Noooobody expects I’ll need an orthopedic physician!…

Monty Python – The Autumn Years.

Their legs are grey, their ears are nulled, their eyes are old and bent. IT’S. Monty Python’s Flying Circus 2014. Oh, and one of them’s been dead for over 25 years like a very naughty boy.

MONTY PYTHON: AND NOW FOR SOMETHING RATHER SIMILAR is a documentary by IMAGINE, a BBC TV series (Season 23, Episode 4), following the Pythons as they prepare for their historic live shows at London’s O2 arena in July 2014. From all accounts – schedules, insurance, imminent deaths – their last ever appearance together onstage. You cannot, will not, and should not watch this feature without tears gushing like the mighty rivers of British Columbia down your lumberjack flannels; the nostalgia, the reunion, the glory, the Boys…

In 1998, the five remaining members of Monty Python (John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin) convened in Aspen for a tribute by the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. At that gathering (their last group appearance being 1982’s LIVE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL; their last group film, 1983’s THE MEANING OF LIFE), when asked if they were going to “do something together again,” they made the “historical announcement” that they were!

So in July 2014, 16 years after making that promise (!) Monty Python at last align their stars and schedules to come together onstage for Monty Python Live (Mostly): One Down, Five to Go, a one-off live show at O2. It sold out in 43 seconds. In the end, 10 shows were performed.

Still crunchy after all these years…

But it was never about fun and games and keeping promises. Presenter Alan Yentob asks Eric Idle, “Why are you doing it?” We expect Eric to blurt, “The money.” That reliable go-to gag for people who obviously don’t need the money. And Eric actually blurts out, “The money”! Seriously. He outlines how they had to legally defend themselves from a producer on MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL who sued them, costing them a million pounds. Eric quipped to Jim Beach (manager of Queen, brought in for legal advice), “If we did a night at O2, we could pay this off in a second!” At the collective Python meeting the next day, Beach said the same thing. What a good idea, said Eric.

Eric Idle is painted as the one Python holding the mammoth production together, the producer if you will, organizing music, dancers, rehearsals, production design and finding the albatross; delegating, stipulating and fulminating, while the rest don’t really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment.

They’re busy. How busy? No one can tell. Yentob can go through each of their tales post-Python and still omit acres, oceans, planets of their storied careers. We hear about Palin’s travelogues and Diaries, but miss out on RIPPING YARNS (a natural progression from Python that I remember very fondly). We hear about Cleese’s FAWLTY TOWERS and A FISH CALLED WANDA, but not much else, even though he has appeared in over 70 productions since WANDA, TV series, video games, to say nothing of his speaking tours. And where does one start unspooling the surrealism of Terry Gilliam’s inimitable body of work (BRAZIL, THE FISHER KING, 12 MONKEYS, et al)? (So they focus on his most recent film and opera.) So it goes with Idle and Terry Jones as well, all short-changed because they’ve done too much. (And like Mr. Smoketoomuch, they’ve never thought about cutting down a little…)

Every time a classic Python sketch is mentioned, we see that sketch from the original series, not any permutations of it. It is a thing of beauty that it is.

Python memories are tied to an epoch when life was a simpler time, a better existence, a meaningful purpose. Python was not just for nerds and not just for elites. Python covered the spectrum, from Gumby Brain Specialist to Beethoven at home; from mountaineering hairdressers, to philosophy football. Monty Python’s flying circus was, and remains, the greatest comedy sketch show in history. So it’s a… disappointment… when we see the actual performances from the tour…

(The performances are not shown in this featurette, but can be found on YouTube.)

It’s not so much that their hair is gray, their teeth are false, their bowels are unreliable… Their conviction is lacking. Gone is the impeccable timing and energy of their youth, with each sketch being performed with a nudge nudge wink wink to the audience that everyone knows what’s coming next, so it doesn’t matter if it feels staged, if they forget lines or break out of character and corpse. And everybody expects The Spanish Inquisition… More than anything, it seems like “five slightly shriveled septuagenarians” (as the humorless Daily Mail put it) trying to fulfill a manifest, dutifully putting all the pieces where they belong.

