Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
August 25, 2022 8:21 AM - Subscribe

King Arthur, accompanied by his squire, recruits his Knights of the Round Table, including Sir Bedevere the Wise, Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot and Sir Galahad the Pure. On the way, Arthur battles the Black Knight who, despite having had all his limbs chopped off, insists he can still fight. They reach Camelot, but Arthur decides not to enter, as "it is a silly place".

Starring Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, and Terry Jones.

Directed by Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones.

98% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Currently streaming in the US on Netflix and Fubo. Also available for digital rental via Amazon and Apple. JustWatch listing.
posted by DirtyOldTown (60 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
On second thought, let's not go to FanFare. 'Tis a silly place.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:37 AM on August 25, 2022 [25 favorites]


This movie was my introduction to life at MIT in 1992. I showed up at my temporary dorm and was immediately corralled into the common area where they were running a Monty Python marathon. I had seen plenty of Python over the years but never really sat down and watched it in full fire hose blast.
posted by drewbage1847 at 8:42 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


I can no longer separate this film from the enthusiastic fans who relentlessly performed all the parts, over and over, at uni. I suspect there are graduate studies on the persisting appeal of this film to a subset of humans. Revisit the Holy Hand Grenade scene a bajillionth time? No thanks. Yes, yes, please fart in my general direction. etc.
posted by elkevelvet at 8:56 AM on August 25, 2022 [9 favorites]


I was listening to the Imaginary Worlds podcast, an episode about the Arthurian legend, and a scholar said that this was perhaps the best King Arthur movie yet made. I don't remember if she specifically said it was the most accurate, but I got that impression, since King Arthur movies have set a pretty low bar in that regard, and Terry Jones was a medievalist after all.

I saw this as a child, and for many years that was how I pictured all the characters. It maybe isn't something they'd recommend over on Common Sense Media, but it did get me through my Monty Python-quoting phase early, like chickenpox. The reason nerds got so obnoxious about quoting Python for a while there is, after all, because it is just that funny and that smart, and things that were both funny and smart were thin on the ground for a long time. (Still, I have no desire to see Spamalot. I feel like I could take one or two numbers, and I would be Done.)

Apparently this was a pretty miserable shoot. The weather was as bad as it looked, and poor old Graham Chapman was drinking a bottle of vodka a day.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:03 AM on August 25, 2022 [6 favorites]


I don't know how I old I was when I first saw MP and the Holy Grail. My father and I used to do lines back and forth when I was pretty young. My mom took me to Spamalot when it came out (my father was long since dead sadly) and when I went to go to the bathroom, she bought me a killer rabbit which I named Marv in honor of my father. A few years ago I went as a killer rabbit for Halloween and won 3rd prize in a costume contest so this movie has been with me my entire life.

Countess Elena both Alan Tudyk and Tim Curry were in the original cast of Spamalot so it was a pretty tremendous show.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:24 AM on August 25, 2022 [8 favorites]


I loved it the first 5-6 times I saw it, but, if we had a 50 year moratorium on people quoting Monty Python, that would be a blessing to all humanity.

Still, Phyllis Ann Karr, in her excellent The King Arthur Companion, noted that, while MP&tHG is generally not a reliable guide, the depiction of Lancelot is utterly true to the original sources.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:42 AM on August 25, 2022 [7 favorites]


This was one of the movies my dad was super-excited to show me and my brother as soon as he figured we were old enough (the other one being The Blues Brothers) and I remember watching it a million times til I got sick of it and started finding it boring.

A couple of years ago, I caught part of it on TV and, with maybe ten years since I'd seen it and memory going the way it does? Still slays. Absolutely hilarious movie when you don't know every line. Just needed time for the tolerance to fall off, so to speak.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:06 AM on August 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


How many dads required a family viewing of the Blues Brothers? that's what I want to know

We should form a club, this is absolutely a phenomenon
posted by elkevelvet at 10:07 AM on August 25, 2022 [13 favorites]


I saw this on the day it opened, first showing. It was the first time I ever cut school and was scared to death the ticket taker would rat me out to "the authorities." But I had to go, the ad in the paper had a banner reading "free coconuts given on first showing." I didn't know what it meant, but of course I had to get one.

