Tag: Monty Python

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At Large Opinion

Stumped by Ignorance of Covid

And another one bites the dust.

It’s become almost a daily story in the media: Some outspoken anti-vaxxer dies of Covid. Some are repentant in their final days, like conservative radio talker Phil Valentine of Nashville, who, after coming down with the disease, changed his tune and urged his listeners to get vaccinated — before he died on a ventilator. Others have gone to meet their maker still insisting that a) Covid was a hoax, b) the vaccines don’t work, or c) they really just had the flu.

Three conservative radio hosts have died in recent weeks: Valentine and two Florida talk-show mainstays — Marc Bernier and Dick Farrel. All three disparaged the vaccine, masks, and distancing; trashed the CDC; and told listeners not to fear Covid. Bernier tweeted: “Now the government is acting like Nazis, saying ‘get the shot.’” Farrel tweeted: “Why take a vax promoted by people who lied 2u all along about masks, where the virus came from, and the death toll?” He also called Anthony Fauci “a power-tripping lying freak.”

This week, Joe Rogan, aka the “little ball of anger,” the most popular podcaster in America, announced that he’d contracted Covid. Rogan, unsurprisingly, is also an anti-vaxxer. He claims that he is taking a horse dewormer to treat his case. I hope he is as lucky as he is stupid.

But it’s not just radio hosts who are dying from denial of science and common sense, who are losing the ultimate bet, making the deadly choice to pick ideology over science and medicine. It’s evangelical ministers, politicians, anti-mask leaders, and other assorted right-wing spokespeople, now dead because they bought the bilge being spewed by Valentine and their cohorts, and, even worse, by prominent talk-show blatherers with national audiences, like the loathsome and hypocritical Tucker Carlson (who’s been vaccinated) and Laura Ingraham (also vaccinated), to name just two. Their lies are quite literally getting people killed.

Several country music stars and boomer rock heroes like Eric Clapton and Van Morrison are also virulent and outspoken in their anti-vax, anti-mask positions. The latter two have written horrible songs about losing their freedom. To be idiots? Most of Kid Rock’s maskless band caught Covid at the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally last month. (South Dakota’s Covid infection rate went up 700 percent following the gathering.)

Locally and statewide, we are seeing the results of a low vaccination rate and anti-mask sentiment, due mostly to ignorance and ideology. Parents in this county and this state are intentionally sending their children to school, unmasked and unvaccinated, convinced that all these deaths, these ever-rising case numbers, these young people dying in our hospitals, are somehow a Joe Biden/Anthony Fauci plot to take away their freedom. Their own children (and ours) are being sacrificed on the altar of know-nothing ideology, aided and abetted by GOP state governors, including our own absurdly incompetent Bill Lee, who when asked how he planned to deal with the fact that Tennessee now has the highest infection rate in the nation, answered that he didn’t plan to “change strategy.”

“Strategy?” No, Bill. “Strategy” is a plan, a course of action, a way to take on a problem sickening and killing the people in your state. Sitting on your ass and saying that “parents know best” is not a strategy. You are an embarrassment, a wanna-be DeSantis, a mini-Trump with the charisma of a pine-stump.

King Arthur and the Black Knight

All this reminds me of nothing so much as the fight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which the Black Knight refuses to allow King Arthur to pass. In the ensuing sword fight, the knight’s left arm is hacked off. “’Tis but a scratch,” he proclaims, fighting on. When his right arm is severed, he still refuses to surrender.

“Look, you stupid bastard,” says Arthur. “You’ve got no arms left!”

“’Tis but a flesh wound,” says the knight.

Then a leg is sliced off, then the other. Still he persists, shouting insults and threats, a noisy torso on the ground. “The Black Knight never loses!” he shouts.

Empty words. From a stump. Seems familiar.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Throwback August: Brazil

This week we’re tackling films from 1985 on Throwback August, which means I get an opportunity to write about one of my favorite films of all times, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.

The production of Brazil is one of the most infamous and convoluted stories in all of Hollywood lore. Gilliam, Monty Python’s resident animator, had embarked on a solo directing career as the legendary comedy troupe went their separate ways. With the Python cache and the 1981 sci fi/fantasy hit Time Bandits under his belt, betting on Gilliam’s fevered imagination seemed reasonable to Twentieth Century Fox. It was 1984, so naturally Orwell was in the air. What would be the most successful screen adaptation of Orwell’s dystopian classic was already in production, and Gilliam promised a modernized take on the themes of surveillance and oppression with the trademark Python satirical bent. He delivered all that and more—it’s also a Christmas movie.

