During the 1980s, Johnson studied improv under Del Close during the founding days of Improv Olympic (now iO) and would go on to publish two books on Close - "Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation" (1994) and "The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close" (2008).
(meta data) TITLE: About Kim "Howard" Johnson | howardjohnsonblog (meta data) PUBLISHER: https://www.facebook.com/WordPresscom (meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2013-11-19T15:42:26-05:00 # howardjohnsonblog ## Books, Pythons, comics, improv, show biz and who knows what else? Skip to content # About Kim "Howard" Johnson John Cleese was my boss in "Life of Brian," and later on, in Santa Barbara as well. I grew up in small-town Illinois and started out in journalism. The very first piece I ever got paid for writing was an interview with "Curly Joe" DeRita, the last surviving member of The Three Stooges. I was working in radio news when I went off to Tunisia to live and work with the Monty Python guys on the set of Life of Brian. I eventually began writing on the Pythons for an assortment of magazines, and became a regular writer for Starlog magazine. And then I started writing Python books. I ended up moving to Chicago and lived there for a dozen years. I studied with improvisation legend Del Close during the time when the Improv Olympic (now the iO) was getting under way. In fact, I went on to co-write the improvisational manual Truth in Comedy, and even became Del's biographer years later with The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close. Del was the guru of longform improvisation, and taught just about everyone worthwhile, from John Belushi and Bill Murray to Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Stephen Colbert. But the point of all this is that I learned to write improvisationally. It turns out that the rules of improvisation are much like the rules of good writing. For example, that's how I learned to start scenes in the middle and eschew exposition. I've written a little bit of everything, since then, I suppose. I've written non-fiction (The First 280 Years of Monty Python, And Now For Something Completely Trivial, Life (Before and) After Monty Python), I've written biography (The Funniest One in the Room), I've written memoirs (Monty Python's Tunisian Holiday, about my life on the set of Monty Python's Life of Brian in Tunisia), co-written an improvisational manual (Truth in Comedy) and a graphic novel (Superman: True Brit) as well as other comic books. I've also co-written a YA novel (The Dare Club: Nita) with my wife, Laurie Bradach, which was great fun. And I've written dozens, possibly hundreds of magazine articles. But at the moment, I'm focusing on a new series of SF novels, starting with The Last of the Time Police (The Time Authority Book One) and the second half of the story, The Return of the Time Police (The Time Authority Book Two). It's my first solo fiction, aside from the comic book stories, and I'm having a great time! ## 3 thoughts on "About Kim "Howard" Johnson" Afternoons Rnz November 19, 2013 at 3:42 pm Hello from Radio New Zealand. We would like to speak with you about the Monty Python Reunion. Can you email me? Susan.baldacci@radionz.co.nz Thanks! Reply evdebs June 2, 2017 at 3:11 pm Hi, Howard. I read your bio of Del Close, an old and dear friend, years ago. I loved the book about my dear friend and think I may have sent you a note then. I moved from Barrow, Alaska, in April 1999, after marrying the widow of another old friend and moving to her farm in rural Kansas. I thought I'd get a chance to visit with him (it would have been an 800-miles drive), only to find he'd died a month earlier. I was actually looking for the place of death of Garry Goodrow and just found (rediscovered?) your blog by chance. You can drop me a note at: IndianCycleBuyer@yahoo.com Thanks much. Reply evdebs September 1, 2018 at 11:05 pm I think I gave you the wrong address. Write me at polly(underline)math@gmail.com if you would. Reply ### Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here... Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment: Email (required) (Address never made public) Name (required) You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change ) You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out / Change ) You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change ) You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change ) Connecting to %s Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Monty Python from the Inside Out ### "The Last of the Time Police," Book One of "The Time Authority" Read a sample or buy it now! Search for: ### Recent Posts HBD Terry! Sir Michael Bleed Out Happy 75th! 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Kim "Howard" Johnson
Career.
Johnson is the author of several books related to Monty Python, as well as other nonfiction volumes. Johnson was the publisher of a Monty Python fanzine when he first met the members of the troupe in 1978.