Monty Python's Flying Circus - Classic or Dud?

total classic, btw. as I have written elsewhere recently, almost unspeakably *important* at times.

"that series 1 episode where it's mostly about the Scottish man fighting alien blancmanges is pretty poor."

I love that episode! One of the very first ones I ever saw... for some reason, people always rag on the Python sketches that went any longer than five minutes, but i thought this and Scott of the Antarctic were quite good.

Series three, very good. Series four, okay... even though Cleese's writing material did make into several episodes, the sense of balance he provided the show was gone, and a lot of the material just fell into overdone and overplayed nonsense. See the sketch with Terry Gilliam on the couch eating beans very messily with Chapman in drag and Jones I believe going on about snogging. I mean, I like gross-out humor, but a lot of the fourth season just seemed pointless and uninspired. There are a few moments of brilliance still present, however.

(Also, does anyone remember those Time Life UK adverts where they tried some rip-off thing where you signed up for a series of tapes at 5.99 each or something that only had two episodes on each one, all out of sequence, and all from those smudgy mid seventies NTSC transfers?)

If not classic I don't know what is.

Er, these are arguments for Python?

I had no idea there were episodes without John Cleese, though.

The Spanish Inquisition sticks in my mind as the sketch that made me chuckle a lot. I don't even mind when people quote that one.

"I say, Lionel! Catch!"

Ah ... so you're a Two Ronnies man, then?

I'd caught programmes here and there on TV, but the majority of it I'd never seen before. My conclusion? Classic. Python is quite simply the funniest and most creative comedy show there has ever been. Perhaps only Chris Morris comes close to the subversive surrealism of it.

Actually, Terry Gilliam's interludes are what I like least; I find him manic and vulgar. For me he's the Ringo Starr of the Pythons, a sort of fratboy Salvador Dali. The others remind me of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Eric Satie... brilliant eccentric humour which can only come out of a certain high-minded seriousness. For instance, I discovered recently that one of the sketches was based on a Fluxus performance that happened in London. Now, even to parody a Fluxus performance, the Pythons had to be arty and curious enough to go to one, just as, to parody medieval romance it helped to be steeped in the subject, as Terry Jones was.

Those darn Americans! ;-)

Momus, people were writing news articles about Fluxus events back then; it seems like the sort of thing that you'd just be aware of (especially after Yoko had gotten famous through Lennon). I'm not sure any of them actually went to such an event.

I'm not sure that the slow-moving bullet hitting the tenor or the old lady tripping the busses are any more manic and vulgar than the French aero-sheep demonstration or "sex on the telly" bit.

(I have the DVD set. I can hereby attest to the fact that watching a whole day worth of MPFC can drive one slightly batty. I, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed myself.)

Also, for anyone who loves the show and hasn't heard any of Python's comedy albums, I highly suggest picking those up. "Matching Tie and Hankerchief" is by far my favorite of the bunch.

I picked-up a CD set of ... hmmm .... maybe 'The Best of Python'? It sounds like someone put a tape recorder next to a TV speaker while MPFC was on, and then burned that to CD. Horrible quality. And yet funny. We listened to that skit about the architect who was supposed to design an apartment building and ended-up with a slaughterhouse instead while driving through Flagstaff in the middle of the night during a snow storm. Without the visual cues for the skits, well, it is an experience. Highly recommended.

And yes, Spiny Norman did go around looking for his friend Dinsdale.

My mom made almost this exact comment earlier tonight. (My cousins--aged 7 and 10--had a sleep over here tonight and we watched the blancmange episode. Eh...but I did giggle at the manner in which the people were instantly transformed). She first saw it in the early-mid 70s on PBS. She had never even heard about it, just happened across it by chance one night. It truly was the first of its kind and, arguably, the best.

Dan, I fucking love that gore-gy scene. And can I just say: Momus OTM about the Gilliam segments. I just. don't. get it...and aesthetically, it makes me uneasy.

Apparently, as I've recently discovered, there are some funny edits and things on the A&E boxset. The "Proust" sketch is censored for the word "masturbation", for a start. I think the "Biggles Dictates A Letter" sketch features a weird glitch at the start due to being mastered from a faulty copy... and I've heard series 4 is all different edits. Oh yes, and the end of episode 12 of series 3 has been cut. And of course the picture quality is a bit rubbish (what with everything coming from early NTSC transfers which are all horribly smudgy).

Some guy over on the Comedy (formerly SOTCAA) Forum on NotBBC claims there's a UK boxset coming out in a year's time, which might rectify these faults.

I am probably utterly wrong about that bit, by the way, so feel free to correct me!

This reminds me of some sketches which were filmed but got cut out at the last minute, and subsequently wiped - "Choreographed Party Political Broadcast", something about a sculptor and his big nosed subject, and a thing about bees and businessmen (I think I completely misremembered that one). Just the scripts and a couple of production stills are all that exists of them now.

Also, has anyone here ever heard of the infamous "Wee-Wee Sketch"? Apparently it was written but it never got filmed, as the censors forbade it. It was about a couple at a restaraunt trying out wines, which are all actually urine.

Thought I saw that sketch, but I could be thinking of the restaurant sketch instead, where the guy eats so much, he throws up everywhere.

(It's OK to show that, but not glasses of wee? Odd moral bent.)

YESSS!!!! Can it get any better than that?!

My Python geekery is shining especially brightly on this thread.

Isn't the beauty of Python that it allows for happy juvenile geekdom too, though?

The Simpsons, The Day Today, Tommy Cooper, Morecambe and Wise, Wayne's World, Police Squad, Blackadder, early Friends.

One edit I always found curious in the versions I have (which are some kind of US VHS ones done in the late 80s) - the sketch where the black spot appeared on the guys face. In the original showing they apparently said he died of cancer. In the copy I have it is dubbed over (very badly and obviously - on purpose?) with the word "gangrene" which is absurd.

I dont know if the dubbing was a BBC thing or a US thing... *consults her 200 years of python book* Ah it was a BBC thing. Which word is used in the box sets? I'd like to buy the DVDs but now I'm dubious if it is true they're poor prints...

This is very interesting.

Most consistent/coherent Python show was the one with Palin as the cyclist, more or less parodying himself 20 years later (Pole to Pole etc.), which probably remains funny because it doesn't get rerun that often.

I don't know how accurate this is, or if this is actually true - but I recently read that Thames offered to produce Monty Python in 1969, and planned it as a 45 minute show in a primetime slot. For some reason Thames couldn't commit themselves to doing the show until 1971 and so they went with the BBC. Again, I'm not sure if this is true, as I'm sure I remember something about them being with the BBC from day one but it's an interesting "what-if" story, anyway.

Most consistent/coherent Python show was the one with Palin as the cyclist

Mr Pither's Cycling Tour. Very good that - with Terry Jones losing his memory and thinking he's Clodagh Rogers, and then Lenin.

"Pither! What a stroke of luck to find you again!"

"Well, yes and no..."

the Jesus on the telephone poles thing is BIZARRE.

I remember for the LONGEST time being utterly befuddled by the brief clip of the animation of that showing in the 'episode recap' and trying to pause the videotape just so so I could read it.

Wonderful book, picked up a republication when I was 16 or so. Very goofy and ridiculous. The Famous Five parody is absolutely stellar.

Annoying how the BBC has lost so much wonderful old footage - Goodies, python, dr who etc.

"To save time, I will continue in English ..."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-806332_1,00.html

(not even sure why I care at this point though, slow day at work obviously)

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/sotcaa/python.html

The above link is of a truly incredible website that examines the production of the shows, movies and records, with fantastically detailed examinations of various edits, out-takes, alternate versions of episodes/records, acres of quotes from actual rehearsal scripts featuring - yes! - the Wee-Wee Sketch in full, along with a great big press archive dating back to the very first article ever written about Python in the Radio Times in 1969! It is wonderful and I have spent virtually the whole evening reading it.

Gonococcal urethritis, streptococcal ballinitis,
Meningo myelitis, diplococcal cephalitis,
Epididymitis, interstitial keratitis,
Syphilitic choroiditis, and anterior u-ve-i-tis.

"Medical Love Song," I salute you.

One story: when King Arthur crossed the rope bridge, it was actually an extra, as Graham was suffering from the shakes and couldn't really perform that day.

