Laughter alone has zero chance of ending the covid-19 pandemic. But hearty chuckles and an occasional guffaw can ease the anguish of our fears and social isolation. That's healthful advice drawn from John Cleese, maestro of silly walks.
"Laughter connects you with people," Cleese once told an interviewer. "It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy."
I'm laughing like crazy while sheltered in my Little Rock living room with Cleese and his five fellow Brit-wits while I binge-watch The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus, billed on its box as a "16 Ton Megaset."
The 16 DVDs are packed with 29 hours and 9 minutes worth of "something completely different" -- all four seasons and 45 episodes of the British comedy that took American public-television viewers by surprise and then by storm in the late 1970s. The humor can be cheesy, sleazy, rude, lewd, naughty, bawdy, sometimes slapstick, sometimes sexist, sometimes politically incorrect.
A certain number of U.S. viewers back then found the BBC import offensive, inscrutable and/or easily resistible. But a whole bunch of us found it gut-bustingly hilarious. I can still manage a stirring (if off-key) rendition of "The Lumberjack Song," complete with Pythonesque lyrics that skirt or even leap borders of propriety. To wit, a sampler:
I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK
I sleep all night and I work all day
I cut down trees, I eat my lunch
I go to the lavatory.
On Wednesdays I go shopping
And have buttered scones for tea.
I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK
I sleep all night and I work all day
I cut down trees, I skip and jump
I like to press wild flowers
I put on women's clothing
And hang around in bars.
If you find those lyrics disgustingly offensive, read no further. If you find them disarmingly clever as well as delightfully silly, please take a deep breath and join in another Python moment of mirth. This one is Cleese's antic sketches as a British bureaucrat working at the Ministry of Silly Walks.
In the role, he unleashes his gangling 6-foot, 5-inch frame in a ballet of leg-twisting strides that even a professional contortionist might have difficulty matching. A reviewer in The Guardian newspaper wrote that "Cleese is utterly deadpan as he takes the stereotypical bowler-hatted political drone and ruthlessly skewers him."
A viewer need not detect social commentary, though it may be evident in the silly-walks twitting of entrenched bureaucracy. That is similarly the case in the "127th Annual Upper Class Twit of the Year" sketch. Cleese provides a sportscaster's brisk commentary for an obstacle-course race among five toffee-nosed snobs competing for that dubious title.
The contestants are played by Cleese and fellow Pythons Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Graham Chapman. They must navigate challenges that include jumping over a fence exactly three matchboxes high, kicking a beggar until he falls down and taking the bra off a mannequin debutante while standing in front of her.
Among other copious highlights is the all-time favorite of a good many Python devotees: "The Dead Parrot Sketch." Set in a pet shop, it portrays an argument between a disgruntled customer (Cleese) and the shopkeeper (Palin) over whether a recently purchased parrot is dead -- as it clearly is. Cleese is finally driven to an outburst:
"This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"
The Pythons were not an immediate success on this side of the Atlantic. And Now for Something Completely Different, a movie cobbled together from the first two BBC seasons, fared poorly at the U.S. box office in 1972. The television series won a large American audience only after PBS stations began airing it in 1974. By the fall of 1975, it was reportedly the most popular feature on U.S. public TV.
Merely the title of some other sketches can still draw at least a snicker from devotees with long memories: "Nudge Nudge," "The Killer Joke," "The Spanish Inquisition," "Killer Sheep," "The Attila the Hun Show," "Spam," "Fish-Slapping Dance," "Argument Clinic," "Cheese Shop," "The All-England Summarize Proust Competition."
A visually surreal bonus is the animated illustrations by Terry Gilliam, the sixth Python. His opening titles, which feature a giant foot that squashes whoever happens to be beneath it, became a symbol of the "Pythonesque" wonderland. The cartoon art includes glimpses of unclothed body parts sometimes referred to as "naughty bits."
If you yearn to revisit the Pythons, or would like to take the plunge, "The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus" is available new or used from a number of online sites. It includes two bonus discs of the troupe's later live appearances, along with an ultra-zany episode taped in German for German and Austrian television.
And if the 16 CDs leave you panting for more mad merriment, consider tracking down the three-CD package containing the 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers. A project of John Cleese, who plays bumbling hotel keeper Basil Fawlty in the seaside English town of Torquay. It is even more beloved by some Python devotees than the Flying Circus shows.
Additional banquets of "something completely different" can be savored in three feature-length movies from the late 1970s and early '80s: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python's Life of Brian and Monty Python's the Meaning of Life.
In Life of Brian, Chapman plays a first-century Palestinian Jew who is mistaken for Jesus Christ. Via loopy plot twists that are sometimes hilarious and sometimes sacrilegious, he winds up being crucified among a field of fellow victims -- an image that brings to mind a climactic scene in Spartacus.
His companions in misfortune serenade Brian, with lyrics meant to be deeply ironic. Taken straight, they can provide an upbeat mood bounce during these dismal days:
If life seems jolly rotten,
There's something you've forgotten,
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps,
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle, that's the thing.
And always look on the bright side of life,
Always look on the right side of life.
MovieStyle on 05/01/2020