John Cleese; is he funny?

WAS funny? Not so much with Python but was with Fawlty Towers.

Cleese was funny, once upon a time. But why is it that most comedians from TV shows always end up in the shittiest movies? Or become "serious" - hi, Jim; stop acting, would ya? Bill Murray's the only one that's bucked the trend. Of course, Bill Murray's classic, without a doubt.

And why Ally gives me lip about Mira when she's touting Nic Cage as GRATE boggles my mind.

But it's still a good series. It gets praised a lot of the time for its character work but all the above, not to mention Likely Lads, are much better on character comedy - Fawlty Towers though is one of the few sitcoms that works as farce. There's not been much demand for sitcom-as-farce recently (Father Ted is a recent example) after Allo Allo and Terry And June pretty much killed it in the 80s so maybe thats why its reputation seems to be sinking a bit now.

(Christ, I'm turning into Ally's bitch. I'll shut up now.)

My first encounters with Mr. Cleese were Muppet-related, actually -- hosted an episode of the show and has a brief, quietly funny role in the second movie -- and then there was his hilarious turn as Robin Hood in Time Bandits. A couple of years after that I first started watching Python, and there we are. Fish Called Wanda is genius, but I was never bothered to see Gentle Creatures or whatever it was called.

My favorite Cleese story happened in 1989, when in fact he stopped by UCLA to pick up the Jack Benny award, given out every year to 'a comic legend' or something of the sort. That they've given it out to a few hacks along the way is unfortunate, but hey, Cleese got it that year and I was attending UCLA at the time, so off I went to the award ceremony and question and answer session. Had some great tales and funny stories, the best being this extemporaneous riff on Alexander the Great. Reason: somebody had asked if the Pythons were getting back together to do a bio of said historical figure (uh, no), and that was enough! "He was taught by Aristotle! Can you imagine what that would have been like? 'Master Aristotle, what are we learning today?' 'Oh, zoology, biology, history, geography, psychology...'"

I find the idea of Ally thinking Cleese is the second best man who ever lived funnier than the majority of his actual work. But 'Clockwise' and 'Fawlty Towers' were good.

FT is farce in a stricter technical sense, tho, isn't it (Feydeau => Rix): not just cheeky slapstick idiocy, but people running in and out of dfft doors the whole time, and hiding in cupboards

David: Sooner or later, I turn everyone into my bitch. You might as well go for it now.

And his last series on the Beeb, that human face thing, I know the BBC fucked him over on it, but God! I just found it embarrassing.

http://images.dailyexpress.co.uk/img/covers/257x330front/2011-09-02.jpg

The irony being that Cleese has been here recently scrounging up some cash to pay his alimony (or some other BS).

Short Q&A, including:

What song would you like played at your funeral?
Tchaikovsky's 1812, sung by Barry Manilow.

Just saw that he was in a series Charles McKeown wrote this year. Is it any good? Reviews are quite poor.

Saw him 'perform' last night and the answer to the question in the thread title is emphatically, painfully "no"

he's nearly 80. Chaplin wasn't funny then either.

Even accounting for his age, his long routines about how annoying it is that "the blacks and mexicans" want to be called 'people of color' but you can't say 'colored people' anymore, or about how hotel maids need to learn to speak english, made for one of the most queasily uncomfortable shows I've ever sat through. Afterward my GF confessed that she initially thought he was doing an 'old clueless racist guy' character bit, and then began to have the sinking realization that no, this was his actual material. Super depressing.

hooo boy

is this the Basil Fawlty tour?

was this dinner theater in Youngstown?

I only saw a couple of episodes, but the sitcom he did with Alison Steadman a couple of years ago wasn’t the long awaited return to form.

Xp Alfred Close, it was a fancy theater in my upstate ny town. it was billed as a one-man show/monologue thing, presented as a kind of ted talk format with slides, lots of him talking about popular social science books that he'd recently read, really strange. We were expecting something super halfassed like you usually get with old showbiz lions doing shows like this & would have been fine with that, just kind of wanted to see him live before he croaks, but was not expecting all the racial stuff. (He also did another weird digression about how evolution alone cant explain consciousness that was very hard to parse but seemed like was going to get into creationist stuff?) Also lots of pandering anti-Trump jokes, but then he seemed totally unaware that his routine about how Mexicans are invading the US could have been lifted straight from a MAGA rally. Just a really bizarre night.

He’s been like it for ages

the early funny stuff was largely written by others but he did have a good bodyshape for physical comedy once upon a time

fawlty towers was a documentary

I use to piss myself watching this bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwqJzCG9qr0

"He also did another weird digression about how evolution alone cant explain consciousness that was very hard to parse but seemed like was going to get into creationist stuff?"

lolled at reading this, so I guess that makes it a form of comedy - but i don't think i'd listening to it 1st hand would have had the same effect

Haha yes true, i did spend the whole show confused and baffled with no idea of where things were going to go next from moment to surreal moment, so in that sense it could be located within a grand python tradition

so, the trend I'm seeing in these answers would be "is funny? no. was funny? yes.".