Cleese fought to play Brian in TLOB, but he was shouted down.
Eric Idle wrote strictly on his own, and out of all five, he's the only one who comes across as a primadonna and an arrogant jerk. He seems to despise Cleese with a passion, and always blames Cleese for any trial or tribulation suffered by the group, usually contradicting all four of the other pythons.

This--and I know you're just paraphrasing--is fucking brilliant.

ask neil innes!

This--and I know you're just paraphrasing--is fucking brilliant.

agreed!

In Idle's defence, he was responsible for one of the great TOTP performances - "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" where he systematically demolished the stage set.

Very pleasant and likeable, in the same way Palin's travelogues are very pleasant and likeable. Jones and Palin are still very good friends, I believe.

Agreed. I was so happy to see that at long last, having heard about it for years.

Basically the dispute between him and Innes is well known, and I watched the Rutles with the "director's commentary" i.e. Idle's, and two things struck me:

1) No mention at all of Innes
2) or anybody else who did non-oncreen work.

Until about halfway through when he discusses Innes' wonderful songs, the co-director's work and everyone else. Ah well, I guess he warmed up.

Oh, and 4) It actually isn't unfair to claim he wrote it, as there is a great deal in it that isn't purely beatlessong or story.

Also, that he 'idly' pondered getting out all the out-takes and extras and making a sequel. "YOU NUTS??" I thought.... (It's easy to think this bloke chatting over the film is in the chair next to you)..

So I look up on Amazon, IMDB etc, and that is exactly what he did do. And how dreadful the reviews were for it.

Monty Python & Stephanie Edwards hosting A.M. America in 1975. Includes bonus Peter Jennings reporting on the fall of Saigon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfmS-DM8Jc0

My son has just started watching Monty Python and repeating the lines as I did as an irritating teenager (although he's only 11) and indeed still do as an irritating 40 something. It was one of the first programmes I was allowed to stay up and watch back in the early 70s. The circle is unbroken.

palin's 70s diary rocks. great book to have on a pain-in-the-arse long journey.

Monty Python Youtube Channel Launches

holy fuck was the series lame. dig the movies, but i hadn't properly sat down to watch eps of the actual MPFC in aeons. so far not a single lol.

total classic, btw. as I have written elsewhere recently, almost unspeakably *important* at times.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, September 1, 2003 1:12 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wonder what he meant. maybe it was the comedy working-class accents or preponderance of loldolly-birds.

the rutles movie is a stinker as well.

Would you leave your kids with Eric Idle alright?

It matters not which Python's were right bastards and which were nice guys, the comedy is still funny after all these decades (at least whatever was funny the first time through) and that is quite a feat. Classic, obv.

nrq keeps rong streak goin

the series beats any of the movies (as well as just about any other sketch comedy) any day.

i love how brits frantically detest any comedian of theirs with overseas appeal, then turn around and lionize shit like "friends."

TS: Benny Hill vs Curb yr Enthusiasm

i love how brits frantically detest any comedian of theirs with overseas appeal, then turn around and lionize shit like "friends."

Yeah, we ALL do that.

Because americans never lionised Friends or anything.

so far not a single lol.

And you, so renowned for your gaiety and hearty sense of humour

John Cleese, who at 70 is the oldest of the group, in addition to appearing in movies and sitcoms and making golf-ball commercials, sometimes turns into a cranky old buffer complaining about cultural decline and Britain’s tabloids. He doesn’t watch much comedy anymore. “As you get older you laugh less,” he says, “because you’ve heard most of the jokes before."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/arts/television/04mcgr.html?pagewanted=all

You see, this is why *I* am watching less comedy...

Is it NY Times house style to call everyone "Mr."?

Very much so. Especially if you are female.

I remember when their Iggy reviews called him "Mr. Osterberg."

I'm told they used to add "Mr." and such even to one-name celebrities, thus Mr. Meatloaf, Ms. Cher, etc, but I'm not sure I believe this.

Mr Cent.

Mr Mr Mr, the famous band

“As you get older you laugh less,”

Soon we die.

Hahaha and I know exactly the tone of voice in which you say that...

I know you do, and you know why i agonized over "we" vs. "you," and now fear I may have chosen the wrong word.

You should really just relax.

Death relaxes you like nothing else can. Your bladder and bowels, too.

haha

and sphincter.

Take it to I Love TMI.

Where is the love for the Monty Pythons albums?? ABSOLUTE TOTAL FUCKING CLASSIC!!

Monty Python's Flying Circus, though, is pretty duddy. Way too much laughtrack.

you're deranged, TV was their medium.

people ragging on python must not have seen 90% of other tv. i'm hoping.

it didn't have a 'laugh track,' it was filmed in front of an audience.

Are you sure about that? Not the filmed bits -- I don't believe any TV comedy was permitted NOT to have a laugh track in that era.

British TV didn't use laugh tracks, as far i'm aware

Definitely in front of an audience from the start and the laughter you hear is live -- it's not only been discussed in any number of books/documentaries but a slew of sketches specifically use the audience as either backdrop or part of the whole thing. (Best example being the second season ender, the cannibal undertakers, which involved the audience supposedly rising up and charging the set in protest.)

I can't think of a single British comedy series of the 60s and 70s with one

Sketch in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWWg5shNWR4

One of the Pythons mentions in a later book and interview that this didn't quite go off as planned since most of the audience were loving it -- you can hear a few plants from staff/friends complaining and catcalling but the initial cutaways to the audience show 'em all chilling. The 'stage invasion' is a little easygoing at points. And then they all stand for the queen (the conceit of the episode being that Her Majesty was supposedly tuning in that night -- whenever she did so the national anthem was played, etc.)

Hahaha I have very strong memories of that sketch!

Based on the time you broke into the mortuary and...well anyway.

That IFC special sounds pretty cool!

Cleese, sounding off on everything:

I went through a very unpleasant divorce and discovered just how hopeless the American legal system is.... Now I have to pay one million dollars a year until I’m 76. So that means I have to organize my life around earning the first million dollars every year. And the normal sources of income for people like me are drying up. There aren’t as many film and TV parts — and you can do interesting documentaries but they don’t pay anything. So I’m doing one-man shows and other things ...

(on quitting the MPFC series)

Two things: One is I did not like the fact that we were repeating a lot of our material, even if other people didn’t notice; the others didn’t care. They were having a good time. I think if one was playing “I’m the pure artist,” I would win on that one. The other thing was that I was carrying the alcoholic [the late Graham Chapman]. That seems to get forgotten in all of these discussions. They were completely blind to an extraordinarily important point, which was: I was the guy who was having to work with the alcoholic. They never said, ‘We’ll share part of that burden with you. I’ll write with him one day a week.’ This is never mentioned. It was ‘Oh, John was rather difficult … ’

There were two types of days: days where I did 80 percent of the work and days when Graham did 5 percent of the work. He was basically lazy, but he had two great qualities: He was the most extraordinary sounding board and he was capable of coming in with very good off-the-wall ideas. But he was very lazy.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/10/interview_john_cleese_slams_ex.html

Gilliam was on the One Show last week, making very Bryan Ferry-esque statements about the Nazis.

Graham Chapman may have been an alcoholic layabout, but he was an extremely funny one. So there.

Anything but mindless good taste for him.

I would love to read a book about Graham Chapman. He was a wild guy!

He wrote A Liar's Autobiography. Great title.

Cleese: the Ingmar Bergman of the Pythons

He's funny, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlmzwZXa-Ww

Great commercials, all of them. The Mac vs. PC ads of their day.

He wrote A Liar's Autobiography. Great title.

Well, "wrote" is a bit of a stretch, it ended up being a collaboration with four other writers(including Douglas Adams).

Yeah, Python always had a live audience. In fact rewatching the first episode is fascinating in this regard, as you can practically hear the unease in the studio as if they aren't quite whether they should be laughing at this.

Oh, while we're here, is everyone aware of Eric Idle's latest Python-milking atrocity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVA_qFKEys4

He is absolutely determined to squeeze every drop of life out of those withered teats, isn't he?

Cleese: the Ingmar Bergman of the Pythons

so you wd say, Smiles of a Summer Night hata

xpost dunno, is that not "what it says on the tin"?

(didn't watch clip tbf)

yes, but there was previously Spamalot, and that seemed a bit on the "get your own career" side already.

Not that it was bad or anything. I didn't see it, but 14 Tony noms isn't too shabby. Idle has a way with a tune, hafta admit. Even so. Enough, already.

