And Now... The END!

"I think we have an eater here!" -  Graham Chapman as a Cannibalistic Undertaker 

So-- how'd Season 4 go? For those of you who need a refresher on where we are in the history of Monty Python's Flying Circus, check out this blog right here. 

Well, the results were mixed. There were some brilliant bits, and an increasingly cinematic ambition very much in keeping with the era. New partnerships, with Neil Innes and Douglas Adams, seemed promising. But, without John Cleese on board, the commitment to comedy itself had waned.

Exception #2

The overall feel of the season is one of transition, the group abandoning one state for another. And, with few exceptions, transition is rarely funny. (Those exceptions-- my adolescence, and Gilliam's caterpillar bit.)

At any rate, the 4th series/season, which didn't have the confidence of the BBC to begin with (as indicated by the truncated 6 episode commitment,) didn't renew the BBC's enthusiasm. In December, 1974, 5 years after they started revolutionizing television comedy, Monty Python's Flying Circus aired its final original episode. There were no reunion shows or reboots. It was over.

Wellllll... sort of.

Horse on horse action

While the television show itself had run its course, the jockies who had whipped it so mercilessly were just getting started. Cleese was already writing Fawlty Towers, while Palin was developing Ripping Yarns with Jones. Gilliam and Jones were increasingly focused on film. Idle was already broadcasting Radio 5, and followed this with Rutland Weekend Television and the Beatles parody The Rutles. Chapman was working on a TV pilot with Douglas Adams. Strangely enough, none of the work they did individually was as groundbreaking as Monty Python had been. In fact, much of it harkened back to more antiquated styles-- Cleese with the bedroom farce, Palin with WW2 era entertainments, Idle with satire. Still, the work itself was good, even great.

But while they were heading off in their own directions, a mighty gravitational pull began to exert itself-- an entity of such immense mass that it warped time itself, pulling the lads back into a single unit and transforming their futures so that they mirrored their past. Yes, I'm speaking of-- America.

Folks had been trying to get the word out about Monty Python for years. Remember, their first movie, "And Now For Something Completely Different" was initially intended to be the lads' entree into America, and America said "No, thanks." Albums had been released, to not very great acclaim. They had even swung through LA, on their rock n' roll tour of Canada, and had done a bit on the Tonight Show that had gone dismally. Former Rat-Packer Joey Bishop ("The Bishop!") was the guest host that night, introducing them with a lackluster "This is a comedy group from England and I hear they're supposed to be funny." Way to sell it, Bish.

All of this Yankee Doodle Indifference convinced the lads that America would never embrace them. As a result, they adopted a stand-offish attitude that worked so well for me with the middle school girls. "Fine, ignore me. Your loss" he said, trying to take out his head gear. Python refused to allow interested producers to convert the episodes from PAL format to the American NTSC "just to piss them off", according to Idle. ABC at one point wanted to broadcast episodes, only re-edited to make room for commercials and to make more linear and sensical. (Hah!) ABC had purchased the rights from the BBC, and Palin and the Pythons sued to get them back, refusing to let them air in any altered state.

But just as the cracks were beginning to show in the Python team, so were they becoming apparent in the U.S.'s resistance. Student studying abroad were coming back with the books or albums, and tales of the craziness playing out on the airwaves in Britain, in contrast to the states. FM stations were starting to play the albums. Julie Andrews, a huge fan, handed out books as Christmas gifts. Carl Reiner was a huge fan. Finally, in a burst of RatPack karma, Dean Martin featured some of the more filmic sketches from the first season on his 70s show, Dean Martin's ComedyWorld. This was my first introduction to Monty Python. I can remember, to this day, seeing the Milkman sketch, the Bicycle Repairman sketch, and a Day in the Life of a Stockbroker sketch. I was 10, and I loved it.

This never happened.

All of this was creating an undertow in the zeitgeist. There was no sudden Python explosion. Once people discovered them, it was like they had always been there. Monty Python's Flying Circus was like a club without a sign. People in the know spread the word, and soon web like networks began to form. Someone would drop a reference to a Norwegian Blue, and suddenly five people would be huddled together at a party reciting the Dead Parrot sketch, which would draw onlookers, and ten new people would slide into the Python orbit. It was organic, like a TB outbreak. Airborne, incredibly infectious, and lethal. You die with it.

It was only a matter of time before big government caught on.

When Republicans take the primary stage and talk about "firing Big Bird", aka defunding public television, they instantly lose my vote and my respect. If it hadn't been for public television, Monty Python never would have made it overseas. From Boston to Texas, PBS stations began showing the Flying Circus episodes, without commercial interruption, and the disease became a pandemic. When it was fundraising time at the stations, they would show Flying Circus marathons, sometimes even flying the lads in to answer the phones and do interviews. For the first time, Palin and Idle and Jones felt the love.

Money, Money, Money!

The love wasn't all they felt, though-- they counted the money. The members of the group were also the owners of the material and the television shows, so every time a PBS affiliate aired a show, money appeared in the Python coffers. For the first time, Idle could truly conceive of having 90,000 pounds in his pajamas. The albums were selling better, too, and there was pressure to do a live show in NYC. Sure, the lads had their solo projects, but seriously-- this was like printing money. They had made it in the states, and on their own terms. The lads found the time to capitalize on their fine work, in the land of capitalism. They never looked back.

And then... there was the movie.

Even before the fourth season had been shot and broadcast, Monty Python had sht their first feature length movie. Fearful that American audiences wouldn't take to it, Executive Producer John Goldstone was shocked to see lines for his movie going around the block at the LA Film Festival premiere. It's a nice analogy-- fearful that the crowds wouldn't show up, Goldstone discovered they were already there.

"The Holy Grail" is the Monty Python product that almost everyone knows. It has entertained generations of Americans, although that passion hasn't always translated over to the Flying Circus shows. While the UK generally prefers "The Life of Brian", empirically a better movie, "The Holy Grail" is just funnier, and America loves it above all else. It has secured a permanent place for the lads in the American entertainment firmament.

So it was the end of them as a television sketch show--but the show's corpse would provide decades and decades of sustenance as the lads gleefully fed off the remains. They did, indeed, have an eater here, and they were tucking in!

And although this blog is about the television show, we're going to break down the movie, so that everyone can see how the development of the artists during the TV show made "The Holy Grail" possible. 

Next Time; The Holy Grail!

No More Cannibalism!