Slashdot Mirror
And Now For Something Completely Different: Monty Python Reunion Planned
cold fjord writes with this report from The Telegraph: "The original members of Monty Python will reunite more than 30 years after the comedy troupe last worked together. John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Michael Palin will officially announce their reformation at a London press conference on Thursday. The five surviving members have reportedly been in months of secret talks about getting the Flying Circus back on the road. The reunion comes after several failed attempts to reform by the group. However, according to The Sun, the surviving members realised 'it was now or never,' and had decided to embark upon 'a fully-fledged reunion.'" Related stories include this commentary, one take on the best of Python and this negative reaction, too.
They are just pining for the fjords.
Nobody expected that!
No, they aren't.
well as long as it confuses someone.
anyways, some of cleeses newer comments have been funny.
aaanyhow, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8Afv3U_ysc
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
for the "John Cleese can't afford his alimony" tour! I hear it's 90 minutes of grumbling about ex-wives!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
With another special appearance by Dr. Chapman's Urn.
Don't get me wrong - I love these guys as much as anyone else. But isn't this going to be the exact opposite of "Something Completely Different"?
Word game?
"Well they're coughing up blood!"
"Isn't there anything you can do?"
"Oh Alright.."
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
http://xkcd.com/16/
So hopefully they'll give us some new spontaneous material to drive into the ground with endless repetition for decades to come? (And i admit, i'm as guilty of that as the next geek.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Memories are tied to emotion. In broad strokes, emotions act as a "volume control" for how well and easily you remember. A situation accompanied by emotion is important for survival, so you tend to remember the details. It's why we can recall the exciting parts of movies, but not the dialogue.
It's also why, even now 30 years later, nerds can recite large swatches of Monty Python verbatim.
Not really looking for yet another "Best of Python" stitched together and acted by old men.
The corpse of another fond childhood memory to be poked and prodded over - and ultimately ruined - by deluded old men. Much of Monty Python's appeal stemmed from poking fun at the establishment, at ridiculing societal norms. Now they are part of the establishment.
And there was much rejoicing.
Actually I don't think you're right here. I don't think anyone in Python would agree with you, either. By their own admission they built on and expanded the type of humor that "The Goon Show" brought to prominence. They aren't a copy of the Goon Show, but go listen to it and you'll hear the legacy.
Bright Side of Life (whistles).
Well, to be fair, I'd say Peter Cook and the Goons were pretty major influences, and the Pythons regularly cite them. Certainly Spike Milligan's anarchic humor is a straight line between the comedic revolution of the 1950s and early 1960s and Python. The chief difference between the Q series and Python was that Milligan was pretty deranged and more inconsistent than the Pythons, but still that fundamental absurdism is something the Pythons built on.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I have watched several Monty Python stuff. There are a few skits here and there which are very funny. But a lot of them are boring.
OTOH, I am a big fan of John Cleese's Fawlty Towers. I have watched every episode atleast 20 times and it's always amazingly funny.
The beginnings of the Q series and Monty Python were about the same time. After watching each other Spike apparently wanted to do what Monty Python was doing and vice versa. There was some direct cross-pollination during that period of time.
A Pythons reunion now would be like a Beatles reunion consisting of just Ringo.
now my cat is confused.
"We are all individuals"
I'm a programmer and I'm above average -or so I think-, I hack all day and have too little sleep at night.
I cut down b-trees, I skip and jump, I like to piss off people by using gotoes.
My code is unintelligible and I hang around with the coffee machine.
I wish I were a metal worker just like my dear mama.
I should not have pushed the submit button bit still I did.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
The same old jokes, the one's that nerds have absolutely beaten to death before fucking the corpses, redone by grampas.
Haha the parrot is dead! I don't like spam!
...is still better than most comedy troupes can manage at full effort. So yeah.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I've watched a fair chunk of the first couple of Q series, and while there are some insanely funny bits, all in all, I find Milligan, on his own, could get a little tiresome. Perhaps, in part, it was because there was six Pythons who would sit down, hear the sketches the others had come up with and would be able to throw it out the trash, or perhaps reuse it in inventive and unforeseen ways, whereas Milligan didn't have the benefit of a large group of equals to clean up material. Milligan was also far more willing to go for a cheap laugh, and even by late 1960s and early 1970s standards some of his skits were astonishingly racist.
I look at this way; Monty Python without the Fish Slapping Dance would not have been Monty Python. Monty Python that was a large part Fish Slapping Dances would have been unbearable.
Still, Milligan was a comedic genius of the first order, who, when he was in his head, was probably one of the funniest men who ever lived. Every time I watch the skit with the domestic Daleks blowing up everyone and everything in the flat, I fall off my chair.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Conspiring to perform a comedy I'll bet would be the charge.
Or worse, if they intend to perform "The Funniest Joke In The World".
I blow my wind in your general direction!
I will have to do one in celebration! As soon as I get back from my weekly meeting of the Peoples Front of Judea.. or was it the Peoples Judean Front?
Say....No.....MORE!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Funny that the icon on this picture is the British phone booth, not the Python foot used for humor stories.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Help, help! I'm being repressed!
The reunion comes after several failed attempts to reform by the group.
The Pythons may reunite but they'll never reform. Especially Chapman.