S'funny, cause about 10 years ago when Idle appeared on the Craig Kilborn show, Kilborn announced forthright that Idle refused outright to talk about MP - a kinda unprecedented occurrance, especially for a particularly irreverent talk show host. (In the end, Idle brought his acoustic guitar and sang an amusing little song called "I'm Waiting For the Film".)

I did.

Well, if anyone's going to, and people want to see it, hey...

The above bit reminded me of some TV appearance where he had it stated "No monty python" whic was like taking the elephant out of the room, and did new/different things, and by all accounts was great.

XPOST!

I just got this like six disc doc about MP has anybody seen it??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SXq5X9zEZI

"And Gilliam, being American, went to no known school whatsoever." Heh.

Very nicely done, sir. :)

(One quibble -- his answer about Life of Brian is disingenuous. It hardly matters that Jesus also appears in the film. The film mercilessly makes fun of the New Testament in many places -- its inscrutable language, its impossible instructions -- and worse yet, it points out the solid fact, as its premise even, that Jesus was one of many prophets who were hanging 'round at the time, and perhaps suggests that Jesus' choice as the one messiah was more or less arbitrary. idle knows all this. But I suppose to really answer the question would be to start a theology debate, which he likely is not interested in doing. So why address that question at all?)

That Palin + Cleese vs. Muggeridge + Bishop of Southwark confrontation is classic though, not that Palin contributes much

palin very nervous, as opposed to cleese seeming like he's been looking forward to it his whole life.

He comes across as a guy you wouldn't want to fall out with

Cleese? or Idle?

Cleese/Fawlty

I think I saw Palin say that he was very angry about it all and had a selection of excellent debate points prepared, but then Cleese started with the jokes and he didn't know what to do with his serious arguments.

Hard not to resort to humour when confronted with Mervyn Stockwood, the gayest Bishop in Christendom

He comes across as a guy you wouldn't want to fall out with

Apparently not even being Cleese's friend from college age, and his longtime professional partner, and then dying suddenly and very sadly, will save you from his scorn.

I don't know if that makes him a bastard cocksucker or not, though. It probably is, in fact, quite difficult to work with someone who, though brilliant, has no work ethic at all and actually has the shakes if made to work for long hours.

No, can't be too critical of someone who has to work with an alcoholic

He comes across as a guy you wouldn't want to fall out with

― The Prince's choice: making a brush. (Tom D.), 13 October 2009 11:09 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
Cleese? or Idle?

― Mark G, 13 October 2009 11:11 (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

God

xp It does seem rude of him, though. Why say those things? Why bother at this point?

Yeah, look what he did to poor old Graham Chapman :( (xp)

^ God, that is, not Cleese... or Idle

Apparently not even being Cleese's friend from college age, and his longtime professional partner, and then dying suddenly and very sadly, will save you from his scorn.

hard for cleese to come across as any other way, but if you think that being honest about graham chapman being difficult to work worth, or cleese's frustration manifesting itself as irreverence towards alcoholism or chapman's behaviour isn't understandable then........

No I get that. But see my earlier post. What is it that he's actually trying to vent? Frustration at not being properly recognized, is how it reads to me. And it's plenty petty.

but cleese being frustrated and bitter is a running joke at this stage, and i honestly think he plays to it when discussing python, particularly when referring to jones or being left to work with python.

Could be, but I hope when and if I'm his age I don't drag my dear old dead friends into it anymore.

i think they assume that

a) he wouldn't mind, would probably approve in fact

b) it's up to them how they refer to someone they worked with and knew closely for 20 years or so before he died.

Cleese: the Ingmar Bergman of the Pythons

so you wd say, Smiles of a Summer Night hata

I was more referring to his propensity for giving crusty, bitter interviews.

I preferred his earlier, funnier interviews

^ we've come full circle

he repeated himself after interviews 1 & 2 imo

That Palin + Cleese vs. Muggeridge + Bishop of Southwark confrontation is classic though, not that Palin contributes much

would love to see the full clip

I'm a fan of crusty + bitter in comedians/people, don't all faint.

Why say those things? Why bother at this point?

cuz fanboys are still "blaming" him for leaving the show? I don't see his remarks as scornful. Don't hold your breath for the day Aykroyd says the same about Belushi.

I don't think anyone "blames" Cleese for leaving the show, I know Python fans are saddoes, but not that sad. I think he could be crusty and bitter because nobody finds him funny anymore, least of all himself.

Aykroyd always wanted to leave the coke fiesta at 4.30am and bang some party girl before passing out and getting up 12 hours later to write five lines of banter, while Belushi always insisted on staying til 5 o'clock

... also because, the others, in different ways, all seem happier and more successful than him? (xp)

different in the way of not making fawlty towers?

judging ppl's happiness by media/interviews = hilarious. Sample, 1993: "Oh, that River Phoenix and his healthy vegan lifestyle."

yeah, Eric Idle's current "success" largely built on the dumbed-down recycling that is Spamalot.

It's making him rich(er), that's success of a kind

judging ppl's happiness by media/interviews = hilarious

Well, of course, but there appears to be only one embittered sourpuss these days, where they're used to be two (Cleese and Idle)

do people want to see john cleese happy?

They want to see him funny

Ok, look. The man will be 70 years old on the 27th. (Happy Birthday, Cleese, in advance -- the world would be quite a bit less funny without you.) It just seems unnecessary for him to go pissing on his ex wife in public, or his old friends... it's ugly, is what I mean. You'll be sour enough when you're dead, so lighten the fuck up. You're rich as hell and loved wherever people speak English. Count your motherfucking blessings, you old coot.

maybe john cleese doesn't think people want to see him happy, though? seriously, have you ever seen the man appear out of 'grouch' mode. i can't think of an instance.

Well, I'm on the record now, fwiw.

john cleese, we'd like to see you happy.

but we don't pay as well as mastercard, so that's probably that out of the running.

Yeah, he's nearly 70, he's more or less retired anyway

Younger than Woody Allen though

You're rich as hell

Not what he says! He's in Eddie Murphy HALF mode.

I think that's exactly what it is, Morbs. How much money does he want buried with him, I wonder?

I mean, give the bitch the money. It's just money. It's not going to make her any happier, either.

bollocks it won't

taking it off him in the first place will make her happier, and then she actually gets to buy stuff with it.

Yeah, but... fine. Let her. I don't actually believe that he's hurting financially. He's just sour-graping. He can give her half and still have plenty to live in the country, drink the world's finest wine, and grow ever more Orson-shaped until his demise.

I guess i AM asking for a mellow, contented John Cleese. And I guess that is a bit silly.

it's a fine world we live in when john cleese can't find happiness but jerry seinfeld only ever seems to be fucking grinning at me.

xp yeah, i just don't think i've ever seen anything to suggest cleese has that 'setting'

Maybe Michael Palin could help him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiBWHHqK7W8

He has a video about cheese, too.

(Although it seems the a youtube search for "John Cleese cheese" only turns up the obvious.)

you guys must get in touch w/ him and tell him what a breeze it is to make a million a year in Hollywood at 70.

he has to make it in hollywood? that's a strange stipulation to throw on to a divorce settlement.

I have not seen the man's bank balance, but I would be surprised if he didn't have a million a year to spare for a good while. Judges can be bastards, but they don't tell people to pay their exes a million a year unless they have many, many millions.

no, it has to be new money he earned that year in hollywood i think.

That does seem to be his side of the story.

anyway, if the judgement enraged him with its unfairness then hurrah cos that's when he's at his best. we should break all his windows and put a potato in his exhaust pipe imo.

eagerly awaiting the divorce-induced Zach Braff remake of Fawlty Towers

(Although it seems the a youtube search for "John Cleese cheese" only turns up the obvious)

heh heh...what, the "cheese shop" sketch or the fact that his grandfather's surname was originally "Cheese"?

(Oh wait, YOUTUBE search not google...never mind.)

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/a-night-of-round-table-with-monty-python/

Responding to a question about how to tell which Pythons wrote which sketches, Mr. Cleese said that his work with Mr. Chapman was fairly clean and “finished short,” while Mr. Palin and Mr. Jones’s skits were “prolonged,” and Mr. Idle’s were “highly verbal” and “disappeared up their own funnel.” (Mr. Palin said his material could be recognized because it produced laughter.)