The theater was about half full, not bad for an 11am Friday show. I guess we were all fans. From the beginning we were all laughing like crazy. The ushers tossed out coconuts as we left.

I got pinched for skipping school when my mom found the ticked stub in my pants, but I regret nothing.

When I worked for HBO, we got a call one night in Master Control. He claimed he was Michael Fuchs, then president, he wanted to know who "let the film run off the chain!" I explained that that was the way the movie ended, and that we didn't use film chains, we use videotape. "Bullshit! I know what I saw. Tell your boss I'll be there tomorrow at 9 to see about this."

I told my supervisor that some loony called about the end of the film, claiming to be the boss. He thought it was funny, but it wasn't too late so he called the Operations VP, just in case.

I hung out until morning, sure enough, 9:15 a limo pulls up and out pops Fuchs and some others. He saw my boss, asked him "what the hell happened last night?" My boss told him that's the way the movie ends, he wanted proof. So we walked him into the tape room, racked up the reel, fast forward to the final minute, and hit play. He watched as it ended, then turned around and walked out. He never said a word.

Classy guy.
posted by Marky at 10:19 AM on August 25, 2022 [53 favorites]


Yeah, well you spin it any way you want, Marky, but I know what I saw!

Damn, what a great story! Two of them actually.
posted by Naberius at 10:27 AM on August 25, 2022


I can no longer separate this film from the enthusiastic fans who relentlessly performed all the parts, over and over, at uni.

One night after a midnight showing at the much-missed Vogue Theater in Louisville, Kentucky, my friends and I went to Denny's, whereupon two friends of friends who were along with the group proceeded to read the script -- of the movie they had just seen -- to each other.

The script was printed on a dot matrix printer, yo.
posted by Gelatin at 10:40 AM on August 25, 2022 [9 favorites]


My senior year high school English teacher told us one day, with a straight face, that he was going to show us a movie that "accurately depicted life in Medieval England" - and then showed us this. I knew the movie and instantly started clapping and laughing. (One of my friends who hadn't heard of it was baffled, and I just said "Oh, just wait.")

One of my favorite know-the-stuff stories was actually about the original Spamalot - early on in rehearsal, one of the producers or the assistant director or something was sitting around chatting with Hank Azaria during a break, and at one point said "you know, I noticed that you know all your lines for the Knights of Ni scene already. That's impressive."

Hank Azaria just stared at him a moment, then said, "It's Monty Python. I've known all the lines since I was twelve."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:02 AM on August 25, 2022 [25 favorites]


Oh - and at current count, this film falls near the halfway point of my playlist for my movie blog, and I take that as a cosmic sign of some kind.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:05 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Sure, overquoted to death amongst a certain cohort, but it came by the status honestly. I, too, caught some of it on TV relatively recently after not having seen it for years, and it's held up surprisingly well for a comedy as old as some of Gen X. "Let's not bicker and argue about 'oo killed 'oo" has proven a useful line in real life, alas.
posted by praemunire at 11:17 AM on August 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


I can no longer separate this film from the enthusiastic fans who relentlessly performed all the parts, over and over, at uni.

Maybe I Can Impress Her With My Holy Grail Quotes [The Onion, and yes, I was totally guilty of same]

I was listening to the Imaginary Worlds podcast, an episode about the Arthurian legend, and a scholar said that this was perhaps the best King Arthur movie yet made. I don't remember if she specifically said it was the most accurate, but I got that impression, since King Arthur movies have set a pretty low bar in that regard, and Terry Jones was a medievalist after all.

I saw this movie right around the time that I also saw Excalibur, and there was no question in my mind about which was more accurate.

