Unearthed Monty Python Footage From 1975
KERA-TV in Dallas was the first PBS station to broadcast Monty Python's Flying Circus, and it was the Pythons' first stop in the US after the premier of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in Los Angeles in 1975. This interview footage first aired live on KERA that year, and hasn't been seen by the public since. It was discovered on an old reel that had been saved by an engineer, and as you can see, it cuts off after about 14 minutes... the engineer taped over the rest. It's a look at the group being candidly questioned by fans at the peak of their fame and creative powers.If you prefer not to watch the video in-line, it can be downloaded in iPod-ready format. You can also download the video or subscribe to our free podcast from iTunes. Our show, of course, features many in-depth interviews with folks in entertainment and the arts, and particularly comedy.
"Monty Python's Personal Best" airs this month on PBS, and Flying Circus returns to PBS later this year. Personal Best was also just released on DVD, and as a DVD box set.
Please share this blog link, but understand that KERA and the Python folks retain the rights to their footage, so please refrain from redistributing the file itself.
If you're coming from outside the blog, I encourage you to check out our radio show / podcast, The Sound of Young America. We've interviewed many comedy legends, from Bob Odenkirk & David Cross to, just last week, Terry Jones of Monty Python. It's totally free, so take a look at our archives and see if something interests you. You can also check out our blog for news and views from the world of art & entertainment.
My thanks go to KERA in Dallas for sharing the footage with us, especially to Kim and Bill Young, who made the arrangements. Also to the Python organization for giving us clearance to share the Flying Circus footage seen in the clip. Also, thanks to Tyler MacNiven and Jessica Jardine for their help shooting the introduction.
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posted by Jesse Thorn at Wednesday, March 01, 2006
39 Comments:
Awesome footage! I don't think I've seen the Pythons in this kind of environment and not in character. There's some stuff on DVDs as extras but nothing like this.
Plus the hair! You can't go wrong with 1975 fashion.
Thanks Jesse.
-beach
Thanks for providing Jesse!
It's kind of amazing. Looks like Terry Jones will be on The Sound soon, and I'm totally freaking out.
Find out if he still has that shirt.
I should find out if Palin still has that armadillo.
By the way, great job on the narration. Reminded me of Eric Idle in The Rutles...
All I could think of as I was doing it was how serious I was being, and how much it was like any of the BBC Tele-doc parodies Python did.
We cut the end of my shot, where I got up. I was standing on my knees the whole time. Didn't want my joke to compete with the greatest comedy group ever of all time.
Thanks so much for sharing, this is a great find!!
More armadillo! Thanks for sharing this, it brings back memories of what I was doing at the time.
Good quality on the web. It's interesting how things have changed over the last 30 years. Chapman is dead. Jones is noted for his sharp satirical polemics against the invasion of Iraq (and thats' no doubt the excuse for his SOYA visit as he has a collection of these articles out now in book form), Idle is on Broadway with the musical, Gilliam is still recovering from Don Quixote and Cleese is doing this and that(after achieving so much with Fawlty Towers)...
But I find that Americans tend to lionise Python in isolation because they don't have a sense of the traditions and milieu which generated it. It's Ok, good television and the like; radical and brilliant in many and varied places, etc but theres' more to the vein than just them. So I think they get put on a pedestal and the other stuff is neglected(such as Black Adder or even the Young Ones, or the work of Marty Feldman or Peter Cooke and Dudley Mooore-- I mean there is a lot of great stuff there before the whole medium moved over to sitcom style). The laughter moves on you know.
However, now that Little Britain is upon us -- my feeling is that some of that Pythonesque grotesque has returned.
Thank you very much for putting this up!
I've never seen them in such a setting before.
Do you know what happened to the ending? They were just about to answer a really interesting question - the origin of the name Monty Python....dang...
