Monty Python at 50 - Official Press Release

[daf]

Series 2 deluxe version (with the book) now listed on Amazon - currently at £22.99 *
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Monty-Pythons-Flying-Circus-Complete/dp/B082PQTR62/


 

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* (Also available at the same price from Base.com)

[PinkNoise]

The Series 2 set is great for the extras... if you want a little bit more of "The Bishop" and "Ken Clean-Air System".

I'm slowly working my way through the box set and - aside from the fact that it's all looking beautiful - I've been properly laughing at some of the outtakes as they "explain" some of the abrupt edits in the finished versions. For example, the original transition between the Gumbies and Ron Devious is great.

There's one extra bit of the pantomime horses in Series 3 which pays off an earlier sketch and had me in tears.

[Autopsy Turvey]

Even just reading the misspelled subtitles of the silent extra Pantomime Horse footage, the brief confusion about the phrase "I couldn't have beared it" had me in danger of waking the neighbours. It's amazing how good the Pantomime Horses actually look, and the Pantomime Princess Margaret, and everything else. That 'Mary Surplus Store' gag is gone in half a second!

The restoration is so good you can now see that at the end of the Panto Horse ep, in the fight over the closing credits, there's a man in a jumper with MAIR FENHINES written across it. What level of nonsense is this?!

Frustratingly the silent footage of the silly dressed characters' monologues don't have any subtitles: Eric as a carrot, Terry J in lipstick and oilskins, Graham hugging an inflatable etc. Any lip readers in? I wonder if they tried out a number of incongruous phrases before settling on 'Lemon Curry?'?

[Glebe]

Blu-ray.com review.

[the]

I've made my way through all the episodes now, but have only watched the extras for series 1 so far.

Superbly restored, although I have to concur with a comment earlier about a few of the re-created captions being a little too clean. Without a bit of added mechanical wobble and maybe something like Median to round the text edges off, they look a bit too 21st Century. That's just a very minor quirk though, it doesn't spoil my enjoyment.

Nearing the end of book 1 too. Call me dim but I never before noticed how the parrot sketch was a further development of the car sketch from How To Irritate People.

[Revelator]

I didn't think there were any unknown Python rarities items left, but We Are Cult has found one:

"Monty Python: Who's There? (1970) An instructional film about canvassing, for the Labour Party and starring the Python team [Cleese, Chapman, Palin, Jones, and Carol Cleveland], showing Labour Party workers how to canvass for votes. Filmed April 1970. Narrated by Michael Parkinson."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6do95qglvvw

A pity this wasn't unearthed in time for the Blu-Ray, but I'm grateful to find about it.

[Jockice]

I didn't think there were any unknown Python rarities items left, but We Are Cult has found one:

"Monty Python: Who's There? (1970) An instructional film about canvassing, for the Labour Party and starring the Python team [Cleese, Chapman, Palin, Jones, and Carol Cleveland], showing Labour Party workers how to canvass for votes. Filmed April 1970. Narrated by Michael Parkinson."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6do95qglvvw

A pity this wasn't unearthed in time for the Blu-Ray, but I'm grateful to find about it.

And Connie Booth, unless I'm very much mistaken.

[Gurke and Hare]

This is excellent. And I always had Parky down as a Tory bastard.

[Mr_Simnock]

What a find. Can anyone else think of a comedy group (or anyone) who has done work like this? i know Fry and Lauri did a Labour party political broadcast years ago but this along with the other films in the extra's for companies are rather unique no?

[daf]

How on earth did this slip through the cracks - and is there more stuff like this out there?

A pity this wasn't unearthed in time for the Blu-Ray, but I'm grateful to find about it.

There's still the possibility that Network might release a set of the German shows (they were conspicuously absent from the recent box) - so they could pop it on that.

[Shaky]

I want all the rejected stuff from Meaning of Life and I WANT IT NOW, PLEASE.

[Gurke and Hare]

What a find. Can anyone else think of a comedy group (or anyone) who has done work like this? i know Fry and Lauri did a Labour party political broadcast years ago but this along with the other films in the extra's for companies are rather unique no?

Cleese did at least one ppb for the SDP (or possibly the SDP/Liberal alliance - not sure of the timeline).

[pupshaw]

What a find. Can anyone else think of a comedy group (or anyone) who has done work like this? i know Fry and Lauri did a Labour party political broadcast years ago but this along with the other films in the extra's for companies are rather unique no?

Did you notice who wasn't in the film?

[the science eel]

Series 1 Blu-ray digipak now £15 on Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07XN4BKQC/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1

[Jockice]

Did you notice who wasn't in the film?

Billy Bremner?

[biniput]

Eric Idle of course.

[Revelator]

And Connie Booth, unless I'm very much mistaken.

I thought I'd spotted her but wasn't sure, so I'm glad you've confirmed this.

I want all the rejected stuff from Meaning of Life and I WANT IT NOW, PLEASE.

Me too! But that will require the Pythons allowing someone to root through all those scripts and then choose material everyone would approve of releasing. James Gent, the guy at We Are Cult who found Who's There? would certainly be a good choice.

There's still the possibility that Network might release a set of the German shows (they were conspicuously absent from the recent box) - so they could pop it on that.

I very much hope you're right. If the Flying Circus blu-rays sell well enough, then the German shows and any other rarities would be a worthwhile project for Network.

Eric Idle of course.

Terry Gilliam is also absent, though for obvious reasons (on the othr hand, he could have played the American tourist). Not sure what Idle's were, though I doubt they were ideological. More likely material.

[the science eel]

What did the Pythons have against Frost?

[Hand Solo]

What did the Pythons have against Frost?

