FLYING WITH 'MONTY PYTHON'
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television FLYING WITH 'MONTY PYTHON' BY MARVIN KITMAN A few Monty Pythons ago-the way I count the days since Monty Python's Flying Circus began appearing on public television is Friday,...
...And there is at present a dearth of material available for the Mobil Oil and Public Television Company to select from...
...This is a subject I know a lot about...
...Indeed, over the months, I have come to believe that it is the funniest series on television today-and this broad statement covers not only Tony Orlando and Dawn but that laugh riot The Mac Davis Show...
...I got 72 per cent of the jokes...
...Channel 13 researchers have discovered that Monty Python viewers are young (18-32), and, as another source put it: "Mobil probably doesn't need these big consumers of gas...
...It would have taken a hell of a scriptwriter to compose one of his Edwardian essays explaining the boys to Americans," one spokesman said...
...But I shouldn't try to repeat any Monty Python routines...
...This particular so-called 10-minute break, which lasted about half an hour, starred Crane Davis, an institution whose stature in public television equals Ed McMahon's in the real world...
...It has been getting some of the highest ratings in PTV history since it premiered last October 6; and in one of those paradoxes of alternative television's brave new world (advanced by such thoughtful educational TV advocates as Jack Gould of the New York Times and the Carnegie Commission), the most popular shows are subjected to the longest delays while pitches for funds are made...
...The most desirable strain of watercress, if we knew what he meant...
...Inside sources told me that one reason the Pythons weren't considered for inclusion in the prestigious series is that Alistair Cooke wouldn't know how to introduce them...
...Then, groups of teen-agers would gather in living rooms for the cinema verite glimpses of a wholesome California family, and laugh at Lance Loud...
...As impressive as the ratings for Monty Python are, I could never understand why the show wasn't originally presented as an attraction on Masterpiece Theater...
...It reminded me of the absurd things one generally sees on the series...
...Though most of the bits are as flat as warm British beer, the Monty Python people are fully aware of this...
...This may have been a factor behind the major revolt that broke out at WNET when that courageous experimental station first considered programming something so completely different...
...Some intelligence is needed to fully appreciate the goings-on...
...As he profoundly droned on, the camera showed a girl undressing in a bedroom...
...These breaks are something completely different for public television (PTV), a recent innovation, an excuse for going to the bathroom or the refrigerator...
...I keep reading complaints that Monty Python is sophomoric...
...None of these opinionmakers seems to have caught on yet that not all the BBC dramas are great...
...It was one of their so-called 10-minute breaks when they try to raise money...
...We have realistic sitcoms like All in the Family, where the writers arc constantly trying to work in comments on politics and life...
...What other program has Ramsey McDonald jokes...
...The Pythons don't speak Cockney...
...Perhaps I should interject here my suspicion that the trouble with American TV humor is that one always gets the jokes...
...We have the whole double entendre...
...Actually, the first Monty Python episode I saw was disappointing in this sense...
...You don't laugh...
...Monty Python is British...
...They said they feared the folks on Long Island wouldn't get it...
...These days, you admire the artistry of a Bob Hope or a Lucille Ball or any of our other great masters of comedy in an academic way ("Oh...
...It already has obscene profits...
...They rely on a very insane, truly visual humor, that has to be seen to be appreciated...
...Now they gather in groups to laugh at the Pythons, a sick "British family" of six boys who like to dress up a lot, none of whom is named Monty...
...But Mobil has to have the highbrows to corroborate its good works, and Monty Python is just fun and giggles...
...Reruns of the reruns began on January 5, and played until the consortium of 50-or-so stations headed by Channel 13 could negotiate a second package of 26 programs...
...Maybe I wouldn't mind so much if there were more watercress in my life...
...Proponents of running the ribald, irreverent and totally mad series argued that it didn't matter if they got it in Mineola or even Setauket...
...viewing time for a message from the sponsor, the station management of New York City's WNET/13...
...Monty Python is funnier than Coronation Street, and even than Princess Anne's wedding...
...The U.S...
...And there's always something every half hour that makes me laugh out loud...
...Python's special brand of humor are kids and adults with warped minds, people who don't normally watch PTV...
...What I like most about the Python series is that you never quite know what to expect next-an entirely different situation from that of your average, predictable American TV comedy...
...One faction, led by top station official Robert Kotlowitz, didn't want to put on Mr...
...Those who go for Mr...
...Besides, the audience is all wrong...
...Twelve Monty Pythons ago, an educational TV professor-type on the program was delivering a lecture on the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the agrarian movement in the Balkans...
...On the other hand, I do have a few deep thoughts on the show's significance...
