Monty Python's Flying Circus - Classic or Dud?

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