English actor John Cleese has heard enough about sex, nightclubs and getting drunk. Mr. Cleese thinks that these days too much comedy revolves around such mundane topics. He longs for a little more intelligence. “I think if you made a joke about 1776 now, most of the young members in the audience would think, ‘That rings a bell!’ ” he says. “There’s a tiny range of things that people know…so that means you can’t make jokes about all of the rest of this wonderful, insane world.”

Mr. Cleese, 75, became famous for his work writing...