Are There Limits for a Sitcom Premise? A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast (#47) Discussion and Quiz

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | June 10th, 2020

Sit­coms pro­vide a form of escapism that does­n’t take one to a mag­i­cal world of pos­si­bil­i­ty, but instead to a basi­cal­ly unchang­ing, cozy envi­ron­ment with relat­able char­ac­ters engaged in low-stakes con­flicts.

So what are the lim­its on the type of premise that can ground a sit­com? While most of the longest last­ing sit­coms have sim­ple set-ups involv­ing friends or co-work­ers, stream­ing has led to more seri­al­iza­tion and hence wider plot pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Does this mean that the era of sit­coms has come to an end? Or has the genre just broad­ened to admit entries like Ricky Ger­vais’ After Life and Derek, Har­mon & Roi­land’s Rick & Morty, Greg Daniels’ Upload and Space Force, and Arman­do Ian­nuc­ci’s Avenue 5?

In this low-stakes, feel-good dis­cus­sion, Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an also touch on the Parks & Recre­ation reunion spe­cial, Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, It’s Always Sun­ny in Philadel­phia, Com­mu­ni­ty, Mod­ern Fam­i­ly, Red Oaks, The Simp­sons, Last Man on Earth, WOOPS!, the stain of Chuck Lorre, and more. Plus a quiz to guess which weird sit­com premis­es are real and which Mark made up.

Incor­po­rate these arti­cles into your sit­u­a­tion:

If you enjoy this dis­cus­sion, check out our pre­vi­ous episodes on Friends and The Good Place.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Al Jaffee, Iconic Mad Magazine Cartoonist, Retires at Age 99 … and Leaves Behind Advice About Living the Creative Life

in Art, Comedy, Magazines | June 9th, 2020

Apart from Alfred E. Neu­man, there is no Al more close­ly iden­ti­fied with Mad mag­a­zine than Al Jaf­fee. Born in 1921, he was around for more than 30 years before the launch of that satir­i­cal mag­a­zine turned Amer­i­can cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non — and now, at age 99, he’s on track to out­live it. Just this week, the longest-work­ing car­toon­ist in his­to­ry and inven­tor of the Fold-In announced his retire­ment, and “to mark his farewell,” writes the Wash­ing­ton Post’s Michael Cav­na, “Mad’s ‘Usu­al Gang of Idiots’ will salute Jaf­fee with a trib­ute issue next week. It will be the magazine’s final reg­u­lar issue to offer new mate­r­i­al, includ­ing Jaffee’s final Fold-In, 65 years after he made his Mad debut.”

Over these past six and a half decades, Jaf­fee has drawn praise for his wit and ver­sa­til­i­ty. But all through­out his career, he’s also man­aged to com­bine those qual­i­ties with seem­ing­ly unstop­pable pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. “I am essen­tial­ly a com­mer­cial artist,” Jaf­fee says in this brief two-part inter­view from OnCre­ativ­i­ty. “I will not try to save time, ever, on my work by going through it quick­ly and just get­ting it done. I have to be as sat­is­fied with it as the per­son who’s going to buy it from me.”

When an assign­ment comes in, he con­tin­ues, “I will not deliv­er it until I am sat­is­fied that I would buy it.” This requires a clear under­stand­ing of the clien­t’s needs — “you are there to solve their prob­lems,” he empha­sizes — as well as the will­ing­ness to turn down not-quite-suit­able jobs.

Of course Jaf­fee said all this in his younger days, back when he was only 96. Per­haps it isn’t sur­pris­ing that a man in his hun­dredth year would decide to step back from his worka­day sched­ule (his Fold-Ins alone num­ber near­ly 500) and focus on the projects from which com­mer­cial exi­gen­cies might have dis­tract­ed him. “I do fine art for my own amuse­ment,” he say in this inter­view. “We should all feel free to amuse our­selves that way and just hang every­thing we do up on the refrig­er­a­tor.” But he also express­es the wish to “cre­ate a cou­ple more things before I kick the buck­et.” This after, as he puts it to Cav­na, “liv­ing the life I want­ed all along, which was to make peo­ple think and laugh.” Now Jaf­fee’s younger read­ers have the chance to think hard and laugh hard­er as they catch up on era upon era of his past work — not that, strict­ly speak­ing, he has any old­er read­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Al Jaf­fee, the Longest Work­ing Car­toon­ist in His­to­ry, Shows How He Invent­ed the Icon­ic “Folds-Ins” for Mad Mag­a­zine