Also, I'm absurdly proud of myself for adding a MPatHG reference in a sort of three-way mashup for a Starfinder RPG (think D&D meets space opera) adventure that I GMed that I adapted from a mission in Mass Effect 2. ME2 has a character known as The Illusive Man, frequently referred to in fandom by the initials of his title, and in my game, the secretive mastermind behind the plot introduced himself by saying, "There are some who call me... TIM."
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:23 AM on August 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


It's like a type of person observed the most rabid Rocky Horror Picture show fans and it turned into the longest sustained Hold-My-Beer moment in history

respect, Monty Pythonites. Respect.
posted by elkevelvet at 11:33 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Maybe I Can Impress Her With My Holy Grail Quotes

I had a young lady quote from this film when we were on our third date; I married her.

This was one of the movies my dad was super-excited to show me and my brother as soon as he figured we were old enough

We showed this to our kids somewhere during the pandemic - not something that was part of some plan, just a night where we needed a laugh and thought the kids were old enough to "get" Monty Python. They left the room somewhere about 20-30 minutes in; we carried on and enjoyed it - in part, I think, because it was familiar more than anything else.

From what I've seen, MP didn't age well in terms of catching new fans - it appealed to a certain group during its period of time, and I still love pretty much everything they did - but that time is fading, and the MP quotes are thin on the ground even in my gaming group now.
posted by nubs at 11:37 AM on August 25, 2022 [5 favorites]


the ad in the paper had a banner reading "free coconuts given on first showing."

Eric Idle has spoken about how no one thought about the difficulty of actually signing coconuts until they had to do it as part of the film promotion.
posted by miss-lapin at 11:51 AM on August 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


From what I've seen, MP didn't age well in terms of catching new fans - it appealed to a certain group during its period of time, and I still love pretty much everything they did - but that time is fading, and the MP quotes are thin on the ground even in my gaming group now.

I had a theory for a while that there are some "cult classics" that only really "work" if you see them for the first time on a day when you're twelve or thirteen years old and are seriously hopped up on sugar.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:04 PM on August 25, 2022 [10 favorites]


I'm definitely not in the socioeconomic group who would have known about this as a cultural artifact but social mobility and affirmative action meant that in my college years I got introduced to people who would know them but even then it's not such a background thing so spending a good 3 years being into MP on my own where I live still made the movies (and show) pretty fresh to me.

So much of my getting into MP overlaps with the memories of browsing through the DVD section of the UK Virgin Megastores in London though, because that was (then) a once in a lifetime trip and i wouldn't have had the opportunity to stock up (and the DVD deals!). And to think, I got into them through A Fish Called Wanda, and having a crush on Michael Palin, of all things.
posted by cendawanita at 12:40 PM on August 25, 2022 [9 favorites]


I was wandering around a second-hand bookshop a few years ago, one of those superior places with somewhat categorized volumes stacked just so to obey the letter if not the spirit of the local fire codes. I found the Penguin edition of The Quest for the Holy Grail, published 1969.

At last, I thought, I can find out the real legend without all of the silliness. So I read the book and realized that, if anything, the Pythons actually toned it down. Most of the stories involve a very dim knight meeting some strange apparition, totally missing the obvious clues, and only realizing what has happened when some random monk explains it to them. The knights wander around alone, or in small groups, not really achieving much until right at the very end where a few of them go overseas on an official quest with a magic boat.

It is totally crazy and the film captures that really well.
posted by AndrewStephens at 12:43 PM on August 25, 2022 [8 favorites]


It's like a type of person observed the most rabid Rocky Horror Picture show fans and it turned into the longest sustained Hold-My-Beer moment in history

and actually wrote a good movie
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:55 PM on August 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


Can confirm that a younger generation just doesn't think it's funny anymore. I watch a lot of (old and new) movies with my Gen Z nephew and he just got bored when we watched this.