The moral to the story is that when you find yourself in the company of an emerging artist, don't waste time impressing yourself talking about geeky socio-political issues. ASK THEM ABOUT THEIR ART! Terry Jones mentions that they just showed their new film, a little thing called Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Of course the audience doesn't know it yet, so they don't ask about what will be interesting forever. They ask about censorship, which - granted - was a hot topic in the day, but what about telling us a little something about the film, a far more useful subject that they probably know even more about than censorship. Just a note for future reference.
Meanwhile, I love the sit-in protest arrangement. So come-on-people-now-smile-on-your-brother chic. What a great piece of 'day in the life'.
Thank you so much for sharing this! Fabulously introduced and ended, that old clip. :) This blog link will most definitely be shared!
"ipod format"?
Wy not use AVI or MOV or RM or plain old MPG so everyone can watch it?
FYI: iPod format plays in iTunes and up-to-date versions of Quicktime.
Enjoyed reading about Python. Watching The Best of Python has been a lot of fun. It is making me feel a bit old.
Mike
See my blogs.
Varietyviews
http://www.varietyviews.blogspot.com
Yes, There IS an Arizona.
http://www.arizonaviews.blogspot.com
I know this one, don't ask me how... At the cut-off Terry Jones was about to say "Owl-Stretching Time".
it plays nicely in VLC which is available for any platform
Argh, why are you introducing the clip? I don't see the point when you're posting it on a blog?
The folks at KERA shared it with me so that I could share it with my podcast subscribers, where it needs an intro. I shared it on the blog seperately.
I'm watching it now, and I'm kinda', like, "What's the big deal?".
What's not to love about Python. GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY! Thanks to you for sharing and to BoingBoing for pointing the way! You have just earned a new reader and you've been Boog-rolled!
Thank you from France. These men made my education and my Show is dedicated to them. Thank you again for this unbelievable extract. :-)
I hope you'll like it. (this is not Spam spam spam spam... ;-)
http://www.bonjour-america.com
On live at Aspen they do also explain the origin of the name monty python, but i'm sure some of the other questions would have been really interesting thanks for posting, but i think the rest must exist in some form somewhere hopefully its found.
Thanks, J! Much appreciated. Check out the Terry Jones interview.
Anon... it's pretty sure that the rest doesn't exist. At the time, it was common practice to record over tape/discs/film of live TV after a few weeks. The only reason this slipped through was that an engineer had saved a reel of random stuff from his career... when the folks at KERA saw it, they digitized it and gave it to me.
Found this blog via Google. The footage is awesome, thanks for sharing it.
Fantastic. Thanks for sharing this. It made my birthday special. How do you get all of these great comedy individuals to sit and do an interview with you?
Thanks so much for this - it's always great to see old footage like this.
Hard work, DruidBros! Also, I've been doing this show for five years, and it has a rep. Comedy people are usually forced to do awful morning radio interviews, or humorless, clueless public radio interviews (if they're lucky). So this show is a breath of fresh air.
This is just way tooo cool. I am soo jazzed, as I wait for the 82.4MB to download. I'm e-mailing my old prof who turned me onto Python during a study abroad in Italy.
--Marilee Veniegas
http://www.iwantmyess.com
Too bad the ending is cut off... reminds me of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 KTMA Episode Superdome... except for the fact that we ended up finding someone with that missing ending in the end.
Didn't the BBC have a series called 'Black' something? It was essentially black comedy. I say a few episodes while studying in Europe in the mid 1990's. Does anyone know the name of this series and what the possibilities are for it to come to US Public Broadcasting?
Thanks
Ray -- Maybe you're thinking of Black Adder? It wasn't especially black humor, more like a broader Python, but it did start with Black. It runs on public TV some places.
What a brilliant clip.
Its interesting to see how MP was introduced to the US.
And ROFL...that 75s look...its awesome ;)
Thank you!
I really liked Chapman a lot. I've never heard him and it was just great. He's really the quiet guy, who says only something when he's sure about it.
As much as I would love to download this rare video, I can't seem to, as for some reason the server keeps resetting whenever I try. Is there perhaps another mirror available for this link?
I just double-checked, and it seems to work fine for me.
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