Monty Python S Flying Circus

At times, it seemed that officials from the Ministry of Earnest Questions were there just to ask a trio from the Ministry of Silly Walks the difference between British and American humor. But Eric Idle quickly put things in perspective. "American humor pays more," he explained. So things went here at a Museum of Broadcasting seminar that launched a 20th-anniversary celebration and display of the works of Monty Python's Flying Circus. This look back in humor is to run through Feb. 25.

In 1969, five young British comedians and one young American animator came together to make a television show. Without much of an idea of what they were going to do, they were given a series by the BBC to do it in, and after hunting around for a name -- "Owl-Stretching Time" and "A Horse, a Spoon, and a Basin" having been bruited and vetoed -- they settled on "Monty Python's Flying Circus." The 40th anniversary of this event is being marked by an excellent six-hour documentary series, "Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut)

In 1969, five young British comedians and one young American animator came together to make a television show. Without much of an idea of what they were going to do, they were given a series by the BBC to do it in, and after hunting around for a name -- "Owl-Stretching Time" and "A Horse, a Spoon, and a Basin" having been bruited and vetoed -- they settled on "Monty Python's Flying Circus." The 40th anniversary of this event is being marked by an excellent six-hour documentary series, "Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut)

In 1974, a programmer at a PBS station in Texas came across a tape of a British comedy show he'd never heard of and tried it out on the air. "Monty Python's Flying Circus" eventually conquered America, and the world was never the same. (This incident alone should justify eternal government funding for public television.) The Pythons' humor captured the extreme tension between British formality and its veiled aggression; their silliness signaled the end of empire as surely as India's independence.

An English newspaper once described a soccer star as having "developed splendidly and then aged as well as could be hoped for." That might sum up another U.K. icon, Monty Python. Because while it's been 25 years since the seminal six-man English comedy troupe has produced any new material, its thoughtful silliness still resonates. Now the group is again among us, cheerfully exploiting its upcoming 40th anniversary with a Python-palooza of events on tap: a new play in Los Angeles based on its classic TV sketches, a six-part documentary on the IFC channel, a book describing its live performances and a rare coming together of the group's five living members for a Q&A session in New York.

5pm / Festival "King of the Blues," B.B. King gets the Taste of Orange County '98 food and music festival off to a flying start at the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro. The Braxton Brothers and pianist Joe Sample keep things hopping on Saturday, and keyboardist Jeff Lorber continues Sunday. Master chefs prepare their best dishes, comics tell their best jokes on the Improv stage, and there's plenty of kids' stuff too, from "bounce houses" to pony rides.

Twenty years ago tonight, "Monty Python's Flying Circus" first aired in a late-night slot on the British Broadcasting Corp. Some claim the BBC hoped no one would notice the show, replete as it was with lampoons of old ladies and politicians, gags, bizarre animation and naughty British humor. But, of course, its audience soared and "Monty Python" went on to attract an international following.

John Cleese, a creator and star of the BBC-TV series "Monty Python's Flying Circus," has listed a beachfront Montecito home that he owns at just under $5.5 million. The British comedian plays the owner of a TV network on the ABC sitcom "Wednesday 9:30 (8:30 Central)," which will debut Wednesday night. "I'm not just selling a house. I'm buying a neighbor," Cleese said by phone from his home next door, which he has owned since 1994. When the house he's selling came on the market about a year ago, he purchased it so he could choose who would live there.

A play called "Monty Python's Spamalot" is headed for Broadway, and Hormel Foods Corp. is laughing. Based on the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and featuring a book by Eric Idle, the musical begins previews Feb. 14 at New York's Shubert Theatre. It will run in Chicago from Dec. 21 to Jan. 23. Hormel plans to issue Spam Golden Honey Grail in a collector's edition can. The product will be available in limited quantities at select New York City retailers in February.

