Perhaps one of the greatest "lost" Python related projects is "Out of the Trees." In 1975, after Monty Python's Flying Circus had ended, Graham Chapman created a series with Douglas Adams (who would later create The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), and Bernard McKenna. That series was "Out of the Trees." Three scripts were written, but only one was ever produced. The pilot aired only once, got low ratings, and was never heard from again. It starred Chapman along with future Hitchhiker alums Simon Jones and Mark Wing-Davey.
It is not currently known if any copy of this one-off 30-minute show from 1976 exists. The BBC master copy was erased long ago, and our only hope currently is a rumor that star Simon Jones (or Mark Wing-Davey) might have kept a copy all these years. The only sketch from the show known to survive in full is the "Peony" sketch, which is pictured on this page. In this sketch, an innocent couple picking peonies by the roadside are harassed by ill-tempered policemen ... which results in utter chaos, and, eventually, the destruction of the planet earth. This sketch was shot on film, and that film survives ... it was included in "The Making of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which is on the Hitchhiker's DVD.
What happened to "Out of the Trees?" Does a copy of it still exist anywhere? Or is this piece of comedy history lost forever? Here - watch a clip.
Out of the Trees clip
(6 MB, Realplayer)
In this clip from "The Making of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which is on the Hitchhiker's DVD, most of the "peony" sketch is played, and Douglas Adams recalls the lost show. He seems embarrassed by his own writing for the show, but in truth the script is quite terrific (we've read it), and we hope the lost show turns up someday.
We have read the script, which is great stuff, and would love to be able to share it with you, but Jim Yoakum likes to stop people posting these things so he can make money off of them himself. Eventually. Not that he's publishing it anywhere at the moment.
The comedy scholars at Some of the Corpses Are Amusing have written a very good article about Out of the Trees ... I can't write it better than they can, so I'll just post their entire entry below, verbatim. Enjoy. Images on this page are courtesy of Darrell, SirKobble, with many thanks.
From Some of the Corpses Are Amusing:
Out Of The Trees eh? Look, has anybody out there actually seen it? We've all heard the stories - Graham Chapman and Douglas Adams, following their collaborative work on the fourth and final Monty Python TV series, team up with ubiquitous freelancer Bernard McKenna and write a comedy show - ostensibly a pilot for a TV series, but which is only shown once (unpublicised, opposite Match of the Day), and dies a death.
But the show has reached a sort of mythical status among fans of both Python andThe Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, mainly through word of mouth or badly-researched biogs or 'companions'. All of these are quick to bring its existence to our attention but a little reading between the lines soon proves that none of the biographers have actually watched the thing. Robert Ross' Python Encyclopaedia entry is little more than a sly uncredited rewrite of Kim 'Howard' Johnson's effort, itself based on little more than a brief Adams-interview and a lot of guess-work. Lewihson's Guide To TV Comedy adds little by claiming that 'the general consensus was that the show lacked cohesion'.
So what was Out Of The Trees? It was a comedy sketch show starring Graham Chapman and a team of semi-unknowns including Simon Jones and Mark Wing-Davey (later to play Arthur Dent and Zaphod Beeblebrox in Hitch Hiker's ) along with Roger Brierly, Tim Preece, Maggie Henderson, Jennifer Guy, Maria Aitkin and Marjie Lawrence. Sub-titled 'The End of the Road Show' , it was recorded in October 1975 and broadcast only once, at 10pm on January 1976. And if the show itself lives up to the script then we have a lost classic here, guys.
Like yer Python, there's a fair bit of dry post-modernism at foot - two of the main characters are a voice-over artiste and a links man (Brierly and Chapman respectively) who meet on a train. Their vocations seemingly manage to hold the show (which they acknowledge as existing) together. This obviously open linking device takes us to the sketches which include a dramatic adventure about Ghengis Khan becoming jaded with the tedium of raping and pillaging (which appears to change en route into a documentary); a looks-like-it-was-rejected-from-Python skit which sends up parliamentary procedure in a cabinet meeting (the MPs are obligated to address the chair and use the word 'draconian' in every speech (followed by a quip) - even if, as in this case, they are simply warning the others about the building being on fire) and a great sketch in which a young couple are harrassed by some over-zealous coppers for picking a peony which sets off a chain reaction and escalates radidly towards the destruction of the world.
