Monty Python's Flying Circus - Classic or Dud?

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.