It’s been, what, 30 years since he was even a bit funny? Closer to 40?

A Fish Called Wanda was his last successful fling at funny. Calculate from there.

Fierce Creatures had its moments iirc

a fish called wanda hasn't been funny for more than 30 years

& it’s probably about 10 years since I first noticed him popping up to do weird morrissey-style interviews about how England isn’t England anymore cause all the foreigns are doing white genocide by existing

He is *terrible* at Twitter

Re Waitrose ducklings...

I've been digging, and have discovered that the family who first made chocolate in the 15th century, chose to produce white,dark and milk chocolate in order to stir up racial disharmony. They especially abhorred chocolate-coloured people

Apology......

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) April 10, 2019

A post that has always stuck with me from this Monty Python thread:

Maybe six or seven years ago, I heard an interview with Cleese in which he more or less said he felt he'd lost his edge in terms of humor. What he said was kind of sad and the gist of it has stayed with me since then, something VERY loosely along the lines of "When you're young, you notice all these little inconsistencies in the world, things that aren't quite right, people who don't quite seem to know what they're doing, and you can derive humor from that. But when you get older, you start to realize that nothing is really right at all, that no one has any idea what they're doing, and then it stops seeming as funny."

^^^ funny man

he spent the 90s doing corporate video work which was (a) almost certainly not even slightly funny, but (b) possibly a tiny step up* from what they were going to get if he hadn't been in the video

*up as in:
"this is great, john cleese is hilarious!"
*later, uncertainly*
"i must have enjoyed that lots, john cleese was in it!"
narrator's voice (etc)

think cleese has always been the python most likely to be awful in old age

doesnt come across great in palin diaries, and palin is a v kind observer

but hes 80. yknow.

People who avoid a slow entropic slide into human turdburgerdom in their dotage should get some kind of medal, maybe.

a fish called wanda hasn't been funny for more than 30 years

I'm sorry they did that to you, Wanda.

Lol, thanks

Aristotle was not Belgian.

It's said he was a bugger for the bottle though.

A Fish Called Wanda is unwatchable IMO, I've failed to get past the first 30mins many times as a teenager after being told it was "hilarious", though Cleese is by no means the worst thing in it

looking at you, Kevin Kline w/ ridiculous moustache

I love it. Cleese is a believable romantic lead too.

it seems polarising, and I have time for other Cleese vehicles e.g. Clockwise

Finest moment imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUWj8PVRF70

Miss Piggy's stunt double steals his thunder imo

he spent the 90s doing corporate video work

As someone who has had to sit through a number of these training videos, I can confirm that they're mildly amusing in places at best. 'Liable to raise a wry smile every few minutes' would be a generous summary.
Basically like this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UFNCrxWI2M

He'd been doing those since the 70s fwiw.

The main advantage of these training videos was that Cleese could present to camera without looking awkward like so many Open University lecturers. Here's a good example (although again not from one of the training videos):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bDIxI8HV8g

He was in some embarrassing Sainsbury’s ads in the 90s

I remember a Derek & Clive bit about a public info ad where he told ppl how to send a letter “he said put a stamp and address on, that’s what I’ve been doing since I watched those fucking ads”. So even his contemporaries held him in contempt going way back

"A Fish Called Wanda is unwatchable IMO, I've failed to get past the first 30mins many times as a teenager after being told it was "hilarious", though Cleese is by no means the worst thing in it"

what an incredibly strange opinion

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ecJvyvh_Ics/maxresdefault.jpg

He was always a bit of a hack, wasn't he? Even during the height of Python he and Chapman were writing for The Two Ronnies and Doctor in the House (although he did ditch Python first, which I suppose wasn't hackish).
How many comedians have still got it after the age of *plucks at random* 65?

Eight

JUST ANNOUNCED: @MelBrooks On Broadway at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on June 17 + 18! Tickets are on sale tomorrow 4/23 at 10am.

Get more info here: https://t.co/ZUE965yUoW pic.twitter.com/1bAM8iaLOz

— In Residence On Broadway (@inresidencebdwy) April 22, 2019

As has been pointed out, Cleese was finished well before he was 65.

Mel Brooks is entertaining if not funny in public speaking situations at age 90+, which puts him ahead of nearly all of his films

I saw Clockwise as a kid in the cinema. A much superior movie than Cannon + Ball's Boys In Blue in terms of production and writing obv.. but seriously lacking a chortle as funny as when Bobby Ball jumps chest first onto a cowpat.

https://gifimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/spaceballs-alien-gif-10.gif

All the Pythons seem to have been in agreement that Cleese was a colossal soft-Tory arsehole his entire life, but very funny and a very hard worker. He combined the deep vein of superiority with his sense for funny in public appearances through the '90s, but Wanda was definitely his last hurrah at writing, aged 45.

