Mr. Creosote (Terry Jones) is about to explode in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
October 20-26
quadcinema.com
www.montypython.com
On October 5, 1969, an oddly titled sketch comedy show premiered on BBC One, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, written by and starring five very bright, seriously funny British men from Cambridge and Oxford — Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin — and an American animator, Terry Gilliam, who had graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles and had become a British citizen in 1968. The half-hour program regularly skewered the status quo, taking on politics, sports, the arts, England, the medical establishment, family relationships, religion, historical events, class, the military, the police, and, perhaps most of all, television itself. The show ran until 1974, when it began airing on PBS in the United States while the Pythons moved on to the movies. The Quad is celebrating the troupe’s successful transition to cinema with the week-long series “The Ministry of Silly Films: Monty Python and Beyond,” featuring all four official Python movies as well as eight that either starred or was written and/or directed by at least one member of the troupe. The mini-festival begins with one of the funniest, most quotable films ever made, 1974’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which King Arthur (Chapman) goes in search of the ancient relic, accompanied by a ragtag group of knights who encounter a killer rabbit, a wizard, the Bridge of Death, a shrubber, a nasty French taunter, and a collector of the dead. It’s deliriously silly for every second of its ninety-one minutes.
Graham Chapman plays a would-be savior in Monty Python’s Life of Brian
They followed that up with 1979’s riotous Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which, upon its release, was met with picketing, protests, and even death threats for the Pythons. The film is a gem, telling the story of a poor schlub named Brian Cohen (Chapman) who is mistaken, since birth, for his neighbor, Jesus Christ. Palin gets to play Pontius Pilate, Idle introduces the sing-along classic “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” and Chapman adds a memorable turn as the splendidly named Biggus Dickus. Four years later, the gang explored the nature of existence itself in the choppy but often hysterical Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, which is divided into “The Miracle of Birth,” “Growth and Learning,” “Fighting Each Other,” “The Middle of the Film,” “Find the Fish,” “Middle Age,” “Live Organ Transplants,” “The Autumn Years,” and “Death.” The film includes one of the all-time-great vile scenes, involving Mr. Creosote (Jones) and a snarky waiter (Cleese) offering him a “wafer-thin” mint to finish his meal, as well as such smashing Idle tunes as “Every Sperm Is Sacred” and “Galaxy Song.” The fourth official Python film is 1971’s And Now for Something Completely Different, a collection of more than three dozen skits from the television show, restaged, so they pale in comparison to the original versions; still, it’s an opportunity to see such fab sketches as “How Not to Be Seen,” “Nudge Nudge,” “The Funniest Joke in the World,” “The Dead Parrot,” and “The Lumberjack Song” with other Python fans.
Kevin Kline looks on as John Cleese makes a move on Jamie Lee Curtis in A Fish Called Wanda
The highlights of the rest of the series are Charles Crichton’s A Fish Called Wanda, which was written by costars Cleese and Kevin Kline, earning them Oscar nods (Kline also won the award for Best Supporting Actor), and also features Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephen Fry, and Palin as the lisping Otto; Gilliam’s remarkable Brazil, the controversial 1985 drama in which a futuristic society gets buried in red tape, with a cast that includes Jonathan Pryce as poor Sam Lowry, Katherine Helmond as his well-to-do mother with a thing for facelifts, Bob Hoskins, Ian Holm, and a heroic Robert De Niro; and Gilliam’s delightful Time Bandits, a rollicking fairy tale about a group of little people traveling through time and space, meeting up with such historical, hysterical characters as Robin Hood (Cleese), King Agamemnon (Sean Connery), and Napoleon (Holm) while trapped in a battle between the Supreme Being (Sir Ralph Richardson) and the Evil Genius (David Warner). Palin cowrote the film with Gilliam and plays Vincent; the songs are by Python friend and fan George Harrison.
Rat (Eric Idle) and Mole (Steve Coogan) can’t believe what they see in The Wind in the Willows (aka Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride)
Palin is the lead in Gilliam’s uneven but fun Jabberwocky, a strange adaptation of the Lewis Carroll poem in which Palin is the simple-minded Dennis, an apprentice cooper in love with the horrible Griselda Fishfinger (Annette Badland), asking her to wait for him as he heads out to begin life anew in the big city but soon finds himself battling a giant monster. Jones does not fare quite as well with Erik the Viking, a 1989 comedy starring Tim Robbins as the title character, who goes in search of Valhalla; the stellar cast includes Cleese, Jones, Mickey Rooney, Eartha Kitt, Jim Broadbent, and Imogen Stubbs. Mel Damski’s Yellowbeard, with cowriter Chapman as a tax-evading pirate, also has an amazing cast (Cleese, Idle, Peter Boyle, Cheech & Chong, Marty Feldman, Madeline Khan, James Mason, David Bowie) but goes nowhere; it really is possible to be just too silly. Cleese, Idle, Jones, and Palin all appear in Jones’s The Wind in the Willows (aka Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride), an adaptation of the beloved children’s story by Kenneth Grahame that also boasts Steve Coogan, Nicol Williamson, Fry, and Antony Sher, with songs sung by the Weasels, Rat (Idle), and Mr. Toad (Jones). Perhaps the most surprising film to be part of the festival is Jones’s Personal Services, a drama inspired by the real-life story of brothel madame Cynthia Payne, with Julie Walters and Alec McCowen. It’s now been nearly fifty years since the debut of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and Gilliam, Cleese, Idle, and Palin are still active, going strong; sadly, Chapman died in 1989 at the age of forty-eight, and Jones has been diagnosed with dementia. Together these six individuals have left quite a mark on the world, seeing it like no one else has.