On a sidenote, I tried watching Spinal Tap with a Gen Y friend and had to stop the film as he didn't get it. It seems that nerdy humor is totally out of fashion.
posted by Kosmob0t at 1:42 PM on August 25, 2022


I don't know if it is "nerdy humor" in the case of Spinal Tap. Probably more that younger folks don't have that cultural image of the outrageous hair metal rock star moron in their experience.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:22 PM on August 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


"Now we see the violence inherent in the system!" cuts a little different nowadays, huh.
posted by phooky at 2:40 PM on August 25, 2022 [10 favorites]


"Now we see the violence inherent in the system!" cuts a little different nowadays, huh.

All I'm saying is, Dennis makes some good points.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:58 PM on August 25, 2022 [18 favorites]


I have loved this movie for decades. There was a rerelease in maybe…1995? I remember going to the crappy cinema, the one on the periphery of Hanes Mall that is now long gone, and sitting in the theater with maybe one or two other people and thrilled that I could view it on a big screen.
My coworkers think it is stupid, and it reaffirms my desire to find an occupational specialty where I may be surrounded by more of My People. I also love RHPS, Beavis and Butthead, The Kids In The Hall, and Conan O’Brien. There’s something about inanity woven into chaotic but smart (for values of intelligent) comedy that really tickles my funybone.

I think I mentioned this in another thread, but an initial viewing of Wet Hot American Summer (if someone is so unfortunate as to not have already seen it) is a litmus test for whether or not our friendship is going to work on more-than-superficial levels.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 3:25 PM on August 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


I still use a short clip of "Camelot! ... Camelot!! ... Camelot!!!!!! ... it's only a model" whenever I teach some kind of modeling -- data modeling, infosec threat modeling, modeling in research, whatever.

Because I am an official Old Fart and I do what I want.
posted by humbug at 4:11 PM on August 25, 2022 [5 favorites]


As a fellow-Old Fart, I am proud to revel in my complete love for this movie and all things Python. But I’d rather quote bits from the tv series. So much more to choose from!

But I came here for an argument!
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 5:30 PM on August 25, 2022 [3 favorites]


I love the ending. It's brutal. I had absolutely no idea it was coming. It hit me really really really hard. I completely thought I had a defective version of the DVD or something. I truly was just flabbergasted: what, so… so… you mean, that's it??? Now I cackle every time.
posted by Omon Ra at 6:02 PM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


As I have oft mentioned, it is (perhaps oddly) a movie that makes the DVD format worthwhile. There is a great feature on the DVD: alongside the English and French subtitles, there is an option called "Subtitles for those who don't like the movie" or words to that effect, which just subtitles all of the dialogue with dialogue from Henry VI, Part II. The effect is weirdly pleasing. Below, find a well-known scene with the dialogue as spoken and how the subtitles read.

The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a man puts a body on the cart]
O, give me the spare men!
Large Man with Dead Body: Here's one.
Here I yield him.
The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.
Seven groats.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
Not that I am dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
What's this?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
Here's four harry ten shillings.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
Not that I am dead.
The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Here, he is dead.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not.
No, my lord, not so.
The Dead Collector: He isn't.
Nay, not so.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
He cannot long hold out.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm getting better.
Better than I was.
Large Man with Dead Body: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
The apoplexy will certain be his end.
The Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
Is this proceeding just and honourable?
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I don't want to go on the cart.
I'd as lief be hanged as go.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, don't be such a baby.
What a maidenly man-at-arms.
The Dead Collector: I can't take him.
I confess, I cannot help.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I feel fine.
I am well.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, do me a favor.
For my old dame's sake...
The Dead Collector: I can't.
I cannot.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
You can do it, sir, he is retired.
The Dead Collector: I promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.
I must a dozen mile tonight.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, when's your next round?
When. I pray you sir?
The Dead Collector: Thursday.
O'Thursday.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I think I'll go for a walk.
Let me see, where is Mouldy?
Large Man with Dead Body: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?
By cock and pie, you shall not. Not able to invent anything?
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I feel happy. I feel happy.
Happy am I!
[the Dead Collector glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Body with his a whack of his club]