Every Cov­er of Mad Mag­a­zine, from 1952 to the Present: Behold 553 Cov­ers from the Satir­i­cal Pub­li­ca­tion

A Gallery of Mad Magazine’s Rol­lick­ing Fake Adver­tise­ments from the 1960s

When Mad Mag­a­zine Ruf­fled the Feath­ers of the FBI, Not Once But Three Times

Watch Mad Magazine’s Edgy, Nev­er-Aired TV Spe­cial (1974)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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When Lucy Lawless Impersonated Stevie Nicks & Imagined Her as the Owner of a Bad Tex-Mex Restaurant: A Cult Classic SNL Skit

in Comedy, Music, Television | June 5th, 2020

What we wouldn’t give to trav­el back in time to Sedona, Ari­zona for a non-social­ly-dis­tanced $2.99 Tues­day night bur­ri­to spe­cial at Ste­vie Nicks’ Faji­ta Roundup, the hun­dredth best restau­rant in this 161-restau­rant town accord­ing to one rat­ings site.

Alas, the clos­est this Fleet­wood Mac‑flavored Tex-Mex estab­lish­ment has ever come to phys­i­cal exis­tence was in Octo­ber 1998 when actor Lucy Law­less, famous then as now for play­ing Xena the War­rior Princess, was host­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live.

The day before the Wednes­day table read to deter­mine which sketch­es will make it on air, writer Hugh Fink got wind of Law­less’ Ste­vie Nicks imper­son­ation (she also does a mean Chrissie Hyn­de…)

Fink thought this was some­thing to build on, inspired by his dad’s Fleet­wood Mac fan­dom, and the fact that Nicks’ star had dimmed a bit since the band’s 70’s hey­day, when its mem­bers’ inter­per­son­al rela­tions were a hot top­ic and Rumours, still the 8th best sell­ing album of all time, dom­i­nat­ed.

He joined forces with fel­low staff writer, Nicks fan Scott Wainio, tar­ry­ing ’til the wee hours of Wednes­day morn­ing to begin cast­ing about for com­ic ideas of how the sexy, shawl-draped fairy god­moth­er of rock ‘n’ roll might spend her off duty hours, now that “Lind­say Buck­ing­ham and cocaine” were in the rear view.

They decid­ed that hav­ing her own a bar­gain-priced local eatery sim­i­lar to the ones Fink remem­bered din­ing in as a tour­ing stand up was their best bet…and what more fit­ting locale than New Age mec­ca Sedona?

Plot-dri­ven SNL skits often peter out en route from a strong open­ing premise to the end­ing.

As a com­mer­cial par­o­dy, Ste­vie Nicks’ Faji­ta Roundup has no such trou­ble.

As Fink recent­ly recalled in an inter­view with The Ringer’s Dan Devine:

I want­ed this com­mer­cial to come off as not a classy, nation­al­ly pro­duced ad, but clear­ly a cheap, local­ly pro­duced com­mer­cial for a shit­ty restau­rant and that’s why, even in the script, at the time, I put in those cut­aways of, like, real­ly unap­peal­ing, bad-look­ing food with the price, and adver­tis­ing spe­cials. Comed­ical­ly, I thought it’d be even fun­nier if the restau­rant was cheap. The research depart­ment had to get me pho­tos of the Mex­i­can food, which I would approve. I would tell them, ‘No, I want it to look shit­ti­er than that. That looks too good.

The research depart­ment def­i­nite­ly deliv­ered. As did New Zealan­der Law­less, though she lacked the cul­tur­al ref­er­ence points to get the joke, and game as she was, dis­creet­ly tried to get pro­duc­er Lorne Michaels to pull the skit, wor­ried that it was a lead bal­loon.

