Monty Python at The Tribeca Film Festival- The Meaning of Live Part 2

I went to two of the Monty Python  events at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. The events were arranged to coincide with the 4oth anniversary of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL but I have the feeling it was just part of the Pythons saying good bye to their fans.

I went to see the HOLY GRAIL with Hubert. We were joined on the trip uptown by Leslie Coffin who was covering the event for a comedy site.

The place was packed and the crowd friendly. There were a few people dressed up as say Tim the Enchanter, but mostly it was just fans waiting to commune with the group.

As we walked in there was a notice that we could tweet questions for the Pythons to answer.

The Robert DeNiro and someone else from the festival came out and introduced the film.

The screening was fun. It was the restored version, with the "get on with it" sequence from the Anthrax castle sequence intact. Seeing it big for the first time I caught little things in the background that I had never seen before.

Surprisingly there wasn't a great deal of reciting during the film, however The Knights Who Say Ni and a few others resulted in the audience adding Ni's or comments.

After the film ended John Oliver (to the right) came out and intrduced the Greatest Fucking Comedy Group to wild applause.

From that point on insanity ensued. Yes the group answered questions seriously but mostly it was nuts.

John Cleese kept wandering off and returning...going so far as to bring a chair for the invisible Carol Cleveland

Then a game of musical chairs began

Eventually deteriorating into a something that looked like the stateroom scene in NIGHT AT THE OPERA

Cleese wandered behind the screen and did weird things

He returned and he and Terry Gilliam made a weird horse

Then John Oliver declared the tweeted questions shit and then climbed into the audience to get new ones-telling people straight out when their questions sucked.

And then sadly it was the end and the Pythons said good bye

Hubert and I headed off into the night- and I got ready for the next day and the World Premiere of THE MEANING OF LIVE (The director called it a world premiere)

I reviewed the film yesterday calling it the best film at Tribeca and I still feel that way. Its both funny and entertaining. (I'm waiting to see what Sam Juliano, a long time internet friend who runs Wonders in the Dark will make of it. He was at the screening and it afforded us a chance to finally meet in person)

After the film three of the Pythons, Eric Idle, John Cleese, and Michael Palin came out and spoke along with the two directors Roger Graef and James Rogan and Holly Gilliam

A much more serious discussion there was a lot of talk about doing the live show and making the documentary. Things were frequently thoughtful.

And frequently funny...

Everyone seemed to be having a good time

It was a delight even to the point that the questions from the audience didn't suck.

I know I should probably tell you more (like this really is the end, the documentary only got done because the directors are friends of the Pythons, and other stuff)  but I don't remember it. Where the night before I was laughing too hard, here I was just enjoying one last time with some of my idols.

And then it ended with the Pythons signing some stuff and heading off

And with that they were gone and were were left to ponder a world without Pythons...

However I must say, as the women sitting next to me did to Eric Idle when the show was over- He asked what her question was  and she took his hand and replied "No no questions- just Thank you. Thank you for everything"

Yes, thank you Mr Cleese, Mr Idle, Mr Jones, Mr Gilliam, Mr Palin, Mr Chapman and even the invisible Carol Cleveland, thank you for everything.

Monty Python The Meaning of Live (2014) Part 1

The Spanish Inquisition

As this posts I'm sitting in the SVA Theater at the Tribeca screening of THE MEANING OF LIVE with the Pythons in attendence. I will give you a report later but for right now I thought I'd saw a few words on the film unclouded by the emotion Python of seeing  in person.

A document the final performances of Monty Python at the O2 Arena is also a look back at their live gigs and celebration of their legacy. Its full of clips from the slows, the Pythons rehearsing and lots of moments between the guys revealing how wonderful they are.

If this is the last we shall see of them together I am satisfied. This is the way we should all go out.On our feet having a blast with friends.

I'm not going to lie I was leaking tears through chunks of it. Being a 40 plus year long Python fan I couldn't help be feel the sadness at this being the end. At the same time I was laughing my ass off at the routines and at the guys being the guys. They are just funny men and its was a joy to watch them enjoy themselves.

I loved the moment when Mike Myers got off stage from his throw away bit in the live show and you watch him tearing up for having just been on stage with Python-as he said his 14 year old self in Canada would never believe that he would have the chance to do that.

