John Scott Lewinski at Wired wisely checks in with Frank, Mike and Bill for a piece about Monty Python.
Let me add my thoughts: I was a high schooler in the Philadelphia area in 1973 when the local PBS station, way ahead of almost every other station in the country, began showing Monty Python. I was already a student of comedy, sampling every brand of humor I could find, from the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin to the National Lampoon and Woody Allen. And then I saw Monty Python. I cannot underestimate the effect on me. It was a revelation. I was a member of a sketch comedy group, and seeing these shows was like finding the comedy Rosetta Stone. Every week I was glued to the TV. In the days before VCRs, I was audio taping episodes so I could dissect the incredibly witty wordplay. All these years later (and isn’t amazing that this group was doing its best work nearly FORTY years ago?), like a lot of nerds, I can recite most of the bits by heart — and I still laugh.
That’s something special.
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Yes. But remember how many people were dissuaded from promising careers as barbers when they realized there were other career
choices available. :cry:
I’m not trying to be overly dramatic when I say that Monty Python helped to shape me into the person I am today. I come from a very repressive, religious background, and I watched Monty Python covertly. I learned there were other ways of thinking about a lot of different things than what I had been presented. That’s quite an effect on a person, isn’t it? That’s not to say I didn’t laugh at the sheer silliness, because that was a big part too. My children have been given free access to Monty Python. They don’t even have to sneak around.
I got into Monty Python in reverse thanks to MST3K and I love it, oddly I was already watching some British TV when I started watching MST3K, mostly Red Dwarf, I’m thankful for the Brains for the comedic education.
On a DVD set note, the set is frustrating for someone (me) who already bought the 16 Ton box set, kinda like the MST3K essentials having the already released Manos.
I think you just short circuited my brain.TWo of my favorite things in the entire world.—Collide.
Gaw thank you soooooooooo much for this.
Monty python and mst3k are helping shape my humor and personality thank you soo much again
Thankfully, my dad’s side of the family had developed a taste for Monty Python well before I came around, so I got to watch Holy Grail without any real restriction as a kid. Which was good, because it’s something I could appreciate for a lifetime.
It’s funny to me how much more of a cult thing Monty Python seems to be in the US, whereas in the UK it’s pretty much part of the establishment of TV greats. I grew up watching “Life of Brian” and “Holy Grail” on home video from as young as I remember, and we had a book of scripts from the show that my brother and I used to love reading out together when I was about 7. Our favourite, for some reason, was “Take Your Pick”. To this day I use “Henri Bergson” when I don’t know the answer to a question. No wonder I’m strange.
For those non-U.S. and/or non-politically interested people you might be care to know that Dennis Moore is the 3rd District of Kansas Representative.
http://moore.house.gov/
Don’t know if he rides a horse to Washington.
I got into Monty Python in high school, as the theater crowd I was with was into it. I was the only girl who knew the Lumberjack song, which gave me some much-needed cred. I think people have always bonded over quotes from the show or one of their movies.
I remember learning about MP from a guy in my 4th year French class in HS. We spent more time listening to him describing the Radio Venus dancing on the half-shell than we did learning the subjunctive tense. I thought Todd was wicked cool. :twisted:
20 years later, and I’m fluent in French *and* Flying Circus. I feel so lucky.
I can credit Monty Python with introducing me to Sam Peckinpah. That one sketch, with the piano chopping off hands (or is it just fingers? can’t remember) fascinated my fourth grade brain. Only after many years did I finally get around to watching The Wild Bunch and Alfredo Garcia, and I don’t think I would have without that germ of interest planted when I was but a wee lad.
I thought it was hands, but being 8 at the time I had to ask my aunt who the heck Sam Peckenpaugh was and why it was funny. Of course during the “naughty cartoons”, her hand would flash before my eyes.
My personal favorite sketch is the flying sheep or the Bureau of Silly Walks or The Parrot Sketch which morphs into “The Lumberjack” “da’ y’a know what I mean, nudge,. nudge”
Monty Python, like MST3K, is something that i hold very dear to my heart. I remember sitting down one Sunday to watch a double feature of both Holy Grail and Rocky Horror with my father. I was never the same.
Other things that formed my sense of humor: Dr. Demento, The Simpsons, Space Ghost, South Park, and Ren & Stimpy. All very important things in my development. :razz:
The best thing about Monty Python and MST3k is that they both contain so many different types of humor with so many different references, that you can get something different out of an episode every time you watch it.