(also nb the only solo writing he ever did was probably a few episodes of Doctor At Large in 1971, and possibly his 2014 autobiography:

It’s just that the overall tone of the book is cross and churlish, the story of his life rendered in the voice of an ornery old man who never made it in showbusiness rather than the fully realised genius behind comedies of such towering brilliance as Fawlty Towers, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Life of Brian.

"A Fish Called Wanda is unwatchable IMO, I've failed to get past the first 30mins many times as a teenager after being told it was "hilarious", though Cleese is by no means the worst thing in it"

what an incredibly strange opinion

― akm, Tuesday, May 21, 2019 7:24 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you... think it's a funny film? that's cool, each to their own, it's just not for me

He was always a bit of a hack, wasn't he? Even during the height of Python he and Chapman were writing for The Two Ronnies and Doctor in the House (although he did ditch Python first, which I suppose wasn't hackish).
How many comedians have still got it after the age of *plucks at random* 65?

― fetter, Tuesday, May 21, 2019 7:50 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And Les Dawson.

Who is a genius, tbf..

at least through Young Frankenstein, Mel's films get big laughs when seen properly with a theater audience.

Fawlty is still one of the funniest sitcoms ever, maybe dial back the hate just a tad.

Fawlty is unimpeachable yes.

Remember enjoying Clockwise, but I was a child and of unsound opinion

It was OK, it had funny.

The final speech was just bad "Basil Fawlty with concussion", mind.

Fawlty Towers really not all that, the pompous useless husband + hyper efficient wife who stays with him for no reason set-up has been a bad influence on sitcoms in general and Manuel is the worst fucking character.

I saw Cleese perform as part of a comedy gala Maybe 10 years ago? went because of fond childhood memories of Python/Fawlty/Wanda and absolutely regretted it - half an hour of desperately unfunny and bitter material about his ex-wife with generous helpings of misogyny and a light dusting of casual racism

I guess it's just like seeing a past-it rock act, but the nastiness was such that it really soured that any warm feelings I might've once had for his work

Having said that I sat down to watch an episode of The Goodies with my kids the other day, it opened with a woman getting beaten up to a laugh track and then evolved into a fully-fledged anti-Arab laugh riot - so I guess that era's humour has dated pretty shabbily

I was listening to some very old ISIHAC episodes and the calypso songs with comedy accents should really remain buried.

Every non-Caribbean calypso song ever has been done in a comedy accent.

If it's good enough for Bill Oddie it's good enough for Van Dyke Parks.

And Robert Mitchum

Of course, calypso is linked to satirical comedy in the UK, because of Lance Percival on That Was The Week That Was *pushes glasses up bridge of nose*

x-post!
And Lance Percival (who I've just discovered had the middle name of 'Blades'!)

(lance percival one of my dad's weird pet hates, along with jim dale and bilko)

and mike read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYOBZ3Seeio

(lance percival one of my dad's weird pet hates, along with jim dale and bilko)

Hating Lance Percival doesn't seem weird to me tbh.

Fawlty Towers really not all that, the pompous useless husband + hyper efficient wife who stays with him for no reason set-up has been a bad influence on sitcoms in general and Manuel is the worst fucking character.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, May 23, 2019 10:35 AM (eleven hours ago)

i love the show but this is still kind of otm. polly is the best character.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/1/23/1358954840656/Major-Gowen-Fawlty-Towers-010.jpg

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/1/23/1358954840656/Major-Gowen-Fawlty-Towers-010.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=ac18ea5db4ccfb11dd4d529bdc9acc9e

Fawlty Towers really not all that, the pompous useless husband + hyper efficient wife who stays with him for no reason set-up has been a bad influence on sitcoms in general and Manuel is the worst fucking character.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, May 23, 2019 10:35 AM (eleven hours ago)

i love the show but this is still kind of otm. polly is the best character.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 23 May 2019 21:44 (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

with all due respect prime minister it is not otm

polly is the most believable character

but sybill and reilly are the best characters

Going full gammon this morning

Some years ago I opined that London was not really an English city any more

Since then, virtually all my friends from abroad have confirmed my observation

So there must be some truth in it...

I note also that London was the UK city that voted most strongly to remain in the EU

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) May 29, 2019

I mean, it isn't even true.

But it wasn't, a short train ride south and you find the city of Brighton and Hove, we voted 69% in favour of remain to London's 60%
Never mind Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Cardiff, Bristol and Manchester, all a higher % for remain than London.

— Colibri (@StudioColibriUK) May 29, 2019

John Cleese: is he Morrissey?

Is this the first stage of you making it impossible to enjoy any of your work again, a la Morrissey?

— Nick (@Mikowaj) May 29, 2019

we're well past the first stage and heading towards the terminal stage iirc

fawlty towers is a documentary, written by connie booth abt the inside of her soon-to-be ex-husband's absurd head: it is funny! connie booth is funny!

