This are the lines in question in my php file:
$eventid_arg = $_REQUEST['eventid'];
$pyresponse_str = system('python s_scrape.py $eventid_arg', $retval);
And I have done the following for s_scrape.py:
1- placed it in the same localhost folder as the php file.
2- chown changed to www-data:www-data
3- chmod changed to 777 on both the .py and .pyc
4- made sure '#!/usr/bin/env python' is on the python file