Other characters on the train include a bicycle-obsessed scoutmaster who's obviously bored an American couple into a coma with his bletherings, a rude and incompetent waiter (featuring some great exchanges which follow the 'failure to communicate' idea typical of a lot of Series 4 Python sketches); and two pepperpot-like women (albeit played for once by female actors - Aitkin and Lawrence) who bicker and boast about their husbands in a way which isn't a hundred of your Earth-miles away from those two characters out ofThe League Of Gentlemen. Does Mark Gatiss have a copy of Out Of The Trees hidden under his mattress along with all the other sci-fi-related stuff missing from the BBC archives?
A brief clip of the 'Peony' sketch was inserted into the Making Of Hitch-Hiker video simply to illustrate that Adams had worked with Simon Jones before. Mark Wing-Davey's involvement in the show wasn't alluded to (save for in a blipvert info-burst biog. The inclusion of the clips shown didn't by any means prove that Out Of The Trees has survived - The master tape for Out Of The Trees has apparently been wiped. The clips on the Making Of Hitch Hikers video were culled from 'whatever extant material remained'. So, just the celluloid stuff then. ('Peony' is one of the pre-filmed sketches and as such has only survived as film stock - the clip does not have a laugh-track, a requirement the BBC would almost certainly have insisted upon at this time.
The 'Peony' incident is also told, as an apocryphal anecdote, in Graham Chapman's fantastic A Liar's Autobiography - co-written by Adams, among others. The innocent Peony-pickers in the anecdote are Chapman and boyfriend David Sherlock.
The 'Ghengis Khan' sketch was reworked as a short story called 'The Private Life Of Ghengis Khan' (credited as 'based on an original sketch by Douglas Adams and Graham Chapman' and illustrated by Michael Foreman) for the 1986 Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book which Adams edited. The text stays very faithful to the original version but adds the twist of having Khan visited by Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged (from Adams' Life The Universe And Everything) which presumably proved a tad confusing to anybody not au fait with the Hitch Hiker books.
The joke about a brutal historical figure growing tired and disgusted with rape was also re-used as the opening - and only vaguely funny - scene in the Terry Jones-penned 1989 film Erik The Viking. A vague link, until you realise that Michael Foreman also illustrated the original Erik books, and both Erik The Viking and Out Of The Trees boasted music by Neil Innes.
Out Of The Trees was described by Adams on the Making Of Hitch Hiker video as 'only semi -brilliant'. Whether this was down to performance or production values is open to question (until someone can confirm whether or not the thing still exists and furnishes us with a copy) but the script is marvellous. There's a pure old-school BBC2 atmosphere to the work (which wouldn't look out of place among Series 4 Python), and the fact that a full series was never developed - probably due in part to Chapman's alcoholism, although that's often used as a scapegoat for a lot of BBC idiocy so we'll halt that theory RIGHT NOW - is a great shame.
NOTES:
Douglas Adams, interviewed in David Morgan's excellent Monty Python Speaks (Fourth Estate 1999) is uncharacteristically hazy in his reminiscences, but intimates that although only one show got made, maybe three full scripts were written. He added that Out Of The Trees was probably too similar in style to Python (though why this should necessarily be a problem is unclear to us).Jim Youkum's The (Non-Inflatable) Monty Python TV Companion (Dowling Press 1999) requotes a few old biogs in a short section given over to Adams/Python crossovers. He mentions that the never-filmed second show included an Adams sketch about a haddock being accepted at Eton and that Chapman's adopted son John Tomiczek claimed that Adams nicked it from rejected Python material. There were also some rumblings from (the now late) Mr Tomiczek that Adams originally co-wrote the Hitch-Hikers Golgafrincham B-Ark material in collaboration with Chapman (for The Ringo Starr Show - another mythical project which didn't get further than script stage) but never credited his input.
The Official Hitch-Hiker Companion has some very interesting bits about Out Of the Trees but unfortunately we can't find it at the moment.
If anybody out there does know the whereabouts of a full copy (or any further material from the show) please let us know.
