The Pythons - Softcover

Chapman, Graham; Palin, Michael; Cleese, John; Gilliam, Terry; Idle, Eric; Jones, Terry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312311451 ISBN 13: 9780312311452

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005

Synopsis

Over thirty years ago, a group of five Englishmen and one wayward American, re-wrote the rules of comedy. Monty Python's Flying Circus, an unheralded, previously unseen and practically unprogrammed half hour of sketches, hilarities, inanities and animations first appeared on the BBC late one night in 1969. Its impact on the world has been felt ever since.

From its humble beginnings as late night entertainment on a British TV channel that went off the air before midnight, it blossomed into arguably the most influential movement in modern comedy. They found the Holy Grail, they detailed the life of the Savior-also-ran Brian, and when we were lost, they explained The Meaning of Life.

Now, those purveyors of dead parrots and silly walks are going to tell us something more: Their story. In their own, intimate, never before heard words.

The Pythons by The Pythons is the definitive word on all things Pythonesque (the only word invented by a modern comedian which is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary.) 30 years of insight, hindsight, and bad sight - now told for the first time. Stuff they're never remembered before alongside stories they'd forgotten to say, coupled with things they couldn't say then and even more things they can't pronounce now (with a healthy dollop of things they would never have said in the first place if any others had been in the room at the time.)

The Pythons by The Pythons is a unique look at arguably the most important comic team of the modern age, lavishly illustrated with 1000 photographs and illustrations, many culled from the teams' own personal collections, many seen here for the first time. A tome, a tombstone, the definitive word on all things Python, as told by all things Python - do you want Spam with that?

About this title

About the Author

Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, were all lifelong (so far) members of Monty Python.

Bob McCabe is a writer.

Reviews

Eric Idle recalls that when publishers approached Monty Python to do their first book, in the nineteen-seventies, "nobody was very interested." Little seems to have changed, and this book was put together by Bob McCabe, a film critic, who interviewed the Pythons about life before, during, and after the TV show. The result could easily have felt warmed over, but in fact it's consistently absorbing. The principals have obviously told their story too many times to bother with concealment, and are disarmingly frank about their frequent disagreements and rows. Accompanying the text are hundreds of photographs, including many unfamiliar ones from private collections—backstage shots and shots of school plays, cricket teams, and university revues. Such is the legacy of the show that the pictures of the Pythons' schools and touchingly ordinary-seeming parents look as if they had come out of Monty Python sketches.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312311451
• ISBN 13: 9780312311452
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368