When I was a kid, I got the slapstick. In my teenage years, I got the bawdy humor. Just a few weeks ago, Weird Universe ran a piece on Joanna Southcott’s box – a reference in a MP skit that I never got before. It was still funny before, but now I know just what “Open the Box! OPEN THE BOX!” means. :lol:
My first “exposure” to Monty Python may have been around that same time. I was seated in the living room with my parents and my sister and pops was “channel surfing” (all 7 of them plus UHF :grin: )when he came across this comedy bit where a guy got hit in the eye with a tennis ball and blood shot out of the injury. Chaos insued as the piano player got his hands chopped off by the keyboard drawer! All the men at the “picnic” were all bloodied and the women kept screaming. It ended with some annoucer getting shot and we saw the blood shoot out in slow motion. Of course it was the “Salad Days” sketch! I found it to be funny! It would be a few more years till I came back to Python. I guess the parents were a bit mortified that I saw that sketch so that channel was passed over when we gathered by the TV! :lol: But by the early 80’s, with some looser parental supervision, I was able to find them again on a PBS station and I never looked back!
Professor
You got to watcha double feature of rocky horror and monty python.
you lucky lucky boy
I first watched Python back when it was first shown on WNET, Channel 13, New York. I was making audio copies of the episodes, too, and got to where I could rattle them off from memory. And I even convinced my Mom to take me to see “Holy Grail” at the Dunellen Theater when it was first released.
This was when I was when I was about nine years old. It would be decades before I’d get some of the jokes, though. And I’m still not sure who Reginald Maudling (sp?) is.
My Mom & Dad weren’t too crazy about some of the Python’s humor, but things turned out OK. The Pythons’ success led to the U.S. arrival of “Last of the Summer Wine” and “Keeping Up Appearances”, which were more their speed.
Oddly, I think my first intro to Monty Python was watching And Now For Something Completely Different on HBO in the early eighties. They played Time Bandits and Yellowbeard a lot at the time, too. Needless to say, I developed a taste for the Pythons’ later, more polished work. It took me a little while to appreciate the rougher production values of the TV show. But everything changes, and now, I kinda prefer some of the pre-Python TV sketches from Do Not Adjust Your Set and At Last, The 1948 Show.
Incidently, I can trace back my love of Mel Brooks and Cheech & Chong to this same time period.
My parents were big Pythonites (my Dad and some friends performed ‘Whizzo Chocolate Factory’ in a high school review in the late 70s and managed to thoroughly confuse the rest of the school), so I was introduced young. I saw ‘Holy Grail’ for the first time when I was seven, and like Mike Nelson I knew I that what I was seeing was special even if many of the jokes went over my head. By sixth grade, I was versed enough in ‘Flying Circus’ to spend my recesses swapping lines with a classmate who was also into Python. Yeah, I was popular.
Actually, my experience with MST3K was quite similar in that I was too young to get a lot of the references to politics, literature, history, etc., but I was so enthralled by the ingenuity and enthusiasm of the show that it didn’t matter. I was drawn to the cerebral absurdity demonstrated in both shows, even though at those early ages I wasn’t able to keep pace with everything I heard or saw.
The more I think about it, the more and more appropriate it seems to include MST3K and MP in the same article. :)
It’s weird. Now that I think of it, I was first introduced to Python around the same time I discovered MST3K. Around 1990 in Miami (Homestead AFB) when I was in the 6th grade. The geeky freaks I’d hang out with before the bell rang would be talking about it. They happened to be the only ones who knew of the Comedy Channel as well and also told me to check out Short Attention Span Theater and the Higgins Boys show and stuff like that. We’d talk about MST3K and Python and they were also the only kids I knew into underground Punk and Metal that Didn’t skateboard.
Btw, if you’re out there Jason Urban or Bradley Morales (AKA Paralysis)… what’s up. :) And thanks for telling me about Python. ;)
Oh yeah and the Peckinpah “Salad Days” happened to my first Python sketch as well. The first one to really draw me in and had me hurting with laughter when I finally caught the show. Needless to say, that’s all it took. :twisted:
I was 14 when WNET began showing the episodes (Sunday nights, if I recall correctly), and audio taped them like some of the others here.
