Word: grails
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...show in the U.S. The Pythons - composed of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin - had made a film of their best early skits, called And Now for Something Completely Different, but they were barely known in these parts when the Holy Grail film opened here. The movie was essentially a calling card for the show's airing on U.S. public television stations. That made the Pythons famous, which was almost as funny as their best skits, since by then the team had effectively broken up. After that, the six reunited for two films...
...Pythons, each of whom earned a stingy ?125 per episode in the first season of Flying Circus, would have lovely annuities even without Spamalot. Last year Monty Python won the Holy Grail - a Tony for Best Musical - and 18 months after it opened on Broadway it's playing to packed houses and has spawned road companies touring North America. (Next stops: Cincinnati and St. Louis.) The show goes to Las Vegas in March and Australia a year from now. And this Saturday, Spamalot opens at the Palace Theatre in London's West End. The Pythons, who can be expected...
...Once it was risky even to attend a Python event. I was at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival for the Holy Grail world premiere. As all Pythonistas recall, MP&HG begins in earnest with opening credits that keep breaking down, as the people responsible for goof-ups keep getting sacked. The last credit reads: "Directed by 40 specially trained Ecuadorian mountain llamas... and Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam." The story finally starts when they're done with the llama...
...Once the Pythons were comedically dangerous. Thirty years later, in part because they schooled the Western world in their brand of sublimely silly comedy, the rebels have inevitably become a nostalgia act. So, what changed between the Holy Grail film and the Spamalot show? Idle codified and cute-ified the old loopy, spiky surrealism. The show is so mainstream it's arri?re-garde. It's been polished and burnished, pressed and dry-cleaned, into a Broadway musical that is super-ingratiating - don't risk, can't miss...
...little, and you could see the Pythons as British versions of the American college jocks who reached their apex of glory and achievement as young men, then went into real estate, coasting on their lingering allure. It's true, anyway, if we see the TV show and Holy Grail as an extension of the glamorous days Jones and Palin spent at Oxford, and Cleese, Chapman and Idle at Cambridge...