<p>Can I run the python interpreter without generating the compiled .pyc files?</p>

As far as I know python will compile all modules you "import". However python will NOT compile a python script run using: "python script.py" (it will however compile any modules that the script imports).
The real questions is why you don't want python to compile the modules? You could probably automate a way of cleaning these up if they are getting in the way.