Cheers! It is the 45th birthday of Monty Pythons Flying Circus! (Well, happy birthday British Monty Python, but what a happy birthday, indeed.) We watched Monty Python as a family, the family that was still at home, and many times we all laughed riotously. And then we repeated the sketches to each other and laughed even more. Does that still happen? I hope so. I still giggle at Terry Jones playing The Bells of Saint Marys on the mouse organ. And the crazy animated pieces by Terry Gilliam. If you are looking for a topic at a party when the conversation has stalled ask about Monty Python sketches. Monty Python (sometimes known as The Pythons) was a British comedy group that created the influential Monty Pythons Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series. The Python phenomenon developed from the television series into something larger in scope and impact, spawning touring stage shows, films, numerous albums, several books and a stage musical as well as launching the members to individual stardom. The groups influence on comedy has been compared to The Beatles influence on music. The television series, broadcast by the BBC from 1969 to 1974, was conceived, written and performed by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Loosely structured as a sketch show but with an innovative stream-of-consciousness approach (aided by Gilliams animation), it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in style and content. A self-contained comedy team responsible for both writing and performing their work, they changed the way performers entertained audiences. The Pythons creative control allowed them to experiment with form and content, discarding rules of television comedy. Their influence on British comedy has been apparent for years, while in North America it has coloured the work of cult performers from the early editions of Saturday Night Live through to more recent absurdist trends in television comedy. Pythonesque has entered the English lexicon as a result. Time-Life Films had the right to distribute all BBC-TV programs in the United States, however they had decided that British comedy simply would not work in America. Therefore, it was not worth the investment to convert the Python episodes from the European PAL standard to the American NTSC standard. Sketches from Monty Pythons Flying Circus were introduced to American audiences in August 1972, with the release of the Python movie And Now for Something Completely Different, featuring sketches from series 1 and 2 of the television show. This 1972 release met limited box office success. In the summer of 1974 Ron Devillier, the program director for non-profit PBS television station KERA in Dallas, Texas, started airing episodes of Monty Pythons Flying Circus. Ratings shot through the roof, providing an encouraging sign to the other 100 PBS stations that had signed up to begin airing the show in October 1974—exactly 5 years after their BBC debut. There was also cross-promotion from FM radio stations across the country, whose airing of tracks from the Python LPs had already introduced American audiences to this bizarre brand of comedy. The popularity on PBS resulted in the 1974 re-release of the 1972 ... Completely Different movie, with much greater box office success. The ability to show Monty Pythons Flying Circus under the American NTSC standard had been made possible by the commercial actions of American television producer Greg Garrison. Garrison produced the NBC series The Dean Martin Comedy World, which ran during the summer of 1974. The concept was to show clips from comedy shows produced in other countries, including tape of the Python sketches Bicycle Repairman and The Dull Life of a Stockbroker. Payment for use of these two sketches was enough to allow Time-Life Films to convert the entire Python library to NTSC standard, allowing for the sale to the PBS network stations who then brought the entire show to US audiences. In 1975 the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) broadcast two ninety-minute Monty Python specials, each with three shows, but cut out a total of 24 minutes from each in part to make time for commercial, in part to avoid upsetting their audience. As the judge observed in Gilliam v. American Broadcasting, where Monty Python sued for damages caused by broadcast of the mutilated version, According to the network, appellants should have anticipated that most of the excised material contained scatological references inappropriate for American television and that these scenes would be replaced with commercials, which presumably are more palatable to the American public. Monty Python won the case. With the popularity of Python throughout the rest of the 1970s and through most of the 1980s, PBS stations looked at other British comedies, leading to UK shows such as Are You Being Served? gaining a US audience, and leading, over time, to many PBS stations having a British Comedy Night which airs many popular UK comedies. (Wikipedia)
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 11:51:15 +0000
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