My first encounters with Mr. Cleese were Muppet-related, actually -- hosted an episode of the show and has a brief, quietly funny role in the second movie -- and then there was his hilarious turn as Robin Hood in Time Bandits. A couple of years after that I first started watching Python, and there we are. Fish Called Wanda is genius, but I was never bothered to see Gentle Creatures or whatever it was called.
My favorite Cleese story happened in 1989, when in fact he stopped by UCLA to pick up the Jack Benny award, given out every year to 'a comic legend' or something of the sort. That they've given it out to a few hacks along the way is unfortunate, but hey, Cleese got it that year and I was attending UCLA at the time, so off I went to the award ceremony and question and answer session. Had some great tales and funny stories, the best being this extemporaneous riff on Alexander the Great. Reason: somebody had asked if the Pythons were getting back together to do a bio of said historical figure (uh, no), and that was enough! "He was taught by Aristotle! Can you imagine what that would have been like? 'Master Aristotle, what are we learning today?' 'Oh, zoology, biology, history, geography, psychology...'"
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I find the idea of Ally thinking Cleese is the second best man who ever lived funnier than the majority of his actual work. But 'Clockwise' and 'Fawlty Towers' were good.
― Nick, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
FT is farce in a stricter technical sense, tho, isn't it (Feydeau => Rix): not just cheeky slapstick idiocy, but people running in and out of dfft doors the whole time, and hiding in cupboards
― mark s, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Billy Dods, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Otis Wheeler, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
David: Sooner or later, I turn everyone into my bitch. You might as well go for it now.
― Ally, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Joe, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― nathalie, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― David Raposa, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tom, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Croooooow, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
And his last series on the Beeb, that human face thing, I know the BBC fucked him over on it, but God! I just found it embarrassing.
― DavidM, Tuesday, 21 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Mark Morris, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
http://images.dailyexpress.co.uk/img/covers/257x330front/2011-09-02.jpg
― Ned Trifle X, Friday, 2 September 2011 15:08 (twelve years ago) link
The irony being that Cleese has been here recently scrounging up some cash to pay his alimony (or some other BS).
― Ned Trifle X, Friday, 2 September 2011 15:09 (twelve years ago) link
Short Q&A, including:
What song would you like played at your funeral?Tchaikovsky's 1812, sung by Barry Manilow.
― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 21 October 2012 19:20 (eleven years ago) link
Just saw that he was in a series Charles McKeown wrote this year. Is it any good? Reviews are quite poor.
― akm, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 13:39 (five years ago) link
Saw him 'perform' last night and the answer to the question in the thread title is emphatically, painfully "no"
― One Eye Open, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 14:19 (four years ago) link
he's nearly 80. Chaplin wasn't funny then either.
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 14:42 (four years ago) link
Even accounting for his age, his long routines about how annoying it is that "the blacks and mexicans" want to be called 'people of color' but you can't say 'colored people' anymore, or about how hotel maids need to learn to speak english, made for one of the most queasily uncomfortable shows I've ever sat through. Afterward my GF confessed that she initially thought he was doing an 'old clueless racist guy' character bit, and then began to have the sinking realization that no, this was his actual material. Super depressing.
― One Eye Open, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 14:54 (four years ago) link
hooo boy
is this the Basil Fawlty tour?
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 14:55 (four years ago) link
was this dinner theater in Youngstown?
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 14:55 (four years ago) link
I only saw a couple of episodes, but the sitcom he did with Alison Steadman a couple of years ago wasn’t the long awaited return to form.
