Subj : Re: Python Resurrection!
To : Motorau
From : I Am *Not* Mentok
Date : Sun Oct 29 2006 11:04 am
From: "I Am *Not* Mentok" <
[email protected]>
I was amused to have seen *Motorau* write this:
> It is sad that the UK is not producing humorous material like that of
> the Monty Python in the 1970s
> Perhaps the BBC might consider having a Next Generation of Pythons if
> Dr Who can regenerate itself and Star Trek can re invent itself
> Why not the Python Genre? Or are we not making funny people anymore...?
Not to be querulous, but were the follow-ups to said programs /really/ the
same
or even on a par with the original? Well, in their own way, no, but even a
re-invention would take a lot of wiggle room for viewers to develop a taste for
it. For example, when "Twilight Zone" was brought back (and for a mercifully
short time) it just did not have the same tone, feel, tension or expectation as
what bore the imprimatur of its originator, Rod Serling. As for a Python-type
show, only "Kids in the Hall" (from Canada) have come even close, and they had
the support of the producer of "Saturday Night Live", Lorne Michaels, a show
which itself was essentially a Python clone, following closely on the heels of
the disbanding of that group in the early 70's.
Sure, a "new" Python may create a following, and there will certainly be
detractors, but in today's creative uber-micro-management style, you end up
with
a camel; a horse as designed by a committee. Not to mention the patronizing,
ever-spiraling-downward dumbing down of what they think is "funny" nowadays.
Python was inspired lunacy, derived from its diverse influences stemming from
its authors coming from a school of comedy as developed in their respective
adolescent, collegiate and post-graduate endeavors. Today's audiences are fed
by people who believe they know /so/ much more than you or me as to what they
think we as the audience will find funny; the "will-it-play-in-Peoria?"
mentality, i.e., will the average viewer who lives outside of their
entertainment-world-cocoon be amused? Control is in the hands of those whose
main concern is the bottom line, not the belly laugh, people who have never
even
heard of the comic influences of those whose artistic lives they hold in their
overeducated fist.
Monty Python was a product of its time, its creators and the overall zeitgeist,
all of which were brought together in some manner of supreme comic cosmic
convergence, never duplicated, always imitated, so to answer my own question -
and in my opinion - any "Next Generation" Python would be merely a pale, flimsy
and clumsy carbon copy at best.
Also, considering the relative autonomy the Pythons had over their show, I
seriously doubt that the practices of BBC management ('eck, the U.S. is even
worse. Committees, focus groups, demographic studies, "Notes, notes, notes"
all
serving to stifle the artist's inspiration) in today's market would allow such
creative freedom and thus suffocate the baby in the crib.
So, it may (or more than likely, not) be funny as hell, but it just wouldn't be
the same.
--
The *Original* Captain Ozone
--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5
* Origin: FidoNet MONTE <--> alt.fan.monty-python (1:379/45)