It came by its laughs hon­est­ly in per­for­mance, the audi­ence eat­ing up retooled Fleet­wood Mac hits pro­mot­ing bur­ri­tos and nachos, but with Youtube some 8 years away, Ste­vie Nicks’ Faji­ta Round Up fad­ed into obscu­ri­ty….

It took a man with vision and a long mem­o­ry to bring it back.

In 2012, Matthew Amador truf­fled up the fond­ly remem­bered clip and start­ed a Face­book page for the hypo­thet­i­cal restau­rant, large­ly so he could claim it had catered the end-of-year intern-appre­ci­a­tion buf­fet at the cast­ing agency where he was work­ing.

The first likes came from the duti­ful interns, but even­tu­al­ly the page attract­ed oth­er like­mind­ed fans, who’d caught the orig­i­nal per­for­mance over a decade before.

It has since migrat­ed to Twit­ter, where “Stevie”—the first female dou­ble inductee to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame —is eager­ly await­ing reopen­ing while remind­ing her fol­low­ers that the Roundup’s tables “have always been a MINIMUM of 6’ apart, giv­ing you a safer din­ing expe­ri­ence you’ll nev­er for­get and giv­ing me plen­ty of room to twirl depend­ing on the length of my fringe.”

View the full tran­script here. And yes, you are cor­rect, that’s Jim­my Fal­lon at the piano, in his 3rd SNL appear­ance.

via The Ringer and Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

How Fleet­wood Mac Makes A Song: A Video Essay Explor­ing the “Son­ic Paint­ings” on the Clas­sic Album, Rumours

Actress Lucy Law­less Per­forms the Pro­to-Fem­i­nist Com­e­dy “Lysis­tra­ta” for The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Is It Rude to Talk Over a Film? MST3K’s Mary Jo Pehl on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #45

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | May 28th, 2020

We live in a com­men­tary cul­ture with much appre­ci­a­tion for camp and snark, but some­thing spe­cial hap­pened in the ear­ly ’90s when Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000 pop­u­lar­ized this addi­tive form of com­e­dy, where jokes are made dur­ing a full-length or short film. Mary Jo Pehl was a writer and per­former on MST3K and has since riffed with fel­low MST3K alums for Riff­trax and Cin­e­mat­ic Titan­ic.

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an briefly debate the ethics of talk­ing over some­one else’s art and then inter­view Mary Jo about how riffs get writ­ten, devel­op­ing a riff­ing style and a char­ac­ter that the audi­ence can con­nect with (do you need to include skits to estab­lish a premise for why riff­ing is hap­pen­ing?), riff­ing films you love vs. old garbage, the degree to which riff­ing has gone beyond just MST3K-asso­ci­at­ed come­di­ans, VH-1’s Pop-Up Video, and more.

Fol­low Mary Jo @MaryJoPehl.

Here are a some links to get you watch­ing riff­ing:

Dif­fer­ent teams have dif­fer­ent styles of riff­ing, so if you hate MST3K, you might want to see if you just hate those guys or hate the art form as a whole. The alums them­selves cur­rent­ly work as:

Here are a few rel­e­vant arti­cles:

Also, PROJECT: RIFF is the website/database we talk about where a guy named Andrew fig­ured out how many riffs per minute are in each MST3K episode, which char­ac­ter made the joke, and oth­er stuff.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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A Michigan Family Makes Everyone Passing Their House Do Monty Python Silly Walks, and Then Puts Recordings on Instagram

in Comedy, Current Affairs | April 30th, 2020

Even if you don’t know the Bea­t­les, you know “Love Me Do.” Even if you don’t know the Rolling Stones, you know “Sat­is­fac­tion.” Even if you don’t know Mon­ty Python, you know “The Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks.” Like an AM radio hit, the sketch works on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al lev­els while cap­ti­vat­ing audi­ences of dis­parate ages and cul­tures, all with­in the span of a few min­utes. As a satire of British gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy it com­pares, in its way, to Antony Jay and Jonathan Lyn­n’s series Yes Min­is­ter, which would debut on the BBC a decade lat­er. As sheer phys­i­cal com­e­dy, it draws its pow­er, as all those old songs do, from the innate char­ac­ter­is­tics of its per­form­ers. Or rather, from John Cleese, who not only looks the part of a born estab­lish­ment fig­ure, but stands near­ly six and a half feet tall.

