Monty Python's Flying Circus - Classic or Dud?

Very much so. Especially if you are female.

I remember when their Iggy reviews called him "Mr. Osterberg."

I'm told they used to add "Mr." and such even to one-name celebrities, thus Mr. Meatloaf, Ms. Cher, etc, but I'm not sure I believe this.

Mr Cent.

Mr Mr Mr, the famous band

“As you get older you laugh less,”

Soon we die.

Hahaha and I know exactly the tone of voice in which you say that...

I know you do, and you know why i agonized over "we" vs. "you," and now fear I may have chosen the wrong word.

You should really just relax.

Death relaxes you like nothing else can. Your bladder and bowels, too.

haha

and sphincter.

Take it to I Love TMI.

Where is the love for the Monty Pythons albums?? ABSOLUTE TOTAL FUCKING CLASSIC!!

Monty Python's Flying Circus, though, is pretty duddy. Way too much laughtrack.

you're deranged, TV was their medium.

people ragging on python must not have seen 90% of other tv. i'm hoping.

it didn't have a 'laugh track,' it was filmed in front of an audience.

Are you sure about that? Not the filmed bits -- I don't believe any TV comedy was permitted NOT to have a laugh track in that era.

British TV didn't use laugh tracks, as far i'm aware

Definitely in front of an audience from the start and the laughter you hear is live -- it's not only been discussed in any number of books/documentaries but a slew of sketches specifically use the audience as either backdrop or part of the whole thing. (Best example being the second season ender, the cannibal undertakers, which involved the audience supposedly rising up and charging the set in protest.)

I can't think of a single British comedy series of the 60s and 70s with one

Sketch in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWWg5shNWR4

One of the Pythons mentions in a later book and interview that this didn't quite go off as planned since most of the audience were loving it -- you can hear a few plants from staff/friends complaining and catcalling but the initial cutaways to the audience show 'em all chilling. The 'stage invasion' is a little easygoing at points. And then they all stand for the queen (the conceit of the episode being that Her Majesty was supposedly tuning in that night -- whenever she did so the national anthem was played, etc.)

Hahaha I have very strong memories of that sketch!

Based on the time you broke into the mortuary and...well anyway.

That IFC special sounds pretty cool!

Cleese, sounding off on everything:

I went through a very unpleasant divorce and discovered just how hopeless the American legal system is.... Now I have to pay one million dollars a year until I’m 76. So that means I have to organize my life around earning the first million dollars every year. And the normal sources of income for people like me are drying up. There aren’t as many film and TV parts — and you can do interesting documentaries but they don’t pay anything. So I’m doing one-man shows and other things ...

(on quitting the MPFC series)

Two things: One is I did not like the fact that we were repeating a lot of our material, even if other people didn’t notice; the others didn’t care. They were having a good time. I think if one was playing “I’m the pure artist,” I would win on that one. The other thing was that I was carrying the alcoholic [the late Graham Chapman]. That seems to get forgotten in all of these discussions. They were completely blind to an extraordinarily important point, which was: I was the guy who was having to work with the alcoholic. They never said, ‘We’ll share part of that burden with you. I’ll write with him one day a week.’ This is never mentioned. It was ‘Oh, John was rather difficult … ’

There were two types of days: days where I did 80 percent of the work and days when Graham did 5 percent of the work. He was basically lazy, but he had two great qualities: He was the most extraordinary sounding board and he was capable of coming in with very good off-the-wall ideas. But he was very lazy.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/10/interview_john_cleese_slams_ex.html

Gilliam was on the One Show last week, making very Bryan Ferry-esque statements about the Nazis.

Graham Chapman may have been an alcoholic layabout, but he was an extremely funny one. So there.

Anything but mindless good taste for him.

I would love to read a book about Graham Chapman. He was a wild guy!

He wrote A Liar's Autobiography. Great title.

Cleese: the Ingmar Bergman of the Pythons

He's funny, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlmzwZXa-Ww

Great commercials, all of them. The Mac vs. PC ads of their day.

He wrote A Liar's Autobiography. Great title.

Well, "wrote" is a bit of a stretch, it ended up being a collaboration with four other writers(including Douglas Adams).

Yeah, Python always had a live audience. In fact rewatching the first episode is fascinating in this regard, as you can practically hear the unease in the studio as if they aren't quite whether they should be laughing at this.

Oh, while we're here, is everyone aware of Eric Idle's latest Python-milking atrocity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVA_qFKEys4

He is absolutely determined to squeeze every drop of life out of those withered teats, isn't he?

Cleese: the Ingmar Bergman of the Pythons

so you wd say, Smiles of a Summer Night hata

xpost dunno, is that not "what it says on the tin"?

(didn't watch clip tbf)

yes, but there was previously Spamalot, and that seemed a bit on the "get your own career" side already.

Not that it was bad or anything. I didn't see it, but 14 Tony noms isn't too shabby. Idle has a way with a tune, hafta admit. Even so. Enough, already.

S'funny, cause about 10 years ago when Idle appeared on the Craig Kilborn show, Kilborn announced forthright that Idle refused outright to talk about MP - a kinda unprecedented occurrance, especially for a particularly irreverent talk show host. (In the end, Idle brought his acoustic guitar and sang an amusing little song called "I'm Waiting For the Film".)

I did.

Well, if anyone's going to, and people want to see it, hey...

The above bit reminded me of some TV appearance where he had it stated "No monty python" whic was like taking the elephant out of the room, and did new/different things, and by all accounts was great.

XPOST!

I just got this like six disc doc about MP has anybody seen it??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SXq5X9zEZI

"And Gilliam, being American, went to no known school whatsoever." Heh.

Very nicely done, sir. :)

(One quibble -- his answer about Life of Brian is disingenuous. It hardly matters that Jesus also appears in the film. The film mercilessly makes fun of the New Testament in many places -- its inscrutable language, its impossible instructions -- and worse yet, it points out the solid fact, as its premise even, that Jesus was one of many prophets who were hanging 'round at the time, and perhaps suggests that Jesus' choice as the one messiah was more or less arbitrary. idle knows all this. But I suppose to really answer the question would be to start a theology debate, which he likely is not interested in doing. So why address that question at all?)

That Palin + Cleese vs. Muggeridge + Bishop of Southwark confrontation is classic though, not that Palin contributes much

palin very nervous, as opposed to cleese seeming like he's been looking forward to it his whole life.

He comes across as a guy you wouldn't want to fall out with