"Mount Everest... forbidding... aloof.... terrifying... the mountain with the biggest tits in the world--"
"Start again." - Michael Palin as Announcer, Terry Jones as annoying director.
Hope you all had a great holiday season. As for me-- look what I got for Christmas! You can get one for yourself here. In the bottom of the cup, "Monty Python" in the classic Ben Hur style. Makes my tea soothing and silly.
As with life, we begin the new year pretty much where we ended the old year. Monty Python's Flying Circus is enjoying a great run of pretty great shows, as they use their new status as London cult icons and mmmmmovie stars to further push the boundaries of the BBC's tight little envelope. While very permissive by U.S. standards, the TV brass is feeling the heat from grass-roots organizations, and have started actually reading the scripts the lads submit for the show, even going so far as to object once in a while. Case in point-- the following episode. As always, if you weren't good and didn't get the Monty Python box set for Christmas, be good to yourself and give the gift of laughter... to you. (It may be that too much "being good to yourself" got you on the naughty list in the first place-- he knows when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're awake, and he knows what you're really doing in the shower...)
We begin with pipe. Lots of pipe. It's an organ. I mean, it's a pipe organ, played by Jones' nude organist... so now there's even more pipe. This character, like the Gumbys, is evolving. A blacked out tooth has joined the lack of costume, making the manic grimace even more demented. Cleese's Announcer and Palin's "It's" do their bit, and the credits roll. More pipe.
Eric Idle voices over a pretty shabby town-hall style stage, festooned with those strings of multicolored triangular flags you see at used car lots. A dark banner stretches across the top of the stage, telling us what Idle is also telling us-- that this is the All-England Summarize Proust Competition. Contestants must summarize the seven-novel ode to navel-gazing, "once in a swimsuit, and once in evening dress." Judges are cardboard cut-outs of a Surrey cricket team, and Omar Sharif. (Also a cardboard cutout.) Idle ramps it up for the introduction of the MC, Arthur (he's back!) Me, played by Terry Jones, in a garish gold tux and a fop-adour. He starts with a joke, in French, and there's a shot of the cardboard cutouts not responding, which is nice. Jones is giving these guys 15 seconds to summarize, with a thermometer graph on the side indicating how far they got. Sounds impossible, right?
Well, it turns out, it is. Chapman is the first contestant. Doubled over, he speaks fast, forcing each word, scarcely pausing to breathe. Idle informs us that he gets as far as page 1 of Swamm's Way, the first book. Jones does a little human interest with him, and asks about hobbies--
And something strange happens. We hear "golf and strangling animals", but Chapman's words don't match his lips. The original line was "strangling animals, golf and masturbation" and the BBC objected to "masturbation". (Speaking of "being good to yourself.") (Speaking of "pipe".) Jones went to the mat for the inclusion of masturbation, insisting that we all do it. The BBC denied any knowledge that it masturbates, and the joke was cut from the show with the strangest dubbing and editing. Frankly, I find a fondness for masturbation to be a requirement for reading Proust, but what is really strange, perhaps too obvious to be mentioned, is that "masturbation" was found offensive, while "strangling animals" was not. Ostensibly, the reason to cut sexual references is to keep children from doing it. I'd really rather have little Timmy jacking off than strangling Lassie. You can't choke the chicken, but you can strangle it. I could go on all day. Let's get back to the show...
Next contestant, the way-too-eager Palin, who assumes the position-- and goes up on his lines, unable to think of the names of characters or the nouns associated with them. He stammers through his fifteen seconds before Jones shoves him off the stage. Ironically, he managed to get up to book three. A choral group is next, repeating the musical phrase "Proust in his first book wrote about, wrote about..." over and over until the gong goes up, not even managing to start. (It's funny how there seems to be some argument over whether Proust is pronounced "Proost" or "Prowst", even amongst the members of the chorale.) Finally, Jones announces that he's going to give first prize to "the girl with the biggest tits." (In the States, we're, like, "Masturbation, no, tits, yes?!") big-breasted (by 70s standards) comes out in her sweater... not Carol Cleveland... and the closing titles roll. We're on to another show.