It might be hard to appreciate how revolutionary this show was if you weren’t there at the time. It really was “completely different” – the Pythons changed what comedy was. The Marx Brothers were the closest analogy I can think of, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there was a big revival of interest in the Marx Brothers in the early ’70s.
If you’re younger, and found Python in the ’80s or later, you probably really enjoyed it, but you would have already been exposed to lots of comedy that had been influenced by Python, so the sense of uniqueness and discovery couldn’t have been the same as when the Pythons started.
In 1973 I was in junior high when the local PBS station began showing Monty Python, quite late at night as I recall. (It was actually my same friend that would later tell me about MST3K when he saw it on KTMA that first told me about the show.) I remember distinctly that the first few episodes I saw had Confuse-a-Cat and How to Identify Different Types of Trees, which I thought were brilliant. I thought I would try introducing my parents to the show so that I could make sure I would be able to stay up and use the TV each week at that time. Unfortunately for me the first episode they saw had the Dull Life of a City Stockbroker and they were mortified that there was nudity on TV (this was a long time ago wasn’t it?). They wouldn’t watch it any more, but I was able to get a small black and white TV that I could use for the next year or so.
TO: Big Stupid (Post #21)
As I recall, 13 ran “Flying Circus” Sunday nights at 10:30, thanks to an grant from British Airways.
I remember that they once got Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Graham Chapman to do spots for one of NET’s pledge breaks. On one on them, Palin asked for viewers to contribute “or Dinsdale will staple your knees to your television set”.
Speaking of whom, I recall that at least once one of the ‘bots referenced Dinsdale in an ep. Can’t remember which one, though.
I do have to say that the name Tarquin Fimtimlimbimlimbimwimbimlimbusstopfatangfatangolaybiscuitbarrel has been said by me far more times in my life than would seem necessary.
In the 1970’s PBS Hawaii showed Laurel and Hardy backed by Monty Python. What a gloriously wonderful way to have a comedy education. “If I had any sense I’d walk out on you” “It’s a good thing you haven’t any sense” followed by “My brain hurts! My brain hurts!” Man it was fun!
I discovered Python in part thanks to my fifth-grade General Music class, where I got more of a comedy education than music. (Keep in mind reading this that I’m 14.) All of my classmates had different favorites and senses of humor, and some were more than nice enough to introduce me to their favorite comedy bits. Whenever our teacher would announce we were watching a movie, Forest–one of my classmates–would ask if it was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It never was. Most of the students had “naughty” senses of humor, so for a long time I was under the impression that it was one of those newer movies consisting mostly of dick and fart jokes.
Later, during a family get-together, my relitives were reminising and one of the topics that was mentioned was Monty Python. Remembering Forest, I asked who he was. Silly, silly me.
A couple of days after we got home, Dad went through a box of old cassettes and found a Python television marathon (from PBS) that he had recorded as a child. Appearently, it was a blow-out party–PBS was on the verge of pulling MP from the line-up and replacing it with something completely different. I saw most of seasons one and two this way.
Later on, my dad found out the entire series was on DVD. I am now the proud owner of the Flying Circus 16-Ton Megaset.
Ammendum: I’m 14 NOW, and in ninth grade. If I wasn’t perfectly clear.
I was kid of about 9 or 10 and it was about 1974.
I used to read the tv guide back then religiously from cover to cover and I read a bit about Python and that pbs would soon begin broadcasting the episodes of their tv series.
I already knew their work from Dr. Demento on the radio. So I eagerly awaited and man was I ever impressed! I watched every episode and the reruns. Nobody else in my school even knew who they were except there was this one kid who would get on the bus last (his stop was last).
Poor kid never had a seat, and I would always skootch over and let him sit next to me.
We never talked much, but one day in small talk we discovered that each other loved Monty Python.
Incredible! Another person who’d heard of them!.
Well, the rest of our time together on those rides from then on was spent reciting sketches word by word and laughing riotously while the rest of the bus still had no clue what we were talking about.
It was pretty rough times back then because besides school, I also worked part-time as a catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates. but Anyway…
I don’t know what it is about that show that makes you want to learn every sketch word for word but I was no different.
By the way, I was audio-cassette taping every episode too.
I thought I was the only nut in the world who did that, so thanks for admitting that, Sampo.
I also confess that I audio taped Don Knotts’s The Ghost & Mr, Chicken. My brother thought I was mentally gone at that point, and I was only 9 years old.
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