Large Man with Dead Body: Ah, thank you very much.
I thank thee with all my heart.
The Dead Collector: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
O'Thursday.

posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:32 PM on August 25, 2022 [20 favorites]


If you're ever in Scotland be sure to see Doune Castle, where the majority of this was filmed. There's a great audio tour narrated by Terry Jones, which smartly covers not just the real history of the castle (which was really interesting), but also where each movie scene was filmed.

The movie stuff was somewhat amazing in its own right--the castle is surprisingly small and it's truly impressive how they used the space. But the most mind-blowing sight was in the kitchen, where there are ruts carved into the stone wall by centuries of knife-sharpening.
posted by equalpants at 9:31 PM on August 25, 2022 [9 favorites]


Dennis and the peasants covered in shit remains the most quoted bit of Python for me. My partner likes to purr WAFER THEEEEEEN at me sometimes when I demur on a second helping or a dessert, but "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony" has gotten way more milage than I had ever thought possible. It's just how politics have been, really.

I think there's an element of pacing and delivery that hasn't endured, and you have to have an appreciation for a certain kind of British dry wit to really enjoy it (also watching it at 12 or 13 hopped up on sugar, as Countess Elena says, certainly helps - for me it was also Forbidden Racy Comedy so I really appreciated it all the more).
posted by Jilder at 12:01 AM on August 26, 2022 [2 favorites]


'Zounds. Who left the grail-shaped beacon on?
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:46 AM on August 26, 2022 [5 favorites]


if we had a 50 year moratorium on people quoting Monty Python, that would be a blessing to all humanity

Ni! Ni! Ni!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:34 AM on August 26, 2022 [9 favorites]


I can no longer separate this film from the enthusiastic fans who relentlessly performed all the parts, over and over, at uni.

One of the reasons I gave up dating and settled into Bog Witch Hagdom was going on dates - far too many of them to count - with men whose idea of conversation was quoting Monty Python at length.
posted by essexjan at 6:21 AM on August 26, 2022 [7 favorites]


I understand the annoyance at people who seem to substitute "quoting MP" for "having a personality", but this movie is a classic and holds up surprisingly well and I expect to still be occasionally watching it and laughing at it well into my dotage.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:01 AM on August 26, 2022 [4 favorites]


"Now we see the violence inherent in the system" is still something we say in our family. Thinking of it again, it's pretty amazing how much that little sketch communicated about '70s radical politics, as well as academic writing, and how little I understood while still finding it funny. Who else is going to tell a kid in Mississippi what an anarcho-syndicalist commune is? Same deal with Life of Brian and the People's Front of Judea, a metaphor that comes in handy to this day.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:55 AM on August 26, 2022 [14 favorites]


Regardless of later events (thinking of Cleese and Gilliam), the commune scene and pretty much everything about the PFJ in Life of Brian suggest that at least one of the Pythons had some pretty direct experience in radical spaces.

(And I mean, Dennis is right- Arthur doesn't really have a good answer for any of his criticisms and resorts to violence to silence him instead. That's basically real life!)
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:13 AM on August 26, 2022 [6 favorites]


Carol Cleveland's Castle Anthrax scene is one of the greatest landmarks in film history.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:14 PM on August 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


Carol Cleveland's Castle Anthrax scene is one of the greatest landmarks in film history.

Metafilter: And then the oral sex!
posted by Thorzdad at 1:28 PM on August 26, 2022 [5 favorites]


Castle Anthrax fell a bit flat for me, but "No, I am Zoot's identical twin sister, Dingo" gets me every time.
posted by phooky at 2:20 PM on August 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


men whose idea of conversation was quoting Monty Python at length.