But what has Johnny Marr done since Fawlty Towers?

Fawlty Towers is the greatest comedy ever. Nothing else even comes close.

yeah i think it's become increasingly obvious as time has gone on that connie booth was likely the real creative force behind fawlty towers

xp poll

yes minister beats it off top of head

counterpoint: yes minister did brexit

fawlty towers is a documentary, written by connie booth abt the inside of her soon-to-be ex-husband's absurd head: it is funny! connie booth is funny!

also her ex-husband

the fawlt in the timeline

love that bit where he hilariously falls through a bar and then starts self-flagellating with a twig till he bleeds to death.

beating up the famine-thin oirish yokel is a classic

O'RLY

The contractor?

Orelly man.

just spent a few minutes reading orly taitz's wiki page, thx for the reminder of a more innocent age of rightwing nuttery

Orelly man.

So, what's those "all my friends from abroad" about, is that like "Coloured Brethren" or some such?

he lives in the caribbean so maybe "abroad" means the uk

the phrase "i opined" rarely signals worthwhile content imo

"mused Cleese"

friends from abroad = the Americans, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle

(this is a joke, as Eric Idle has no friends)

If some twitter japester hasn’t cunningly jiggled around the letters on the fawlty towers sign so it now reads ‘fucking cunt’ then I shall be sorely disappointed

this guy's brain has been shit soup for more than 50 years

As part of the research I'm doing for the programme on woke attitudes, I'd like to ask this:

Are wokes bothered by the lack of diversity in Putin's army ?

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 3, 2022

i wouldn't go back that far but the past five years or so of him on twitter has been 75% unbearable. Eric Idle presents as a much more tolerant and likable person which surprises me because for years I thought he was a twat.

i checked my numbers and they're in fact correct

(xp) He is a twat but Cleese is a thousand times worse.

I had no idea woke was a noun now.

everything is a noun

Worst thing about Cleese's current steez is he still pretends he's exploring the issues with an open mind, the cowardly sniveling cunt

Are wokes bothered by the lack of diversity in Putin's army ?

Just another open-minded guy askin' questions

I checked Tom’s numbers and they're in fact correct

always despised the hideous cunt. ha ha ha I'm going to hit a car with a branch and shout very loudly - instant brit comedy classic. Him and Baddiel should be dropped from a helicopter into a volcano before they make any more tv programs.

fawlty towers is good and that falls within the 50-year range but i suspect the good things about it are mostly due to connie booth

Fawlty Towers is good and I think a lot of it is due to John Cleese but nonetheless he is still a dick.

Controp: the latest series of The Righteous Gemstones is far funnier than anything Cleese ever did, including with Python.

but this puts me in the invidious position of admitting that comedy is good... grr!

cleese is for sure some of why fawlty towers is funny -- bcz connie booth knew how to deploy his silly walks and moves and also his obnoxious and stunted persona (aka the real him)

Person who is a dick unsurprisingly good at portraying a character who is a dick.

I could never stand that show. So shouty.

I think someone else could have played Fawlty - Leonard Rossiter for instance. The physical comedy would have been slightly different and the class based humour would have played differently but it would have been just as funny.

this crop of aging famous dudes who stroke out over woke-ism are so limp and lazy with their “zings” it seems like they mostly end up undermining their point. but then I remember who the intended audience is and it’s like oh right you really can’t fumble this

yeah, its not worth getting too het up about an eighty something yr old comedian lads if anyone that matters is listening its to stoke their own rage reactors

Idle posted several tweets about how electing Corbyn would lead to communism and how creators like him would him would have all their property and wealth stolen. He also called him a cunt. All around the 2019 election. Idle is dead to me.

None of us has any idea how the Fawlty Towers scripts were written and which of Cleese and Booth, if any, was the dominant one in the writing partnership.

i know exactly how they were written (the good funny stuff: all connie booth)

electing Corbyn would lead to communism and how creators like him would him would have all their property and wealth stolen

Unless you were in the room with them while they were writing it, which I doubt, I don't think you do. xp

no i do

there's actually going to be a whole episode of Cleese's new podcast about wokes where he confesses to this

it's clearly contrarian to write Cleese's career off. I think everything he did through a Fish Called Wanda is pretty excellent, and that includes some of the odd films he appeared in like Clockwise and Privates on Parade. His drop off post-Wanda was precipitous though. Anyway I'll just pretend he died after making that film.

Connie Booth supposedly had more to do with the plotting and making sure the scripts made sense. I imagine Cleese did the shouty bits

Wonder which of them was responsible for the badly-dated caricature that is Manuel?

didn't he start getting therapy at some point? I think I've seen people theorize that he stopped being funny because the therapy made him better adjusted and therefore less shouty and stunted etc.

xps to anagram afraid this is true, Connie Booth’s ghost appeared to me in a dream and confirmed it

he went through tons of therapy in the late 80's I believe, he wrote two books with his therapist. I read one of them (families and how to survive them).

