Sunday, October 29, 2006

Bowel Stretching Time


Terry Jones was recently diagnosed with cancer. Luckily it’s at an early stage and very treatable. Could Spam be a carcinogen?

Within Monty Python, Jones was the leading romanticist pushing for the anarchic free-form structure of Flying Circus with sketches flowing in and out of each other or ending abruptly. He loved exotic film locations, vulgar characters and lots of visual clutter. In counterpoint was John Cleese’s classicism of straightforward comic premises—a cheese shop with no cheese—word play and slapstick.

When Cleese left to do Fawlty Towers both shows suffered. Flying Circus became messier and long-winded. Sketches grew to almost the length of an entire episode and risked tedium. Meanwhile Fawlty Towers was funny but boringly traditional. Farcical to the point of predictability, it lacks a good dose of the weird.

Here's to balanced health and holistic comedy.


6 Comments:

At 5:50 PM, Blogger ablebody said...

here here!

 
At 9:58 PM, Blogger Brian Bannon said...

Don't y'all have a location on the corner of Northside Dr. and Bankhead?

 
At 3:38 AM, Blogger Robiscus said...

very perceptive. i thought i was just missing Cleese in that last season, but i think you are correct. it's the structure that it lacked.

its actually "hear hear" though.

not to be a stickler, but i was once harshly corrected for the same mistake...

 
At 6:25 AM, Blogger Brian Bannon said...

That sounds like the start of a Cleese/Chapman wordplay sketch. A minister of Parliament keeps pointing to the ground in and yelling “Here, Here.”

Another MP corrects him “It’s not here, here (points to ground) it’s hear, hear (points to ears.)”

“What?”

“HEAR, HEAR!”

Speaker: “Order, order. No yelling in Parliament.”

“What?”

“NO YELLING IN PARLIAMENT!”

Or whatever. They could work it out better and add the right tweaking of authority. Then maybe Jones/Palin would add a healthy dose of weirdness toward the end.
Like a couple partially deaf surveyors who measure arms' lengths with amputated arms. Then Eric Idle'd add a large-breasted surveyor who makes topographical maps.

I don't know.

 
At 2:40 AM, Blogger ablebody said...

their their, dano. it's ok.

 
At 2:50 AM, Blogger Robiscus said...

Don't TEMPT ME Frodo!!...

 

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