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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!
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.
That's not an argument. You're just being contradictory.
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
I'm sorry, your five minutes are up.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
That's still better than nickleback.
If Terry Gilliam is involved, I doubt it will just be a rehash. Besides, I have a fairly good feeling Terry Jones has likely been sitting on some damned good material for the last quarter century.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well yes, but Gay Hitler Sings The Hits is better than Nickelback.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
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 just can't believe Gilliam would get involved simply for them to go on a tour redoing forty year old skits. Palin and Jones have continued to be writing partners, Cleese still dabbles in it, Idle is constantly writing annoying music and Gilliam, well, he's pretty much my favorite filmmaker, who has, in his way, kept the spirit of Python going while the others have gone in other directions, coasted, or in the case of Idle, ravaged the corpse for Broadway revues.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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)
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.
Not really looking for yet another "Best of Python" stitched together and acted by old men.
I'll have you're Python, then. I love it!
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.
The reunion comes after several failed attempts to reform by the group.
The Pythons may reunite but they'll never reform. Especially Chapman.
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.
We apologise for the fault in the comment. The person responsible has been sacked, and whill shortly be replaced by a Lla, err, Monty Python.
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.
Cleese was always a bit of an asshole. Watch interviews with him from any period from when they first made it big until now, and he was came off as abrasive, arrogant and argumentative. Even he, on occasion, has admitted it. And he's been bitching about ex-wives as long as he had ex-wives, so that's nothing new. The only thing new is he asking you to fork over the money for a ticket to hear him bitch about his ex-wives instead of showing up on talk shows and doing it for free.
Another major prick is Eric Idle, who has also come off as abrasive, arrogant, argumentative and at times just outright mean. He's treatment of Neil Innes is unforgivable, particular when you consider that The Ruttles wouldn't have existed without Innes. Idle has also been the most willing to simultaneously spurn previous plans to reunite whilst simultaneously ripping off chunks of the Python corpse for mediocre musicals.
I'm actually amazed they've actually been able to get into a room long enough to plot out a reunion. I would imagine money is a big part of it. Cleese's marital problems are well known, but I'd hazard a guess Gilliam has pissed off enough investors that he wouldn't mind getting some new seed money. Let's face it, a Python reunion tour would be as big and profitable as a Led Zeppelin reunion tour.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
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
Other Python members claim he is deceased, but his agent has said Mr Chapman can be available for the right price.