And he's emerged from therapy a king-size wanker.

who knew therapy made you a senile unfunny bigot?

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/sep/19/miriam-margolyes-writing-my-memoir-was-terrifying-its-quite-revealing

Yes, the first person in the book she really doesn’t love is John Cleese who, with their fellow Footlights contemporaries (including Bill Oddie), she claims bullied and ridiculed her. At 19, “I’d not met studied cruelty like that before,” she writes, and the pain is still with her. “I feel awkward, admitting to such bitterness 60 years later… I should’ve got over it. But I haven’t.” She scowls, shaking her head. “They were horrid. Particularly Cleese, he’s a very unpleasant man.”

Sounds about right

there's a bit later on in the book where she meets Connie Booth and they co-write Fawlty Towers with no input from Cleese

I read one of them (families and how to survive them).

One of his relatives should write How to Survive John Cleese

randos attack his adult daughter for his opinions on Twitter and she has to ask if they’re responsible for everything their dumbass parents say

so without checking, probably too busy with that this week

Cleese recorded some commentary tracks for one of the Fawlty Towers collection, and he goes in to quite a lot of detail about the writing, and his collaboration with Booth. These commentaries are actually really interesting on the mechanics of comedy and might be one of the few worthwhile things Cleese has done in the last fifty years.

for the record, A Fish Called Wanda is risibly unfunny crap as well, I've never been able to get through more than ten minutes of it

absolutely correct.

Yeah never understood the fuss about how funny it’s supposed to be…

yet more factual evidence that Connie Booth wrote all his lines imo

Aristotle was not Belgian.

if laughter is the best medicine I think I got the wrong prescription here, doc

I'm fond of Fish, particularly the last scene b/w Cleese and Palin when trying to figure out where Wanda has gone and whenever Kline sputters about limey fruits.

kline is the best thing about wanda, the last time i watched it well over ten years ago anyway

The thing is, whether you like Fawlty Towers or not it's def a show that could've been on the air ten years before Monty Python, with only very minor adjustments. I'm as exhausted by the Python mythos as anyone else but I do think it's interesting that nothing Cleese did afterwards has any of the love for experimentation that Flying Circus did.

Speaking of, underrated sketch from that show and a moment where Cleese is undoubtedly funny for me: Mr.Hisler. "Not much fun in Stalingrad, no."

Re: Python, for Connie Booth read Graham Chapman. Worth remembering that, while doing Python, Cleese and Chapman were also writing scripts for creaky old trad British sitcoms like Doctor In The House.

xp I think there are moments of formal experimentation in Fawlty Towers, like in the 'Basil attacks the car with the tree branch' scene that was mentioned above where you get this long static shot of the car and the moment when Cleese unexpectedly turns on his heel and runs off camera leaving the car alone on the screen for a few seconds. I think what makes it funny is that it goes from looking like a standard 70s sitcom to looking like a Monty Python sketch, it's intentionally 'wrong' looking and makes you suddenly consciously aware that you're watching a tv show.

the tree branch bit reminds of the end of the Bicycle Repairman sketch where the voice-over becomes increasingly feverish talking about the communist menace and then it actually cuts to John Cleese as the voice-over guy sitting behind a microphone ranting about the dirty reds, this also has him suddenly walk off camera

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63197829

Actor and comedian John Cleese has confirmed he will host his own GB News TV show from next year.

"people say it's a right-wing channel but it's a free speech channel"

He later walked out of a BBC interview due to what he described as the "deception, dishonesty and tone" of the conversation.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

Jesus christ what a stupid old cunt

was this generation always like this or did something happen

apart from anything else I don't know how they convince themselves that by repeating the most low effort conservative talking points over and over that they're somehow doing something new and brave and radical

I don't think it's really any different from any other generation - the difference between this and olds in the 60's/70's is cosmetic, half remembered counter cultural norms means they need to cast themselves as edgier, but the substance is pretty much the same, the youth is radical, unthinking, won't listen to them.

wide swathes of gen x already on their way to this too

I always wondered where the jokes about leftism in the python films were coming from - is the butt of the joke the peasant's anarchism or arthur's presumption of ruling him, or both? is the sectarian stuff in brian anything more knowing than "look how ridiculous the left is" which is how it tends to be used? is it ultimately all just the "we all know the establishment is full of shit but look how ridiculous the people who oppose it are" style of elite british satire that gave us hignfy?

I don't expect people with these backgrounds to be sympathetic to the views they're making fun of but there's something almost apolitical in the form-over-content focus of those python jokes - they don't offend me at all (unlike some of the others) and could be coming from just about anywhere politically

idk what I'm saying really just wondering if something curdled or if it was always there just in a cleverer package or whatever

xp tbh I blame gen x (probably unfairly) for making this kind of nihilistic conformism that mainstream conservatism is now converging with seem like something edgy and rebellious. in their defence they had even less to work with than millennials (afaict). but boomers had so much more going on that they really should have no excuse

caveat that maybe cleese isn't actually a boomer and the generation stuff is mostly just a diversion

Not "probably" unfairly.

