Hacker Cinema
Monty Python's Flying Circus
1969 · TV series · 4 seasons
Created by Ian MacNaughton, John Howard Davies
A British sketch comedy series with the shows being composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines.
7 positive1 negative7 neutralfrom 15 commenters
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15 comments on Hacker News
I'm most reminded of not the movies as much but -- Monty Python's Flying Circus? Same kind of ... "uh what?" vibe.
BIg swords weren't made to cut down an enemy in half. They were made to bring down a knight riding a horse.
You didn't club it, but bashed it down with a swing.
Also, the Middle Ages weren't as dirty as you think, the British wrote a Black Legend about them. The 20th century movies didn't help neither. I'm not talking about Monty Python, but the supossedly serious dramas set on that era.
For instance, I'm pretty sure the 13-14th centuries were completely different to the 8th or 9th ones in technology, development and culture.
This thinking school was almost in the Enlightenment era, but we can perfectly place it at the end of the Middle Ages as the kickstart of the modern rights born in the Enlightenment:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca
And, of course, before these there were the Italians and the Humanist movement.
In Star Trek, one thing that I always found weird as a kid is they didn't have TVs. Even if the holodeck is a much better experience, I imagine sometimes you would want to watch a movie and not be in the movie. Did the future not have works like No Country for Old Men or comedies like Monty Python, or even just stuff like live sports and the news?
Nowadays we know why the crew of the enterprise all go to live performances of Shakespeare and practice musical instruments and painting themselves: electronic mediums are so full of AI slop there is nothing worth see, only endless deluges of sludge.
"comparatively, very few episodes. Especially places like the UK"
OK - Fawlty Towers: 12 episodes. Now, look up the Two Ronnies, Morecambe and Wise, Victoria Wood, Absolutely Fabulous, French and Saunders, Lenny Henry, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Ben Elton, The Fast Show, ... oh and I'm watching Dawn French doing current stand up right now. Jo Brand, ... oh this is getting boring and I've missed out loads. That's just a few comedians.
We have a few soaps that have stood the test of time too and a few current affairs programmes that have been around for a while: Coronation Street, East Enders, Have I got News for you, QI, The Archers, Panorama.
The BBC alone has been running for quite a while and I'll finish with an honourable mention for Blue Peter.
I haven't really refuted your argument but then that was pretty arse to start with. Gave me an excuse to reminisce for a while 8)
I am a huge fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus (watched all episodes and own it on disc and as a book), but I never understood why people go crazy about The Holy Grail. The humor feels different, more silly with less wit to it.
The answer to that question depend on what kind of quantity and quality that the shunning had on a person. At the extreme end we have massive discrimination of whole demographic because something a single person said or did, and at the other end we have zero reaction.
We can look at notable events in history, like say Monty Python's Flying Circus and the Monty Python films. Those were censored in some countries and got shunned by Catholics, but they did not get fired, their homes did not get turned on fire, the shows did still air on TV and movie studies in the UK, they continued to get employment later in life and in general was not that shunned by society at large. How they treated Catholics was not compared to the Nazi. UK flags was not burned nor did anyone break into UK embassies.
So that is one level of free speech we can compare with. Catholics may disapprove of what Monty Python said and did, but as a society we should defend the level of free speech that Monty Python performed. We should avoid having consequences of Monty Python-level of free speech be worse than what Monty Python received back in 1979.
For me personally, I spent most of the 70's bored to death in school, but I got to come home and watch shows like "International Animation Festival" on Channel 13 (PBS if you grew up in the NYC area). They also had the first run of Monty Python's Flying Circus in the US, which was one of the few things me and my dad enjoyed together.
But the bulk the animation shown on PBS came from the NFB - The National Film Board of Canada, which provided the retro aestheics that were later adopted by Boards of Canada.
https://youtu.be/upsZZ2s3xv8
For those unfamiliar with Monty Python's Flying Circus, "The Golden Age of Ballooning" is the first episode of the fourth and final season, notable for being the first episode without John Cleese.[0]
No idea if 9front is intentionally referring to this.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0650996/
I just began watching the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus (the TV show) for the first time last night (it was released almost 50 years ago today), and I could not believe how insanely funny it was.
I assumed that because of it's age, it would be at least a bit outdated.
Perhaps it was just way ahead of it's time?