― Dan Worsley, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 15:04 (four years ago) link
Xp Alfred Close, it was a fancy theater in my upstate ny town. it was billed as a one-man show/monologue thing, presented as a kind of ted talk format with slides, lots of him talking about popular social science books that he'd recently read, really strange. We were expecting something super halfassed like you usually get with old showbiz lions doing shows like this & would have been fine with that, just kind of wanted to see him live before he croaks, but was not expecting all the racial stuff. (He also did another weird digression about how evolution alone cant explain consciousness that was very hard to parse but seemed like was going to get into creationist stuff?) Also lots of pandering anti-Trump jokes, but then he seemed totally unaware that his routine about how Mexicans are invading the US could have been lifted straight from a MAGA rally. Just a really bizarre night.
― One Eye Open, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 15:14 (four years ago) link
He’s been like it for ages
― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 15:15 (four years ago) link
the early funny stuff was largely written by others but he did have a good bodyshape for physical comedy once upon a time
― mark s, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 15:19 (four years ago) link
fawlty towers was a documentary
― michael keaton IS jim thirlwell IN ‘foetaljuice’ (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 15:21 (four years ago) link
I use to piss myself watching this bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwqJzCG9qr0
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 15:21 (four years ago) link
"He also did another weird digression about how evolution alone cant explain consciousness that was very hard to parse but seemed like was going to get into creationist stuff?"
lolled at reading this, so I guess that makes it a form of comedy - but i don't think i'd listening to it 1st hand would have had the same effect
― calzino, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 15:22 (four years ago) link
Haha yes true, i did spend the whole show confused and baffled with no idea of where things were going to go next from moment to surreal moment, so in that sense it could be located within a grand python tradition
― One Eye Open, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:00 (four years ago) link
so, the trend I'm seeing in these answers would be "is funny? no. was funny? yes.".
― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:09 (four years ago) link
It’s been, what, 30 years since he was even a bit funny? Closer to 40?
― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:15 (four years ago) link
A Fish Called Wanda was his last successful fling at funny. Calculate from there.
― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:19 (four years ago) link
Fierce Creatures had its moments iirc
― Simon H., Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:20 (four years ago) link
a fish called wanda hasn't been funny for more than 30 years
― mark s, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:22 (four years ago) link
& it’s probably about 10 years since I first noticed him popping up to do weird morrissey-style interviews about how England isn’t England anymore cause all the foreigns are doing white genocide by existing
― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:30 (four years ago) link
He is *terrible* at Twitter
Re Waitrose ducklings...I've been digging, and have discovered that the family who first made chocolate in the 15th century, chose to produce white,dark and milk chocolate in order to stir up racial disharmony. They especially abhorred chocolate-coloured peopleApology......— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) April 10, 2019
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:33 (four years ago) link
A post that has always stuck with me from this Monty Python thread:
Maybe six or seven years ago, I heard an interview with Cleese in which he more or less said he felt he'd lost his edge in terms of humor. What he said was kind of sad and the gist of it has stayed with me since then, something VERY loosely along the lines of "When you're young, you notice all these little inconsistencies in the world, things that aren't quite right, people who don't quite seem to know what they're doing, and you can derive humor from that. But when you get older, you start to realize that nothing is really right at all, that no one has any idea what they're doing, and then it stops seeming as funny."
― eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:34 (four years ago) link
^^^ funny man
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:37 (four years ago) link
he spent the 90s doing corporate video work which was (a) almost certainly not even slightly funny, but (b) possibly a tiny step up* from what they were going to get if he hadn't been in the video
*up as in: "this is great, john cleese is hilarious!" *later, uncertainly* "i must have enjoyed that lots, john cleese was in it!" narrator's voice (etc)
― mark s, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:38 (four years ago) link
think cleese has always been the python most likely to be awful in old age
doesnt come across great in palin diaries, and palin is a v kind observer
but hes 80. yknow.
― daenerys baker (darraghmac), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:39 (four years ago) link
People who avoid a slow entropic slide into human turdburgerdom in their dotage should get some kind of medal, maybe.
― 5 favrite kind of animal. jaguar. giraffe. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 16:54 (four years ago) link
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 17:02 (four years ago) link
I'm sorry they did that to you, Wanda.
