Graham Chapman - Legacy

Legacy

Since Chapman's death, the speculation of a Python revival was inevitably diminished. Idle stated: "We would only do a reunion if Chapman came back from the dead. So we're negotiating with his agent." Subsequent gatherings of the Pythons have included an urn said to contain Chapman's ashes. At the 1998 Aspen Comedy Arts festival, the urn was "accidentally" knocked over by Terry Gilliam, spilling the "ashes" on-stage. The apparently cremated remains were then removed with a dust-buster. Asteroid 9617 Grahamchapman, named in Chapman's honour, is one of six asteroids named after the Python members.

In 1997 Sherlock allowed Jim Yoakum to start the Graham Chapman Archives. Later that year, the novel Graham Crackers: Fuzzy Memories, Silly Bits, and Outright Lies was released. It is a semi-sequel to A Liar's Autobiography, with Chapman works compiled by Yoakum. Ojril: The Completely Incomplete Graham Chapman, a collection of previously unpublished material, was released in 1999. It contains scripts Chapman wrote with Douglas Adams and others, such as "Our show for Ringo Starr, a.k.a. Goodnight Vienna". In 2005 Calcium Made Interesting: Sketches, Letters, Essays & Gondolas was published. At one time, the script for "Out of the Trees", written by Chapman and Adams in 1975 (and later extensively rewritten by Chapman with Bernard McKenna), was online. Jim Yoakum had it removed, to the disappointment of co-writer Adams, who had made no objections to it being there.

Recordings of Chapman's college tours during the 1980s have been released over the years. The CD A Liar Live was delayed several times, but was released as A Six Pack of Lies in 1997. Other college tours also came out on CD, such as Spot the Loony in 2001. A DVD of the tours (Looks Like a Brown Trouser Job) was released in 2005. The single episodes for "Out of the Trees", which was wiped but later recovered on an early home video system, and "Jake's Journey" still have not been released. In 2004, there was talk of a movie about Chapman's life, to be called Gin and Tonic, by Hippofilms in cooperation with Jim Yoakum. Auditions were held in March 2004 in California, but the project has been officially abandoned. Its website is no longer online and the Internet Movie Database page has been deleted; the Graham Chapman Archive's website has disappeared as well.

In June 2011 it was announced that most of the surviving Python members (except Idle) will perform in a 3-D animated version of Chapman's memoir A Liar’s Autobiography: Volume VI. The movie, called A Liar's Autobiography - The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman has a running time of 85 minutes. It was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2012 and it will premiere in the UK on 16 October 2012 as part of the BFI London Film Festival. The voices of Cleese, Gilliam, Jones, and Palin were spliced into commentary recorded by Chapman reading from his memoir and taped shortly before his death and the story of Graham Chapman's life is told in 17 different animation styles by 14 different animation studios. The film's official trailer claims that Graham Chapman said, "This is the best film I've been in since I died."

In September 2012 a British Comedy Society blue plaque, to commemorate Chapman, was unveiled at The Angel pub in Highgate, North London, by Jones, Palin, Barry Cryer and Carol Cleveland. Palin said, "This was Graham's manor and Graham was a lovely guy. I spent many happy times with him, most of which I forget. Highgate was his patch and he should be celebrated because he was a very good, brilliant, funny, nice, wise, kind man, who occasionally drank too much."