Bend it like....erm.... Teenage Rock Opera!

It was about now that I really started to get into Monty Python in a big way, dedicating my Thursday evenings to being glued to the TV set and what I think were the BBC repeats of the show.

I believe it's difficult for younger generations to fully comprehend the impact that Python made back in the seventies. As countless other people have commented over the years, they really were to comedy what The Beatles were to music. There is just so much comedy about nowadays that would not exist if it weren't for the early stylings of  Messrs Cleese, Jones, Palin, Chapman, Idle and Gilliam.

It's only my opinion of course, but - having (again) watched several BBC America repeats lately - I personally don't think the TV episodes have stood the test of time very well. I much prefer the movies such as "Life of Brian" and "Monty Python & The Holy Grail", mainly because they seem FAR less of a curate's egg.

For die-hard Python fans I know that will be considered a sacrilegious viewpoint, but it's something I can't lie about.

However, back in 1972 I'm not sure I could have said even the vaguest bad thing about Monty Python. "Obsessed" is, perhaps, an understatement for how I was?

Sure there were some sketches I didn't laugh at - some I'll admit I was too young to properly understand at the time - but then something like election candidate "Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel", Bicycle Repair Man, the Architect sketch, the Spanish Inquisition, Spam, Bruce, Nudge Nudge Wink Wink and countless other crazy moments would come along and provide me with my quotable material for the next week or more.

I've hung onto quotes from Python all my life, and every so often my brain will mysteriously unveil one previously forgotten and I'll recite an entire sketch - or at least some dialogue - verbatim.

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that - along with the likes of Spike Milligan, The Goons, Tony Hancock and The Goodies - I owe my own anarchic sense of humour to the Python crew. So they're the ones to blame really.

The interim years have seen mixed fortunes for the Pythons.

Michael Palin was head and shoulders my favourite Python - maybe because he always had the best lines, or the ones which I found the most funny? - so I was as pleased as anyone with the success of his mid-life traveling series like "Around the World in 80 Days" etc. Just as in various interviews, these showed him coming across as a "genuine bloke"... if that makes sense?

John Cleese surpassed his Python days with the timeless and irrefutably hilarious "Fawlty Towers", in itself another deeply influential TV comedy series. (Although why co-writer Connie Booth has never been given the proper credit for her contribution is anyone's guess). In contrast to his writing skills however, Cleese always seems to come across as something of an angry bitter man, full of demons. I've also heard rumours that he also a bit of a git to work with, always miserable, etc and FAR too serious That seems a shame for a man who gave us so much humour - but isn't that often the case where a comic's best work is always on the outside?

Graham Chapman - always the most nervous-looking Python - sadly left us in 1989, following a losing battle against a rare form of spinal cancer. His funeral service (link NSFW or kids) was as fabulously irreverent as you - and he - would expect.

Terry ("Mr Creosote") Jones appears to have spent his post-Python years with a pen in his hands, co-writing other quality comedy series like "Ripping Yarns", as well as authoring books, magazine and newspaper articles. He's done some historical documentaries for TV, and got to do his own fair share of film directing (Erik the Viking etc). Many consider him to be very much be the "philosophical one" of the troupe, responsible for many of the more esoteric and 'educational' skits. It was probably his skits that I failed to fully grasp. Rumour (sadly) has it he too has been fighting cancer recently.

I hate to say it, but Eric Idle has always irritated me. He was my least-liked Python back in the 70's and he's certainly my least-liked now. (I try to conveniently ignore his genius of parody with the sublime "Rutles" project, always referring to it as being written by Neil Innes) I have always felt Idle to be a little too 'smug', a little too 'full of himself' and the one apparently most involved with somehow undermining the Python legacy, his latest attempt being the theatrical musical "Spamalot"... which - to me at least - just seems to stretch a joke a tad too far... if that's possible?

However, having said all that, he is TOTALLY redeemed thanks to one major musical contribution. That contribution being the song at the end of "Life of Brian", "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". It is such a beautiful mix of pathos and comedy that I've actually considered asking to have it aired at my own funeral, the only thing putting me off is that it has now become something of a "funeral cliché". Well, that, and the fact that my wife doesn't care for whistling very much.

Animator Terry Gilliam has gone on to be a film director of considerable acclaim with classics like "Brazil", "The Fisher King" and "Time Bandits" assuring him of a place in film, as well as comedy, history. (Let's not mention "The Brothers Grimm" shall we?). I wonder if he'll ever shake off the tag of being Python's "cartoon man" though?

Take a moment to process that.

