He’s making videos for a data backup company.
IIRC, Cleese did the majority of the hard work, but every now and then Chapman would throw in some totally off-the-wall idea that took the comedy to the next level. That is, when it came to their writing, Chapman contributed his fair share of the inspiration, but Cleese did more than his fair share of the perspiration, especially when Chapman’s alcoholism really got bad.
He may not have been phoning it in, but I was referring to new comedic performances and material, not simply revisiting the old chestnuts periodically.
I haven’t seen Terry Jones’ BBC docs, but are they funny, or just well-done? Palin’s travelogues are interesting, and he’s a good vehicle for these shows, but they’re not really gold mines of humor.
I didn’t catch Idle on The Daily Show–I’ll have to keep my eye out for a rerun. Buzz is early but strong on Spamalot, though, so here’s hoping…
I think that is wonderful. I see no reason why one cannot be both spiritual and funny. Would that more “religious” types saw it that way!
You can see Jon Stewart’s interview with Eric Idle here.
Did anyone else see the show on Food Network about wine, hosted by Cleese? That was pretty good. I’d like to go to one of his pool parties :o
Caught a bit of it, as I caught a bit of Jones on the crusades. Both are better than Palin, because ach has more depth than Palin. But as to the OP, I don’t think they’re particularly funny anymore, but that might have to do with the fact that a) they went to Cambridge (and all the really funny people went to the other place) and b) they got into comedy by chance - as I guess most comedians do - and it was just a stopgap (in some cases rather a long one) before they did something they really wanted to do. And doing the latter sometimes takes a long time, as it often takes a long time to work out what we want to do, and indeed who we really are.
But horses for courses. Want a fab documentary? Get David Attenborough. The best. (Okay, only for the natural world, but still.) It’s his metier. I love watching people who are outstanding in their field. They are invariably humble, in the CS Lewis sense, of being able to design the greatest cathedral in the world and, when asked about it, say ‘yes, it’s good’.
“Just my way of getting through the day, dear. The Samaritans were engaged.”
Thanks for the link, though I was seriously underwhelmed. Nice guy, typical patter, but I’d say one guest/week is at least as funny. Cleese is still the contemporary winner, hands down.
One of the funniest things I’ve seen in John Cleese naked, prancing around while reciting random Russian words. Hilarious.
You’re talking about a scene in A Fish Called Wanda. But I believe they were genuine Russian sentences (spoken to inflame Jamie Lee Curtis’ character, who got off on foreign languages), otherwise the scene makes little sense.
I kind of think it was just random words. His character didn’t actually speak Russian, but he was just using a lot of nouns, “glasnost! Gorbachev!,” etc etc. IIRC, of course. They were real words, but not actual sentences.