As I texted to some of the other Unseen Films people- the film is fucking glorious.

As the film ended I started to get very teary-this was the coda to the end- there would be no more....

...and then I started to smile since I realized that it wasn't quite the end- their appearances in New York were coming and I could not only see them but I could say good bye.

A report on what happened will be appearing later on....

Monty Python Live (mostly) One Down and Five to Go (2014) - or thank you guys its been fun

The night before Thanksgiving I popped in the DVD of the final Monty Python performance at the O2 Arena. Put together to pay a judgement against them regarding the show Spamalot, the show was lots of old stuff, a little bit of new stuff and a promised end to Python as we know it.

I had tried to get a seat or two to the show- I actually had one- but I was so far back from the stage that the thought of going to London to essentially watch TV from a long way away was just too insane for me or my wallet to consider.

The show as recorded is fun. Its not great, but it's fun with all of the bits flying around and some nice tributes and shout outs to the late Dr Chapman. It is clear that the show was both too big to be full seen on TV and too small to be seen in an arena such as the O2.

Watching it I was hit by two strong feelings-

First was that these guys are now too old and too not into it to be doing this sort of thing. Yes, they were funny, but at the same time it looked more like old friends having fun with each other at a picnic rather than a performance.  This was old high school friends doing stuff from their youth where you've seen them in their hey day and you knew why they were great but now you wonder what the fuss was. Yes, the bits are funny, watching the shows and the movies they are killer. Even watching the tour of actors doing the material that Eric Idle put together was a great deal of fun, this was less so. Perhaps it was the scale  and perhaps it was just time to move on...

...which brings me to the second thing I felt, I found I didn't want to see this. What I wanted was to sit down with the guys individually and talk to them. All I could think was I was more engaged meeting Terry Gilliam at a press conference earlier this year and how good it was listening to John Cleese talk about his life now. I also wanted to see how Terry Jones's new film is.

While I love Monty Python and what they did, I want what they are doing now more. Their lives and creative output now mean much more to me than what they did 35 and 40 years ago. Don't get me wrong they shaped the way I see the world- but I have changed since then and so have they, and where they are going and where I am going is much more interesting then where we/they were.

The show is interesting but it is a door closing. Its time to move on...

...and based on what Gilliam and Cleese and Idle have been doing of late the future is going to be just as wondrous.

To Mr Cleese, Mr Gilliam, Mr Palin, Mr Jones and Mr Idle- Thank you for all that has gone before and all that you will do in the future.

Life of Brian (1979)

I’m not a huge fan of The Life of Brian.

No wait, let me restate that.

I’m not a fan of the Life of Brian in the form it exists. I made the mistake of reading the script before I saw the film so I had all of the cut material in my head when I saw the film. The trimmed material, was for me, some of the funniest stuff the Pythons ever did (Otto’s suicide squad for example). When I finally say the film I couldn’t understand where all of the great stuff went. I also wondered when I’d ever get to see it.

For those who don’t know, the Life of Brian is the story of Brian , a young man in Judea at exactly the same time as Jesus. His life mirrors Jesus’s however to much more comedic and satiric effect.

The film was picketed and protested to such a degree that the little film that probably would have come and gone without making much of a blip on the radar became a box office smash and cemented the Python’s reputation as satirists of the highest order for all time.

For me the really interesting bits of the film are its making, Kim “Howard” Johnson, a fan who became a friend and biographer of the Pythons wrote a great book about the making of the film. There is a very good hour long documentary on the making of the film (The Pythons) which is on the Criterion DVD and there is various interviews concerning the film which are just fun to read.

Actually the reason I’m writing the film up is because if you are a Python fan and if you like the movie, you need to get the Criterion disc because the film has two commentary tracks with the surviving pythons. The commentary has each of the pythons talking about the film and other things and while some of the stories overlap there is enough variation that you see things slightly differently during each pass through. They are amazing and the commentaries are so good that I have been known on more than one occasion to listen to them in succession. The commentaries are so good that friends of mine had me put the commentaries onto VHS tapes for them because they didn’t have DVD players at the time.

Yes you want to buy the disc, of if not buy it rent it.

As I said at the top I’m not a fan of the movie, however I am a fan of the DVD from Criterion.