Johnathon Pryce as Sam Lowery in one of Brazil’s dream sequences.

Costs ballooned during filming, as Gilliam added elaborate dream sequences and fussed over the details of the production design. The final tally was three times as much as Time Bandits, and when the producers saw Gilliam’s cut, they belatedly remembered the old Broadway saw “satire closes on Saturday night.” The epic pissing match over the the final cut and the release are detailed in the book The Battle Of Brazil, but Gilliam found himself facing every director’s worst nightmare, and not for the last time in his career.

Pryce and Michael Palin as Jack Lint in Brazil‘s climactic torture scene.

The film, hurt by the bad publicity and buried by the petulant studio, lost money on its initial release, but it quickly established a cult audience, and has had an enormous impact on filmmaking for the last 30 years. During a recent screening at the Brooks Museum, the story of daydreaming bureaucratic lackey Sam Lowery’s (Jonathan Pryce) struggle to keep his identity, do the right thing, and find the woman of his dreams still resonates in strongly in 2015. Particularly prescient are the themes of the unnamed society’s information economy as a means of both financial exploitation and social control— a banner in the Ministry Of Information offices reads “Information The Key To Prosperity”.

Gilliam used production design to convey thematic information.

Lowery and the other hero, the mysterious, rogue HVAC repairman Harry Tuttle (an unrecognizable Robert DeNiro), are both tech whizzes disdained and manipulated by the privileged ruling class. A seemingly senseless and endless War on Terror provides the low hum of paranoia that pervades the film’s action and gives gentleman torturer Jack Lint (Python Michael Palin, in his best film role) his wealth and status. Terrorist bombings are just part of the background of life in this dystopian society, like we now routinely make a public show of getting upset about the latest mass shooting but then go on about our business.

Robert DeNiro as revolutionary HVAC repairman Harry Tuttle.

The notion that the terrorist attacks might all be faked as a way to keep the ruling class in power is also present. When truck driver and Lowery’s object of affection Jill Layton (Kim Griest) asks, “How many terrorists have you actually met?”, she could be speaking to us. That, and the scene where Information Retrieval shock troops arrest Sam and Jill in mid-tryst are two of the many direct allusions to Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Kim Greist as Jill Layton

But Brazil has bigger fish to fry. In its final act, it becomes a inquiry into the nature of reality itself. Gilliam takes his endgame from the Ambrose Bierce’s 1890 short story “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge”, where much of the action presented as real in the story turns out to be hallucinations of the dying protagonist. It’s one of my most hated fictional gambits, because it’s usually a cheap trick on the part of an author who has written himself into a corner. And yet, Gilliam makes it work in Brazil because it serves his bigger themes: As the elites gain increasing power to work their will on the individual, the mind is the only preserve of freedom we have left. 

Throwback August: Brazil

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Eddie Izzard To Perform at the Orpheum

CREDIT: Amanda Searle

British comic Eddie Izzard burst into the American pop consciousness as a false eyelash-wearing standup comic with performance sensibilities that owed as much to David Bowie as Monty Python. But Izzard is always evolving, having built a solid second career as a dramatic actor in difficult plays by David Mamet, mainstream Hollywood films like Ocean’s Twelve and in TV shows like Hannibal and The Riches. In 2009, he surprised the world by running 43 marathons in 51 days with no previous experience as a long-distance runner. In short, Eddie Izzard is not the kind of performer one can easily sum up in a few words, unless those words are smart, funny, and unpredictable.

Amanda Searle

Eddie Izzard

Flyer: I tried to learn your language for this interview, but I’m not gifted like that.

Eddie Izzard: I speak English.

So, this isn’t your first time in Memphis?

No, it’s not. In fact, my first ever performance in America was as a street performer in Memphis. There’s an Overton Park there, right?

Yes.

And an Overton Square.

Yes, but they aren’t the same. The park is park-like and the Square is…

It’s like a triangle or something. I did my first show in Overton Square in 1987. I was performing with the US Marines’ Military Band at the Memphis In May Festival. I was riding on a 5-foot unicycle escaping from a pair of handcuffs. I wasn’t paid for my performance. We were all flown over and all expenses were paid, but they didn’t pay us a fee because we were street performers, and we couldn’t command very much.

Did Memphis appreciate the unicycling act?

I think people were bemused. But it was a brand new show, so I didn’t know quite what I was doing. The main thing people would say to me — because I was walking around with this 5-foot unicycle — was “Ride that thang, Eddie boy.” In the end I’d say, “No, you ride that thang.”