Other exchanges were downright bizarre, even by Python standards. Mr. Cleese read a card that asked, “What about that very funny thing that happened at Auschwitz?” This yielded an anecdote about the troupe’s visit to Germany when they traveled a concentration camp — recollections differed as to which one — only to discover that it was closed to visitors. Mr. Chapman suggested they say that they were Jewish, but the group was still denied entry.

The format also yielded a couple of authentically touching moments. Mr. Gilliam read a question submitted by 10-year-old Talia Lindner, asking if she could perform her version of the Spanish Inquisition skit for the Pythons. Mr. Gilliam accepted, and up to the front of the theater strode little Talia, in glasses and blue jeans. After a deep breath or five, she rapidly performed all the characters in the scene in just under a minute (“I didn’t expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition”; “Hold on, I’ll come in again”), drawing roars of laughter from the troupe followed by enthusiastic handshakes.

I'd heard that Auschwitz story before, forget where...

Haha visualizing that ten year old girl has me chuckling out loud

nytimes:

Chapman suggested they say that they were Jewish, but the group was still denied entry.

wired:

"Graham (Chapman) said, 'Tell them we’re Jewish,' he recalled, to a now completely inconsolable audience. 'They let us in.'"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmWN9fwmOKM

I remember being thirteen or so and seeing that on PBS...I had no idea wtf was happening. "When will they start speaking English?"

i only recently found out about German Python. Palin's and Cleese's German are actually quite good as far as i can tell.

This has been out on DVD for ages here. First ep is all German, second is all English. Fascinating stuff.

Oh god, a guy I was dating broght over the german python dvd once, back in 2002. I got rabidly drunk while watching it and so dont recall most of it.

Chapman would have approved

Heh :D

This has been out on DVD for ages here

it's been out on VHS here for longer

Huh.

But on another note.

Eric Idle is basically like "can my part in this be me singing while fucking a large pile of money? no? then piss off"

When did Gilliam turn into Orson Welles?!

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/06/27/arts/JPPYTHON3/JPPYTHON3-articleInline.jpg

No, no, no. He is clearly Sigmund Freud.

Excellent! I like the story about how he recorded this in one night at Nilsson's place. The usual schtick about that group of party fiends (Lennon, Moon, Nilsson, Ringo, Chapman etc) being on a years-long career-killing bender often overlooks some pretty creative stuff.

I would rather see a docfilm about the LoBrian contretemps.

Comedian Steve Punt will star as Eric Idle

especially for rhyming verses

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/aug/13/monty-python-life-brian-bbc

Steve Punt has always reminded me a bit of Eric Idle.

um

would love to see the full-length version of cleese and palin's face-off with muggeridge one day. have only seen clips in docs, and it seems a corker.

getting repeated next month iirc? spods have compiled 45 minutes of it from all the excerpts in various docos over the years but this may be its first ever actual full rebroadcast

there's no "face-off" to speak of tho. muggeridge is an utter tool and the increasingly hurt and pissed-off cleese and palin just zing the senile old twat into oblivion.

awesome news. that's kind of what i'm after tbh nv.

"...We thought about doing jokes about Jesus. Trying to book a table for 12 for the last supper. 'I can do you three 4s. Or you can come in tomorrow night?' 'No, it's got to be tonight'..."

"jesus h christ: lust for glory"

"not a funny building" tbh

Palin in partic claims to have been completely surprised by the vitriol directed at the movie. And tho I think they were being a little disingenuous when they said that they weren't laughing at Christianity, it should be pretty obvious to the feeblest feeb that the man-made fuckery of religious bureaucracy is the real target. Muggeridge, like a lot of late-convert Catholics, doesn't realise something that the church had sussed many years earlier: the best way to deflect satire is to pretend that the work is deeply religious at heart. (Obv it ain't)

Jones said at the end of the one of those clip show thingys - "It was't blasphemous, it was heretical..."

Rather more than a clip show thingy actually. This was on the Beeb a couple of years ago.
http://youtu.be/eC5rhnuMPz8

Great clip.

The new movie then:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jan/27/monty-python-film-reunion-absolutely-anything

Terry Gilliam cast doubt on whether a reunion would ever be successfully achieved. "We all have our own careers now … the BBC put us on 10 years ago, and it was an hour of mediocrity … the work wasn't what it should be."

He means that Monty Python Night thing hosted by Eddie Izzard, I presume. He's right, the new sketches in that were pretty mediocre.

watching series four atm, move towards making each installment a more complete episode with a theme or two running through it works very well i think

mm, where do you stand on 'The Cycling Tour' from Series 3? it's years since i saw it but i thought it worked pretty great; one long 30 minute sketch as it were. i think they put it into the 'failed experiment' box, or some of them did anyway as they never did that again.

i think that was the first departure in that direction, yeah (tho 'ethel the frog' with spiny norman and the krays substitutes was probably close to it too). i didn't like that one iirc but i could revisit.

i think it maybe turned out a lot like one of palin's whatchoocallem tales?

rippin yarns, that's the one

Palin & Jones wrote Cycling Tour, also wrote Ripping Yarns

only caught the ripping yarns last year, varying quality but not bad at all

Cycling Tour is one of my favorite episodes.

"¿Su mujer se enrolla? ¡Seguro que sí, seguro que sí!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyKGxwmQRXY

Ok so

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24999401

"Idle went on to create spoof Beatles band The Rutles and wrote the hit Spamalot musical."

Neil Innes could not be reached for comment.

Eh, those reunion bits for the thirtieth anniversary special programming in the UK were pretty unspecial, and I can't imagine things being any better now. All feels like yet another Eric Idle attempt to keep functioning somehow.

the reunion sketches were dire yeah. supposedly it was always Palin who didn't fancy a reunion much, seems he's come round to the idea.
it must be the early 1980s since they all last performed together onstage.

Palin's diaries are really good value, apropos of nowt.

true say. got a bit of a shock in Volume 2 when his sister killed herself :/

NO SPOILERS!

The 3000 Year Old Men

Expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

The 3000 Year Old Sketches

The Dead Horse Sketch

Did Cleese get divorced again or something?

i've been watching these for the first time in yeeears, and last night i was thinking how awful it would be if they ever got together and tried to make it work again. and now this.

First it was the Pixies wo Kim Deal, now this. Ugh

don't tempt fate, they could recruit Gervais

talk about not tempting fate, sheesh!

He added on Tuesday: "Python meeting this morning. Can't wait. Press Conference Thursday will apparently be live on Sky News. I'll get you the online URL."

get us the offline URL you lazy shit

So, one show so far, at the O2 in London in July 2014.

At a press conference, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones said they wanted to see if they "were still funny".

good one

You aren't, go back to writing your memoirs

John Cleese says, familiar sketches like “Dead Parrot” and “Crunchy Frog” won’t be done in “a predictable way,” but rather be given a “modern, topical, Pythonesque twist”

O___0

Yeah, no.

this is going to be very shit isn't it.

i mean, at least with rocky horror, people can enjoy the songs, and shout at the appropriate times turning the show into a mass gathering 'event'.

if they try and be clever and make their so called classic sketches different who fuckin' wins from that ?

nah, they shd do a show of nothing but misanthropic spite where they shit on every fond memory their audience has, that wd be legit lol

would still be crap though.

that said, i have never fallen for the MP groove - too many of my school classmates used to recite the classics every f*ckin' day ..

so, with that in mind, anyone want a full set of the reissued expanded albums i have in the archive ?

(could be good time to check ebay to see if they are worth posting at long last !)

“Dead Parrot” and “Crunchy Frog”

sigh

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25031520

but reiterated that there would also be "some new material".

the sad thing is i always thought it was awesome that these guys went out at the top and refused to get back together, and that they went out on such an uncompromising, nihilistic, fuck-you note -- 'meaning of life' is one of the most disturbing and upsetting comedies i've ever watched. i guess everyone gets around to doing that tedious reunion that everyone wants but no one actually likes.

plus there are about a billion sketches and bits on the original python show that aren't tired at all because no one ever remembers or recites them, but i somehow doubt many of them will make their way into this.

not everyone

xp

I'd rather they appear in a film together than a stage show frankly; and maybe not a 'python' film, more along th elines of fish called wanda. What's going on with Absolutely Anything (terry jones film that was supposed to have them all but idle didn't wind up in it)?

They need to just re-create confuse-a-cat as a web series or something.