I confess this is how I met my BFF--he was roommates in our college dorm with a guy who was dating my roommate, and since he was wearing an Ashland Shakespeare Festival t-shirt, I struck up a conversation at dinner one night when he'd joined said roomie. By the time everyone had left, we were quoting the entire movie at each other, and I'm sure driving everyone within earshot bananas (if we hadn't already with Shakespeare quotes). To be fair, the movie was only a few years old at that point. But even just two days ago, a much younger friend and I were texting and she made reference to the Lady of the Lake and her arm clad in shimmering samite, and then we tumbled down into the violence inherent in the system etc. etc.

It does have pacing issues, and there are stretches where I'm tempted to FF, but for the most part, I still think this is one of the funniest movies ever made, and always will.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 3:18 PM on August 26, 2022 [2 favorites]


Carol Cleveland's Castle Anthrax scene is one of the greatest landmarks in film history.

Indeed, a lesser actor would find the whole scene quite perilous.
posted by nubs at 3:29 PM on August 26, 2022 [4 favorites]


if we had a 50 year moratorium on people quoting Monty Python, that would be a blessing to all humanity

Help! Help! I’m being repressed! I've been used to being SILENCED ALL MY LIFE.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:15 AM on August 27, 2022 [7 favorites]


As one of those people who quoted MP at length, I fully admit that Beloved Spouse would not have married me if I had not changed that behavior drastically.

However, at my job, I have gotten to name a job for checking the active-status of certain equities bring_out_your_dead,pl , delighting myself and my cow-orker-of-similar-age-and-background, and baffling all the 20-somethings on our team.
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 3:29 PM on August 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


I have just now remembered this....

At one of my old jobs (EA support at a big global bank), the IT department once rolled out a new approach to the security question-and-answer things for when you called the help desk. For the first two question-and-answers, you had to pick the questions from a dropdown menu - and it was all the usual stuff like "mother's maiden name", "high school mascot," "sibling's birth year", or whatever. But for the third one, you got to write the question yourself, and then provide the answer.

So of course - for the question, I wrote, "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?", and the answer was (of course) "African or European?"

For the next several months, any time I called the help desk things started out normally - the tech on the phone would first note my name, my office address, and then pull up my questions, starting to read them off in a bored voice: "Mother's maiden name?....okay: sibling's birth year? Okay...." and I would answer each, waiting for what I knew was coming. They would instinctively launch into reading the third question in that same bored voice, but then about halfway through they would start hearing themselves: "Okay: what is the airspeed velocity....of...." and crack up, sometimes not even finishing. I would still happily chirp out "African or European?" like I was supposed to, and they would thank me, and go on to start working on my issue, periodically chuckling as they worked.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:20 PM on August 27, 2022 [9 favorites]


I once input as "favorite color" on a government password reset question as "Blue. No! Yelllllowwwww..."

Except, when I actually needed to use that, I had no recollection of how I had "spelled" that.

So I called the helpdesk, and about 1/3 of the way into my explanation of why I needed a reset, the nice lady on the other end noticed my answer and immediately broke out cackling.
posted by stevis23 at 7:14 PM on August 27, 2022 [7 favorites]


If you're ever in Scotland be sure to see Doune Castle, where the majority of this was filmed. There's a great audio tour narrated by Terry Jones, which smartly covers not just the real history of the castle (which was really interesting), but also where each movie scene was filmed.


Mrs Jabo and I visited several years ago and it was a delight to hear Terry's narration which covered more history of the castle than the movie (and sadly it was when he was no longer able to speak in public due to his dementia). I'd love to get a copy of it.

