Eric Idle and Neil Innes [split topic]

[Glebe]

Brother got me the Sortabiography for Christmas, looking forward to reading it.

[Jake Thingray]

Be interesting to see how the transatlantic cunt who owes his success to the work of others, and the gormlessness of Americans, reacts to the news of the death of the man he sued into penury.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Be interesting to see how the transatlantic cunt who owes his success to the work of others, and the gormlessness of Americans, reacts to the news of the death of the man he sued into penury.

Well said, luv.

[idunnosomename]

I wish it were eric idling in grave

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Yeah, completely departed.

[Bennett Brauer]

He sort of quit Twitter about a month ago, a couple of days after the deaths of his friends J Miller and C James.

[Jake Thingray]

Not before taking the opportunity to drop both their names though, and in the process reminding everyone he twats about in LA rather than live in 'England', as he no doubt calls all of the UK.

[jobotic]

What did he sue Innes for?

[Ambient Sheep]

What did he sue Innes for?

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,68231.msg3564690.html#msg3564690

[jobotic]

Thanks. And oops - I think i read that thread at the time.

[Ambient Sheep]

You might let out an even bigger oops when you realise you're reading it now! :-)  Happy New Year...

[jobotic]

Fucking hell.

[Ambient Sheep]

Sorry...

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Had never read that stuff about Eric Idle and Neil Innes, I'd obviously heard there was some bad blood, but I didn't know the details. Fucking hell, Idle is an unbelievable piece of shit. Absolutely fuck this cunt, especially today of all days.

[Ambient Sheep]

Quite.

Especially as in the Guardian article about Neil's passing it says that Innes' case against Idle for the Spamalot royalties was never even filed.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Watched The Rutles 2 for the first time ever today as I was going through Innes stuff and decided that, like a true comedy nerd, I had to see it out of sheer completism. And fucking hell, I was not prepared for how rancidly unfunny and low effort it is. What happened to Eric Idle that made him think that just repeating old material is really good and a decent day's work. Seriously, why is he like this?

[the science eel]

A few million people still idolise him and will pay good money for any old shit he tosses together?

[Jim Bob]

A few million people still idolise him...

They think he's Eric Idol.  In reality, he's more Eric Bone-Idle

[Rizla]

Watched The Rutles 2 for the first time ever today as I was going through Innes stuff and decided that, like a true comedy nerd, I had to see it out of sheer completism. And fucking hell, I was not prepared for how rancidly unfunny and low effort it is. What happened to Eric Idle that made him think that just repeating old material is really good and a decent day's work. Seriously, why is he like this?

I assumed he banged it out to justify his cuntish behaviour over the Archaeology album. His body of work post Python/RWT really is staggering in its shitness, there's almost nothing actually funny in there at all. Who else has a comparable quality deficit? Christ, even Chevy Chase redeemed himself with Community.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

There are bits of The Rutles 2 that are clearly filmed on a consumer grade camcorder with minimal planning involved. It definitely feels banged out, like a bunch of incoherent stuff that he shot sporadically over the course of a year or so without much concerted effort at all, and then handed off to some poor editor to give it some shape. Which seems to have been impossible without basically just inserting loads of rushes from the first special and giving it exactly the same narrative shape as the first one. With the same gags! Why!? Every gag is the fucking 'trousers' gag!

[idunnosomename]

was there any new footage of Innes et al shot?

pre-emptive Idle is a cunt

[Monsieur Verdoux]

no new footage of Innes, Halsey, Fataar etc. and as far as I know none of them were even invited to participate

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

no new footage of Innes, Halsey, Fataar etc. and as far as I know none of them were even invited to participate

He still used songs from the Rutles' Archaeology album though, the cheeky cunt.
Like the Monsieur, I was not prepared for what a fucking outright abortion that fucking thing was.Not even the best drummer in the Rutles a sequel, just a fucking remake, the fucking exact same story told, but with the fucking jokes about the narrator going to the wrong fucking location and comments about tight fucking trousers repeated ad fucking nauseam. Oh, and fucking LUNCH! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAFUCKINGHAHA!
Then right at the end of the fucking thing, there's all these clips of all these celebrity cunts what have just been in it laughing away. Fuck knows at what. The very last shot is Garry Shandling ad- libbing " You know, I was a very bad..." at which Idle says " comedian", and they both have a nice chuckle at this, then Idle says " No, you're a great comedian", the fucking oily, obsequious cunt. FUCK OFF.
I just wish that Neil Innes had got round to sueing the fuck out of the cunt over the Holy Grail music. Ah, well.

[idunnosomename]

I hope when eric idle dies they just stick him in a shopping trolley and push it into a canal.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Was Steve Punt his lovechild?

[ajsmith2]

Rutles 2 is the worst Python related thing of all time.

It's my opinion (that I formed 2 days ago after doing a bit of armchair psychology in the wake of the fallout of Innes's passing) that Idle's particularity crappy behaviour over Innes and The Rutles is down to the fact that he loves The Rutles but that it eats him up that deep down he knows that he didn't contribute anything that was actually good about The Rutles to The Rutles. In the film about all he's bringing to the table is mugging and bad puns. Innes writes all the fantastic songs and his Nasty steals the show as a more likeable Lennon that arguably improves on the model, whereas McQuickly is just a gurning surface level piss take of McCartney.

Idle is a fantastic broadway/Noel Coward/Irving Berlin old school songwriter in his own right, but I think it got/gets to him that despite having that talent (along with many many other strings to his bow) he wasn't able to write in what he perceived as a more credible (for the times) rock idiom as effortlessly as Innes could. I think with being such a schmoozer with Harrison and the SNL folks and the like, 70s rock and comedy royalty types, Idle wanted to appear more 'rock and roll' in that context and that he felt in the Rutles Innes had (by just doing his part) stolen his thunder from his biggest chance to live out his rock star fantasies. Not saying that's definitive, just where I ended up as I was pondering this the other day.

One more thing about Rutles 2: apparently in an outtake Salman Rushdie is interviewed about their double LP which he refers to as 'The Shite Album'. I think that about sums up the wretched projects mismatch of the biggest possible names with the worst possible material.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

So people dislike Idle more than Cleese?

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

None of the Pythons have done anything of any worth for the past 40 years or so, to be fair ( although Michael Palin's quite good at the old serious acting in other people's stuff. He was the second best thing in " Remember Me".)
Also, Neil Innes, if people * must* refer to him by using an ordinal number and the word " Python" was the eighth Python, if anything ( but, more importantly, he was Neil Innes.)

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Tell you what, Eric Idle's appearance on Top Of The Pops in 1991 was actually quite funny, we should all give him that.

[the science eel]

So people dislike Idle more than Cleese?

I'm sure most do.

Poll it!