Could happen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvhdWBBuBpA

there's going to be screens and such so the film aspect could mean a revival of such relative unknown classics as..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5fGSBsfq8

Hard to recreate Confuse-a-Cat and the Philosopher's Football match live on stage :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcsVz6jo5MM

decent new 90 minute Yentob doc for the Britishers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b048ry6w/imagine-summer-2014-4-monty-python-and-now-for-something-rather-similar

they bleeped them, they bleeped out the swearing omg

The fuckers.

friend went to one of the O2 shows and said a guy in front of him was aggressively shouting the punchlines before the team got to them, which was, tbh, exactly what I would have expected.

http://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/2014/07/john-cleese-wrote-this-amazing-letter-to-a-14-year-old-monty-python-fan/?utm_source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pubexchange_article

anyone read Cleese's book? goes up to start of MP, i think?

I haven't yet, but Palin's diaries are an absolute joy to read.

I'd be surprised if there's much joy to be had from the Cleese book.

The boys were back in town, being interviewed after a fashion by John Oliver.

https://tribecafilm.com/stories/tribeca-film-festival-2015-monty-python-holy-grail-reunion

Oh no :(

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-37451043

Monty Python star Terry Jones has been diagnosed with a severe variant of dementia.

The 74-year-old is suffering from primary progressive aphasia, which affects his ability to communicate.

As a result, Jones "is no longer able to give interviews", his spokesman said.

The news was confirmed as Bafta Cymru announced the Welsh-born comedian is to be honoured with an outstanding contribution award.

The National Aphasia Association describes primary progressive aphasia as a neurological syndrome in which language capabilities become slowly and progressively impaired.

"It commonly begins as a subtle disorder of language, progressing to a nearly total inability to speak, in its most severe stage," their website states.

grievous

awful

Wow. I could have sworn Jones was active and busy even recently. Dementia is the worst. Once it's been diagnosed you often realize it's been going on for some time, and that you've already been living with the steady decline.

:(

That is sad. Terry Jones rules.

It's a little weird realizing that 'Python' as a loose group has now existed for notably longer without Graham Chapman than it did with him -- it almost seemed like they'd live forever as a result, I was just used to the five of them celebrating the occasional anniversary and all. Hope Jones has got the good care he needs.

As a result, Jones "is no longer able to give interviews", his spokesman said.

Our hairdresser's husband died of logopenic progressive aphasia & apparently the later stages involve daily inarticulate screaming fits.

Such sad news.

My aunt just died after a year of progressive dementia (ultimately diagnosed as vascular dementia); it was very bad. Unlike the perception of a happy, senile person living their life in a bizarre reality, she was angry, confused, and resentful of not being allowed to drive or, say, walk out of the house with no clothes on. She finally was unable to swallow. It was all very fast and intense.

Long ago I had a friend describe the cheerful sort of interaction mentioned a few posts up. The aphasic would sit on a porch and say things such as "In there, but not anymore" and their companion would say "Walter Cronkite?" to which they would smile and nod.

In fact my mom is now a cheerful aphasic. A few months ago she told me she was wearing purple "because of the guy, something happened to him."

Just noticed that TJ has a seven year old daughter.

TJ's general lustiness is a recurring joyous theme of Palin's v enjoyable diaries

so am not surprised he fathered offspring so recently

So did anyone watch the DVD of the 2014 reunion show? Will it make me sad?

It's on the Netflix now. I'm about 6 episodes in but have to admit I've been generally unimpressed. The racist skits haven't aged well, suffice to say.

it's very much of another time. If I were to watch it now I doubt I would laugh at all

comedys job to age well for americans alright

comedys job is to annoy lex and calzino afaict

I would laugh.

The movies are still brilliant though! The one that I watched anyway!

thanks to this show, whenever somebody says "not guilty," i think not gillcup

The records (apart from the first one) are better than the TV show too. Think it's just the pressure of putting together three hours of sketches, you could edit the first series down to a much better single hour.

I bought the complete Flying Circus on DVD with bar mitzvah money but probably the last time I watched any was sometime in college. I'm pretty sure even adult woke me would think much if not most of it is still good. I remember the ratio of unmoored absurdity to racism being pretty high?

I'd rather watch a randomly selected episode from the first three Flying Circus series than even one minute of (say) Animal House, Airplane, a Pink Panther movie…

Kinda glad they could get away with not boiling it down, it wouldn't be improved as wall to wall "classics"

Science Fiction Sketch is a miserable shaggy dog story with no proper punchline that takes up two thirds of an episode and I love it

TBF the only inarguably offensive sketch that I've seen so far is the Native American theatre aficionado.

But in terms of real lols, it's been very sparse. Lots of riffing on a single unworthy joke.

Yeah flying circus has some pretty racist bits, but have you rewatched Spike Milligan's Q.. series recently?

Yeah I'd never say it all works but it's absolutely not punchline comedy

Recently cried with laughter at those German episodes that on Netflix. Brilliant, genius etc.

There's definitely stuff that falls flat and doesn't work in virtually every episode.

Plus a lot is badly under-rehearsed and looks cheap and threadbare (lol BBC comedy budgets).

Low-budget production on British shows are quaint!

as a kid, i found a lot of the flying circus not funny so much as just fascinatingly weird, like i'd watch it with a real sense of wonder and anticipation that i can't remember ever feeling with any other comedy show. so much of it was based on satire of things i was completely unfamiliar with (both as an american and as a non-adult) that there were entire episodes that just flew over my head, but i don't remember ever being bored by it.

Leee's initial revive point is pretty OTM, one I've been turning over a lot in my brain ever since they announced it would end up on Netflix.

I do think the movies are generally better, even though I never, ever need to see them again due to overexposure

as a kid, i found a lot of the flying circus not funny so much as just fascinatingly weird

OTM. I loved the out-of-left-field stuff like 'Conrad Pooh's Dancing Teeth' and 'Find the Fish' so much.

fishy fishy fishy fish

weird coincidence: just watched a Monty Python sketch, as the result of searching Youtube for 'hide and seek championship'. i wish i was lying

The racist skits haven't aged well, suffice to say.

*takes a drink*

it's very much of another time. If I were to watch it now I doubt I would laugh at all
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, November 27, 2018 6:24 PM

I'll take How to Tell Things Are Funny for $200, Alex

oh shit, Monty Python is on Netflix?!

Dr Morbius: “Racism is actually good”

Nobody was saying blackface was bad in 1970! We didn’t know!

The English were blacking up their children for a larf on bonfire night until the late 90s

you fuckers need an enema

hey guys the Marx Bros did blackface in A Day at the Races, I'm letting you know so you can lead off every discussion of them til you fucking die with that (yer welcome)

Do u still laugh at it

Come on, guys, we all know the best way to handle instances of unfortunate racism from the past is to pretend that they never even happened. It will never magically disappear if you keep bringing it up (v uncool, F-).

Fwiw my initial comment wasnt meant to imply that the show isnt funny because its racist, just that i dont find it funny anymore - it’s targets (stuffy british ppl, mainly) don’t much concern me or seem so funny as they did in previous times.

It's not racist and it remains very funny and ingenious. And the TV shows are better than the films.

The Goodies was way more 70s casual racist than MP shurely. i’m struggling to even think of a blackface flying circus skit but i prob just don’t remember?

Oh there was that Gilliam bit with the jewish satan and jesuses on the telephone poles but that bit got cut in the first place.

wait no now i remember that jungle one urgh.

Yeah there's a number -- not to mention a lot of yellowface ones too.

Onion A/V Club writers, always talking like a normal human

Okay, we should probably back up a bit. I don’t really want to talk about this, but I’ll give it a paragraph, and that’ll be enough. (I mean, feel free to whatever in the comments, although please be respectful, except when you’re talking about me, because let’s face it, I deserve what I get.) Palin is playing a character named “Mrs. Nigger-Baiter,” and while I don’t know how this was supposed to play at the time, as is, it’s an ugly line with no real point other than to shock. There’s no context, no build, no punchline. It’s just a mean, vile word tossed out without any apparent consideration. I don’t think challenging or hateful language needs to be banned, because that never gets us anywhere we want to go. But when you’re going to use a word like this, it needs some reason beyond itself to be there.

There's a recurring gag about cricket teams, confused about a joke saying the test match is being held in a room and being shepherded out told "it's only a joke, it's a joke". The team appear in black face as the Trinidad team. No-one would do it now but it's not racist.

