Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Narrative

• Universal
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters
• Characters As Device
• Dialogue
• Motifs
• Narrative Devices
• Paratext
• Plots
• Settings
• Spectacle

Genre

• Action Adventure
• Comedy
• Commercials
• Crime And Punishment
• Drama
• Horror
• Love
• News
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• War

Media

• Animation (Western)
• Anime
• Comic Book
• Fan Fics
• Film
• Game
• Literature
• Music And Sound Effects
• New Media
• Print Media
• Radio
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Television
• Theater
• Videogame
• Webcomics

Topical Tropes

• Betrayal
• Censorship
• Combat
• Death
• Family
• Fate And Prophecy
• Food
• Holiday
• Memory
• Money
• Morality
• Politics
• Religion
• School

Other Categories

• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Creators
• Derivative Works
• Did Not Do The Research
• Language
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Stock Room
• Trope
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Weirdness Isolation

redirected from Main.MontyPython

And now for something completely different.
It's...

Monty Python's Flying Circus featured some very well-educated clowns. Three of them (John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle) met at Cambridge University where they were members of The Footlights, a celebrated performing society. Two others (Terry Jones, Michael Palin) had been similarly occupied at Oxford at about the same time. Cleese met Terry Gilliam — the one American in the group, then a cartoonist for the humor magazine Help!? — during the US tour of "The Footlights Revue." In 1967 Idle, Palin, Jones and Gilliam wrote and starred in the English TV series, Do Not Adjust Your Set. In 1967 Cleese and Chapman joined together with the likes of Tim-Brooke Taylor to produce At Last The 1948 Show, and in 1968 the two provided additional material for the unruly satire The Magic Christian. They all came together the following year to form Monty Python's Flying Circus. British-born/American-raised actress Carol Cleveland is the unofficial seventh member and comedic musician Neil Innes in the unofficial eighth member.

Monty Python invaded America with rebroadcasts on local PBS stations, two ABC late-night specials in 1975 and a 1988 video release. They found a relatively small but devoted and appreciative audience stateside and influenced many American sketch comedy series over the years. The success of their inspired lunacy has generated four films to date, each featuring the performers in multiple roles before and behind the camera. Its fame in Britain is much larger, and the show is considered by many to be the best television program ever made in the UK. Quoting a line from almost any sketch or one of the films triggers either a hail of quotes or a chorus of groans.

The show's humour has spawned its own adjective- Pythonesque. Sketches end without punchlines, the Pythons sometimes go out of character mid-sketch and declare it to be silly and... We also haven't mentioned the crudely done, but hilarious animated interludes.

The Pythons have established a YouTube channel as well. Which is available worldwide!

Thanks for some of the description go to Monty Python's Completely Useless Web Site, which has loads of current information on the cast, clips, and a supply of original scripts. http://www.intriguing.com/mp/

Some of the most famous sketches were:

• Argument Clinic ("Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position." "Yes, but that's not just saying 'no, it isn't'!" "Yes, it is!" "No, it isn't!" *Beat*)
• Bruce Sketch/Philosopher's Song
• Cheese Shop (The Long List)
• Dead Parrot ("This is an ex-parrot!")
• Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook (Which gave us "My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels")
• Four Yorkshiremen (Which was not written for MPFC, but was instead created for At Last The 1948 Show, in which Cleese starred along with Young Frankenstein's Marty Feldman. Its use in other Python stuff has led to many attributing it mistakenly to Python.)
• Lumberjack Song ("I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars.")
• Penguin Sketch
• Self Defense Against Fresh Fruit ("No pointed stick?" "SHUT UP.")
• Spanish Inquisition ("NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!" "Fetch... the comfy chair!")
• Spam ("Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, LOVELY SPAM!! WONDERFUL SPAM!! LOVELY SPAM!! WONDERFUL SPAM!!"): Yes, Monty Python unwittingly inspired the current usage of the word spam (As in spam e-mail: something irrelevant, repeated ad nauseum, not the meat product whose name they used)
• Sergeant Major (Marching up and down the square... alone.)
• The Ministry of Silly Walks ("It's not particularly silly, is it? I mean, the right leg isn't silly at all and the left leg merely does a forward aerial half turn every alternate step.")
  • It's a Forward Aerial O'Brian Half Turn in Live At The Hollywood Bowl.
• Upper Class Twit of the Year (Kick the beggar and insult the waiter.)
• The Funniest Joke in the World ("Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!")
• The Colonel (Would appear in the middle of a sketch, declare it to be silly, and tell everyone to leave. "I've noticed a tendency for this program to get rather silly.")