Gordon Brown, despite the startlement this must have initially caused, managed to see the humour in the situation and laugh, so good on him. There could be an article all by itself explaining the train of thought which lead Dan Glass to think up this cunning plan - my imagined version involves alcohol, a rogue swan, bad kebabs, at least two strippers and John Cleese, but that could just be the crazy talking.

In real life, it was probably Michael Palin.

Jules Verne was way ahead of his time with his adventure stories. I've always loved this particular one, and have also seen all 3 movie versions that I know of. The old classic with David Niven is the best, as far as elegance and faithfullness to the original text.

The came Pierce Brosnan as Phileas Fogg, a fun, though average, kid friendly type movie. The directors and writers took some liberties with the stories.

Finally, the spoof with Jackie Chan as Fogg's valet Passepartout. This one is more comedy and farce than anything, with Chan getting plenty of opportunities to act the clown and display his able stunts. Fogg here is a "crazy professor" type waging he can go around the world using his own inventions.

Last but certainly NOT least, is Michael Palin's own journey around the world. He was challenged to follow in Fogg's foot steps as closely as he could, within the same frame of 80 days, and traveling only with transportation that would have been available at the time.

Palin is a wonderful host and adventurer, good natured, empathetic to the people he meets, and aptly armed with a must for this kind of travel: a sense of humor. The journey was aired on BBC television as a 7 episode series and received great reviews.

I am putting together a squidoo lens comparing his journey with that of Fogg.

Check it out so far here --> www.squidoo.com/AroundTheWorldIn80Days

There is more to come. I have Fogg's journey up already and will be working on Palin's soon.

:-)

Check him out! (Search, find, watch, buy)
Do Not Adjust your Set (1967-69)
Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-74)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Ripping Yarns (1976-79)
Life of Brian (1979)
The Meaning of Life (1983)
Labyrinth (1986)
The Crusades (1995)
The Wind in the Willows (1996)
Medieval Lives (2004)
Barbarians (2006)
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/terry_jones/index.html

Find out stuff about Terry Jones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Jones
http://www.terry-jones.net/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001402/

Check him out! (Search, find, watch, buy)
Brazil (1985)
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Life of Brian (1979)
Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969 - 1974)
Ripping Yarns (1976 - 1979)
Around the World in 80 Days (1989)
Pole to Pole (1992)
Full Circle (1997)
Sahara (2002)
New Europe (2007)

Find out stuff about Michael Palin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Palin
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001589/
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/510300/
http://pythonline.com/meet/palin

hello!

it's been a busy one; friday night was out with a few mates drinking in the west end and camden. my boyfriend and his south african friends LOVE having their pictures taken with the most ridiculous facial expressions. I don't know how they physically do it. haha.

Leon came up with a great concept at the World's End in Camden; beer tap reflections. This was the result!

Saturday I toddled down to the southbank. it was a glorious sunny day! my best friend had informed me that Michael Palin was doing a signing outside Foyles and he wanted to get his book signed; I had to be the allocated photographer of the event! haha. After a 1/2 hour wait, Robin finally met Michael and had his booked signed "from me and the camels". a very nice touch.

Today I decided that it's time to brighten up my apartment with some plants, and so ventured to Shoreditch for the sunday flower market. it was incredibly busy! i was armed with camera hoping to take some lovely foliage shots however, it didn't seem appropriate to stand in anyone's way at that moment in time. eep! I walked away with some pansys (or so i think!) and a few nice shots of my friends...

all-in-all a great weekend!

To see larger images, please visit my deviantART site: http://agentmphotography.deviantart.com/

I was at the BFI last night to see Michael Palin and Terry Jones introduce The Complete and Utter History of Britain, a 1969 series of which only two episodes were thought to exist.  Last night saw the unveiling of a third recently-discovered episode.  I was at a Q&A with Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement only the week before in the same venue, and I had been expecting the evening to take the same form: that night was split into two distinct sections, the first part being a showing of one episode each of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Porridge.  This was followed by a short break and then Clement and La Frenais were brought out to sit on the stage, answering questions from Dick Fiddy and latterly from the audience for about 90 minutes.  This felt to me to be excellent value, as you had plenty of time in their expansive and highly interesting company.  Palin and Jones's set-up was very different, in that they came out before the showing of the episodes, sat in with the audience throughout, went onstage for a few very brief questions at the end and the whole thing was done by half past eight.  The focus was not, as it had been with Clement and La Frenais, on the Q&A but on the shows.

