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/listeners. In this sense, the audience reception of the Welles broadcast leads directly to mock-documentary texts such as Forgotten Silver (1995) and Alien Abduction (1998), 4 which are both examples of media hoaxes (with Forgotten Silver being another interesting example of an apparently unintentional hoax which overestimated the sophistication of its audience). Television precursors Monty Python’s Flying
. We are all Britons, and I am your king. Woman: I didn’t know we had a king. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (White et al., 1975 : Scene 3) This clip from the British comedy group Monty Python illustratively denaturalises sovereign rule in the above encounter
its own (real-life) van with the slogan ‘Stirring up tension and division in the UK illegally? Home Office, think again,’ targeted at gaining press and social media attention. More informally, photoshopped parodies multiplied on Twitter; examples included a slogan telling the Romans to go home (playing on the Monty Python ‘what did the Romans ever do for us?’ joke); another told the Australian lobbyist Lynton Crosby (rumoured to be behind the
Heaven , the postmodern anachronisms of Derek Jarman’s Edward II or A Knight’s Tale (2001), or the full Mel Brooks treatment of Robin Hood: Men in Tights . Each of these modes of expression, and especially the frequent confusion or tension between them, owes much to the Monty Python brand of medievalism in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Jabberwocky (1977
laugh on radio, on television, in film and through digital technologies such as the internet and mobile devices. US radio comedy has experienced a resurgence through channels such as XM Satellite Radio and programmes such as The Comedy-O-Rama Show (featuring the Monty-Python-like Crunchy Frog Comedy), Armstrong & Getty and The Bob and Tom Show, the latter two combining topical talk and comedy. US
intonation right, and thereby ensure that she heavily emphasised the ‘You’ at the start of the sentence; if it was all read in the same intonation, the aural impact would have been lost (Mount, 2009: 330). On another occasion, after the newly formed Liberal Democrats had adopted a soaring bird as their logo, it was suggested that Thatcher mock this in her Conservative conference speech by citing Monty Python’s famous ‘dead parrot’ sketch; ‘This parrot has ceased to be. It has shuffled off its mortal coil … This is an ex-parrot’. Not being familiar with the surreal comedy
concerned’. 35 Before Wanda , Benson had in his capacity as an experienced first assistant dealt with everything from the excesses of Ken Russell to the lunacy of Monty Python, not to mention being part of the Oscar-winning team on Chariots of Fire (1981). He told me: I met Charlie for the first time at the beginning of filming. I thought at first that he was a bit intolerant. Then one day he apologised and said he was sorry for getting impatient and wouldn’t be again. After a while, I learned to like him a lot and we became good friends, and from my point of view
against the long-established tropes of the Golden Age of Hollywood with its biblical films. It is, in fact, the idea of grappling with faith and witnessing that process on film which brought the ire of the U.S.American right, certainly its vocal religious representatives, as happened nine years earlier in the UK with Monty Python’s Life of Brian . In both cases we see the questioning of core tenets of faith being deemed blasphemy. Life of Brian , a comedy about the man who was born in the stable next to Jesus, provides a useful point of comparison. According to
the audience’s response (as if that was something that ruined their enjoyment of, say, Monty Python or Dad’s Army’ (2007: 2). It seems fair to suggest that the aesthetic debates about recorded laughter apply primarily to sitcom and to a lesser extent the sketch show, which didn’t appear to ‘outgrow’ the studio audience to quite the same degree that sitcom was perceived to have done. It is impossible to imagine a panel show or a stand-up/variety format without a studio or theatre audience because ‘liveness’ and ‘working’ an audience are so intrinsic to the formats
the end of the sixties, Cleese, now a household name in the wake of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969–74), its first authentic feature spin-off, Monty Python and The Holy Grail (1975), and six triumphant episodes of Fawlty Towers (1975), suggested to Margaret Tree, Video Arts’ joint managing director and programmes’ producer, that she might like to seek out Crichton. Tree recalls: ‘John was obviously familiar with his work and a great fan, and he thought it was ridiculous Charlie was not still working as a director of both films and television. He said to me