Monty Python: The “Who’s Next?” Tour

In 2000, Eric did a tour called Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python. With Eric’s financial explanation about this tour, and with all the members not wanting to, or not having the time to, rehearse, and with the brand recognition they all enjoy when coming together (which only aids their individual pursuits), then surely it is now a case of Monty Python Exploits Monty Python. But then, isn’t that what we ALL do? Cherrypick our inimitable, explosive art from our youth and spend the rest of our wretched, diminishing lives trying to recreate it. Robert De Niro Exploits his Gangster Persona; Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley Exploit KISS; Pete Townshend Exploits The Who. But all the naiveté and nostalgia and sociological swirl of the times that were an integral part of creating that original art are in a different balance now. So one NEVER recaptures the EMOTION that was an integral part of that art, therefore any attempt at recapturing art FULLY will necessarily fail. I am saddened that that is the Truth – not in any capitalistic or cynical way – just in the sense that we all get older and snider. And nothing can retain the innocence and humor of youth. Sad sad sad. The reasons keep changing but I’m still weeping rivers.

But – as Cleese says – Python “made some people laugh.” And that is the bottom line. They did it. In such a giant way that it can never be undone. “Pythonesque” is not only in the Oxford English Dictionary – it’s in every English dictionary. They are part of history. They shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is black. Like a stream of bat’s piss.

Speaking of never being able to recapture art: Superman was in a wheelchair, Freddie Mercury died, Paul Stanley lost his voice, Clint Eastwood swerved rightwing nutjob, John Cleese can’t Silly Walk— Due to extensive knee surgeries, Cleese’s most iconic performance piece is nixed forever. And you ask why I’m still weeping rivers of British Columbia. Worse, the choreographer is putting the sketch to music and a host of young dancers play the ersatz Minister of Silly Walks. And that’s a biggus dickus bowl of wrong.

Carol Cleveland (the “seventh Python”) makes the show – aged like a fine wine (kept in a cellar for thirty years). Neil Innes (the other seventh Python), unfortunately does not. And Graham Chapman (not the Messiah, just a very naughty boy) appears in videos, his spirit living on in Python media and shows, so long after his death that he might just BE the Messiah….

Documentary ends on the five Pythons, gathered before the tempest, just about to hit the stage before their first show. Cut to black.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING RATHER SIMILAR is an excellent – though hardly detailed – featurette. If nothing else, it provides a whirlwind overview of what Monty Python means to the world, an honest snapshot of where they are now, and a grandiose tribute to what may be their last performance together. Witty, intelligent, poignant, and of course, very, very silly. (And it pays the legal bills…)

END

BACK TO THE FUTURE by way of BRAZIL.

Like BACK TO THE FUTURE II with Biff in charge forever.

Another Terry Gilliam dystopian vision, 12 MONKEYS (inspired by French short film LA JETÉE and modeled after Gilliam’s own inimitable BRAZIL), is a claustrophobic, strangling, time-paradox action stunner; like all Gilliam’s films, it’s also completely off the rails.

A subterranean Orwellian Earth culture in the year 2035 sends a prisoner back in time to observe and report on, and perhaps stop the spread of, a human-created virus that killed 90% of life on the surface.

Bruce Willis is prisoner James Cole, serving his government overlords by being sent back to 1996, the time in Earth history that the alleged “Army of the 12 Monkeys” supposedly released the virus. Cole ends up getting sent back time and again, either years too early or too late, often meeting psychologist Kathryn Railly (Madeline Stowe) and then being dragged Back To The Future, as it were, and becoming ever more dazed and hallucinatory as to what is real, what is memory, what is past, what is future, and what the hell Brad Pitt is doing.