IMHO, the problem with Netflix is: 1. Too few shows that I actually want to watch: The office, Futurama etc are no longer on Netflix 2. The original content is very hit and miss, and mostly misses. By the time I find out about a series and start watching, they cancel it. They need to realize that it takes time for people to find out about series and at times it can take two to three years. You can do agile dev with content 3. Binging one or two series is fine, but there is very little "weekly programming".Sometimes, I just want to catch one episode of something a week 4. The movie catalog is abysmal, with the exception of the Monty Python stuff 5. The UI is just actively hostile. Let me set my defaults across all shows (no intro, thirty seconds between shows etc)
Where did you live in 1977 that only had 3 channels? I was in the greater LA media market and I think we received about 20 terrestrial channels counting all the UHF. About every other VHF channel picked something up.
Also, my recollection is that TV airing of movies that were a couple of years old was a bfd back then. My father worked 2pm to 10pm in 1977 and he and my mom were huge monty python fans, so I bet they watched it.
It also aired on PBS, the dates are not in the wikipedia article, but by the time the Carter incident became public it might have aired a few times.
And 1975 is when Monty Python started to show on public television in the US (vs 1969 on BBC). I was only 7 in 1979, but I know we as a family watched flying circus when it aired (I didn't control the TV during prime time, but flying circus, dr who, nova, macneil lehrer newshour, some business news show, and yoga are all shows I remember watching with my parents on PBS) https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/26/archives/monty-pythons-flying-circus-is-barnstorming-here.html?searchResultPosition=2
A 1979 NYT article called it a "killer rabbit" https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/30/archives/a-tale-of-carter-and-the-killer-rabbit-president-orders-photograph.html
I find it hard to believe there were not any people who made some humorous connections between the killer rabbit of caerbannog and the killer rabbit of a Plains, Georgia pond.
Eh, not sure it's all art. Some mediums (like hollywood blockbuster movies and video games) lend themselves to more of a team effort than a solo artist one, and there are classics in those mediums/artforms too.
There are also quite a few British TV shows made by duos and small teams rather than a single creator, including some of the best in the medium. Like Fawlty Towers, Dad's Army and Monty Python's Flying Circus.
I always appreciate that Hulu has its Criterion collection section.
And I very recently signed up for Seeso for $4 a month because I was craving some Monty Python's Flying Circus. I don't plan on keeping it long term, maybe just a month, to get it out of my system.
And then I still end up digging through shitty cheap roku channels occasionally to find stuff. Mostly just schlock, but I saw, for example, niche titles like Millennium Actress, Ninja Scroll, and Ghost in the Shell 2 on free services.
The idea of one streaming service that has it all is dead, but it kind of reminds me of DVD bundles at Walmart. 10 Sci Fi movies for $10, and one of them will be Existenz and the rest will be straight to TV or DVD.
For instance, the accent of one of the main characters in Monty Python's Flying Circus. Which one is it?
Or any other std TV shows, which have more or less standardized accents, no?
That said, I did not entirely agree with them :)
I agree that Kickstarter is unlikely to raise 300 million dollars for the next Hobbit trilogy. I disagree that a huge blockbuster will never be crowdfunded. Transformers, Harry Potter, and Avatar all cost less than 300 million dollars. 30 million people pre-paying 10 dollars is not ridiculous, when you look at how many people use Google, and how many users Facebook claims to have.
Surprisingly, movie studios don't necessarily fund the projects that they profit from. Since you mentioned LotR universe:
"New Line made enough pre-sales in foreign markets, and there were enough subsidies to pretty much cover their costs. New Zealand was not the only subsidy. There was also the British Commonwealth subsidy and the German tax subsidy in those days. New Line didn't have to put up any cash to make that movie."
Also movie studios consistently claim to not make profits from their movies.
"However, New Line later produced accounts showing that instead of making a profit, the movies made "horrendous losses". According to Hubbard: "We found it surprising because it was one of the biggest box office success of all time.""
Other funding options: a company could start making short films and then transition into making larger, more expensive ones once it gains the trust of its audience. The films could be broken into "episodes" to reduce the amount of money that each chunk would cost. This all ignores patronage, another alternative funding mode.
Lastly, most movies aren't blockbusters. Even if everything I just said is a lie, the vast majority of movies will be just fine, because their budgets are laughably small. District 9 was shot for 30 million dollars. Primer was shot for 7000 dollars. When Harry Met Sally cost 16 million dollars. Citizen Kane cost 15 million. Pretty Woman cost 14 million. The government funded BBC has produced such things like The Office, Monty Python, and Billy Elliot on less than 5 million each.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10693123
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting#Examples