Insights From John Cleese At Motor City Comic Con 24
Image Source: Motor City Comic Con
It was definitely easy to look on the bright side of life last week when I took my boys to the Motor City Comic Con Fall Edition at the Novi Suburban Collection Showplace. We were looking very forward to seeing the vendors, as my youngest is an avid Pokemon card trader, the different exhibits, and the people they know who bring them happiness through the TV shows or movies they have seen. Amongst the impressive list of celebrities was one who I knew from my childhood, watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python’s The Life of Brian multiple times, and singing along to a cassette tape I had of ‘Monty Python’s Greatest Hits’: John Cleese! When I saw that I was going to be able to see him on a panel, I was very excited!
As soon as we checked in, I told my boys that we needed to hurry to the panel that was going to be happening within the half hour: they were going to have the opportunity to see John Cleese! We made our way through the cosplayers that were crowded in the vendor section, and my youngest remembered how to get upstairs to the panels. We made it into the panel room and learned that there were ducks hidden around the convention center “just to amuse” us in John Cleese’s honor. What a delight!
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The moderator for the panel was Dr. Chrissy Blanche. She introduced Mr. Cleese to the eager crowd, and I whispered to my children that we were in the presence of a legend. Mr. Cleese explained to us that he is getting elderly, and part of becoming elderly is that he is starting to go deaf. One of the benefits of going deaf is being able to ask someone, “Would you mind repeating that one more time?” six times in one conversation, and this will get you out of the conversation. Very good advice from an expert!
John Cleese then turned to the more serious aspects of humor. He explained that he got into comedy through his mother, who he described as being clinically depressed. Mr. Cleese said that she was someone with “many anxieties” and that the only thing she was not afraid of was “a loaf of bread”. Whenever he would call her up, she would tell him that “I’ve been a little bit down this week,” - and this was EVERY week! Finally, Mr. Cleese said to his mother that there was a little man in Fulham that he could go to get to kill her - and she would “cackle” with laughter! Even though this may have been a dark thing to say to his mother, it was what she needed to get through her issues.
Mr. Cleese went on to explain that humor is what people need to cope with their not-so-good times. He told of when he went to Sarajevo for a cinema festival and how he wondered how the people of Sarajevo coped during the Serbian War - the Serbs were using snipers to just pick people in Sarajevo off. The people of Sarajevo made themselves a movie theater and chose comedies to watch. Even with the war raging around them, these movies made them feel better, and they could cope with what was happening around them. He even shared with us a story where a couple came to him and explained that their daughter had been murdered. Naturally, they were very depressed. But, they found that when they watched Fawlty Towers, they were able to sleep at night. Such is the power of comedy. Before the boys and I left the panel discussion, Mr. Cleese said, “People who have no sense of humor should not make decisions for those who do have a sense of humor as to what to laugh at”. These are pithy words coming from a true legend.
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