Brad Pitt is Jeffrey, who meets Cole in an insane asylum (in an extended sequence that obviously builds on the primal fear created in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST – that of being sane and accused of being otherwise with no way to prove it). Jeffrey may be connected with the Army of the 12 Monkeys or may just be a twitchy wacktologist. Pitt is a keg of dynamite, frenetically showcasing a mad dog performance, his pretty face a carnival monster here through his own contortions and his crazy-eye. Alongside Willis’s characteristic underplaying, Pitt is like an explosion in a German cheese factory.

David Morse is one of the ominous future scientists; Frank Gorshin (The Riddler from the 1960’s BATMAN) is a doctor in the asylum, and Christopher Plummer makes an appearance as Jeffrey’s millionaire dad.

The only performance lacking is that of Madeline Stowe as the confused psychologist, who aids Cole in his quest to reveal the 12 Monkeys insurrectionist group. With Willis and Pitt and every day player conveying the film’s sense of Damoclean doom, Stowe cannot embrace the necessary gravitas required for her integral role. She becomes more a plot device than a character – the person who fills in information for Cole when he needs to know the year or a street name. (Some A-List director or movie exec once described Madeline Stowe’s beauty: “Even if she opened her legs, you wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off her face.” Wow, what a compliment!… I think. Praising a woman’s beauty by invoking visions of her open labia. Well, if she’s proving such a lazy actor, I guess she’s still got her face and labia to fall back on.)

To outline the story’s beautiful circular construction would be to reveal too much; suffice to say that Cole remembers, as a boy, seeing a melee at an airport, a lady screaming, a man gunned down. His future will be inextricably linked with these events time and again. And the desolate soundtrack (by Paul Buckmaster) complements well the grim story of a man forever manipulated into a tragic time-loop.

12 MONKEYS is rife with interesting ideas, such as Railly’s lecture on prophets actually being time travelers; déjà vu, in which a future event is “remembered” by Railly and Cole as it happens to them; the Christ mythos, in the form of James Cole (J.C. huh?) who sacrifices his life for the salvation of humanity…

Under different circumstances, the title theme would be considered a quirky, cute accordion line, rather than evoking a disturbing monkey jumping around on your brain.

Does your minkey bayt?

END

The Distractionarium of Heath Ledger.

Color-screaming and wonder-dreaming, Terry Gilliam’s adventure fantasy THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS might have been one of his better characteristically surreal dark comedies had his star Heath Ledger not been claimed by that darkest of comedies – death.

We watch this MUNCHAUSEN-like parable unfold with the constant distraction in the back of our heads that IMAGINARIUM – not THE DARK KNIGHT – is Ledger’s actual swan song. We try to forget but we know anyway that he died before principal photography was completed, so had to be replaced by other actors (Gilliam’s filmmaking style at least lending itself to this sad necessity, so that the replacement actors – Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Colin Farrell – almost seem to fit as substitutes. Almost); we know that rewrites and re-shoots and re-edits had to surgically be performed; we wonder at the mood on set; we marvel at the professionalism of the other actors rising above the tragedy to finish the job seamlessly – and all this contemplation colors our enjoyment of a movie that should be taking us on an altogether different contemplative ride.

Set in the modern world, Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) travels around in a rickety Olde Worlde carnival caravan, bringing his mystical show to largely unappreciative clusters of patrons. It almost seems as if his pantomime/vaudeville show has remained unchanged for eons and modern audiences have lost the wonderment for what was once the greatest show on Earth. That might very well be the case…

The troupe consists of the aged wizard Parnassus, his 16-year-old daughter Valentina (Lily Cole, blessed with the type of cleavage that can earn her a Porsche), young Anton (Andrew Garfield, with a crush on Valentina), and midget Percy (Verne Troyer, at last shucking off the specter of Mini-Me with a sizable performance). On their travels, they rescue a man hanging by his neck from a bridge. It is grifter Troy (Ledger); how ironic that Ledger’s first appearance in the film is in mock death.

