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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!
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
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.
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.
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
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.