The episodes were quite entertaining, taking the idea that cameras have been around since the dawn of time recording all the important developments.  It was arranged around a central long-suffering narrator, Colin Gordon, who provided links between the filmed sketches and the absent-minded history professor (a talking head avant la lettre) played by Roddy Maude-Roxby.  One bit that tickled me in particular was the breaking news coverage of the Battle of Hastings, with pictures just in "from our embroiderers".  As Palin himself said before the screening, the series was meant to be a comment on the television of its time as much as on history, and this helps explain some of its seeming slowness now, but it was a very genial and good-natured 70 or so minutes of some very little-seen comedy and interesting for any Python fan, as it contained the seeds of many recurring images in their later work, such as the idea of Robin Hood being a nuisance to the poor.  All the same, I had been expecting a bit more work from Palin and Jones on the night, but they seemed keen to get away from the packed house.

Esta é sem dúvida, a melhor comédia de sempre. Como este blog é dedicado às opiniões pessoais, não me preocupo em ser isento, mas se tivesse que ter esse cuidado, diria o mesmo. Aviso desde já, quem não é apreciador de humor britânico, que esqueça este post e o filme. Mas se não for este o caso, é um filme obrigatório por tudo o que um apreciador de comédia inglesa pode pedir, ou seja, humor inteligente e com excelentes interpretações.

Os conhecedores de Monty Python, seja dos outros filmes (Life Of Brian, Meaning Of Life, etc) ou da famosa e inigualável (os Gato Fedorento bem tentaram) série Flying Circus, irão encontrar todas aquelas situações ridículas e absolutamente "non sense" bem características destes humoristas, mas com o acréscimo de que as personagens ainda tem mais piada!

Analisando os filmes de comédia que são feitos hoje em dia, o Holy Grail irá reinar por muito tempo. Não querendo desprezar, claro, grandes comediantes como Eddie Izzard, Ricky Gervais; grandes séries que se tem feito : Little Britain, Blackadder (com o melhor de Rowan Atkinson), Seinfeld, The Office, etc.

A história do filme baseia-se na demanda pelo cálice utilizado por Cristo na Última Ceia, o Graal. O Rei Arthur (Graham Chapman) percorre a Inglaterra à procura de cavaleiros com coragem suficiente para o ajudar nessa perigosa tarefa. À medida que vão avançando, montados nos seus cavalos fictícios, imitando o som dos cascos batendo com dois cocos, as situações mais ridículas e hilariantes vão acontecendo. Desde mortíferos coelhos brancos e ninfomaníacas sozinhas num castelo, tudo de mais inesperado e burlesco acontece neste filme genial. Enfim, é um filme absolutamente obrigatório para quem se quiser rir, contado assim não tem piada, é preciso ver mesmo.

Fica aqui um pequeno excerto da luta infernal destes cavaleiros:

O orçamento para este filme foi em parte investimento de bandas como Led Zeppelin e Pink Floyd. Esta informação é só para aguçar o apetite dos admiradores...

Curiosidade : se virem o filme reparem quando Deus aparece nas nuvens, a imagem Dele é uma fotografia de um jogador inglês de cricket do século 19...Genial!! :P

Assinado : Knight Who Say NI!

]]> http://goofybeast.wordpress.com/?p=302 Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:54:45 +0000 thirithch http://goofybeast.wordpress.com/?p=302 "I think we lost him." That is still one of the most chilling final lines of any movie I've seen. (Another very effective last line, and one of my favourite, would be: "Ernest Hemingway once said, 'The World is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part.") And whatever else you may think about the film, Terry Gilliam's Brazil has one of the most effective endings in film history.

On the whole, I like films the way I like my sharks: single-minded. (Okay, that wasn't exactly the most successful simile this side of Metaphysical Poetry.) Films that are trim, lean, effective. I also like the sprawling epos, but if a film is messy - if it's jam-packed with ideas and images that in the end don't really lead anywhere - I tend to lose patience.

Brazil is a big mess of a film. Terry Gilliam isn't exactly a disciplined film-maker, and Brazil is one of his least disciplined movies. There are dozens of scenes, incidents and characters that seem to be in the film because it seemed a good idea at the time. It's garish, cartoony and unfocused - very much like its central character, really. Nevertheless, for me it's the best, most affecting dystopia on celluloid.

Part of this is Gilliam's success at using a handful of characters and actors to anchor the film in some sort of emotional reality. Yes, so many of the characters remain flat cartoons that are there for a joke or to make a point (which usually kills a film's credibility for me), but then you've got Mrs. Tuttle's anguished "What have you done with his body?" or Michael Palin's greatest creation, Jack Lint... or Sam Lowry, Jonathan Pryce's funniest, saddest part ever. The forlornly happy look on his face at the very end, after he's "escaped", still breaks my heart. And the interrogation scenes are still both funny and frightening (although I could do without the "pinball prisoner" scene).