Are we really going to have to cover why blackface is ipso facto racist in this thread

Are we not just gonna fucking take that as read at this point

I was half-thinking about starting a "Racist art that still holds up" thread (I reckon someone would say Birth of a Nation, though I found it incredibly dull), but then some of these responses give me pause.

The Wikipedia page for Al Jolson contains a lot of carefully sourced “he had black friends” which made me kind of 🤨

xpost TBF, the Venn diagram of 'pre-21st Century art that still holds up' and 'racist art that still holds up' is close enough to a perfect circle to render that project mostly pointless.

(See also: a non-negligible portion of 21st Century art.)

It seems like most older stuff I engage with has at least one or two 'oof'-worthy moments that I can consider within the given context and move on from. And then occasionally I stumble upon something where I'm like 'okay, this isn't really defensible' and I have to kinda shut the door on it. Monty Python is certainly among the former grouping.

(Even just realizing lately how ubiquitous 'retard' was well into this decade! Very little can ever fully avoid being retroactively tainted by progress.)

I do appreciate their casting an actual black jazzman to turn into Scotsman.

Billy Crystal did his Sammy Davis Jr thing in full makeup (for about 5 seconds, on film) the last time he hosted the Oscars. I never worried about it being racist bcz it was never funny. He and Chris Guest played two elderly ex-Negro League ballplayers when they were on SNL in '84-85. I remember that being funny.

The Jolson thing was a phenomenon essays could be written about (and have). He had a base of black fans, including Sammy Davis Jr. For homework, all the snowflakes can decide whet all the black performers who used blackface... oh fergit it.

Wow, guess you just went for it there...

ipso facto racist

Whenever I read the word ipso I think of these tic-tac knock offs and this advert which is also kinda you wouldn't do that now.

https://youtu.be/q4Tww7bcIWQ

The sexism in Monty Python is much much worse than the racism, to open another can of worms. I kind of agree with whoever itt said the TV shows are better than the films, they seem like more of an achievement.

Lots of homophobic/transphobic cheap laughs in MP too - all in line with the popular light entertainment of the day.

Oh yes, of course! There's a reason why Netflix isn't re-running the Goodies - and it's not just to annoy Bill Oddie, though that is a fine and noble reason in itself.

It seems like most of the threads I engage with have at least one or two 'oof'-worthy posts that I can consider within the given context and move on from.

(xposts, as I'd hope would be obvious)

yanks as a rule think the gilliam stuff is what mattered thats how you know not to mind too much what yanks think about mp

Monty Python's That Shit Doesn't Fly Any More Circus

You know what does hold up? The sketch where Hitler, Von Ribbentrop and Himmler are hiding out in a British b&b.

"No, no, you've got the wrong map there, this is Stalingrad, you want the Ilfracombe and Barnstaple section."

yes, as with all things from 1970, comedy was much more sexist.

with 1930, at least you have Groucho, who made sexism hilarious.

xp i liked it when hitler disguised as mr hilter was holding a political rally and a woman in the crowd complained, ‘i gave him my baby to kiss and he bit it on the head’

Also the mountaineering expedition sketch, "... Kilimanjaro is a pretty tricky climb you know, most of it is up until you reach the very very top, and then it tends to slope away rather sharply".

(thread descends into a succession of 'funny' quotes)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Stomp.gif

yanks as a rule think the gilliam stuff is what mattered thats how you know not to mind too much what yanks think about mp

― old yeller-at-clouds (darraghmac), Wednesday, November 28, 2018 5:44 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe if those other guys had ever done anything after Python instead of fading into obscurity we would feel differently.

Wait, I take it back, I guess one of them was in The Great Muppet Caper. The exception that proves the rule.

You mean you never saw Terry Jones' "Barbarians" documentary series? That was v. good.

Poor Americans haven't had the pleasure of watching Eric Idle's 'Breakaway' adverts

I dont' think the intention was ever racist, but the presentation certainly...doesn't age well. That said, the golden moments of the show do not involve any of those sketches. The best sketches are still funny. ARgument Clinc, Parrot, that hilarious sketch where they classify words as 'woody' or 'tinny'....I'd say a good 1/3 of this entire series is out of the part brilliant and holds up. The rest varies from 'very good' to 'wtf'.

"He and Chris Guest played two elderly ex-Negro League ballplayers when they were on SNL in '84-85. I remember that being funny."

this is one of the best SNL bits in history (as is most of that season IMO).

With the possible exception of Kids in the Hall, I don't think there's a sketch show in existence with a hit/miss ratio that far exceeds 50/50. I'd say MP hits that threshold. Despite being a half decade older, it at least holds up better than the 'classic' era of SNL.

The sketches with the merchant banker being asked to give to charity; and the man undergoing the bizarre job interview (with Cleese playing the banker and the interviewer, respectively) are probably in my top 5, are still extremely funny, and have none of the "problematic" stuff. Some of y'all are crazy.

Yeah I've never met an American MP fan who felt that Gilliam was the main attraction. Guy just got a lot more ink over the years because his work outside of Python was significantly higher profile.

xps

Wait, was Monty Python responsible for that weirdly-long epilogue to my favorite Gilliam movie, The Crimson Permanent Insurance? That was pretty good, I guess.

Yeah darragh have you met someone who was like “I only liked the cartoons?” I cannot imagine such a person into being

Insurance Assurance, oof

"Yeah flying circus has some pretty racist bits, but have you rewatched Spike Milligan's Q.. series recently?

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length)"

"less racist than Q" is setting the bar real, real low.

"The Wikipedia page for Al Jolson contains a lot of carefully sourced “he had black friends” which made me kind of 🤨

― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby)"

yes this is extremely wikipedia, i recall the wikipedia page for "coal black and de sebben dwarfs" being the same way

"Lots of homophobic/transphobic cheap laughs in MP too - all in line with the popular light entertainment of the day.

― Ward Fowler"

yeah for me personally their contribution to the (long established) british tradition of comedy transvestism is the worst thing about them

having made all these ancillary complaints i will point out as is my wont that "monty python and the holy grail" is one of the most historically accurate movies about the medieval era there is and i will always love them for that

It was a prologue, not an epilogue – shown before TMoL, or the first part of it if you will.

xps

I think you have been read that xps too fast.

monty python and the holy grail" is one of the most historically accurate movies about the medieval era

I find the prevelance of coconuts unlikely tbh.

xpost Yes, as per usual, that was just me being a total dipshit.

it may have been british ilxors on this very thread who the fucknose

It's always anglophile Americans I come across who love MP the most and the grotesque 'Britishness' is obviously a big part of the appeal.

"Wait, was Monty Python responsible for that weirdly-long epilogue to my favorite Gilliam movie, The Crimson Permanent Insurance? That was pretty good, I guess."

that is from a Monty Python film, yes.

xpost Yes, as per usual, that was just me being a total dipshit.

― Fantasy Eyelid (Old Lunch), Wednesday, November 28, 2018 9:04 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It helps to know that the prologue was very much Gilliam's thing.

Also, whatever dialect Graham Chapman is using in the "flying sheep" sketch never fails to make me laugh. Nor does the following bit with Cleese and Palin speaking as Frenchmen demonstrating the sheep airliner.

"Wait, was Monty Python responsible for that weirdly-long epilogue to my favorite Gilliam movie, The Crimson Permanent Insurance? That was pretty good, I guess."

i thought this was funny OL do not apologise

yes, OL's dumb joke was good and ppl explaining it to him are the true dummies

There's a reason why Netflix isn't re-running the Goodies - and it's not just to annoy Bill Oddie, though that is a fine and noble reason in itself.

It's the same reason they're not re-running any other British sitcom or sketch-com or sit-sketch or indeed any programme of any kind from the 1970s (or 1980s or 1990s)

Netflix US does have 'Allo 'Allo!

I rescind my entire posting history

Also, whatever dialect Graham Chapman is using in the "flying sheep" sketch never fails to make me laugh.

Yes! "Notice they do not so much fly, as ploomet."

Aussie Netflix has fawlty towers and yes minister, there’s probably more but I can’t say I’ve loooked too hard.

There's a reason why Netflix isn't re-running the Goodies

There's plenty of racism in The Goodies and at least one incidence of blackface (specifically Tim Brooke-Taylor in blackface as an African-American boxer in 'Kung-Fu Capers'). The BBC did a 'Goodies Night' a few years ago and IIRC they couldn't show an entire episode. Instead they kept showing clips and then cutting back to Tim/Grahame/Bill in a studio in front of a live audience.

