Monty Python Appreciation Thread

[dicartwright]

Michael Palin and Eric Idle, I'd say.

I don't know anyone who's met Terry Jones

I would have sworn Palin was mean
Terry Jones is Brian's mother , or the one with Eric Idle in the "nudge-nudge" sketch

 

[MindlessRuffian]

I would have sworn Palin was mean
Terry Jones is Brian's mother , or the one with Eric Idle in the "nudge-nudge" sketch

Oh I know who he is, it's just I have friends that have met Palin, Idle, Cleese and Gilliam. I don't know anyone who had met Graham Chapman or Terry Jones.

 

[dicartwright]

Oh I know who he is, it's just I have friends that have met Palin, Idle, Cleese and Gilliam. I don't know anyone who had met Graham Chapman or Terry Jones.

so sorry, I misread

it's too hot here, that's it

 

[Qvist]

What I appreciate most about "The Flying Circus" is how many flat sketches there were. You can't get a full appreciation of how brilliant the Pythons really were unless you watch a bunch of their TV episodes to see what worked and what didn't.

Exactly. I got the full DVD set as a birthday present a few years back, and what I find is that I keep coming back to many of the lesser-known sketches, (though of course that may be because most of the well-known ones have been watched to death). Such as Beethoven desperately trying to finish the first bars of his 5th Symphony while his wife keeps coming in to vacuum or to ask what he wants for lunch, the interview of the Lake Tahoe Naval Expedition in which the announcer keeps gradually turning into Long John Silver while the naval officers are all hippies high on weed and have names from fifties female actresses and not least the long episode with the two old ladies who go to Paris to settle a laundrette disagreement over a point of interpretation of one of his novels. A counterpoint to the philosophers' football match that - philosophy transposed to the world of humdrum everyday banter. And as you say, from the whole you get a much better grasp of what they were trying to do, how it worked and why it sometimes didn't.

And you just have to marvel at their ability to not just make complicated things funny in an accessible way, but also their ability to get the details right while doing so. To me as a military historian dealing with WWII the "North Minehead by-election" sketch stands out, with lots of small things you actually need some knowledge to fully appreciate but can laugh at even if you don't. Such as Bimmler's pleased little smile as Hilter rails against McGoring's indiscretion (Himmler and Göring were fierce rivals for Hitler's favor) or Hilter's seething silent anger as one of the other guests jokingly remarks that he wouldn't have had much fun in Stalingrad (It was considered the height of bad form to refer to Stalingrad in Hitler's entourage).

cheers