Would the film be better if it was more focused, if Gilliam had been less sprawling, running off in several different directions at once? It's impossible to say - a streamlined, single-minded Brazil would be an entirely different movie. Sufficient to say, though, that Brazil remains my favourite Gilliam film, even after a dozen viewings. And its happy ending is the saddest ever filmed.

Just make sure not to watch the "Love Conquers All" edit, unless you have an unhealthy fascination with watching road accidents as they're happening - or if you can dissociate yourself enough from what you're watching to observe, clinically, how a different edit can change a film into a grotesque mockery of itself.

Oh, and while we're at it: one of the most fascinating (Un-)Making Of documentaries must be Lost in La Mancha, which documents the disastrous production history of Gilliam's take on Don Quixote. If you ever want to see a mad ex-Python as unwitting King Lear, or if you have any interest in how films come about, check it out.

Michael Palin's birthday is May 5th, the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo.  I had been thinking of doing a book about Maximilian and Charlotte, because I live so close to Mexico.  I have also traveled in the former Hapsburg Empire and wanted to show a situation where all sorts of other nations entered another nation.

Others have written about the romantic part of the Emperor and Empress.  I am more interested in the historical stuff, the politics, the major players etc.

I am working on this first, but also making notes for Freud dealing with the Irish.

Here are some of the other bits of silliness Python and its naughty stepchild Fawlty Towers.

Musical Mice-I never thought I'd see the day when laboratory mice were used as a xylophone.

The joke that killed the Germans in World War II?  There is nothing funny about Germans! (or so the Germans in the Fawlty Towers episode said; see below).   I own a book by Boston Globe reporter Jonathan Kaufman called "Hole in the Heart of the World," about reviving Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.  He mentioned a conference in Germany asking about German humor or lack thereof.  The conclusion they came to was the lack of Jews in Germany, thanks to a certain regimes cruelty.

The deadliest joke supposedly won the Battle of the Bulge.  Then the Major living in Fawlty Towers ran around crying, "Germans?  Here Fawlty?"  The Major said he liked German women and they were good card players, but he did not trust them.

I had a German girlfriend.  She was not a card player and was a decent person.  As long as I did not mention the war!

While we are on stereotypes, (which Python and Fawlty Towers were full of), there is the episode with the contractor O'Reilly.  Yes, I dated a German, but married an Irish person and I have the Claddagh ring on my left hand to prove it.  Yes yes, poor dumb O'Reilly.  Paddy isn't taken seriously unless he is IRA and he is blowing something up.  People tend to forget about the Book of Kells, etc. but all that got left out for some good clean stereotypes.  Thus Python laid out all sorts of stereotyping for Americans (as though we needed help from other quarters).:-)

The Milkman routine:  If the door is answered by a lady in a slinky negligee, think "Black Widow."

Nudge, nudge know what I mean?  Just deck the loser and get on with it!  Where is John Wayne when you need him?;-)

The Army Colonel played by Graham Chapman (God rest his soul).  He keeps stopping the show crying, "Silly, just silly!  And a bit suspect."  Reminds me of a story a college professor told me about Lord Montgomery.  Monty (obviously unrelated to Python), was driving to a television interview.  He picked up a hippie who was hitchhiking.  The kid asked him, "Oh wow man, what do you do?"  "I am a Field Marshal," Monty replied.  "Oh wow man, what does a Field Marshal do?"

"I kill people in fields," was Monty's reply.  The hippie did not want to hang around.  Bad scene and all.

Lumberjacks, eh.  Canadian stereotypes, ya know eh.  I could watch NHL hockey in the past for that, ya know, eh.  So that is what British Columbia is like.  I would I have known without Python?

Lots of Scots-Blancmanges turning the English into Scotsmen, because allegedly they cannot play tennis.  Python got it wrong.  They went to Appalachia and became truck drivers, moonshiners, NASCAR drivers, Senator Jim Webb (who is great) and some of my in-laws.  Monty Python, meet the Dukes of Hazzard.  Appalachia, where Ulstermen headed two centuries ago because they were good at fighting.  Not sure

President Andrew Jackson would have approved of Python.  He was not a man to be trifled with and had the dueling victories to prove it.

Hells Grannies-Rollin' down the highway....Lookin' for adventure....Born to be Wild....