...Monty Python brings a breath of badly needed foul air to television...
...But before Monty Python, TV provided no unadulterated, unrelieved silliness...
...Finally, Python is in deplorably questionable taste...
...I think of Davis as a kind of Count Dracula, who comes out when the sun goes down and tries to get blood out of a stone (me...
...In fact, now that Upstairs, Downstairs has ended, Masterpiece Theater has been reduced to showing a lot of minorpieces like The Higgler...
...Following a brief demonstration of how to throw a Monty Python record around the studio as if it were a frisbee-a highlight of the act was hitting the station manager in the eye-Davis explained that for a $100 pledge, the donor would receive a one-pound bag of genuine, freshly cut Mexican watercress to enhance the viewing of Monty Python's Flying Circus For a $1,000 pledge, the angel would be sent a 20-pound bag-with seeds...
...The movers and shakers are the intellectuals who watch Masterpiece Theater in awe, regardless of what's offered, as long as it's drama and it's spoken by persons with British accents...
...Now, that's what I call ludicrous...
...Their show is no Coronation Street, which bewildered thousands when it ran on Channel 13 last year...
...So, to the narrow-minded, who are not twisted enough to enjoy offensive fun...
...Still, it smacks of commercial television's principles...
...The supporters even conceded that an American TV viewer might get only a few of the jokes...
...This time, there was entertainment along with the sales pitch, a technique the intellectuals may have learned from the commercial networks...
...The sound is startling...
...We have filth, as in Hot I Baltimore...
...We have topical humor, as on The Smothers Brothers...
...and quickly take off in another crazy direction...
...Not understanding all the gags may be the key to laughter in the last quarter of the century...
...The practice certainly makes good business sense...
...Last year Masterpiece Theater had to suffer this indignity...
...The language, moreover, was surprisingly understandable...
...There is plenty of freshmanic and juniorish and seniorish comedy on television, but a dearth of good sophomoric humor...
...After all, 10 minutes with him can be like 10 days in the country with Uncle Vanya...
...It was British humour, they insisted, not Lucille Ball...
...they're doing that sketch again...
...Monty Python's, humor is sheer nonsense, and we have no sheer nonsense on American television...
...Public television's original set of 13 episodes was culled from the Monty Python Flying Circus archives at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), where the show has been on the air since 1969...
...It just needs the movers and shakers...
...The show is an abomination to feminists...
...This is the sort of thing New York City's Monty Python fans, or Pythonians, have to put up with because the show is such a hit...
...series ended last December 29...
...One rarely sees a woman on it who is not nude, or sporting unusually large breasts...
...It's a completely different kind of audience than public television usually gets...
...What is worse, the boys play most of the female roles in drag...
...But as a result of the ratings, the price of the second Python package was double that of the first...
...Nobody else in the United States is interested in buying the rights to the show, so BBC has scored a coup by having the consortium drive up the price against itself...
...The more scholarly the lecture grew, the more clothes came off...
...Be that as it may, Monty Python's Flying Circus is, in many ways, a television phenomenon...
...These started on April 6-an Easter present for the audience...
...To the esthetes working for public TV in New York City, Long Island is the little old lady in Dubuque...
...On Television FLYING WITH 'MONTY PYTHON' BY MARVIN KITMAN A few Monty Pythons ago-the way I count the days since Monty Python's Flying Circus began appearing on public television is Friday, Saturday, Monty Python, Monday, Tuesday, etc.-my all-time favorite show was delayed slightly past its 10:30 p.m...
...Dean Martin school of humor, alive and living in widely watched obscurity on daytime game shows like Tattletales...
...Stop the scene...
...As soon as Davis' face comes on the screen, I automatically want to have a beer-a Heineken or Lowenbrau, of course, not a Bud...
...The old policy of uninterrupted programming on Channel 13 had always been hard on viewers, their physiological systems having been conditioned by commercial TV...
...Sometimes they are noteworthy only for capturing the spirit of '40s British movies-mediocrity...
...It is the first cult on the public's air since An American Family two years ago...
...The actors' accents are just as strange to American ears...
...Why should PTV's management waste its creative sales energy talking to the three people who watch Sir Kenneth Clark and his Romantic Rebellion...
...and to the high-standards crowd, who think Python is just stupid nonsense, let me say this: blow it out your ear...
...That," a WNET executive observed, "is what is known as business...
...There is something in each segment to offend every interest group, from worshippers of dead parrots to transvestite lumberjacks to exploding penguins...
...I didn't...
...They will interrupt a sketch that is going nowhere, announcing, "This is silly...
Vol. 58 • June 1975 • No. 12