Troy joins the troupe and starts bringing in business with his outlaw charm, also attracting Valentina’s approbation, which steams Anton. Mention must be made that Ledger really is/was a gifted son of a bitch and would have taken this movie to the heights Gilliam envisioned had not– uh, you know, that thing that we’re not meant to be thinking about happened…

The subplot – which might have been the main plot until… – is the competition between Parnassus and Mr. Nick (wily Tom Waits) over capturing the most human souls. Nothing is said outright, but we get the impression Nick is a devil and Parnassus is some kind of Eternal (god? angel? immortal?).

A feature of Parnassus’s show is an unpredictable magic mirror – the Imaginarium – that no one is meant to step into, but which, of course, everyone steps into. Every time Troy steps into the mirror, he becomes someone different, either Depp, Law or Farrell. When he steps out again, he is once again Ledger. We realize all the “real world” scenes must have been completed before Ledger’s death, only the surreal Imaginarium sequences featuring the other three actors, who gave graciously of their talents.

“Dedicated to Heath.” Just one of those tragedies that befall us all, and Gilliam must live through it and move onto his next project, all contractual obligations fulfilled. Apologies, but that Heath Thing is all anyone can talk about – it’s all I’M talking about. See what I mean by distraction?

It’s going to take either a few years or a frontal lobotomy to truly enjoy this film on its existing merits.

END

“Er, mm-yes, can we dial the peril down to a 7, perhaps?

How We Know the Earth to be Banana-Shaped.

Delivered on a budget which would hardly diminish the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow, MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL boasts the production values and inherent quality of a movie ten times its cost.A lesson in resourcefulness, HOLY GRAIL succeeds because it excels at what made Hollywood such a star-mart in the first place – its writing and acting. On a meager budget of 229,000 pounds (approx. $500,000), Python schools Hollywood on the Shakespearean value of playing all the parts yourselves, attending to authenticity in set dressing and costuming, and using really, really silly voices.

The Trojan Cucumber

The first feature film from Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin – five Englishmen and American Gilliam) would change the course of the comedy river as dramatically as Moses parted the Red Sea. Their arsenic-laced British television series, MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS (1969-1974) was the zenith of left-turn comedic outrage (in their lifetime, spawning the adjective “Pythonesque”) and HOLY GRAIL hailed the zenith of the troop’s creativity, capturing lightning in a parrot cage.

King Arthur (Chapman) is empowered by God to seek the Holy Grail, thus surrounding his royal person with the Knights of the Round Table, Sir Lancelot (Cleese), Sir Galahad (Palin), Sir Bedevere (Jones), Sir Robin (Idle) and, with his trusted steed, Patsy (Gilliam, clopping coconuts together simulating hoofbeats), he rides toward Camelot…

Camelot… where the Knights of the Round Table “dance whene’er we’re able” and “eat ham and jam and Spam a lot,” which Arthur surmises is “a silly place” and avoids, instead journeying with his troop through forests rank with evil, encountering the contempt of French soldiers at Castle Guy de Lombard (who taunt Arthur’s “Ke-niggits” most hurtfully), refrain from the sensuality of all-female Castle Anthrax (where Galahad The Chaste is rescued – somewhat unwillingly – from The Oral Sex), fall into nefarious service of The Knights Who Say Ni (though Arthur provides a well-tended shrubbery as payment, cutting down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring is asking too much); past sentinels who will not let them pass, allying with Tim the Enchanter, battling a killer rabbit with the Holy Hand Grenade, fleeing the Legendary Black Beast of Aaaaargh, muddling their questions at the Bridge of Death with the Old Man from Scene 24 and ultimately crossing the Gorge of Eternal Peril.

Educated, lucid, atheistic, amoral, Monty Python could and did attack every taboo held by the stiff upper crust to the working class alike. Though many have tried – from America’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE to Britain’s LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, with Canada’s KIDS IN THE HALL brushing up against the magic before their untimely dissolution – retrospect has proved what a sui generis phenomenon Python was.

Of course, if you don’t “get” British humor (i.e. real humor) or if you don’t “get” Monty Python (for which there is no reason to continue living), let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who; you should wait here until I come and get him… And no singing!

Now go, before I taunt you a second time…

END