IMO most of the poking fun at the left in old Python was funny and came from a fair and informed place. Cleese just seems increasingly out-of-it, and acts like he's King Arthur and everyone with a Twitter account is the socialist peasant.

(xxp) In the Arthur film I think the joke is the incongruity of having a middle ages peasant up to his knees in dung breaking into wordy abstruse political theorising - I'm not sure there's any great satirical intent behind it. The various factions in the Brian movie are playing on the proliferation of Palestinian terrorist organizations with very similar names in the 1970s I think

Cleese is whatever the opposite of a Napoleon complex is

The scene in the Holy Grail strikes me as being pure Palin/Jones.

(xp) A de Gaulle complex?

xp And Idle, who was the naif of the group.

tom otm re the peasant in grail. sectarianism joke is p boilerplate even on the left. "what have the romans ever done for us" is the one that bugs me lol. complacent imperial sniggering imo.

what gets me in life of brian is the sustained bit about the hilarious absurdity of a trans woman existing

fwiw I caught the tail end of a Terry Jones history show once and it seemed to be making a "who were the REAL barbarians when u think of it" case

peasant thing can be read as a (presumably accidental) commentary on nationalism and peasant anarchist resistance to incorporation into the national body but I'm sure it's intended to be more incongruous than it actually is (they obviously wouldn't be talking like a student activist in any case)

otm that the romans joke is far more offensive than the others - we built your railways you know etc

Their humor turned vicious in "The Meaning of Life."

what gets me in life of brian is the sustained bit about the hilarious absurdity of a trans woman existing

Not defending this in any way, but I don't think any cis person would've considered mocking trans people problematic or offensive prior to the Millennium. So given Life of Brian was made in 1979 this feels historically revisionist.

sounds like the problem is cis people not revisionism

Their humor turned vicious in "The Meaning of Life"

Which bit, specifically? Mr Creosote?

Guess if you were a devout Catholic you wouldn't much like Every Sperm is Sacred.

sounds like the problem is cis people not revisionism

Of course, you are right, Left, and what's wrong now has been wrong for all of time, and we have the benefit of increased awareness as a result of people affected having the confidence to speak out about the hurt that's been caused. But this thread is specifically about whether John Cleese is funny or not, and I don't see how you can judge this based on what he or anyone else thought about trans rights in 1979 as it wasn't on the map then.

Which bit, specifically? Mr Creosote?

Pretty much all of it. It was an exceptionally mean-spirited film. I remember being taken aback when it came out.

it was? on some maps at least

obviously I'd be far more surprised if cleese and his mates knew or cared than otherwise xp

still I don't buy that no one knew it was hurting people - the jokes don't even work as jokes if they didn't know - they knew they'd get away with it is all. in retrospect it's not surprising how apoplectic the british establishment has become over finally experiencing some mild pushback

My extended family, who are all Catholic, if to varying degrees, love the Every Sperm Is Sacred song. Social bonding for Catholics generally involves laughing at all the ridiculous rules we have (and ignore)

Sure, Camaraderie, but you are arguing from the particular to the general here.

There are Jewish people who love the Two Ronnies' "insurance against becoming Jewish" sketch I link to below. I am sure there are others who find it offensive from start to finish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZzTTICHrAI

speaking only for myself, I only met someone who was transgender for the first time in 2006, and in the years following, made several other friends who were transgender. I knew very little about the community prior to this, partially due to my own (unintentional) bubble, partially because the mainstream media (at least around me) largely ignored them as if transgendered individuals were a fringe novelty and not human beings, so the only exposure I had was the occasional derisive jokes in movies/television. So I too wound up saying some things that I'm now ashamed of, that were hurtful, because of my own unintentional ignorance and also being a naive youth.

that doesn't mean that nobody who made these mean-spirited jokes were aware of the hurtful nature of them, or that knowing what we know now, we shouldn't cast some of this stuff to the ashheap of history, but trans awareness isn't something everybody had not that long ago (some of us still have a ways to go, myself included).

does anyone still watch Fawlty Towers and think John Cleese being an asshole and treating everyone like shit is funny?

He's meant to be a terrible person! The Manuel character, however, has dated pretty badly.

f.hazel- yes, but then I would regard your take on the show as somewhat reductionist.

What Matt #2 says about Manuel is obviously correct.

When did Cleese cease to be funny? Probably the 80s? I can't recall him being funny since then. He's just been relentlessly appearing on talk shows and in the press and doing his tiresome Grumpy Old Man routine. Anyway, he was never funny *on his own*, but as part of an ensemble cast, he was.

