VERSE
Oliver, Mary
SNAKES ALIVE! THE SCREEN What Monty Python and the Holy Grail has in common with Monty Python's Flying Circus is the letters M through n, inclusive. ', is naturally excluded. Aside from that these...
...colin l. westerbeck, jr.eck, jr...
...They don't know nothing else...
...And are they funny...
...Could there be another seven like them...
...A short history of comedy will suffice because things are seldom funny for very long...
...If there's anything I can't stand, it's some guy who's dissatisfied all the time when he doesn't even speak the same language...
...The only flaw in it is that it's from Modern Times (1936), so Monty Python and these seven yo-yos from England really can't take any credit for it...
...They are, in effect, seven fellows, seven blokes, bods, chaps-in a word (or so): a queer lot...
...Never have...
...Sacred and profane, Romantical and Classical, heroical and pathetical, Rowan and Martin: it's got all the really big combos in there, and you can catch it at movie palaces from coast to coast as well as in a rundown little Rank theater (former bingo parlor, reconverted) just off Camberwell Green...
...C'est lui...
...Let me make an example of this...
...It would do your heart good to hear them...
...But the trick was they had to see this funny thing...
...Ruddy foreigners...
...Well, sometimes...
...101,319, for instance, is a number that hasn't been able to get a full day's work since around that time...
...Aside from that these two entertainmentae have nothing in common, or rather-outing the in -nothing common...
...As we all know, the key to the secret that unlocks the buried meaning of what makes a funny movie funny is hidden in the password: VISUAL...
...Visual, visual: that was the big deal for them, because, as we all remember, movies only know a visual language...
...From the screen they would scan the audience all the time, and when they would see something funny happen out there, whether in the loge or the orchestra or the balcony-oh my, how those movies would laugh...
...Now that's risual...
...But first he does a little break-step to warm up the audience, and in the process the cuff flies right off his arm, thus leaving him to cope with the girlfriend, the cafe owner, who's plenty steamed let me tell you, and two cops who are, unbeknownst to our poor friend, seated right there at ringside ready to nab the girl...
...There are seven persons who appear, when the Monty Python television show is on, on television, and they just happen to be in this movie two (too...
...Certainly some shared heritage or mutation is indicated...
...Almost no movie has seen anything funny since then, and great numbers have been unemployed...
...The portrait of the French given in the movie is not too complimentary and may cause some minor demonstrations and skirmishing wherever the film is shown...
...But I'll see whether I can't think of some example of the risual from their film too...
...A fellow steps out onto the dance floor to sing a song that his girlfriend has cribbed onto his detachable cuff...
...This is a point these seven sampannai don't appreciate...
...as the French say (c'est...
...But now Monty Python has restored comedy for movies to its true extent by giving us something that goes beyond even the visual: namely, the risual...
...So there you are...
...They must have all been trained by someone now extinct and unable to go on...
...Movies were always on the lookout for this, from the earliest days...
...Meanwhile, you've got to admit that these seven have done pretty well for themselves with this Holy Grail business...
...But then the portrait of the English isn't all that hot either, so those Frogs haven't all that to complain about and can just bug off...
...What killed the visual in movie comedy was of course radio...
...You can hardly ever tell anyway, since it's never made clear which of the seven is which person, anyway, and on top of that they're half of them playing women half the time, as well as men, which makes it just about impossible...
...Are they funny...
...The main way you know these persons are always pretty much the same persons you have seen before when you saw them is by how fast they talk...
...But any resemblance between these seven living or dead is purely coincidental...
...That was in 1929...
Vol. 102 • June 1975 • No. 6