Britain's top fighter pilots have discovered something completely different to deal with the threat of Iraq's Scud missiles. On Friday, when they were told to expect an attack on their Saudi air base at any moment, they first donned gas masks and chemical suits. Then, they reached for a videotape, and suddenly "Monty Python's Flying Circus" was on the TV screen in their underground bunker.

An English newspaper once described a soccer star as having "developed splendidly and then aged as well as could be hoped for." That might sum up another U.K. icon, Monty Python. Because while it's been 25 years since the seminal six-man English comedy troupe has produced any new material, its thoughtful silliness still resonates. Now the group is again among us, cheerfully exploiting its upcoming 40th anniversary with a Python-palooza of events on tap: a new play in Los Angeles based on its classic TV sketches, a six-part documentary on the IFC channel, a book describing its live performances and a rare coming together of the group's five living members for a Q&A session in New York.

Monty Python's Eric Idle and John Du Prez, who created the hit musical comedy "Spamalot," based on the 1975 film, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," have mined the comedy troupe's film canon for a new musical venture. "Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy)," an oratorio inspired by "Monty Python's Life of Brian," will have its world premiere in Canada this summer as part of Luminato, Toronto's Festival of Arts and Creativity.

HERE is the Oxford English Dictionary on the word "Pythonesque": "After the style of, or resembling the humor of, Monty Python's Flying Circus, a popular British television comedy series that first ran from 1969 to 1974 and is noted for its absurdist or surrealist humor." Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English defines it more particularly as "pertaining to something that is fast-paced, surreal, and following stream-of-consciousness."

What've we got? Well, there's Monty Python. Python, egg and Python. Python, bacon, Python and Python.... These days, everything is coming up Monty Python, it seems. On Broadway, "Spamalot," Eric Idle's musical version of the classic 1975 farce "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," is causing "Producers"-like guffaws. The very un-idle Idle's latest book, "The Greedy Bastard Diary: A Comic Tour of America," was recently published.

Eric IDLE'S stiff-as-a-board leg is stretched out before him like an Arthurian battering ram barging its way toward the Holy Grail. He's wheelchair-bound after knee surgery, but his voice -- perhaps the only one in existence that combines the ease and snobbery of the Queen's English with the pugnacious provincialism of every besieged little man -- is going at full throttle.

A play called "Monty Python's Spamalot" is headed for Broadway, and Hormel Foods Corp. is laughing. Based on the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and featuring a book by Eric Idle, the musical begins previews Feb. 14 at New York's Shubert Theatre. It will run in Chicago from Dec. 21 to Jan. 23. Hormel plans to issue Spam Golden Honey Grail in a collector's edition can. The product will be available in limited quantities at select New York City retailers in February.

Eric IDLE'S stiff-as-a-board leg is stretched out before him like an Arthurian battering ram barging its way toward the Holy Grail. He's wheelchair-bound after knee surgery, but his voice -- perhaps the only one in existence that combines the ease and snobbery of the Queen's English with the pugnacious provincialism of every besieged little man -- is going at full throttle.

The following is a letter sent by former Monty Python member Michael Palin to Martin Lewis, producer of this weekend's Python 25th anniversary celebration at American Cinematheque in West Hollywood, explaining to festival attendees why he will not be able to come to the gala (although several fellow Pythons will attend). He is in London hard at work on a novel. (For information on the festival, which runs through Tuesday, call (213) 466-FILM .

"Monty Python's The Meaning of Life," the last film starring the seminal British comedy troupe of John Cleese, the late Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin, has some of the grossest -- and to some fans, funniest -- sketches ever on screen.

Ian MacNaughton, a television director who helped bring the anarchic "Monty Python's Flying Circus" to the screen, has died. He was 76. MacNaughton died Dec. 10 in Munich, Germany, from injuries sustained in a 2001 car crash, Monty Python member Terry Jones said in London. MacNaughton directed all but the first four episodes of "Monty Python's Flying Circus," which ran on BBC television from 1969 to 1974.