 1999. Outgoing leader of the Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown, had put forward the suggestion shortly before he stepped down, with the idea that Cleese would take the party whip and sit as a working peer, but the actor quipped that he "realised this involved being in England in the winter and I thought that was too much of a price to pay."^[55]

Cleese expressed support for Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, donating US$2,300 to his campaign and offering his services as a speech writer.^[56] He also criticised Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin—saying that "Michael Palin is no longer the funniest Palin"^[57]— and wrote a satirical poem about Fox News commentator Sean Hannity for Countdown with Keith Olbermann.^[58]

Radio credits[link]

• I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again
• I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (1972–73)

Television credits[link]

Major roles[link]

• The Frost Report (1966)
• Frost on Sunday
• At Last the 1948 Show
• How to Irritate People (1968) with Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, Connie Booth and Tim Brooke-Taylor
• Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–74)
• Sez Les (1971, 1974)
• Fawlty Towers (1975, 1979)
• Cheers (episode "Simon Says") (1987), he won an Emmy Award for best actor in a guest starring role
• The Taming of the Shrew (1980) as Petruchio
• True Stories: Peace in our Time? as Neville Chamberlain

As host[link]

• The Human Face
• Wine for the Confused
• We Are Most Amused: Master of Ceremonies for a stand-up comedy show celebrating Prince Charles's 60th birthday.

Guest appearances[link]

• The Avengers (1968), guest appearance as Marcus Rugman (egg clown-face collector) in the episode Look (Stop Me if You've Heard this One)...
• The Goodies (1973), guest cameo appearance as a Genie in the episode The Goodies and the Beanstalk
• Ripping Yarns (1979), guest cameo appearance as "Passer-by" in the episode Golden Gordon^[59]
• Doctor Who (1979), guest cameo appearance as an Art Lover in the episode City of Death as a favour to writer/script editor Douglas Adams
• The Muppet Show (1977)
• Cheers (Season 5, Episode 21, Simon Says) as Dr. Simon Finch-Royce, an acquaintance of Kelsey Grammer's character Frasier Crane and fellow psychiatrist, who offers pre-marriage advice to Sam and Diane, much to his later chagrin.
• Last of the Summer Wine (1993), guest cameo appearance in the episode Welcome to Earth.
• 25 Years of Last of the Summer Wine (1997).
• 3rd Rock from the Sun (1998–2001) as recurring character Dr. Liam Neesam.
• Casper & Mandrilaftalen (1999) both as the repairman of the purple Gunrack, and as the Danish soccer coach Bosse Bo Johansson.
• Wednesday 9:30 (8:30 Central) (2002) as Red
• Will & Grace (2003–2004) as recurring character Lyle Finster.
• Numerous commercials, including for supermarket chain Sainsbury's, snack firm Planters and a British government Stop Smoking campaign.
• Party political broadcasts for the Liberal Democrats and predecessor, the SDP-Liberal Alliance.
• In November 2009 commercials, in which he appears for Swedish electrical appliance chain "Elgiganten", began broadcasting in Sweden, as well as broadcasting in Denmark in late 2010.
• Song "Don't Mention The World Cup" animated video played on ITV, BBC and Channel 4 News, June 2006.
• Batteries Not Included—gadget show on UKTV channel Dave (2008).
• Entourage as himself, season 7 finale (2010).
• Ronnie Corbett's Comedy Britain as Himself.

Filmography[link]

Video game credits[link]

• Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time (1994) 7th Level
• Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail (1996) 7th Level
• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1997) Panasonic
• Starship Titanic (1998) Simon & Schuster Interactive (voice of the Bomb) — (Credited as Kim Bread)
• 007 Racing (2000) Electronic Arts
• The World Is Not Enough (2000) Electronic Arts
• James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (2004) Electronic Arts
• Trivial Pursuit: Unhinged (2004) Atari
• Jade Empire (2005) BioWare (as Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard)
• Shrek the Third (2007) King Harold, Narrator
• Fable III (2010) Jasper

Awards[link]

• Academy Awards
  • (1988) Nominated—Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay / A Fish Called Wanda (shared with Charles Crichton)
• Golden Globe Awards
  • (1988) Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy / A Fish Called Wanda
• BAFTA Awards
  • (1970) Nominated—BAFTA Television Award for "Best Light Entertainment Performance" / Monty Python's Flying Circus
  • (1971) Nominated—BAFTA Television Award for "Best Light Entertainment Performance" / Monty Python's Flying Circus
  • (1976) Nominated—BAFTA Television Award for "Best Light Entertainment Performance" / Fawlty Towers
  • (1980) Won—BAFTA Television Award for "Best Light Entertainment Performance" / Fawlty Towers
  • (1989) Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay / A Fish Called Wanda
  • (also 1989) Won—BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
• Primetime Emmy Awards
  • (1987) Won—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor - Comedy Series / Cheers (as Dr. Simon Finch-Royce)
  • (1998) Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor – Comedy Series / 3rd Rock from the Sun (as Dr. Liam Neesam)
  • (2002) Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for "Outstanding Nonfiction Special" / The Human Face
  • (2004) Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor – Comedy Series / Will & Grace (as Lyle Finster)
• Writers Guild of America
  • (1989) Nominated—Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay / A Fish Called Wanda (shared with Charles Crichton)