Though few of us can sing like Paul McCart­ney or Mick Jag­ger, it does­n’t stop us from join­ing in when their songs come on the radio. By the same token, though few of us pos­sess the sheer leg length to walk as sil­ly as Cleese does, we can all gen­er­ate our own kind of lev­i­ty by giv­ing our best. And much of the Unit­ed States, locked down by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, lev­i­ty is just what’s need­ed. Hence the estab­lish­ment of York­shire Sil­ly Walks, which announces itself in no uncer­tain terms: “YOU HAVE ENTERED THE JURISDICTION OF THE MINISTRY OF SILLY WALKS,” reads its signs. “COMMENCE SILLY WALKING IMMEDIATELY.” All who pass through this ter­ri­to­ry are cap­tured by a video cam­era, and some will lat­er find them­selves post­ed to York­shire Sil­ly Walks’ Insta­gram page — as long as they’ve walked with suf­fi­cient silli­ness.

They don’t have to do it for long: the juris­dic­tion of this Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks extends only across the side­walk in front of a sin­gle house in Grosse Pointe Park, Michi­gan. The home­’s York­shire Road address will con­jure up mem­o­ries of anoth­er beloved sketch in the minds of seri­ous Python fans — a group to which Liz Koto and her fam­i­ly, the house­’s occu­pants, must belong. They’ve post­ed to Insta­gram well over 100 videos, each cap­tur­ing a dif­fer­ent sil­ly walk exe­cut­ed by the peo­ple of their sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood out for a stroll — just about the only thing many Amer­i­cans can do to get out of the house these days. And they do it more joy­ful­ly than Cleese him­self, who has spo­ken of how, like a rock star con­demned to play the same hit over and over again, he grew deeply weary of play­ing the Min­is­ter of Sil­ly Walks on stage for Mon­ty Python’s live shows over the decades. After hav­ing under­gone two hip replace­ments, he’s sure­ly hap­py to leave sil­ly-walk­ing to the fans.

View this post on Insta­gram

Wood­stock called, they want their dancers back.

A post shared by York­shire Sil­ly Walks (@yorkshire.silly.walks) on

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese Revis­its His 20 Years as an Ivy League Pro­fes­sor in His New Book, Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years

John Cleese on The Impor­tance of Mak­ing and Embrac­ing Mis­takes

Ital­ians’ Night­ly Sin­ga­longs Prove That Music Soothes the Sav­age Beast of Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine & Self-Iso­la­tion

Inge­nious Impro­vised Recre­ations of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, Using Mate­ri­als Found Around the House

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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An Art Gallery for Gerbils: Two Quarantined Londoners Create a Mini Museum Complete with Gerbil-Themed Art

in Art, Comedy, Creativity, Life, Museums | April 10th, 2020

Lon­don-based cou­ple Fil­ip­po and Mar­i­an­na’s self-iso­la­tion project calls to mind artist (and muse­um cura­tor) Bill Scan­ga’s At the Met, exhib­it­ed near­ly 20 years ago as part of the group show Almost Warm and Fuzzy: Child­hood and Con­tem­po­rary Art at P.S.1 Con­tem­po­rary Art Cen­ter (now known as MoMA PS1).

Scan­ga’s instal­la­tion involved hang­ing mini-repli­cas of works from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um’s Amer­i­can col­lec­tion on extreme­ly long wires that trav­eled from under-ceil­ing pic­ture rail to the base­board, where a col­lec­tion of art-lov­ing taxi­der­mied mice wait­ed expec­tant­ly. One rest­ed on a famil­iar-look­ing, black vinyl uphol­stered bench, a tiny blue shop­ping bag from the Met’s gift store parked near its dain­ty, shoe­less feet.

