Jokers You Can Sing Along With

Monty Python

The New York Sun, March 18, 2005

More than 30 years after its final, Cleese-less season limped to its cheerless end, the buzz surrounding "Spamalot" is yet another reminder that Monty Python is far from dead, deceased, shagged out, stunned, or even resting. For more than three decades, that dodgy old circus has flown on, soared even, through an astonishingly successful afterlife that has included movies, books, albums, documentaries, critical acclaim, condemnation by religious fundamentalists, spin-offs, the occasional reunion, a performance in the Hollywood Bowl, earnest academic analysis, a litigation victory over ABC, cult status on both sides of the Atlantic, and now a debut on Broadway. That's not bad for a show that premiered on the BBC at 10:55 p.m. on a Sunday night in 1969, immediately after a broadcast of theological commentary by Malcolm Muggeridge.

But this Monty Python, squire, this flying circus, what was, well, it like? Looking back now at some of the earliest episodes, it's striking to see how much Python was a creature of its time and of its place. It was often inspired, occasionally pedestrian, sometimes sublime, and all too frequently silly, very silly, but never quite so "completely different" as it so smugly liked to announce.

It was, really, a typically English show, filled with more bobbies, vicars, colonels, tweedy eccentrics and class consciousness than a Sunday night on PBS - Miss Marple with laughs, something that may help account for its remarkable success in America. Those bobbies, vicars, colonels, suburban accountants, and bowler-hatted stockbrokers who accompanied them were all archetypes of a gentle, genteel, fading country still caught in a way of life that had managed to survive the onslaught of the Third Reich and linger on into the 1960s, but would finally be buried by the unlikely combination of the Beatles, Mrs. Thatcher, and the Labour Party.

Even the contributions of Terry Gilliam, the Pythons' lone American - the weirdly gifted illustrator, cartoonist, and designer (I don't know the appropriate word to describe this polymath), who was later to make a career out of filming visually striking, but interminably dull, movies - were, like the artwork of "Sergeant Pepper's," the retro schmatta sold in Carnaby Street's Lord Kitchener's Valet and so much else of the pop culture of swinging London, steeped in nostalgia for the high summer of Britain's late Victorian and Edwardian heyday. This era was long remembered in England, fondly if not altogether accurately, as the last truly good time, a sun-speckled Arcadia lost to the dark horrors of the 20th century.

Likewise, the delirious, delightful sense of the absurd that permeated Python had deep roots in an English tradition of whimsy that stretches back to Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and beyond. Even the show's frequent descents into violence - those interludes of hacking, chopping, and blood so playfully mixed into the fun - will be nothing too new to anyone who remembers what young Alice witnessed in the course of her more disturbing adventures in Wonderland:

The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting "Off with his head!' or 'Off with her head!" about once in a minute. Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, 'and then,' thought she, 'what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there's any one left alive!'

Closer to the Python era, the unsettled and unsettling nature of the postwar years meant that surreal, absurdist humor found a mass audience amongst Brits, most notably with the "Goon Show," an anarchic, and (to me) painfully unfunny, radio comedy that has the dubious distinction of being beloved by the (to everyone) painfully unfunny Prince Charles.

When former Goon Spike Milligan emerged long enough from manic depression to produce the oddball, chaotic, wildly entertaining, wildly hit-and miss "Q5" for television earlier in that annus mirabilis of 1969, the proto-Pythons were appalled. Milligan's madcap stream-of-consciousness comedy, sketches without structured beginning or formal conclusion was exactly what they had been planning to do. Milligan, it appeared, was Neil Armstrong and they were Buzz Who.

The Pythons' response was to use Terry Gilliam's animation as (to quote Eric Idle) "the link thing." It was a stroke of genius. Mr. Gilliam's artwork gave their new show a look that was distinctively its own, and, more importantly, gave it the illusion of structure. It made Monty Python accessible in a way that "Q5" never was.

We should not be surprised that the Gilliam gambit worked so well. The Pythons may have been intellectual (self-consciously so - who else would, or could, have included a nudge, nudge, aside about Charlotte Corday and Jean-Paul Marat in the middle of a television sketch?), innovative, and inspired. But they were also industry professionals, clever Oxford and Cambridge boys who had already used talent, connections, and very shrewd networking to build television careers that even before Monty Python were remarkable for their success and their precocity.