It's a documentary about Mt. Everest, "the mountain with the biggest tits in the world." A gong interrupts Palin's announcer, and nasal Jones instructs him to "Start again." A buck-tooth clown waves at us, and we start again. They're laying pipe...
Palin starts again, over footage of Mt. Everest, recounts an attempt to climb the rugged, deadly mountain by the "International Hairdresser's Expedition". (Look at all the pipe!) The joke here is the juxtaposition between effeminate men and physically taxing and deadly feats. (Once again, by 70s standards. This was before the era of weekend warriors in their lightweight, space-age gear, oxygen tanks and strip malls at base camp 2.) The expedition fails because "People keep stealing your hair dryers." The performances are all fine, the jokes all hit, but we're not happy with that, are we? MPFK goes further, becomes prescient, as they list the various other expeditions-- the choir, the chiropodists, the vast swarms of tourists winding their way up Everest, inspiring the hairdressers to open a salon. They have anticipated, by a decade at least, the wave of thrill-seeking tourists to demean the accomplishment of mounting Everest. "Summarize Proust" proves they're intellectual, but this sketch proves they're smart. "Challenging Everest?" their cheesy cinema commercial asks. "Why not drop in at Ricky Pugh's? Only 24,000 feet from this cinema."
Gilliam takes up the cinema advertising string, showing us what's coming next at the Katmandu Odeon. It's "A Magnificent Festering", with Omar Sharif and... who the hell is that chick? Anyway, what follows is, for my money, a great example of the simple joys of repetition, expectation, variation and pay-off. This film promises Romance! James (Omar) and Beatrice (Anonymous) mutter sweet nothings fervently to each other. The lady finally says "I could make such a fool of myself over you." "Oh, Beatrice, do. Do!" And she does, putting on a goofy mask with googly eyes and going "Wy-be-dee-be-dee bulalala..." You see it coming from a mile away, and it still cracks you up. Then Gilliam repeats the same scene, with an Adventure theme, and a Suspense Theme. And it keeps being funny! Cleveland, who carries the vocal lode for Beatrice, has a lot to do with it, making her silly noises with such sweet abandon. (Note the medieval warriors parading by in the Adventure sequence at the end-- early "Holy Grail" stuff.) Finally, the bandaged-headed man interrupts the final variation, telling the caller to "Shut up."
Now, things get weird. Back in the studio, Jones, as a Britfrau, is trying to connect with the Fire Brigade. (They're giving themselves a personal day and won't answer her call.) Cleese, as her husband Mervyn, tries his hand, insisting Jones play the cello for their ailing hamster. That's what you do when your hamster is sick-- you call the Fire Brigade. Cleese stays on the phone with the Operator in a maddening one-sided exchange involving a long series of "yes"s and checking one's shoe size. Jones mercifully interrupts this with the news that the hamster has slipped away. (Presumably not strangled by Chapman.) Heart-stricken, Cleese tries to go upstairs-- only to be reminded that he lives in a bungalow. He walks off, and now Jones engages in the same maddening exchange with the operator. Still, she actually manages to hang up the phone. Chapman steps in as a Watusi native who also happens to be the prodigal son returning from Dublin. The phone rings... oh dear God... Cleese answers it, the same exchange ensues, this time with Chapman's shoe size, and we face out.
Do we get to move on to a less excruciating sketch? No! Palin, behind a desk, with a bouquet of flowers on it, and a hand waving from the flowers (The Adam's Family's "Thing".) announces that the Fire Brigade made an appointment for the following Friday night. We get more of this sketch. Yay?
It's not that it's not at all funny. Cleese is making some bold vocal choices, ("Sorry. Thursdays... RIGHT OUT!!") and he's been relatively absent from this show so far, but unlike the previous Gilliam offering, we're not gleefully anticipating some result-- we just want it all to be over. But the lads have other plans, and they haven't steered us wrong yet. So...
