Monty Python legal battle left me living in a bedsit, says 'seventh Python'
Mark Forstater, who helped produce Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1973, says his fight for royalties was a ‘tale of greed and desperation’
The “seventh Python” who won a seven-year battle for full royalties after the success of Monty Python’s Spamalot, has revealed the battle left him out of pocket and terrified about bringing “disaster on myself and my family”.
In his new book, The 7th Python: A Twat’s Tale, film producer Mark Forstater, who helped produce Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1973, wrote that his fight for royalties from the musical spawned by the film, was “a sad story, one of friendships ending and of goodwill eroded. A tale of greed and hope and of desperation and negligence.”
Despite his legal victory in 2013, having to pay costs meant he was out of pocket, living in a bedsit and was terrified about bringing “disaster on myself and my family”, Forstater wrote.
In the book, he reveals how he became involved in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the hit 1975 comedy loosely based on the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the round table that made an estimated £30m.
Forstater, who had shared at flat with Gilliam in New York in the 1960s, said he helped secure funding after coming on board as a producer. He then signed a contract giving him and each of the six Pythons – Gilliam, Idle, Terry Jones, John Cleese, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman — an equal share of any profits after costs.
When Spamalot, developed by Idle using the plot and songs from the Holy Grail, opened on Broadway, Forstater – who stopped working with the Pythons in 1975 – said he expected a seventh of the profits but the Pythons claimed the 1974 contract entitled him to only a one-fourteenth share.