Cleese outlines his political philosophy in this 1985 party-political broadcast he made for the SDP, basically sensible-centrist right and left are as bad as each other, smart thoughtful people like me are politically homeless stuff, this seems pretty consistent with his views these days, though maybe he's gone a bit more in the complaining about there being too many non-whites in London these days direction recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKp7HDv01hk

I mean, the man did start doing corporate training back in the. . . 70s? 80s? A while ago.

it's interesting that he argues people become political 'extremists' because they are filled with rage and frustration and seek out enemies to direct that rage at, when Cleese himself seems like someone filled with rage and frustration, it's what 90% of his comedy is about, and it's led to him becoming a self-described moderate, feels like he's projecting his own issues.

(didn't Cleese have therapy at some point in the 80s, and himself attribute the drop off in quality in his work to the fact that he was now better adjusted and less angry?)

Cleese going from the SDP to GB news is more evidence that fascism is a political movement of the centre rather than the right (or left)

xxxp

Person who is a dick unsurprisingly good at portraying a character who is a dick.

― Being cheap is expensive (snoball), Sunday, 6 March 2022 12:28 (seven months ago)

I found him pretty funny as an addled romantic lead in A Fish Called Wanda but I might be the only defender of that one these days; he's at his best when performing silly shit like stripping while reciting Russian.

He's meant to be a terrible person!

Yeah, but the show is meant to be a comedy. It isn't funny.

answer to thread question still out of reach

Someone upthread said it best. Cleese alone = generally not funny. Cleese as part of the Pythons = funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_7DMk3oeOE

Me saying that the transphobia in Life Of Brian gets me angry does not equate to historical revisionism (I said nothing about thinking it's atypical for its time) nor does it have anything to do with whether I think Cleese is funny or not. Don't think my expressing an emotional reaction merits all this laywering tbh

Fwiw tho when I was in middle school I said something homophobic and my dad (who also introduced me to Monty Python) sat me down and gave me a talk about why bigotry is wrong that did indeed include trans people. I am aware that is not particularly common but still, maybe let's hold off on sweeping statements like "I don't think any cis person would've considered mocking trans people problematic or offensive prior to the Millennium."

Good thing nobody said that then

I don't think trans people were a complete unknown in the 70s. Jan Morris had a bestselling memoir about her transitioning for a start.

Even in 1970, when I was 15 and resources like wikipedia were a utopian pipedream, I knew who Christine Jorgensen was.

I always thought all the left stuff in Python was the result of them(Terry Jones especially) encountering it at university, and the various Trot splinters that were going on, esp by the 70s

Christine Jorgenson was referenced a number of times on 70s Match Games.

"does anyone still watch Fawlty Towers and think John Cleese being an asshole and treating everyone like shit is funny?"

yes

I don't think trans people were a complete unknown in the 70s. Jan Morris had a bestselling memoir about her transitioning for a start.

― Zelda Zonk, Monday, October 10, 2022 11:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

And Michael Palin did an excellent profile of Morris for the BBC about a decade ago, which included a sensitive discussion of her transition. He at least seems not to have curdled in his views in the way Cleese has.

Good thing nobody said that then

It's a literal quote from upthread dude.

Not has Idle. Was reading an interview with him yesterday.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/oct/03/i-didnt-cry-until-i-knew-i-was-going-to-live-monty-pythons-eric-idle-on-surviving-pancreatic-cancer?

"What does he think when he hears Cleese claiming that comedians are no longer free to make jokes without fear of being cancelled? “He’s who he is now. The thing I try to remember is the good times when we were young and funny. And we are no longer those people or speaking to today’s generation. We’re old farts. We should be left to go quietly to bed and watch the telly.” He giggles.

xp

Anyway, soref otm (haven't watched the video). Whenever someone says "free speech" that's the key to this. Plus a fear of what young people are going to do.

If they can drown a statue today..

It's a literal quote from upthread dude.

― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, October 11, 2022 3:40 AM bookmarkflaglink

Apologies, I somehow missed Grandpoint Genie's post entirely. I'm sorry about the rude response

Understood Neanderthal, can understand how it would be galling if you read that part as me responding to you.

idle used to come across and the biggest weasel of the lot but somehow in his old age I find him a lot more sincere (than cleese anyway); Palin has always struck me a lovely man.

Yes, never thought I would favor Idle over Cleese but the world has turned upside down in many respects since a decade ago.

last two posts otm

His brains have curdled though

If I create something that becomes valuable and successful why should Jeremy Corbyn steal it and run it. That's NOT socialism, that's communism. He could take over PYTHON.... https://t.co/n1vQbxpMww

— Eric Idle (@EricIdle) November 27, 2019

Yeah, nm, I hate them both.

Neil Innes to thread.

^ was gonna say, Idle was a total dick to Neil Innes

Yes, let's not kid ourselves, Idle was always a dick and still is. Palin and Jones were the nice guys and Chapman was drunk.

I see this hasn't been mentioned yet:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/miriam-margolyes-john-cleese-younger-b1916456.html

John Cleese is set to revive his classic 1970s comedy Fawlty Towers.