― 5 favrite kind of animal. jaguar. giraffe. (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 17:05 (four years ago) link
Lol, thanks
― Careless Love Battery (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 17:18 (four years ago) link
Aristotle was not Belgian.
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 17:28 (four years ago) link
It's said he was a bugger for the bottle though.
― Ned Caligari (Tom D.), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 17:29 (four years ago) link
A Fish Called Wanda is unwatchable IMO, I've failed to get past the first 30mins many times as a teenager after being told it was "hilarious", though Cleese is by no means the worst thing in it
― Captain ACAB (Neil S), Tuesday, 21 May 2019 18:34 (four years ago) link
I don't think trans people were a complete unknown in the 70s. Jan Morris had a bestselling memoir about her transitioning for a start.
― Zelda Zonk, Monday, 10 October 2022 23:50 (one year ago) link
Even in 1970, when I was 15 and resources like wikipedia were a utopian pipedream, I knew who Christine Jorgensen was.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, 10 October 2022 23:55 (one year ago) link
I always thought all the left stuff in Python was the result of them(Terry Jones especially) encountering it at university, and the various Trot splinters that were going on, esp by the 70s
― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 00:24 (one year ago) link
Christine Jorgenson was referenced a number of times on 70s Match Games.
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 00:51 (one year ago) link
"does anyone still watch Fawlty Towers and think John Cleese being an asshole and treating everyone like shit is funny?"
yes
― akm, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 02:29 (one year ago) link
― Zelda Zonk, Monday, October 10, 2022 11:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
And Michael Palin did an excellent profile of Morris for the BBC about a decade ago, which included a sensitive discussion of her transition. He at least seems not to have curdled in his views in the way Cleese has.
― Critique of the Goth Programme (Neil S), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 07:36 (one year ago) link
Good thing nobody said that then
It's a literal quote from upthread dude.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 07:40 (one year ago) link
Not has Idle. Was reading an interview with him yesterday.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/oct/03/i-didnt-cry-until-i-knew-i-was-going-to-live-monty-pythons-eric-idle-on-surviving-pancreatic-cancer?
"What does he think when he hears Cleese claiming that comedians are no longer free to make jokes without fear of being cancelled? “He’s who he is now. The thing I try to remember is the good times when we were young and funny. And we are no longer those people or speaking to today’s generation. We’re old farts. We should be left to go quietly to bed and watch the telly.” He giggles.
xp
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 07:50 (one year ago) link
Anyway, soref otm (haven't watched the video). Whenever someone says "free speech" that's the key to this. Plus a fear of what young people are going to do.
If they can drown a statue today..
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 07:54 (one year ago) link
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, October 11, 2022 3:40 AM bookmarkflaglink
Apologies, I somehow missed Grandpoint Genie's post entirely. I'm sorry about the rude response
― stank viola (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 10:46 (one year ago) link
Understood Neanderthal, can understand how it would be galling if you read that part as me responding to you.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 12:49 (one year ago) link
idle used to come across and the biggest weasel of the lot but somehow in his old age I find him a lot more sincere (than cleese anyway); Palin has always struck me a lovely man.
― akm, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 13:51 (one year ago) link
Yes, never thought I would favor Idle over Cleese but the world has turned upside down in many respects since a decade ago.
― Chris L, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 14:36 (one year ago) link
last two posts otm
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 15:18 (one year ago) link
His brains have curdled though
If I create something that becomes valuable and successful why should Jeremy Corbyn steal it and run it. That's NOT socialism, that's communism. He could take over PYTHON.... https://t.co/n1vQbxpMww— Eric Idle (@EricIdle) November 27, 2019
― glumdalclitch, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 15:48 (one year ago) link
Yeah, nm, I hate them both.
― Chris L, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 15:50 (one year ago) link
Neil Innes to thread.