Also, whatever dialect Graham Chapman is using in the "flying sheep" sketch never fails to make me laugh.

A kind of generic West Country yokel accent. Or East Anglian.

Aussie Netflix has fawlty towers and yes minister, there’s probably more but I can’t say I’ve loooked too hard.

ha ha, searching for Yes, Minister on US Netflix brings up:

Fawlty Towers
The IT Crowd
World War II In Colour
the US remake of House Of Cards
Bodyguard
The Good Place
Death In Paradise
Friends
Life Of Brian
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History
and Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac

My first exposure to Python was via a CBBC programme called 'Boxpops' which also featured this sketch from NTNOCN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asUyK6JWt9U

Which, while somewhat true, isn't half calling the kettle black in NTNOCN's case. And re-watching it on YouTube a year or so ago, it's probably aged much worse…

i certainly think SCTV w/ the peak cast was better than 50/50

is SCTV streaming anywhere?

It is strange how poorly the UK looks back on the Goodies - it was very very popular in Australia in the 80s as a kids show! Apparently even the cast members were a bit taken aback.

I dont recall weather what we saw was edited much, but probably not given how shithouse Australians tend to be about caring about racism/sexism in media in the first place ("its just a jooooke cant you take a joke" etc)

haha never saw that NTNOCN skit. Funny.

AFAIK the Goodies never ran in the US, at least not with any regularity; maybe a few PBS stations picked it up in the 80's. I've never seen it and only knew about it from books on Python.

It is strange how poorly the UK looks back on the Goodies - it was very very popular in Australia in the 80s as a kids show!

It was generally considered a bit of kids show in the UK tbh.

it was a kids show

it was on at 7, even benny hill was on at 8

Many episodes parodied current events, such as an episode where the entire black population of South Africa emigrates to Great Britain to escape apartheid. As this means that the white South Africans no longer have anyone to exploit and oppress, they introduce a new system called "apart-height", where short people (Bill and a number of jockeys) are discriminated against.

Huh.

(xp) I think Bill Oddie got annoyed at the idea that it was seen as a kids show but then he's annoyed at everything.

it was on at 7, even benny hill was on at 8

it was generally on at 5-6pm in Australia, and quite frequently cut. They did a stage tour in 2005 which was largely them sitting down, talking about the episodes that had been censored, and then showing the censored bits on a big screen.

lol

i liked the one where they knew the end of the world was about to happen bcz the pages in graeme's diary were blank after a certain date, aged 11 i thought this tremendous stuff

I remember one episode that was a parody of Clockwork Orange - not exactly a kids' film!

i think the parody involved them dressing up then falling down

IIRC, Cleese appears in The Goodies as a genie emerging from a can, shouts "Kids' programme!" and disappears.

everything the goodies have done since the goodies is better than anything john cleese did EVEN IN MONTY PYTHON there i said it

Some of them were definitely broadcast later than 7, I wasn't allowed to stay up for them. Altho that was probably mainly on the grounds that my dad "wasn't watching that rubbish".

yr dad otm tho i loved em (silly men falling down was my jam)

Yeah I had the books and watched the TV show whenever the opportunity presented. The books were *definitely* not kids material despite the fact that yeah it's just gussied up slapstick mostly

I still fondly remember the Bronson The Wonder Man and "many moods of Charles Bronson" jokes from the Goodies' Disaster Movie book in the school library, despite having not seen Death Wish at age 8, nor any subsequent age

Is that a dagger I see before me? No, it's Trufo the wonder dog!

...sorry I seem to have derailed a Python thread into a Goodies discussion haha.

monty python and the holy grail" is one of the most historically accurate movies about the medieval era

Unlike almost every other film, MP films really got onscreen filth right. Like, literally, the cast often looks like it'd been rolling around in the dirt and mud before shooting a scene.

holy grail is probably their finest achievement in so many ways -- a consistently funny script, fine performances, just enough animation -- that i wish i hadn't burned out on it so long ago

still laugh whenever i think of "what, the curtains?"

Yeah. Probably not an uncommon story, but The Holy Grail deeply resonated with me and my nerd (USA) friends in middle school in the mid 90s. Like actually revelatory, shaped our senses of humor and inspired us to write comedy bits that we passed back and forth. It was an obsession for a good year or two.

We delved deeper into all the other Python stuff but it was mostly never on the same level in our minds. Not entirely sure of the alchemy, that one wrecked us scene to scene but the other movies and show mostly fell flat.

Is this where I can reveal that I changed all my AOL sound effects to Holy Grail .wavs

It’s SO much funnier than ‘.. Brian’ that it’s not even a debate anymore.

incorrect

like incorrect on both counts but so incorrect on in not being a debate that you should be banned

Since we brought up The goodies, bill office was quite the musician/songwriter, two songs a week on. I’m sorry i’ll Read that again for ten years.

Needless to say there is a lot of Python in ISIRTA and the earlier series probably have a similar hit/miss ratio. Ferret song stands with most of the best python sketches.

out of em all was bill oddie or gilliam or who the biggest prick

tim brooke-taylor clearly the worst ito no actual talent coattailing

Oddie the worst in terms of glaring me down when I saw him on a bus one time and was thinking of thanking him for his work

A glare that intimated the real possibility of verbal assault if I dared to acknowledge him

old cunt

t/s getting slotted by Bill Odie vs Rory McGrath.

Hate to say it, but Oddie used to be a regular customer when I worked in the jazz department of London's biggest record shop and he was always perfectly fine - clearly knew and loved his music, didn't expect or demand any special treatment, no trouble at all.

I know someone who used to work with his ex-wife and, yes, ex-wives and all that, but...

out of em all was bill oddie or gilliam or who the biggest prick

... or Cleese or Idle.

Just watched the episode with the Clockwork Orange parody for the first time in several decades ( https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6ewjb0 ) and it's pretty insane. And is in fact a parody of 2001 as well. Graham sends rabbits to the moon, Bill and Tim follow suit and get kidnapped by the moon rabbits who have become a super race and are sent back to earth as rabbits to terrorise the population (The Transistorised Carrot). How in hell they dreamed that up I don't know. It sort of holds up.

And it references Monty Python too!

That NTNOCN sketch is great, and sent me back to the original, which I still think might be their finest moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeKWVuye1YE

if you can bear it, the bill oddie "who do you think you are" was interesting, if also wrenchingly sad (one of the saddest i remember): http://www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/past-stories/bill-oddie.shtml

it doesn't quite expunge the "don't be a prick" rule but it does explain what maybe turned him into one

If Marcello was here he could list all the jazz/improv musicians who played on the Goodies records. I know Dave Macrae, from Matching Mole, was heavily involved. Also that "Funky Gibbon" was inspired by Parliament/Funkadelic, though it sounds more like "Smash the Social Contract" by Cornelius Cardew.

... actually it's the other way round "Smash the Social Contract" sounds like "Funky Gibbon".

*hurries off to the wire to steal that insight for a thinkpiece*

isn't it also the "vote for nigel barton" tune tho? i think it's something repurpoised from the common realm

Yes, I think you're right, nonetheless I refuse to give up on the idea that Goodies inspired Maoism was a thing at some point in the 70s.

the guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish on a (three-man) bicycle swims in the sea

Here: http://www.alwynwturner.com/glitter/funky_gibbon.html

Bill Oddie:
You won't believe the musical pretensions that went on in my head. I listened to a lot of jazz and a lot of funk, and that period of the '70s for me was fantastic - it was really the era when fusion started. The people I liked were Sly Stone and early Parliament, and I listened to what was happening in jazz at the time, when Miles Davis was coming up with some very interesting hybrid music. With 'Funky Gibbon', I started off - it's almost unbelievable considering how stupid the song is - trying to get the feel of a Miles Davis track, I can't remember which, probably just after Bitches Brew and that sort of era: some really choppy Miles Davis-type rhythm, again with a Sly Stone influence.
We had marvellous musicians on those sessions, but they couldn't get it. They knew what I was sort of trying to do, but I probably listened to that sort of thing more than they did, and it was driving us nuts, so we sent the drummer and the bass-player and the guitarist home. And I had a keyboard player called Dave Macrae, who'd played with Matching Mole and Robert Wyatt and people like that - governor player - and he started playing some clavinet, very Stevie Wonder-type feel to it, and I said, 'That's fine; could you do a synth-bass on it?'
And then I literally started whacking the top of the grand piano. So the actual rhythm-track of 'The Funky Gibbon' has only got me and Dave on it - he plays clavinet and synth-bass and we miked up the top of the piano. Then we got the horn section of Gonzales playing a Memphis Horns-type thing. It was lovely for me to be able to use musicians I liked and try to reproduce sounds which I also listened to. And then put the stupid song over the top of it. The idea that all that effort went into 'The Funky Gibbon'!
It sounds like Parliament on a bad day, or something like that (laughs), that kind of thing. I think subconsciously people feel it - this was always my theory about it, I thought: I want the music to sound good or authentic, whatever style it happens to be in.

the deeps of this man! no wonder he is always cross

I have a positive Oddie story that involves a large bag of chocolate peanuts. It was Halloween and we kids knocked on his door. Always had time for the man after that but now re-evaluating my whole childhood.