It was, perhaps, always inevitable that their television show would burn itself out so soon. For a brief, shining moment, six extraordinary, talented individuals took advantage of the extraordinary, experimental 1960s to give birth to a marvel. Then the moment passed. With the exception of the wise and wonderful "Life of Brian," a film even more relevant today, the Python movies never really recaptured the original magic. It was time to move on. Ever showbiz savvy, the Pythons finally did just that.

There have been other highlights - most notably John Cleese's terrific reworking of the sitcom (a genre the Pythons once looked down upon) in "Fawlty Towers" and Michael Palin's lovely, nostalgic return to that long Victorian summer in both "American Friends" and "The Missionary," but, for the most part, the Pythons' solo efforts have fallen far short of what the ensemble once achieved together, a fitting enough fate for a team once known as the Beatles of comedy.

But like the best of the Beatles, that old Flying Circus will continue to delight, even if it does not resonate now in quite the same way it once did. Devoted audiences will still cherish those sacred scripts, keep dead parrots alive, and gleefully sing along to songs of Spam, lumberjacks, and the bright side of life. Monty Python, meet Gilbert and Sullivan.

Brian's Back

National Review Online, July 1 2004

Life of Brian

Do you remember Brian, Brian Cohen? Yes, that Brian. You know, Monty Python's Brian, Life of. Well, 25 years on, he's back—back for his Second Coming. It has been a sly, mocking resurrection, a manifestation confined to a limited number of movie theaters, all timed to take advantage of (a little) this vintage comedy's quarter century and (a lot) Mel Gibson's startlingly savaged Savior. The Pythons themselves have been characteristically reticent about the timing of the film's re-release. Coyly, its director, Terry Jones, merely told the press that it was "just a piece of shameless commercial opportunism on our part. We were just hoping to make a quick buck on the back of Mel's Passion." Well, whatever it took, in a time marked both by the rise of superstitious belief and, worse still, an explosion of religious conflict unthinkable only a few decades ago, the return of sane, gentle Brian Cohen is good news indeed, worthy of a hymn, a hallelujah, or a hosanna or two except for the fact that—as that most modest of men used to say—he was not the Messiah: Perhaps a round of quiet applause will suffice.

It seems strange now, but when Brian's biopic was first released in the U.K., there was furious controversy, angry debate, and (wild language for amiably agnostic Albion) even talk of "blasphemy." Vicars vented, priests prattled, bishops called for a boycott, a few politicians remounted their high horses, and, chicken-hearted EMI pulled its backing (George Harrison stepped in with replacement funding).

In the land of the Pilgrim Fathers, the reaction was, predictably, even harsher. Writing recently in the Village Voice, J. Hoberman recalled how Life of Brian "scored a perfect trifecta—denounced as blasphemy by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the Lutheran Council ('a disgraceful assault'), and the Rabbinical Alliance of America ('foul, disgusting')." The movie was picketed, banned in certain places, and, the ultimate seal of approval, condemned by Senator Strom Thurmond (a whitewashed sepulcher if ever I saw one).

The protests took their toll. On both sides of the Atlantic, cinemas hesitated over whether or not to take the film, but a decent number did the decent thing. The movie found an audience and, so far as is known, neither viewers nor projectionists nor popcorn sellers were bothered by boils, struck by lightning, or plagued by locusts, flies, frogs, or any of the other unpleasantness so often associated with annoying the Man Upstairs. Rumors that one ticket vendor was turned into a pillar of salt somewhere in the north of England can safely be discounted.

As usual, God got it right. Despite being born on the appropriate day in the appropriate town (something that briefly confused the three wise men and led to some unpleasantness over the gold, frankincense, and myrrh), Brian was, the movie makes clear, not the Messiah. He was not Him, his mother was Mandy, not Mary, and his Life was not blasphemy. Reinforcing this point, Brian is shown listening—at a distance, and with some interest—to the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is portrayed with respect. It is only His message that gets garbled ("Blessed are the cheese makers"?) by a crowd too preoccupied by its own bickering to concentrate on what Christ had to say. Come to think of it, that scene would make a fine sermon in its own right.

This is not to claim that Life of Brian is some sort of religious tract. Far from it. If there's any type of belief that runs through the movie, it's disbelief, unbelief, a world-weary skepticism that reaches its height or its depth (take your pick) on a jam-packed Calvary with the massed ranks of the crucified singing a rousing song that, in its blend of nonchalance, nihilism, and slightly deranged Epicureanism, has few peers:

...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 light side of life...