Film of the Fire Brigade rushing to the call. They scramble out of the truck, come in through the glass-less windows, where inconsolable Cleese, Jones and Chapman wait for them, with sherry and appetizers. "We do like being called out to these little parties," the Brigade says in unison. "They're much better than fires." It's a funny bit, in danger of being made incomprehensible by the in-unison delivery. But then... the phone rings! Arghhh! As half the brigade gives their shoe sizes to the phone, and the other half asks Chapman about Dublin, Jones breaks the fourth wall. "I used to hate parties," she says. She links us to the next bit. Thank God!
The next bit is "Party Hints by Veronica Smalls", a TV show with a Western epic title sequence. (As always, some of the credits are pretty damn funny.) It's a standard Idle bit, him, alone, addressing the camera, usually in drag. This time, it's a glittery sweater and red Thatcher-esque wig, sitting at a table surrounded by bowls, carafes and crockery. Veronica Smalls is a Martha-Stewart precursor, the glamorous yet somehow incredibly functional woman of today, who, this week, teaches us how to put down an armed communist uprising whilst hosting a party. (Spoiler alert; Put down some cloth on the floor and shoot everybody.)
Gilliam takes over, showing us the cowardly Communist leaders from Kruschev to Lenin, all hiding under a bed. They walk that bed door to door selling "communist revolutions." One lady, naive enough to ask for a dozen, gets pierced in the belly with a Russian flag and is spun around twelve times. Get it? Communist revolutions? Well, Lyndon Baines Johnson gets it! He laughs uproariously, until he is grabbed by a much-larger cigar-chomping Brit. "You make me want to puke my guts out!" the Brit says, and then pukes, getting a huge gross-out laugh. Another much larger hand grabs the puking Brit, and it's a salesman hawking the "Puking Peter" doll. I'm sure there's a reference here, but I don't have it to hand. Anyways, all of this links us to--
Chapman giving the timid Cleese a tour of his language school, where students in narrow booths learn accents and attitudes to make them better bigots, politicians and homosexuals. We get Chapman coaching Palin on how to say "Eee- eckie Thump!" and a dreadful earworm that will haunt me to my dying day. Finally, Cleese gets down to business-- he wants to learn a way of talking that will make him less insignificant. After Chapman parades a few huge accents, they settle on "Life and Soul of the Party", which is very similar to Idle's "Nudge, Nudge" character. As they walk out, all of the people in their little lab booths roll their chairs out and engage in a seated musical number, which we're told is Sandy Wilson's version of "The Devils". It lapses into the "Proust" song, the gong cuts them all off, Jones tells them to "Start again," and the clown leans in and waves us off.
This whole last section, while still amusing, is troubling to me. It's like we're getting our laughs the way an IV drip gives us fluids-- without our participation, and scarcely our awareness. The laughter isn't forced so much as involuntary, reflexive. They've taken us to a place where they can make us laugh at will, with odd juxtapositions and repetition... but is any of it truly funny?
"Mt. Everest... forbidding... aloof... terrifying... the highest place on earth...no, I'm sorry, we don't go there." Okay, that was nice. We thought it was another docudrama, but we're actually in the office of Palin's travel agency, with a color shot of the big-titted mountain on the wall.
In something that resembles an actual sketch. Idle steps up to Cleveland. "Would you like to go upstairs?" she asks. When he stares back confused, she covers "Or are you here to arrange a holiday?" When he tries to get back to the whole "upstairs" thing, she dismisses it. Poor sap. Opportunity like that, and you settle for a trip to India? Cleveland ushers him over to Palin, as Mr. Bounder, the travel agent. This particular piece, for reasons that will soon become clear, made it into the live shows. In the shows, Cleveland would announce "This gentleman is interested in our India Overland... and nothing else!"