They had a series of full motion pictures that are almost universally considered classics in the UK.

• And Now For Something Completely Different (1971): A collection of their best sketches from the Flying Circus, reshot on film to introduce the team to American audiences, who didn't catch on quite yet.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975): King Arthur and his knights search for the Holy Grail, infamous for such scenes as the Taunting French Knight and the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. Adapted into a Broadway musical, Spamalot!.
• Monty Python's Life Of Brian (1979): The life (and death) of a man whose life is suspiciously similar to Jesus, famous for The Long List scene "What have the Romans ever done for us?".
• Monty Python Live At The Hollywood Bowl (1982): Essentially a concert film; the Pythons recreated their most famous sketches and songs live on stage for an audience of thousands, who cheered and chanted their favorite lines along with the Pythons.
• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983): A guide from birth to death, all the important stages of human life.

All of which are also scathingly satirical and hilarious.

---

This show inspired the names for:

• Drop The Cow
• My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels
• Silly Walk
• Something Completely Different
• There Is No Rule Six

It provides examples of:

• All Just A Dream (Subverted in Cycling Tour: "So it was all a dream." "No, this is the dream, you are back in the cell.")
• Badass Preacher ("The Bishop". Well, he tries to be one, anyway.)
• Bawdy Song (Several.)
• Beyond The Impossible (From Meaning Of Life — Just when you think the "Every Sperm Is Sacred" musical number can't get any more over the top... The "live organ transplant" from the same film also probably qualifies.)
• Blessed Are The Cheesemakers (The Cheese Shop Sketch. Also the Trope Namer, by way of Life Of Brian.)
• Bloodier And Gorier (Parodied in the "Salad Days" sketch.)
• Bosom Buddies (All the Pythons dress up as women at least once. Terry Jones and Graham Chapman specialized in squeaky-voiced elderly ratbags, whereas Michael Palin and Eric Idle portrayed rather convincing middle-aged women, and John Cleese and Terry Gilliam were simply bizarre.)
• Bowdlerise (Bowdlerisation ruined the "Summarize Proust" sketch by cutting out the marginally offensive punchline of one joke but leaving the remainder of the joke intact, completely disrupting the rhythm of the piece.)
• Bread Eggs Milk Squick The Lumberjack Song is possibly the most famous version.
• Camp Gay (A frequent source of humor in the show's early days, something about which Terry Jones later expressed regret.)
• Catch Phrase ("It's...", "And now for something completely different", and others)
  • In fact, the latter phrase was originally from Blue Peter, but is only now associated with Python.
• Cloudcuckoolander (Pick a character. Any character.)
• Crosses The Line Twice (The Election Night Special has a candidate whose name is an extremely Overly Long Gag, to the point where it loops around from being tedious to fall-out-of-your-seat funny.)
• Cut His Heart Out With A Spoon
• The Disease That Shall Not Be Named: Like so:
  There once was an enchanted Prince, who lived beyond the wobbles.
  One day he noticed a spot on his face.
  Foolishly he ignored it and three years later died of GANGRENE.
• Disorganized Outline Speech ("Our two weapons are fear and surprise and a ruthless efficiency...")
• Distracting Disambiguation
• Drop The Cow ("Fetchez la vache!")
• Everything's Better With Penguins (One on the telly (that explodes), and a giant one with electrified tentacles.)
• Executive Meddling (If the episode with the Tudor porn shop seems disjointed, that's because it had to be edited rather severely before it was allowed to air.)
• Failed Attempt At Drama (The Spanish Inquisition)
• Fake American
• Fun With Foreign Languages
• Gossipy Hens (The Pepperpots.)
• Hurricane Of Euphemisms ("He's not pining, he's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! ...THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!" etc.)
• Hypocritical Humor (shows up constantly, though none more so in the Argument Clinic sketch where the actors in said sketch are accused of taking part in a sketch with intent of inflicting grievous mental confusion. It's later lampshaded when the policeman who comes in to arrest them for this is himself arrested for the same crime.)
• I Am Not Shazam
• Idiosyncratic Wipes (Scenes separated by long, animated sequences.)
• If You Know What I Mean ("Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, say no more")
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy (In the "Cycling Tour" episode, Palin is put in front of a firing squad, and everyone misses)
