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Monty Python's Flying Circus has become an influential work on comedy as well as in popular culture. The programming language Python was named by Guido van Rossum after the show, and the word spam, for junk email, took its name from a word used in a Monty Python sketch.
Oct 11, 2024 · Monty Python’s Flying Circus, British television sketch comedy series that aired from 1969 to 1974 on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) network and became popular with American viewers largely through rebroadcasts on public television.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jul 25, 2023 · That’s how they created Monty Python’s Flying Circus from scratch, a comedy show made up of several loosely connected scenes and sketches. The Circus was characterized by absurd, sharp and surreal humor.
Monty Python's Flying Circus: Between 1974 and 1980 (Live at the Hollywood Bowl was released in 1982, but was performed in 1980), the Pythons made three sketch-based stage shows, comprising mainly material from the original television series.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus Was Influenced by Spike Milligan.
- There Were Many Potential Titles For The Series.
- The Opening Theme Was John Philip Sousa's "The Liberty Bell."
- The Giant Foot in The Opening Credits Belongs to Cupid.
- It Was Almost Canceled After One Episode.
- The Parrot Sketch Was Originally with A Customer and A Car Salesman.
- The Pythons Were Paid About $200 Per Episode.
- "And Now For Something Completely Different" Came from Real News shows.
- John Cleese Got A Dirty Look While Researching The Cheese Shop Sketch.
- John Cleese Left The Series Before Its Fourth and Final season.
Spike Milligan created The Goon Show (a favorite of The Beatles), a surrealistic radio program starring himself, Harry Secombe, and Peter Sellers before Milligan moved to television with Q... (1969-1982). The first series, Q5, debuted less than a year before Monty Python's Flying Circus, and made quite an impact. "Terry Jones and I adored theQ... s...
A BBC executive originally wanted to name the series Baron von Took's Flying Circus as a nod to Barry Took, the network's comedy adviser, who was credited with bringing the Pythons and BBC together. He was also the warm-up comic for the studio audience before the first night of filming. But there were plenty of other considerations for the title, i...
The Pythons chose John Philip Sousa's "The Liberty Bell" (as played by the Band of the Grenadier Guards) as their theme song, largely for financial reasons: Since it was in the public domain, it was free.
The giant foot seen in the show's opening credits belongs to Cupid, and comes from Bronzino's painting "An Allegory with Venus and Cupid." According to The National Gallery, the painting dates back to "about 1545" and was presented to King Francis I of France as a gift. Terry Gilliam saw the painting at The National Gallery in 1969 while searching ...
According to some unearthed internal memos, BBC1 controller Paul Fox said the troupe went "over the edge of what was acceptable." Head of arts features Stephen Heast said they "wallowed in the sadism of their humor." Entertainment chief Bill Cotton thought Monty Python "seemed to have some sort of death wish." Despite those thoughts, and low audien...
Cleese and Chapman penned How to Irritate People, a sketch special which also starred Michael Palin that aired in the United States in January 1969. What would become the "Dead Parrot" sketch originally had Chapman complaining that the car he had just purchased from Palin was literally falling apart, with Palin consistently denying the glaring, mou...
In that same aforementioned internal BBC memo, it was revealed that the Pythons were compensated £160 per episode, which would beabout $208.78 today.
When two news stories that had no relation to the other were presented back-to-back on BBC TV and radio broadcasts, the anchor would say "And now for something completely different." That was no longer the case after Monty Pythonmade it popular.
"I always remember going into the local delicatessen with this notebook and just standing there writing down the names of all the cheeses in the cheese display cabinet," Cleese recalled. "One of the shop assistants watching me with a very suspicious look." According to Cleese, he and Palin used almost all of the varieties he had scribbled down. Som...
Cleese, who had to be persuaded to continue co-writing and co-starring after its first batch of episodes, wanted to move onbefore the others did. “I wanted to be part of the group, I didn’t want to be married to them—because that’s what it felt like," Cleese said. "I began to lose any kind of control over my life and I was not forceful enough in sa...
- Roger Cormier
Sep 12, 2019 · Monty Python’s Flying Circus was unlike anything we’d seen before, and now, 50 years later, the British Film Institute is marking this comedic landmark with a spectacular birthday party.
Oct 4, 2019 · Most of what made the show so popular in 1969—its frustration with bureaucracy, its distrust of authority — still rings true in 2019. And besides, pure silliness will always be in fashion:...
