Monty Python Crew To Reunite For Movie 136
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timothy
from the this-time-with-feeling dept.
from the this-time-with-feeling dept.
dutchwhizzman writes "The surviving members of Monty Python have announced they will make a new movie. It will be titled Absolutely Anything. Graham Chapman won't be there to join them anymore, but they think the movie will still be in the spirit of Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life and other movies they made in the past."
No Eric Idle? (Score:2, Interesting)
The source says that Eric Idle isn't confirmed to be part of the project (yet). So it's not quite a true reunion (yet). So I'm not quite jumping straight out of my window out of sheer joy (yet).
Eric, my life depends on you.
I knew this was inevitable... (Score:5, Interesting)
...from the moment John Cleese's divorce was final and his ex-wife got half of everything. Woo hoo! Shortly after there was a new Monty Python documentary, and now this.
Re:It shouldn't be in the spirit of Life of Brian. (Score:4, Interesting)
....its..../falls over/
Seriously though if they can get Cleese, Palin,Idle and Jones they should be able to capture the feel of the original. Gilliam was mostly animation and as Cleese put it "Graham added fire to the engine but he could never be the engine" as Chapman's function during writing was to be their sense of what was funny. The famous dead parrot was originally a broken toaster and it was Chapman that said 'How can we make this madder?" and got them thinking crazier until they came up with the Norwegian Blue, lovely plumage it has. Not that it won't be missing Chapman, Cleese said "he was always the best actor of the group" which is why he was the lead in LoB and HG, and his ability to deadpan....who can forget his "This is getting silly! stop that!" Major wearing a tutu? But if the guys are actually working together (according to TFA they haven't got Idle on board yet) like in the old days it ought to be better than a good 99.95% of the tripe coming out of Hollywood now. Maybe we can hope that this will start a revival of good silly yet thinking comedy again? Man after all the RomComs and stoner comedies the Pythons will be like a breath of fresh air after touring a sewage treatment plant.
Re:It shouldn't be in the spirit of Life of Brian. (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite sketch is, however, a Chapman sketch, and that's the still very shocking Undertaker Sketch, which Chapman deliberately wrote to be as appalling as possible. During his alcoholic years he was indeed far too unreliable to ever take the lead, and in fact according to Cleese it got so bad that that was why left and did the first Fawlty Towers series.
But it was very much Chapman's sense of the bizarre that was used so effectively. He may not have been the out-and-out creative force that the others were, but I doubt the Python's would have seemed very much like the Python's without him. He was of the same kind of anarchic breed as the Python's idol, Spike Milligan (another brilliant comedian and writer who had his own terrible demons).
They all served their function, and that's what makes any potential reunions seem somewhat underwhelming to me. If Idle's not involved, then you lose that element of it, and if Gilliam isn't involved, then you lose that sort of hallucinatory visual style. Python really is a very good example of how the sum is greater than the parts. They've all gone one and done some rather good things (yes, I even enjoyed Yellow Beard), but only Gilliam has ever managed to achieve things that came close to equaling his brilliance in Python.