Monty Python Speaks! Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Monty Python Speaks! Book

Sensibly eschewing any attempt to emulate the inspired lunacy of Monty Python's Flying Circus, this excellent oral history offers instead a straightforward but fascinating peek behind the scenes. Extensive interviews with the team of madmen who created the legendary British television series and four feature films (except Graham Chapman, who died in 1989) give a vivid sense of the dynamic interplay of personalities that revolutionized contemporary comedy, disdaining punch lines and blackout skits in favor of something much weirder and more free-form. The writing duo of Cambridge grads Chapman and John Cleese favored confrontational, deliberately shocking pieces like the infamous Undertaker sketch ("I think we've got an eater!"). Oxford alums Terry Jones and Michael Palin took a more surreal approach to writing ("Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition"). And Eric Idle, who preferred to write alone, was the cheeky one ("nudge, nudge") as well as a respected sounding board for others' ideas. Terry Gilliam, the sole American, provided the wacky animation that gave the show its visual style. It was, as Gilliam remarks, "this amazing chemical balance... I don't think you could invent a group that would work better." All the Pythons are frank about personal and creative differences, making this a thoughtful assessment rather than a hagiography. --Wendy Smith Read More

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  • Product Description

    When the innovative comedy group Monty Python embarked on their unique partnership, combining intelligence with silliness in a stream-of-consciousness display of nonsense, satire, sex and violence, they made a mark on popular culture which is still being felt today. Now, on their 30th anniversary, the five surviving Pythons -- along with some chief co-conspirators including BBC's Barry Took and Ian MacNaughton, the late Graham Chapman's companion David Sherlock, and the legendary Douglas Adams -- remember what it was like to build a comedic collaboration for the ages.

    Monty Python was a state of mind -- a way of looking at the world as a place where walking like a contortionist is not only considered normal but is rewarded with government funding, where people speak in anagrams or operate a cheese-less cheeseshop, where highwaymen redistribute wealth in floral currencies and knights hop around on imaginary steeds. Here in their own words - and with rare backstage photographs never before published -- is a look into that rare collective mind: the story of the Pythons' meeting, their collaboration, their clashes, their struggles to maintain artistic control over their work, and their efforts to expand themselves creatively-from television to films, books, recordings and stage shows. Here are the artists who made their personal mark on humor, engendered amazing passion from their fans worldwide, and built a lasting monument to spam (the luncheon meat, not the e-mail). In short, it's...Monty Python Speaks!

  • 0380804794
  • 9780380804795
  • David Morgan
  • 28 June 1999
  • Avon Books
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 352
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