For life is quite absurd

And death's the final word

You must always face the curtain with a bow.

Forget about your sin—give the audience a grin

Enjoy it—it's your last chance anyhow...

It has a pretty good tune too.

To be sure, Life of Brian is unlikely to make it very soon into the Vatican's video collection but, unless the Pythons' secularism is of itself "offensive," there really ought to be little in their film to annoy most people of faith—so long as they have a sense of humor, that is. The real target of the movie's satire is not religion as such, but the unholy baggage that too frequently comes with it—the credulity, the fanaticism, and that very human urge to persecute, well, someone.

Watch, for example, poor Brian as he flees Jerusalem pursued by his "disciples." His frantic attempts to deny that he is the Messiah are ignored by a crowd desperate for someone, anyone, anything, to worship, but also intent on proving their own righteousness in that most pleasurable of ways—at the expense of others. Acolytes of Brian's gourd feud with devotees of his shoe, and all indulge in the nasty joys of schism. If Ingmar Bergman had directed Life of Brian, the rest of the movie would have been a grim depiction of an even grimmer religious war, concluding, doubtless, with a bleak finale in some northern European wasteland. But as Bergman didn't, and Terry Jones did, we get a naked hermit, the "miracle" of the juniper bushes, a Pontius Pilate who can't pronounce his "r"s, and, to end it all, that surprisingly cheerful crucifixion.

But as amusing as this movie is (and it is—despite 25 years in the vaults, it stinketh not), Life of Brian is difficult to watch without a sense of sadness. At the time it was made, the Pythons' "Passion" seemed to be taking aim at a soft target. In the West, at least, centuries of superstition, intolerance, and fanaticism seemed gradually to be receding into the past, mourned by a dwindling few. The established religions appeared reconciled to a comfortable, if decreasingly prominent, niche within the secular states of the post-Enlightenment, and where the West led, the rest of the world would surely follow.

Times change. To take just a few wretched examples from the cornucopia of cant on offer on these fruited plains, the nation created by the revolution that was the Age of Reason's finest hour now finds itself lost in nonsense. It is wrapped up in the Rapture, preyed on by Gantrys, prayed at by Falwells, prayed for by Jacksons, dumbed down by creation scientists, and hectored by ranting First Amendment fundamentalists who react to a cross as if they were vampires. Oh yes, fanaticism can be secular too. Just ask the People's Front of Judea (or was it the Judean People's Front?), zealots content to leave Brian to die on the cross, a handy martyr for their cause.

And when organized religion fades, the disorganized variety rushes in. As we stumble back towards the darkness of that beckoning cave, we let ourselves be spellbound by, to take a selection, pagans, Wiccans, shamans, seers, crystal-gazers, aliens, pieces of red string, table-tappers, Gaia, suburban necromancers, sidewalk psychics, and that blend of bunkum, baloney, science fiction, and Hollywood that calls itself the "religion" of Scientology.

But above all—and compared to which those tatty idiocies are nothing but trivia—the return of militant Islam and its encroachment once more on the people and the territories of the West force us to face, yet again, the horrors of religious war, this time an onslaught from Arabia's seventh-century darkness, in which the promise of heaven will be used as a justification for true believers to create a hell on earth for all those who oppose them. In a time when young men fly planes into office buildings in the hope of earning themselves an eternity with 72 virgins, it's difficult to look at those parts of Life of Brian in which the movie played on the baroque cruelty of (what then seemed) ancient history without as much unease as amusement. The long and originally very funny sequence that culminates in John Cleese being stoned for blasphemy now conjures up images of the Taliban's bestial Kabul. Later on, we see the Judean People's Front planning to kidnap and then behead the wife of Pontius Pilate, and the bloodiness of the scheme only serves to underline the utter incompetence of the conspiracy. We laughed then, back in 1979. Beheading? Ridiculous. We don't laugh so easily in 2004. Not after Daniel Pearl. Not after Nick Berg. Not after Paul Marshall Johnson.

So, to break the mood, turn for some words of wisdom from sensible, doomed, hapless Brian. There's a lovely moment when, appalled by the spectacle of the faithful gathering beneath his window, he tells them that, "you don't need to follow me, you don't need to follow anybody. You've got to think for yourselves, you're all individuals." Simple stuff, but, these days, pretty good advice.

Even if it's not The Greatest Story Ever Told.