The Spanish Inquisition-A real fun bunch.

The cartoon with the Black Cancerous spots-Agnes, did you see who moved in next door?  Black as the Ace of Spades they were, oh there goes the neighborhood...We had enough trouble with that sort of bigotry to have to import it.

A Pythonesque Look at History:

The Spanish Inquisition:  If only the Comfy Chair really was the meanest weapon in the arsenal.

In Meaning of Life, Zulus being fought and a tiger showing up?  The tiger took a wrong turn somewhere.

Holy Grail messed up centuries of Arthurian study.

In Life of Brian, of course, it was Ancient Israel.  Israel under the Romans was a rough place.  (The neighborhood has always been a bit rough.  The Real Estate Agent neglected to tell the Jews how many people wanted to live there).  Israel did not need help from Python.  The first time, we saw Life of Brian, the funniest thing to us as Jews was the two guerrilla groups showing up at the same time to kidnap Pilate's wife.  With three Israelis, you have three political parties and a dissenter.  He is not the Messiah, just a very naughty boy!

Recently, I saw a History Channel show about hideouts near the Dead Sea and Masada.  I kept waiting for the hermits to jump out crying, "those are my juniper bushes!"  "Well done, you just brought the Fifth Legion right to our door."  "Write Roman Go Home 500 times."  Heck of a way to learn how to conjugate Latin verbs.

Remember the Killer Cars?  The mutant cat eating everything was a dead ringer for a wonderful Siamese cat we had named Taffy.  He was great.  That was a hard one to watch.  No, buddy look out for the meat grinder!

Half of the human existence reminds me of Python.  Shows they were successful at covering the human experience.

So yes, Python has wrecked my life and corrupted me.  I would not have it any other way.

I signed up for this and wanted to pass it on.

After my return, I tried to track down Hammershøi's paintings in London Galleries, only to discover that they are not currently on display – and there are not that many of them. Edward Hopper has always been one of my favourite painters – that indescribable sense of isolation and solitude is something I always find haunting. You look at some of Hopper's late paintings – Sunlight in an Empty Room (1963) for example – your mind would wonder what goes on outside the picture, the things that are felt but not seen. I get the same feeling when I listen to Sciarrino's music; I have heard Omaggio A Burri (1995) and Esplorazione del Bianco II (1986) in concert, and they were possibly the most intense listening experiences I have ever had – very unsettling.

Why is Hammershøi's art so neglected outside Denmark – just as the way Nielsen's music once was? I know Michael Palin made a documentary called The Mystery of Hammershøi in 2005 for the BBC, which I have not seen. I wonder how much it helped to make non-Danish speakers aware of this marvellous painter.

On a brighter note, most of Dreyer's movies are now available on DVD; my copies of Ordet (1955) and Gertrud (1964) have just arrived. Something for the bank holiday weekend when I get a bit stuck with the composing.
 

An (admittedly small) consolation is that the text of the books accompanying all of Palin's travel series, including New Europe, are available on his website.

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It's a great read for any Python fan (oh and if you aren't a Monty Python fanatic, what're you doing reading this blog?), reaching out from the first day of shooting for Monty Python's Flying Circus, up until the Life of Brian days. The book shows the golden years of Python through Michael Palin's eyes, and reading his notes on the first TV series, or about the reactions to the stage show, and observing Palin's relations to the other Pythons is just awesome.

But that's only one side of it - the book also gives an insight into Palin's personal life, his relationship with his aging parents and his own new family and his view of the world surrounding him. He's affected by the unjust acts and rough times in England and by the uninspired changes occurring around London*, yet tries to make the best of the life he's been blessed with.

Palin seems to be among the most level-headed and talkative of the six Pythons, so it may come as no surprise that he was the one keeping a diary. He and Terry Jones had a strong relationship, both as friends and writers, and played a large part in keeping the group together and standing up for its interests. Thus, he's present at most key events in the evolution of Monty Python, and we get to see what they were like.

I'm about one third into the book, and I wish it'd never end :) Palin concludes the introduction saying:

In the course of these diaries I grow up, my family grows up and Monty Python grows up. It was a great time to be alive.

- this feeling comes shining through, all throughout his diaries.

I just have to leave you with a Python bit, here's a live version of the Dead Parrot sketch from '76, in which John Cleese manages to make Michael Palin crack up :) This is pure gold:

*I'm no expert on the subject, but this reminded me of Genesis' Selling England by the Pound, which in a way views the same troubles from a different perspective... and happens to be an all-time favourite album of mine, of course