And you could rent plastic coconuts at the gift shop.
posted by jabo at 7:41 PM on August 27, 2022 [2 favorites]


Pope Guilty: As an idealistic teenager I assumed that the People's Front was a comedic exaggeration. Then as an actual adult in activist spaces I was thankful for the gentle warning.
posted by Jilder at 11:38 PM on August 27, 2022 [3 favorites]


bring_out_your_dead.pl

bring_out_your_dead.py would have been too on the nose?
posted by Sparx at 2:15 PM on August 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


One year I happened to put this movie on as background viewing while I wrapped Christmas presents. Ended up watching it 3 times that night, back to back to back. And now it's my go-to Christmas movie.
posted by dorey_oh at 8:22 PM on August 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


I have noticed that recent years have seen a diminishing of the cultural influence of Monty Python, itself. Geek humor is kind of a bit on the outs, due both to how things formerly seen is extremely geeky are now very mainstream (see the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and how willingly nerd culture has chained itself to a raft of terrible ideas ranging from Gamergate to Donald Trump to NFTs.

Also, a reason Monty Python doesn't resonate sometimes with younger people is it's so thoroughly seeped into the soul of the internet. Every TikTok video where someone does something silly/crazy/goofy is the spiritual descendant of stuff like the Parrot Sketch.
posted by JHarris at 9:45 PM on August 28, 2022


at least one of the Pythons had some pretty direct experience in radical spaces

I've always assumed that was Chapman, who was (I think) very active in gay radical politics during the seventies.

As regards the fading of Pythonism... Here's a link to an episode of The Goon Show, which is probably one of the most important cultural phenomena in British popular culture (and, given the huge influence it had on The Beatles and Python, and the entire generation that went on to make 60s and 70s British pop culture, that would make it one of the most influential things ever). If you've never heard it before, this is probably how Python seems to a contemporary Young Person. Imagine being sat down and made to listen to it, and then being expected to laugh.

The Missing No. 10 Downing Street

(When Python were hip, it was The Goon Show that was the sine qua non of tedious comedy quoting. Personally, I laugh like a drain at it, but then I'm 57 years old, and I find Young Person's comedy as perplexing and non-funny as they find the stuff I like. Generations, eh?)
posted by Grangousier at 4:14 AM on August 29, 2022 [1 favorite]


The facing is also substantially a side effect of a million channels and on-demand media, which means we're not longer constrained to watching what's on TV at that time. A whole lot of things are only considered common cultural touchstones because we didn't have the *option* to watch other things. In the US, folks of a certain age watched a lot of episodes of things like "Gilligan's Island" and "Three Stooges" over and over because there weren't a lot of other options. I assume a lot of stuff will only be known to younger kids at one level removed because they know references to it, which is how some stuff from early/mid 20th century is for me because I know it from seeing it parodied in Looney Toons rather than the actual thing it's making fun of.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:15 AM on August 29, 2022 [3 favorites]


"bring_out_your_dead.py would have been too on the nose?" - sparx
No, I just haven't tried to learn python. (It was hard enough to get me to learn perl.)
'Too on the nose' has never stopped me from beating a joke to death.
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 1:47 PM on August 29, 2022


The Imaginary Worlds podcast did an episode called "Camelot Forever" back in early 2021 that has some good discussion of the Arthurian legends and, of course, also discusses this movie - which includes the fact that scholars of Arthurian legends absolutely love it, and appreciate it on pretty deep levels.
posted by nubs at 11:14 AM on August 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


10 years ago or so we saw Spamalot on Broadway & as a souvenir I picked up a t-shirt with "I'm Not Dead Yet" emblazoned on the front. I had just survived a heart attack/triple bypass and thought it appropriate. I still have it and it remains my top commented upon shirt. My Bela Fleck shirt comes in at number 2.
posted by jeporter99 at 12:34 PM on August 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


I tried to watch Excalibur after I'd seen the Holy Grail many times, and I could not take it seriously at all. It destroyed a whole genre for me.
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 1:54 PM on September 12, 2022 [2 favorites]


To be fair, I'm not sure Excalibur should be taken as seriously as it thinks it should be
posted by nubs at 1:56 PM on September 12, 2022 [3 favorites]


« Older She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: Sup...   |  Star Trek: Lower Decks: Ground... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments

poster