The sketches in the Chapman episode were those he co-wrote, even if he didn’t appear in them. I found the episode fascinating; it was rare you get a biographical glimpse of a Python.
Eric Idle’s was also good, and his intro segments were as funny as ever,
Netflix has these too.
In my area the local PBS station is having pub quiz night on each of the Wednesdays the series is showing. They find a pub, have an hour of Monty Python trivia, watch two hours of show, and give away prizes and such. I’m thinking about seeing if we can arrange a Dopefest at one of the two remaining pub nights. The final one, on March 8, is a pub I’ve been to with Dopers before. The one next week would be a good little drive from most of the DFW regulars I think.
Enjoy,
Steven
Highly recommended: Graham Chapman’s Liar’s Autobiography.
An interesting bit of writing – confessional and surreal, absurdly comic and tragic without being maudlin. He wrote about his alcoholism honestly, made it funny and entertaining without tivializing the problem, and never came across as a gnasher. Lots of funny medical school stories and stuff, too.
He did co-write “Dead Parrot,” as noted above. He was also the inspiration for the divinely silly Pantomime Princess Margaret and, because he so often suggested silly pantomime animals, usually ended up playing them. I also read that Cleese and Chapman were admiring the strained uphill ambulations of a passerby while they were writing and decided that there should be a Ministry of Silly Walks; but as they had no time to write the sketch themselves they turned it over to Palin and Jones.
I saw about the latter half of the Chapman one and I thought the mix of sketches with Chapman’s presence on camera vs. those he “merely” wrote was quite engaging. Kind of a deeper look into the process than we normally get just by seeing the finsihed product.
Plus, I realized it had been much, much too long since I’d seen the Vikings singing “Spam spam spam spam spamedy-spaaaaaaam, spam spam spaam!”
–Cliffy
Sir Skip of Magic: “We are the knights who say ‘Twee!’”
Alright. Where’s a knight with a rubber chicken when you need him?