Fil­ip­po and Marianna’s art-lov­ing rodents are ger­bils, and unlike Scanga’s art­ful­ly stuffed mod­els, theirs—9‑month-old broth­ers Pan­doro and Tiramisù—are very much alive, as Tiramisù proved when he gnawed the unseen gallery assistant’s painstak­ing­ly assem­bled card­board stool to bits under the watch­ful eye of the tiny Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring fac­sim­i­le Mar­i­an­na craft­ed for his cul­tur­al enrich­ment.

A video the cou­ple pub­lished on Red­dit, above, shows the fur­ry muse­um goers scam­per­ing under the bench­es to the tune of “The Blue Danube” and plac­ing their paws on the art­work, includ­ing an expert, ger­bil-themed forgery of Gus­tav Klimt’s gold-flecked Sym­bol­ist mas­ter­piece, The Kiss.

Not to be vul­gar, but if this muse­um has a restroom, Pan­doro and Tiramisù seem to have giv­en it a miss, an impro­pri­ety sur­pass­ing any waged by the tit­u­lar char­ac­ters of Beat­rix Potter’s Tale of Two Bad Mice.

Fil­ip­po and Mar­i­an­na accept­ed the destruc­tion of their exquis­ite­ly staged set with a cheer that sug­gests they’re not shut up for the dura­tion with a small child… just ger­bils, who can be deposit­ed back into their Habi­trail when the fun’s over.

The atten­tion to detail—the gallery tags! The lam­i­nat­ed cards in mul­ti­ple lan­guages in a wall-mount­ed holder!—captured the imag­i­na­tion of Red­dit. Users jumped Marianna’s orig­i­nal post—(Quar­an­tine, day 14. Me and my boyfriend spent the whole day set­ting up an art gallery for our ger­bil)—with sug­ges­tions of oth­er famous works to recre­ate in minia­ture and add to the col­lec­tion. Rest assured no groan-wor­thy, pun-based, ger­bil-cen­tric title was left unex­pressed.

With cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions tem­porar­i­ly shut­tered for the good of pub­lic health, many view­ers also shared their yearn­ing to get back inside favorite muse­ums. (Mar­i­an­na reports that Fil­ip­po is a muse­um work­er.)

For now, we must be patient, and live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through ger­bils ’til the long wait is over.


Via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Like Choir! Choir! Choir!, she has been crowd­sourc­ing art in iso­la­tion, most recent­ly a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Peanuts Rock: Watch the Peanuts Gang Play Classic Rock Songs by Queen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Journey & More

in Animation, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, Music | February 21st, 2020

In a very crowd­ed field, Gar­ren Lazar’s com­i­cal take on Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” is a stand-out.

Com­i­cal in the lit­er­al sense. Lazar, aka Super G, struck a rich vein when he thought to mash the Rolling Stones’ “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” with footage culled from Charles Schulz’s ani­mat­ed Peanuts spe­cials.

And over the last six years, he’s mined a lot of gold, using Final Cut Pro to pair famil­iar clips of a drum­ming Pig­pen, Snoopy slap­ping a dou­ble bass, and the icon­ic “Linus And Lucy” scene from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas with rock and pop clas­sics.

Schulz, an ardent music lover, fre­quent­ly pic­tured his char­ac­ters singing, danc­ing, and play­ing instru­ments, so Lazar, who has an uncan­ny knack for match­ing ani­mat­ed mouths to record­ed lyrics, has plen­ty to choose from.

Char­lie Brown’s anx­i­eties fuel the intro­duc­tion to a 15 minute remix of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird,” until he gets hold of the Christ­mas special’s mega­phone…

The mega­phone serves Char­lie equal­ly well on “Stayin’ Alive,” the Bee Gees’ dis­co chart top­per, though depend­ing on your vin­tage, the vision of Snoopy in leg warm­ers and sweat­band may come as a shock. Those clips come cour­tesy of It’s Flash­bea­gle, Char­lie Brown, Schulz’s 1984 goofy spin on Flash­dance, Foot­loose, Sat­ur­day Night Fever and oth­er dance-based pop cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­nons of the era. Although that special—Schulz’s 27th—features a roto­scoped Snoopy bust­ing moves orig­i­nat­ed by Flash­dance’s stunt dancer Marine Jahan, that old hol­i­day chest­nut still man­ages to steal the show.