The tour-de-force is coming, but we have to get through the silly preliminaries. First off, Idle has a funny name ("Mr. SmokeTooMuch") but he's never realized it until just now, when Palin points it out. Idle can't pronounce the letter "C" (replacing it with a "B" sound), but he can say the letter "K", and has never thought to switch them for the purposes of oral communication. ("What a silly bunt." he mutters in the live show.) And then, it arrives. Idle starts carping about past travel experiences... and never stops! It's a brilliant bit of comedy, as he "drones onnnn, and onnnn, and onnnn," despite Palin's best efforts to shut him up. "Shut your bloody gob!" screams Palin, but Idle has transcended the scene entirely. There are wicked travel observations inserted, fat German businessmen performing pyramids, and an adenoidal typist from Birmigham and someone "throwing up all over the Cuba Libres." But the real accomplishment is the sheer, relentless length of this monologue, and the steady, implacable delivery that Idle manages, despite having Palin screaming at him.
Palin-- uh-oh-- picks up the phone to call the police. Like the fire brigade, they'd rather not answer. Palin is stuck with the operator, checking his shoe size, when Cleveland steps into frame, speaking directly-- to us? "Could you come with me please?" she asks. Is this it? Is she going to take us... upstairs? Any delivery from a replay of the whole "operator" sequence would be welcome, but this? It's too much to hope for.
What we actually get may not be as perfect as going upstairs with Carol Cleveland, but it's still pretty sublime. Cleveland leads us down a long hall to another set, where Chapman sits with Cleese, in drag, in a grey business dress, huge glasses, and a wig that looks like a ball sack draped over his head. This is Anne Elke, the guest on Chapman's talk show, "Thrust".
In their recent "evening with" in Glendale, Idle asked Cleese what his favorite part of performing in the recent Monty Python O2 show had been. Cleese responded without hesitation; performing this character. He even did it a bit for us in Glendale, trying hard (and failing) to crack Idle up with it. Anne Elk is a myopic, tense, anal-retentive, prim OCD wanna-be member of the intelligentsia, with a weakness for being on television and a bad bronchial condition. In the sketch, Chapman introduces "An Elk... Mrs. Anne Elk."
"Miss." Ann corrects. Chapman has her on the show to discuss her new theory on dinosaurs, but as Elk twaddles around with pseudo intellectual verbiage, and, hilariously, coughing fits that echo through the studio, making her testicle-do bob around her head, it proves very frustrating to Chapman to actually get the damn theory out of her. "You may well ask me, what is my theory." "I am asking," Chapman testily replies, trying to keep his show from going down in flames. The sketch itself isn't much, but Cleese's portrayal is a delight. It's also a nice bit between the old buddies Chapman and Cleese as they play off each others frustration and cluelessness (respectively) beautifully. Finally, the theory comes out, and (spoiler alert) it wasn't worth the wait. But, she teases as Chapman tries to wrap up the show, "I have another theory..."
The phone rings. (Oh, dear God!) Chapman answers it, as Cleese introduces the next theory. Soon, Chapman is saying "Yes... yes..." and checking his shoe size as Cleese coughs up a couple of lungs. Chapman gets up and walks off down the long hall, back into the travel agents office. Palin is still on the phone with the operator. Idle is still talking to Cleveland, who can only gaze with horror and admiration. Chapman tells Palin "The Fire Brigade are here." Ann Elk arrives just before the Fire Brigade, with her second theory that Fire Brigade choruses seldom sing about Proust. Guess what happens next?
The gong. "Start Again." The Clown waves us off, more deranged than funny. The show is over.
We (that is to say, me) are seeing a disturbing trend towards devolution. True, there are some gems in this show, but they seem to be swimming against the current. I can't even say the culprit is randomness, as the bits inserted into this show are repeated often, frequently with little or no variation. There's a clear pattern, but it's not adding up to much. In earlier episodes this season, such as Njorl's Saga, the conceptual humor was in service to an interesting and funny concept, as was the Everest bit here. There doesn't seem to be a higher concept in the overall show-- except that phone operators are irritating, which seems like pretty low fruit for these lads. Maybe I just missed it.
Still-- we get Beatrice and James, Anne Elk, Idle's monologue, and a come on from Carol Cleveland. Not bad for a middling effort.
Next Week; "The War Against Pornography" The BBC is gonna have a field day with this one!
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