I saw the video for the "comedy tour" John Cleese did most recently. And how anyone felt it would be funny is beyond me. Don't get me wrong I feel collectively and individually these guys have done some fantastic stuff that has and will withstand time. But Cleese comes off as an embittered old man who is just trying to justify his entire life by proving how much better he made Python and if it weren't for him look how dull these things would have been. Oh, and he reallllly hates his exwife. We know this by, not only the title, but by the 45 minute rant about how much he hates her.
Please, bask in the truth of what was, and go out on that note.
do not age very well...
There is a good story re Spike and the Pythons.
When the Pythons were in Malta filming 'Life of Brian', they heard that Spike was staying nearby on holiday. So they called him up, and quickly changed a few scripts to write him into the film.
. They shot the first day, and all was well and good... then the next day Spike didn't turn up for filming. Hurriedly they chased him up and found he had gone home!
So, back to re-writing the scripts again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym-k5viJ7tA
It doesn't rhyme.
Then again it doesn't scan either.
YOU SUCK.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A man with a tape recorder up his nose.
I don't think they are funny.
When are they going to make that?
That one will be a box office explosion!
I saw them live at the Hollywood Bowl when I was 18, so that would mean I'd have to be.......oh crap.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Some of Monty Python's routines are absolute classics that merit repetition, because they're that good. But that's only the very cream of the crop. Most skits were eminently forgettable; a fair number were just plain bad. And watching Flying Circus, it often seems as if they had no idea which were which.
Monty Python was willing to go way outside the box. The box usually exists for a reason: it's the material that has worked. There are some brilliant new ideas outside the box, and a vast world of crap. It takes a genius to find the pearls among that crap, and Monty Python were without doubt just such geniuses. But even so, what they brought back still required a fair bit of sifting.
Flying Circus episodes can be enjoyed simply for the joy of the search. The skits that fail were (frequently, at least) noble failures. They came, they tried, and we mostly forgot about them. If their stunning, world-changing successes did nothing more than expand the box... well, that's an accomplishment. You're never going to destroy the box entirely, because the fact is that the vast majority of ideas are just plain bad.
I'll be happy to see if those geniuses can find something worth expanding the box still further, but I have to suspect that it'll look more like Flying Circus than Holy Grail. (Holy Grail was, itself, a holy grail: a stunning fraction of it worked, in a way that few other things they tried did.) Good on them for trying it; it's the risk of failure that makes the successes worthwhile.
I hope doing "The Ministry of Silly Walks" doesn't cause Cleese to break a hip.
Frankly, I'm glad they're not in US, because I'm pretty sure they wouldn't fit.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
It's too bad it's to be a live show. Ah well, hopefully they film at least one performance and release it for distribution.
Though I'm sure the "Ministry of Silly Walks" may have taken a hit due to arthritis by this time. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
hee hee, saved by the slashtot umlat (tm)!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Stop that!
I hovered over the link and had to go to the emergency room!
With all five members in their seventies, and with a combined age of 357 years, 30 years have passed since the Pythons last appeared together in The Meaning of Life.
Wait, shouldn't that be a combined 150 years since the meaning of life came out? Or, if you include the audience.. it's been billions of years...
Get on with it!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I'm not!
I admit, I was an inveterate Pythonite in my high school and college years, when it was still a cliquey-cool thing that not everyone knew about. I can - with too little prompting - recite great swathes of any Python film or most of the TV episodes, I watched them so many times.
So I was delighted when I had the opportunity and the cash to go see their live show in Minneapolis, I think it was in the later 80s.
Hm. Sad might be too strong a word. Poignant?
Here were some men and women who'd really pushed the boundaries of comedy and done some amazing things - sure, some were misses (and I dare you to watch through the Monty Python complete ouevre without recognizing that a few really sucked), but many were hits and some were downright brilliant. And now? nearly 20 years later? Rehashing the SAME tired old bits again and again like cymbal-clapping monkeys, hoping to be thrown some small change.
I'm current in the midst of Palin's first diaries, and already by the mid 1970s, Michael is complaining that their traveling show is nothing but a re-hash of their brightest moments. How prescient is that?
And now for something completely...the same?
Watching people endlessly ape Rocky Horror is one thing; it's frozen forever in celluloid. Every replay of it HAS to be the same. But with humans, that's kind of sad. Like the tired old uncle at Thanksgiving dinner that had a funny joke once, but he tells the same one every year. People grant him a perfunctory laugh, but nobody really means it. One wonders if even he believes it's genuine or is this all some sort of comedy - if not actually comical - ritual?
Uncle, PLEASE tell some other story to make us laugh. At least try.
If you don't have one, or dare no longer risk not getting a chuckle, maybe let someone else tell theirs?
-Styopa
I love MP. I watched the shows, movies. I've been a fan snce the 70's. Getting them together to rehash their old work will just be sad.
Now. if hey all do completely new stuff, that would be interesting. There much older and have different life experiences. Lets see what they can create will all that experience.
If I want to to watch the cheese shop, I'll load it up.
Have you in fact got any cheese here at all.
Yes, sir.
Really?
No. Not really, sir.
You haven't.
Nosir. Not a scrap. I was deliberately wasting your time, sir.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When you have php?
What's this nun-piece doing in my versioning system?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oIFrdepba0
1998 was over 30 years ago?
Other Python members claim he is deceased, but his agent has said Mr Chapman can be available for the right price.
I didn't expect the Spanish inquisition.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'