In a shock move that will likely divide fans of the original, Cleese will write and star in the show alongside his daughter Camilla Cleese. Matthew George (Wind River, A Private War), plus Rob Reiner, Michele Reiner and Derrick Rossi are executive producing the series for Castle Rock Television, which is developing the project.

The new Fawlty Towers is set to explore how Cleese’s cynical, over-the-top and misanthropic Basil Fawlty navigates the modern world. With plot details largely under wraps, the series will explore the relationship between Basil and a daughter he has just discovered he had, as the two tempt fate, and team up to run a boutique hotel.

oof that’s gonna be bad

He is currently making a documentary about cancel culture for Channel 4 and plans to host a show for right-leaning UK network GB News that will champion free speech.

a daughter he has just discovered he had

This shows such a lack of understanding of the character of Basil Fawlty that it surely proves Connie Booth was the creative force behind the original series.

it surely reaffirms the long-proven fact that etc

Well, yes.

weird that rob reiner is producing it given his history with liberal causes

Americans aren't interested in the political views of British people.

Rob Reiner also has a history with Archie Bunker, so maybe that’s the spirit in which he’s producing this.

I have nothing at all to do with this production or adaptation,. Apparently Cleese has cut the song. Of course. https://t.co/OS1X9b5w2k

— Eric Idle (@EricIdle) May 19, 2023

I guess this answers the question posted in the thread title: cleese now aggressively anti-funny

surely Cleese must be cutting out Idle's Stan/Loretta scene as well.

Nah, probably extending it and having the characters address the audience with "this is what the wokerati actually believe now!" afterwards.

Exactly.

i'll say again if you had told me 30 years ago that I would like Idle more than Cleese I would have really doubted you.

his twitter account is now full-on brainworm islamophobia with a bit of transphobia on the side, sharing obviously untrue AI slop and being furious about it. the man needs a wellness check.

he's been on this slide for at least a decade, maybe longer. awful.

I suppose we should all be glad that proposed Fawlty Towers reboot that was mentioned three years ago upthread never happened

It was on a hiding to nothing, seeing as how there's all those successful adaptations being staged at random restaurants on special evenings....

i looked and the first thing i saw was a retweet from an account called "Antifa_Ultra" calling out the insanity of ICE arresting children

second one was him calling Andrew Tate "awful"

Looks more resistance lib to me but idk

I have no problem believing he is a hardcore islamophobe and he does suck for sure but it's just weird with twitter if you don't have an account because you see things pretty differently than what the algo serves up

Is this the same John Cleese twitter account you're looking at?

Not sure I've ever heard John Cleese described as a 'resistance lib' before, always a first time though

I was going to share some examples but it's just far right shit as far as I can scroll

https://x.com/JohnCleese

If you aren't signed in to Twitter and look up an account, you are very likely getting tweets from many years ago, for whatever reason*.

* - Elon fucked something up

that's the link i was at, i'm just reporting what i saw. admittedly the two posts were from October 2025 and i didn't see anything more recent than that

xp well yeah

it's just weird with twitter if you don't have an account

Yeah i just looked and the first bunch of posts listed are all from 5-6 years ago.

yeah there's a bunch of old stuff like this which to me codes as resistance lib. i did see a reddit thread from a few weeks ago making the same observation about his twitter going bananas rw rabbit hole

https://i.postimg.cc/q7nXbb93/1.png

Yes, it's not a bit of grumpy old man lib/wokerati trolling it is full on far right racism.

for whatever reason*

This is by design to make twitter unusable without having an account.

I clicked through and got a bunch of stuff from 2019-2021 and this extremely trenchant enquiry from late 2022

Can anyone ( including BBC employees ) tell me why the BBC has not shown Monty Python for a couple of decades ?

Rupert Lowe

11 February
·
John Cleese is a patriot. His support for our rape gang inquiry is appreciated.

the longer people are on twitter the more their fucking brains rot, this is well established.

John Cleese, 4 hours ago

Slavery is an old Islamic tradition along with beating women, child marriage, Female Genital Mutilation, and not being very bright

Ugh what a creep.

He's been posting a bunch of pro-Ukraine and anti-Trump stuff over the last few days as well (including some obviously fake/AI generated stuff), I think his politics have basically been 'racist-centrist' for some time now, plus he is possibly sundowning

Graham Chapman dying relatively young feels increasingly like a smart move, from a reputation preservation pov at least

Michael Palin has aged rather well.

let's not kiss of death that guy

This is by design to make twitter unusable without having an account.

right and i suppose if it has the knockoff effect of obscuring the deranged posts of bigot sundowners, all the better

His support for our rape gang inquiry is appreciated

what is this regarding?

The far right in the UK are obsessed with gangs of Muslim men raping white girls.

Cleese appears to be supporting the Restore Party, led by the ridiculous Rupert Lowe, who was too racist for Farage.