And when­ev­er you need a lift, you can’t do bet­ter than to spend a few min­utes with Lazar’s heady reboot of Chicago’s quin­tes­sen­tial 1970s sin­gle, “Sat­ur­day In the Park,” where­in the nor­mal­ly reserved Schroed­er reveals a more exu­ber­ant side.

Begin your explo­rations of Gar­ren Lazar’s musi­cal Peanuts remix­es on his YouTube chan­nel, warm in the knowl­edge that he enter­tains requests in the com­ments.

via Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Vel­vet Under­ground as Peanuts Char­ac­ters: Snoopy Morphs Into Lou Reed, Char­lie Brown Into Andy Warhol

Umber­to Eco Explains the Poet­ic Pow­er of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts

The Joy of Expe­ri­enc­ing Queen’s Bohemi­an Rhap­sody for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reac­tion Videos

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City this March for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Monty Python Pays Tribute to Terry Jones: Watch Their Montage of Jones’ Beloved Characters in Action

in Comedy | January 31st, 2020

The actor, come­di­an, direc­tor, and medieval his­to­ri­an Ter­ry Jones passed away last week, but Mr. Cre­osote will nev­er die. Nor will any of the oth­er char­ac­ters por­trayed by Jones in his work with Mon­ty Python, the cul­ture-chang­ing com­e­dy troupe he co-found­ed with Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Gra­ham Chap­man, and Ter­ry Gilliam. You can get a sense of Jones’ range as a comedic per­former in the three-minute com­pi­la­tion above, which fea­tures a range of Jones’ char­ac­ters includ­ing the crunchy frog-deal­ing can­dy-shop own­er, the avi­a­tor-hel­met­ed Span­ish Inquisi­tor, one of the four York­shire­men, and of course, the Bish­op.

My own intro­duc­tion to Jones’ work came through the Spam wait­ress, a Mon­ty Python char­ac­ter beloved of many chil­dren not yet born when Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, the troupe’s BBC series, first ran in the late 1960s and ear­ly 70s.

Set in a din­er where near­ly every dish involves Spam as at least one ingre­di­ent, the sketch pokes fun at the cheap tinned meat’s per­sis­tence on British tables well after the aus­ter­i­ty of the Sec­ond World War, and more sub­tly at the even deep­er and longer-last­ing per­sis­tence of the British wartime mind­set. I nat­u­ral­ly knew lit­tle of all this when first I saw the Spam sketch, and had nev­er once tast­ed Spam itself, but Jones’ com­mit­ment to his char­ac­ter — and that char­ac­ter’s blithe seri­ous­ness about the word “Spam” — got me laugh­ing.

Gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren and adults alike will con­tin­ue to enjoy the Spam wait­ress, as well as all of Jones’ oth­er char­ac­ters and their often absurd inter­ac­tions with those played by the rest of the Pythons. And the more they learn about the troupe and its work, the more they’ll appre­ci­ate Jones’ spe­cial con­tri­bu­tions to its lega­cy. After co-direct­ing Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail with Gilliam, he sin­gle­hand­ed­ly direct­ed the next two Python fea­tures, Life of Bri­an and The Mean­ing of Life. It was in that last film that Jones man­aged to bal­ance his direc­to­r­i­al duties with those of play­ing the colos­sal­ly obese, fre­quent­ly vom­it­ing Mr. Cre­osote, whose sheer glut­tony results in his explo­sion. So yes, tech­ni­cal­ly, Mr. Cre­osote did die — but every time we watch The Mean­ing of Life he lives, and we laugh, once again.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones (RIP) Was a Come­di­an, But Also a Medieval His­to­ri­an: Get to Know His Oth­er Side

The His­to­ry & Lega­cy of Magna Car­ta Explained in Ani­mat­ed Videos by Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es: “The Philoso­phers’ Foot­ball Match,” “Philosopher’s Drink­ing Song” & More

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Mon­ty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Char­ac­ters

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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