I think “Ride that Thang” may be a good title for this piece I’m writing.

I play the Hollywood Bowl now, you know — “From Overton Square to the Hollywood Bowl” — that would be a good title.

Does comedy change from country to country and language to language?

It doesn’t change at all. The only thing that changes is the references. If a mainstream comedian in America and a mainstream comedian in Britain swapped over, it wouldn’t work. But if they lived in that country and got immersed in that country and were still doing comedy then it would work. In terms of a more progressive comedian like myself, I’m fascinated by the whole world, and I’m anxious to get out there and play it. So I’ve chosen references that are more universal. I use references like dinosaurs and God and human sacrifice. Why the hell did we do that? Ancient kings: were they idiots? You can play that in Moscow and people understand it. Or you can play that in Los Angeles or Memphis and people understand it. Everywhere in the world gets it.

So you really are trying to find a more universal kind of comedy instead of tailoring performances to suit different cultures.

Yes. Oh, yes. That would take a lot of work and I’m quite a lazy person. I’m like a big tanker ship. Once I get going I can keep going, but once I stop I don’t like to get going again. So I thought why not keep the comedy the same. Still intelligent. Still very silly and [Monty] Python influenced.

You mention the Python influence. What was it like working on Terry Jones’ film Almost Anything with all the surviving Pythons?

Unfortunately, I already shot my piece. It’s really more of a Simon Pegg and Kate Beckham film directed by Terry Jones, and I think all the Pythons are doing voices to animated characters. So we weren’t all there on the set together doing scenes.

You describe your work as Pythonesque, but they also claim you as well. I think John Cleese called you the, “lost Python.” That has to be affirming.

It’s totally fantastic. I was a huge student of their work and can repeat it endlessly: “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.” It’s beautiful stuff.

And the surreal quality of that kind of humor also crosses languages.

Mainstream musicians play to mainstream audiences around the world. Alternative musicians will play to alternative audiences. It’s the same with comedy. Those audiences are there, you’ve just got to find them.

You described yourself as lazy, but you are constantly touring and doing film and TV. And you did that whole thing where you ran all the marathons.

That’s part of the big ship thing. Once it’s in motion, it can keep on going. Some of my gigs feel like rest. Two months in Berlin was quite restful, really. Two months in Paris.

When I read other interviews for “Force Majeure,” it seems like you’ve confused a few people. From fashion to material, they don’t always seem to understand why you aren’t the Eddie Izzard they expect or the Eddie Izzard they want you to be.

Right. That idea that people are saying there’s this one thing you do that we like that and want more of it, just doesn’t appeal to me. It’s my life so I get to write it.

There’s really no easy way to shorthand all that you do.

Yes, it can be quite difficult. I think some people may block me and say, “Oh, he’s that transvestite guy. I’m not going to watch anything he does.” I try to be open and honest and try different things. And I think people who care, who give a damn, who want to change the world for the better, also seem to give a damn about what I’m doing. That’s great. And I think the people who hate what I do are probably out there doing bad things in the world.
Eddie Izzard’s “Force Majeure” at the Orpheum, Sunday, May 26th, 8 p.m.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Boys and Grails

Q: What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

A: According to various swallow experts, about 24 miles per hour, provided the half-pound birds (of either the African or English extraction) aren’t somehow attached to a much heavier coconut. And now for something completely different.

When Lerner and Loewe’s Broadway musical extravaganza Camelot opened in 1960, Richard Burton’s King Arthur scampered about the stage in tights and sang about his magical kingdom where everyone is well-behaved and even the weather is subject to royal decree. By the time Monty Python filmed Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1975, Arthur’s idyllic kingdom had been reduced to a cardboard model on the horizon and knights scamper about the forest on imaginary horses and eat “ham and jam and Spam a lot.” Thirty years later, the movie was reinvented as the Broadway musical Spamalot, closing the circle on nearly a half-century’s worth of Anglophilic silliness. What does this have to do with the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? Everything, of course.

Not every fan of the film will get all the visual puns in Spamalot. In its transformation from screen to stage, it became not only a satire of English legend and lore but a no-holds-barred send-up of the modern Broadway musical. “The Song That Goes Like This” apes the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, while medieval knights twirl about the stage like the villagers in Fiddler on the Roof and square off to rumble like the gangs in West Side Story. But for all the changes, one thing remains the same: From silly walks to the rude French guardsmen who fart in your general direction to the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, Spamalot is seriously funny. So get on with it.

“Spamalot,” The Orpheum, Tuesday-Sunday, February 13-18, $25-$80