I had a better impression of him than of Mel Smith who I also 'met' around the same time when he was filming something in a mate's house.

Still the NTNOCN hi-fi shop sketch remains classic at least until I decide to watch it again and I can't remember anything specific from The Goodies.

Henry was to meet a grisly end. While working as a semi-retired night watchman in his late 60s - back then a comfortable retirement was a luxury not extended to the working class - he died after tripping into a vat of boiling brine.

sniff, I heard he was remarkably well preserved.

lol i knew you'd enjoy that bit

If Marcello was here he could list all the jazz/improv musicians who played on the Goodies records. I know Dave Macrae, from Matching Mole, was heavily involved. Also that "Funky Gibbon" was inspired by Parliament/Funkadelic, though it sounds more like "Smash the Social Contract" by Cornelius Cardew.

― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:09 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

... actually it's the other way round "Smash the Social Contract" sounds like "Funky Gibbon".

― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:18 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*hurries off to the wire to steal that insight for a thinkpiece*

― mark s, Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:20 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

isn't it also the "vote for nigel barton" tune tho? i think it's something repurpoised from the common realm

― mark s, Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:21 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, I think you're right, nonetheless I refuse to give up on the idea that Goodies inspired Maoism was a thing at some point in the 70s.

― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Thursday, November 29, 2018 11:24 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The 'who killed Cornelius Cardew' plot thickens...

Are you suggesting a tricycle was seen speeding away from the seen of the crime?

well, speeding then falling over

'the seen of the crime' nice

go off to yr Goodies thread already

I remember my ex-brother-in-law gave me a *tape of "Silence" by Michael Mantler with this photo on the cover, which he'd labelled, l-to-r, Robert Wyatt, Carla Bley, Kevin Coyne, Michael Mantler:

https://dvd-fever.co.uk/dvd-fever/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/the-goodies-featureda.jpg

(*we did get on, in spite of this)

warning: personal anecdotes time.

1. inspired by repeated listenings of a dubbed copy of my friend's cassette of MP's the final rip off comp, i recorded my own comedy sketches tape. it was probably no more than 4 or 5 sketch ideas, but i sequenced them, voiced the characters, etc. this was probably ca. '89. i only recall 2 of the ideas. in one, a famous literary critic is on a radio show to discuss (pausing to recall the novel...) (ah!) hardy's return of the native. he gets called out for instead just reading the back of a hardy boys book. the other one i remember was this week's episode of "dictionary reading for the blind," in which i pick up where we left off last episode just reading through the dictionary. my voice fades and the music comes up. the end. really shitty stuff, but what i wouldn't give to have this tape still.

2. i participated pretty heavily for a couple of years in the NFL (national forensic league). my specialty was HI (humorous interpretation, or humorous interp if you're in the know). you got like 10 minutes to present your piece. do all the voices if there are any. etc. in 11th grade i got 2nd place in the state (missippi) on the strength of my performance of "four yorkshiremen." it won me a trip to nationals that summer in san jose. only trouble was they required material to be published in written form and submitted. i couldn't find anywhere where that sketch was transcribed/published. i did, however, find "crunchy frog" published in written form somewhere. so i did that one at nationals and failed miserably. there was a great dance party for all of us, though, and the dj played all my faves of that time: "hippy chick," "enjoy the silence," etc.

go off to yr Goodies thread already

sorry this is now a Goodies thread

I can't understand why this episode hasn't been repeated. What could go wrong?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Roots

Funny how little TV Python I'd seen when I wrote a thesis school project on them (CSE Drama, only the middle-class kids got to do the O-level). Fortunately, I could borrow Roger Wilmut's From Fringe to Flying Circus for weeks on end from the library, to lift sections from verbatim. And then shoehorn in references to Comic Strip and Alexei Sayle, which didn't work at all. I dimly remember the Cleeseless 4th series when it went out (or soon-after repeat) and only saw the early "good" stuff around '87, when BBC ran the lot again. I knew the films and the records best at 15, I suppose.

I’ve fussed abt this on ilx before but it’s pertinent here too: we laugh at things for many reasons, but two of them that don’t really coincide are surprise and comfortable familiarity.

MP is very nearly 50 years old, and its ideas are even more pervasive than its actual material these days. I first saw eps (airing in real time) in maybe 1971- 72, when I was 11 or 12. Someone that age today couldn’t possibly watch a sketch — semi-chaotic TV version or slicked-up film version — and be startled into hilarity by the style, I don’t think… as you still could by watching British TV at the end of the 60s. We primarily laugh at it because what’s funny in it reminds of enjoying ourselves in past times — and this isn’t at all a bad thing! but it does also mean that the er difficult elements grate a lot more than they did back in the days when it was genuinely busy puncturing professional staidness, at a formal level as much as anything.

As some of you are aware — promo shill alert klaxon — I’ve been working on a book for the last few years, an anthology of stuff talking about the UK music press from the 1960s to the early 1980s. One key development in this story is how NME converted from a failing pop-focused early 70s trade rag to the best-selling voice-of-underground-youth UK rock paper — which it did in 1973-74. In May 1974, it included a free flexidisc 45 on the cover: Monty Python’s ‘Tiny Black Round Thing’ — which entirely fitted in with its new editorial ethos (as well the tastes of the readership).*

Because among other things it had cemented its turnaround in direction by a full-on assault on the writer-readers fourth wall, using endless self-reflexive MP-ish tricks in headlines and standfirsts and coverlines and captions to draw the reader into the process of making a weekly paper, including self-deprecating gags about how headlines and captions get decided, plus running jokes (often via editorial interpolation — ed.) about writers as recognisable characters whose views and behaviour you could poke regular affectionate fun at. This wasn’t new to the world of publishing — editors and writers were often also Marvel fans well aware of Stan Lee’s ‘Bullpen Bulletins’ — but it revolutionised the tone of the UK rock weeklies, and set it strongly against the dominant “view from nowhere”, which permeated establishment media. So there was a kind of pellmell anti-officious surrealism suddenly at work, right there among the very extremely sober work of explaining why the Groundhogs were better than Blodwyn Pig.

So yes, anyway — this is an immediate subcultural effect of MP in the UK, which tells you something about the very widespread receptiveness to it, at the level of the teenaged political unconscious.

•It wasn’t actually the first UK rock publication to do this! In 1972, when NME was still flailing re its identity, the underground UK rock monthly ZigZag put the ’Teach Yourself Heath’ MP flexidisc on its cover, a kind of linguaphone parody of the then-prime minister’s very imitable (and widely imitated) voice patterns.

^ Good stuff.

I think I said it somewhere else on ILX, but worth mentioning here, football fans singing "Spot the Looney" to the tune of "Son of Your Father" - I'm not sure you can't get more 1970s UK than that.

RIP Terry Jones. You and the lads warped me forever at 14. I've met Michael and John, but never you nor Graham. A great writer/performer/director for a timeless team. Thanks Jonesy. pic.twitter.com/ZXxXpgkNL0

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) January 22, 2020

R.I.P., heaven needed two sheds.

I saw a Jones appearance at a Museum of Broadcasting thing on Python, likely in the '90s, with Idle and Palin. They had cardboard cutouts of the other three onstage.

Someone asked how they each felt about "being an icon" and Jones said, "I don't mind being a painting in a Russian Orthodox church."

Unless that was Idle.

RIP

Sir Bedivere - rest well good soldier!

RIP

RIP

this sketch makes me laugh so hard every time i see it, and the accent Jones does is so hilarious to me

https://youtu.be/saY10AWXLIY