• In Name Only (Parodied in the "Scott of the Antarctic" sketch)
• Japanese Ranguage ("Erizabeth L")
• Just The Introduction To The Opposites (The gang of grannies, the playwright and his estranged miner son.)
• Juxtaposition Gag
• Kon Tiki Plot ("Mr. and Mrs. Brian Norris's Ford Popular".)
• Kray Winstone (The Piranha brothers.)
• Larynx Dissonance (If any of them could do a convincing woman's voice, they certainly didn't try it, since it wouldn't be as funny.)
• Le Film Artistique ("Le Fromage Grand")
• Look Both Ways
• Made From Real Girl Scouts (The entire premise of the Crunchy Frog sketch)
• Mandatory Line ("But it's my only line!")
• Medium Blending (The cartoon segments.)
• Missing Episode (The "Political Choreographers" sketch was edited out of one episode after its initial broadcast and apparently only survives in a low-quality off-air recording.)
  • Additionally, most episodes of the two Python precursor series, Do Not Adjust Your Set and At Last The 1948 Show, have been wiped.
• Mistaken For Badass
• Ms Fanservice (Carol Cleveland, often used when the Pythons needed an actual woman, as opposed to Eric-in-drag. They called her "Carol Cleavage". She was a busty blonde.)
• Money Song (Trope Namer)
• Motor Mouth (Mr. Smoke-Too-Much, of the "Travel Agent" sketch.)
• The Musical
• Musicalis Interruptus (the Proust song.)
• My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels (The Trope Namer.)
• My Name Is Not Durwood (Raymond Luxury-Yacht, pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove".)
• Nightmare Fuel (The Mr. Creosote scene in The Meaning of Life.)
• No Indoor Voice (The Gumbys)
• No One Should Survive That
• Not Actually The Ultimate Question (Dennis Moore.)
• Ooh Me Accent's Slipping
• One Steve Limit (Inverted with the Bruces)
  • Also, there was an incredible number of people named Arthur, and an even greater number named Eric.
• Perfectly Cromulent Word (Splunge.)
• Ralph Wiggum (Anyone named Gumby.)
• Real Song Theme Tune ("The Liberty Bell March", by John Philip Sousa. Today, it is inextricably linked to the Pythons.)
• Refuge In Audacity (Actually instead of taking refuge, they seemed to have moved into audacity, and regularly invite people over for tea.)
• Reluctant Warrior
• Rock Paper Scissors
• Rule Of Funny (Until they get stopped for being silly by the colonel. Or the Knight with a Rubber Chicken comes to slap someone. Or the large weight drops on someone. Or...)
• Running Gag (Quite a few.)
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny (Not so much the actual shows and movies, but hearing people recite their favorite sketches for the 16,016th time can be aggravating, to say the least.)
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness
• Shout Out Live Action TV: The "Confess!" segment of the Spanish Inquisition sketch and a scene in The Prisoner episode "Fall Out".
• Sixth Ranger (Or Seventh: Carol Cleveland, who was in more sketches than anyone else who wasn't a writer for the show.)
  • Neil Innes can also make a claim for this title, given that he contributed much of the music for the shows and films and was an indispensable part of the troupe's stage shows.
  • Aside from Cleveland, the woman most frequently seen was Cleese's then-wife Connie Booth (she's the woman Michael Palin is holding in the Lumberjack Song). She'd be even more important to Fawlty Towers.
• Sketch Comedy
• Small Reference Pools (Completely averted.)
• Speak Of The Devil (Look, I'm not expecting the Spanish Inquisition here, okay?)
  • No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
• Spy Speak (Played for laughs.)
• Studio Audience (In the "Undertakers' Sketch", they rush the stage in mock indignation)
• Suspiciously Specific Denial (The Bruces using "No pooftahs" as four out of their seven rules of conduct is made especially suspicious by the fact that "Bruce" was considered a stereotypical gay name in the 60s and 70s.)
• That's All, Folks!
• Theme Tune (First movement of Sousa's "Liberty Bell", chosen as it is public domain, to save money)
• Trope Makers
• True Art Sticks It To The Man (Some parts of their Fandom claim they were deliberately subversive in their humor. While the Pythons do admit to mocking some conventions, they insist they "were just sniggering little schoolboys having a laugh at everything.")
• Unfunny (the army officer, who stops sketches for being silly)
• Unusual Euphemism ("Oh, intercourse the penguin!")
• Video Inside Film Outside ("Good Lord, I'm on film!")
• What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome (BICYCLE REPAIRMAN! And others.)
• What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous? (Frequently mocked, particularly in the sketch with the "bit of a dirty fork".)
• World Of Chaos (Most of their animated interludes are set there)

---