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6qglgt

[Mr_Simnock]

I absolutely love that sketch, summed the cunt up very well

[Dewt]

Just sending up an old friend, aren't they? Monty Python wouldn't exist without Frost.

[the science eel]

Just sending up an old friend, aren't they? Monty Python wouldn't exist without Frost.

Well, I used to think there was affection there. But I've seen a few things now that might indicate they really disliked him.

[FredNurke]

I suspect opinions varied among the group. Cleese, whose career was elevated to the first rank largely because of Frost, seems to have had a pretty amicable relationship with him - but Palin says that one of the reasons why Cleese wanted to take up the BBC's offer of a show (which became Python) was precisely because he wanted to reclaim his independence from Frost rather than being attached to Paradine for the foreseeable. Is 'Timmy Williams' an Idle sketch? I would imagine that the 'Do Not Adjust Your Set' Pythons had less reason to think highly of Frost, given the way their names used to hurtle up the screen at the end of the Frost Report, and Idle's usually your best bet for grudges...

[Revelator]

In The First 200 years of Monty Python Idle mentions Frost's reaction to being parodied:

"I talked to him after I did the Nixon interviews on Saturday Night Live--Danny Ackroyd played Nixon and I played him [Frost].
I saw Frost about two weeks later when I came back to London. He came up to me and said 'I loved your Frost'--as though it wasn't him, but somebody else that I was doing! ... We all used to work for him, writing ad libs for him in the '60s. He gave us our big breaks, though we would never admit that in public.
...[Timmy Williams] used to be David. His shows would say 'Written by David Frost. Contributions by --' and the three hundred names would roll by, the names of the people who actually wrote the show. He always took a nice big script credit, and I don't think he ever wrote a joke."

I saw a couple of Cleese's live shows in 2014, a year after Frosts's death, and he included a tribute to Frost, who he thanked for making his comedy career possible.
Cleese also devotes several pages to Frost in his autobiography. They're too long to fully quote, but here are some snippets:

On taking writer's credit:
"David was endearing shameless in matters such as these, and the question therefore arises: why was he so little resented for it? After all writers normally get rather touchy about matters of contribution.
Part of the reason, I think, was that we all felt real affection for him, and were grateful to be part of the enjoyable groups and quasi-families he assembled. There's no doubt, too, that we admired his strengths as a producer: he was brilliant at spotting talent and trusting it, and while he occasionally shaped a project in helpful ways he seldom interfered unnecessarily. But I think another factor was that he was one of the few people I've known who was 'pronoid.' ... a pronoid person believes, on no reasonable grounds whatsoever, that people like him and want to help him...
..This belief of his, that everybody liked him and wished him well, was largely true of the people with whom he interacted all the time. The people who didn't like him...tended not to know him personally, and he had a happy knack of simply tuning their negativity out, so that he was never drawn into responding to it. It is an extraordinary thing to say, but in a fairly close friendship of fifty-three years I never heard him make a mean remark about anyone. Those who envied him should have envied his pronoia too."

[the science eel]

'squeaking with congeniality and engrossed in self-advancement'

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I didn't think there were any unknown Python rarities items left, but We Are Cult has found one:

"Monty Python: Who's There? (1970) An instructional film about canvassing, for the Labour Party and starring the Python team [Cleese, Chapman, Palin, Jones, and Carol Cleveland], showing Labour Party workers how to canvass for votes. Filmed April 1970. Narrated by Michael Parkinson."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6do95qglvvw

A pity this wasn't unearthed in time for the Blu-Ray, but I'm grateful to find about it.

Bloody hell.

They should have republished this for recent election campaigns. Most of it is applicable for door-to-door canvassing today.

So, was Idle not of the same persuasion?

[Autopsy Turvey]

I didn't think there were any unknown Python rarities items left, but We Are Cult has found one:

Not sure where it's been for 25 years, but it's not unknown, it was screened at the BFI in 1994 as part of Python's 25th anniversary season. It's a fascinating glimpse of history, but I do remember cringing a bit, as I did when Kenny Everett appeared at the Tory conference, as I do whenever people who have only ever larked about for a living expect anyone to take their real-world political allegiances seriously.

So, was Idle not of the same persuasion?

Idle came from the poorest background of any Python, so I imagine that 'champagne socialism' would rankle more with him (also that he wouldn't be so keen to work for free), but I suspect he was more concerned that the material was so leaden (except the bit where Carol asks Hitler "When it comes down to it, aren't Labour's ideals yours as well?" Ahead of their time again there!!) and that nailing their colours to the government's mast was an awkward thing for a wacky troupe of anti-establishment comedians to do.

[the science eel]

Watched the second show of S2 last night and it didn't raise a smile. Like all their worst bits in one episode.

[neveragain]

That's a shame you feel that way. There's loads of enjoyable stuff there - the joke seller, Carol Cleveland ripping up the old lady's photos, the courtroom, some moments in the semaphore stuff, the Spanish Inquisition of course (who, if you don't enjoy the performances - which I'd say takes some effort - at least provide solid linking) and some nice cartoons. Tax on thingy I've never been that fond of. The next ep is rather barren[nb]Or alternatively you might enjoy it[/nb] so you have been warned.
To sum up: Oh bugger.

[the science eel]

Coming after the first one, you know - Dinsdale and all that (and how fucking great is Idle with all that 'there's nothing Dinsdale wouldn't do for you' stuff?) - it had to be a bit of a let-down.

But yeah, some laughs. The joke seller sketch is ace, Cleese and Idle on fantastic form.

The Spanish Inquisition bit with the old woman is especially desperate. It's not at all typical, tho' - I always thought they were almost entirely consistent (another reason why the 'Comedy Beatles' thing works).