Other credits[link]

• In 2003, John Cleese took part in Mike Oldfield's re-recording of the 1973 hit Tubular Bells, Tubular Bells 2003. He took over the "Master of Ceremonies" duties in the ‘Finale’ part, in which he announced the various instruments eccentrically, from the late Vivian Stanshall.^[60]
• Cleese recorded the voice of God for Spamalot, the musical based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
• Cleese narrated the audio version of C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters.
• In the mid 1980s, Cleese starred in British advertisements for Compaq computers and Schweppes beverages.
• In the late-1990s, Cleese appeared in a set of poorly-received commercials for the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's. Around the same time, his Fawlty Towers co-star, Prunella Scales, appeared in more well-received commercials for rival chain Tesco.
• He has enunciated a set of directions for the TomTom in-car navigation system. This allows itself humorous notes at non-critical moments, for instance when asking for a U-turn and when signing off: "I'm not going to carry your baggage—from now on, you're on your own" and "Bear right..Beaver left."
• He plays the voice of Samuel the Sheep in the 2006 adaptation of Charlotte's Web. Samuel repeatedly tells the other sheep to be individuals, not sheep. This is a reference to Monty Python's Life of Brian.
• He has a speaking part at the end of the Alan Parsons song "Chomolungma" from the album A Valid Path.
• In 2008, John Cleese appeared in a humorous TV commercial in Poland advertising a bank loan.
• From 2006 to 2008 John Cleese has appeared in humorous TV commercials in Iceland advertising Kaupþing.

Honours and tributes[link]

• A species of lemur, the Bemaraha woolly lemur (Avahi cleesei), has been named in his honour. John Cleese has mentioned this in television interviews. Also there is mention of this honour in "New Scientist"^[61]—and John Cleese's response to the honour.^[62]
• An asteroid, 9618 Johncleese, is named in his honour.
• Cleese declined a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 1996.
• There is a municipal rubbish heap of 45 metres (148 ft) in altitude that has been named Mt Cleese at the Awapuni landfill just outside Palmerston North after he dubbed the city "suicide capital of New Zealand".^[63]
• "The Universal Language" skit from All in the Timing, a collection of short plays by David Ives, centres around a fictional language (Unamunda) in which the word for the English language is "johncleese".
• The post-hardcore rock band I Set My Friends On Fire has a song on their You Can't Spell Slaughter Without Laughter album titled "Reese's Pieces, I Don't Know Who John Cleese Is?".

Bibliography[link]

• The Rectorial Address of John Cleese, Epam, 1971, 8 pages
• Foreword for Time and the Soul, Jacob Needleman, 2003  ISBN 1-57675-251-8 (paperback)
• The Human Face (with Brian Bates) (DK Publishing Inc., 2001, ISBN 978-0-7894-7836-8)
• Cleese Encounters: The Unauthorized Biography of Monty Python Veteran John Cleese, Jonathan Margolis, St. Martin's Press, 1992, ISBN 0-312-08162-6

Scripts[link]

• The Strange Case of the End of Civilisation As We Know It, w/Jack Hobbs & Joseph McGrath, 1977  ISBN 0-352-30109-0
• Fawlty Towers, w/Connie Booth, 1977 (The Builders, The Hotel Inspectors, Gourmet Night)   ISBN 0-86007-598-2
• Fawlty Towers: Book 2, w/Connie Booth, 1979 (The Wedding Party, A Touch of Class, The Germans)
• The Golden Skits of Wing Commander Muriel Volestrangler FRHS & Bar, 1984  ISBN 0-413-41560-0
• The Complete Fawlty Towers, w/Connie Booth, 1988  ISBN 0-413-18390-4 (hardcover), ISBN 0-679-72127-4 (paperback)
• A Fish Called Wanda: The Screenplay, w/Charles Crichton, 1988  ISBN 1-55783-033-9
• Fawlty's Hotel: Sämtliche Stücke, w/Connie Booth, (The Complete Fawlty Towers in German), Haffmans Verlag AG Zürich, 1995

Dialogues[link]

• Families and How to Survive Them, w/A.Robin Skynner, 1983  ISBN 0-413-52640-2 (hardc.), ISBN 0-19-520466-2 (p/back)
• Life and How to Survive It, w/A.Robin Skynner 1993  ISBN 0-413-66030-3 (hardcover), ISBN 0-393-31472-3 (paperback)

See also[link]

• Declining a British honour

References[link]