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 16:02 (one year ago) link
^ was gonna say, Idle was a total dick to Neil Innes
― even the birds in the trees seemed to whisper "get fucked" (bovarism), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 16:21 (one year ago) link
Yes, let's not kid ourselves, Idle was always a dick and still is. Palin and Jones were the nice guys and Chapman was drunk.
― Fronted by a bearded Phil Collins (Tom D.), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 17:07 (one year ago) link
I see this hasn't been mentioned yet:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/miriam-margolyes-john-cleese-younger-b1916456.html
― Fronted by a bearded Phil Collins (Tom D.), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 17:13 (one year ago) link
John Cleese is set to revive his classic 1970s comedy Fawlty Towers.In a shock move that will likely divide fans of the original, Cleese will write and star in the show alongside his daughter Camilla Cleese. Matthew George (Wind River, A Private War), plus Rob Reiner, Michele Reiner and Derrick Rossi are executive producing the series for Castle Rock Television, which is developing the project. The new Fawlty Towers is set to explore how Cleese’s cynical, over-the-top and misanthropic Basil Fawlty navigates the modern world. With plot details largely under wraps, the series will explore the relationship between Basil and a daughter he has just discovered he had, as the two tempt fate, and team up to run a boutique hotel.
In a shock move that will likely divide fans of the original, Cleese will write and star in the show alongside his daughter Camilla Cleese. Matthew George (Wind River, A Private War), plus Rob Reiner, Michele Reiner and Derrick Rossi are executive producing the series for Castle Rock Television, which is developing the project.
The new Fawlty Towers is set to explore how Cleese’s cynical, over-the-top and misanthropic Basil Fawlty navigates the modern world. With plot details largely under wraps, the series will explore the relationship between Basil and a daughter he has just discovered he had, as the two tempt fate, and team up to run a boutique hotel.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 7 February 2023 18:22 (one year ago) link
oof that’s gonna be bad
― piedro àlamodevar (wins), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 18:29 (one year ago) link
He is currently making a documentary about cancel culture for Channel 4 and plans to host a show for right-leaning UK network GB News that will champion free speech.
― groovypanda, Tuesday, 7 February 2023 18:33 (one year ago) link
a daughter he has just discovered he had
This shows such a lack of understanding of the character of Basil Fawlty that it surely proves Connie Booth was the creative force behind the original series.
― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 18:40 (one year ago) link
it surely reaffirms the long-proven fact that etc
― mark s, Tuesday, 7 February 2023 18:42 (one year ago) link
Well, yes.
― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 18:42 (one year ago) link
weird that rob reiner is producing it given his history with liberal causes
― na (NA), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 18:44 (one year ago) link
Americans aren't interested in the political views of British people.
― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Tuesday, 7 February 2023 18:45 (one year ago) link
Rob Reiner also has a history with Archie Bunker, so maybe that’s the spirit in which he’s producing this.
― Josefa, Tuesday, 7 February 2023 19:11 (one year ago) link
I have nothing at all to do with this production or adaptation,. Apparently Cleese has cut the song. Of course. https://t.co/OS1X9b5w2k— Eric Idle (@EricIdle) May 19, 2023
― Dan Worsley, Friday, 19 May 2023 19:13 (eleven months ago) link
I guess this answers the question posted in the thread title: cleese now aggressively anti-funny
― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Saturday, 20 May 2023 16:23 (eleven months ago) link
surely Cleese must be cutting out Idle's Stan/Loretta scene as well.
― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Saturday, 20 May 2023 18:30 (eleven months ago) link
Nah, probably extending it and having the characters address the audience with "this is what the wokerati actually believe now!" afterwards.
― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, 20 May 2023 19:39 (eleven months ago) link
Exactly.
― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Saturday, 20 May 2023 19:49 (eleven months ago) link
i'll say again if you had told me 30 years ago that I would like Idle more than Cleese I would have really doubted you.
― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Saturday, 20 May 2023 21:45 (eleven months ago) link