Blathering On by Felicity Danielle
Cue Hysterical Laughter
It is perfectly typical of the mood I find myself in these days that of two exciting things happening this week-end ( going to see the stage play of “Noises Off” in Ashland on Friday, and coercing Dennis Zane into taping “A Fish Called Wanda” for me on Saturday) I am most excited by the latter.
This is a pity, because whereas we have definite tickets for the play and will show up at 1 o’clock in the afternoon on the dot for it, provided of course nobody gets murdered or anything, “A Fish Called Wanda” is on at four in the morning, and I may have some difficulty getting Dennis to tape it for me since a: he most likely has no idea how to program his VCR to tape at a certain time, and b: he doesn’t like the idea of me watching it anyway, because in its natural state it’s rated R. At least I assume that’s the reason. He may dislike it because it contains scenes of graphic, animal-related violence (but then so does “101 Dalmatians”) or because of John Cleese’s naked behind, or because of Michael Palin’s haircut, or he may in fact just be jealous of me being able to see it whenever I want. Dennis is three years younger than my father, rather on the large side, being both tall and wide, has a tiny nose and large glasses and peculiar taste. The first time I met him when he wasn’t wearing a suit, he was wearing a shirt that said “I’m Too Sexy For My Hair, That’s Why It Isn’t There”. And except for the too-sexy part, it must be true. He claims to admire Monty Python and all British comedy but has never heard of Douglas Adams, he said “Drop Dead Fred” was a cute little film but was positive it starred Winona Ryder (in the title role, no doubt), and judging by the earth-shaking window-shattering laugh he gives at anything even remotely humourous, he’s very fond of comedy-especially slapstick- and thoroughly enjoys bellowing “Oh, that is RUDE!!!” in exaggerated tones at anything having to do with the edgier elements, and yet in the slice of a novellette he made me read that he’s in the midst of writing, he hasn’t got any humour at all, unless you think the spectacle of a much-misused high school student walking down the hall and getting jeered at because somebody spread a rumor that he was gay is funny. (I don’t, but Dennis seemed to.) The novelette (something like an omelette) is really, really, really....not. Oooooohbbrrrrgh. Oy. One of the heavy secrets that Dennis has laid upon me in the course of our acquaintanceship is that he’s written a few of the “True Life” soap opera stories in women’s magazines. I didn’t dare ask if he got paid. (I was afraid the defining word would come out with an ‘l’ in the beginning, and I really didn’t want to know.)
And so the question(s) remains: will Dennis tape “Wanda” for me? Why or why not? And why exactly is it that I’d rather sit and watch Michael Palin get french fries stuck up his nose than go to a stage play?
My dear, the answer is in the question. Nobody, but nobody, gets french fries stuck up their nose with quite the panache and endearingly childish, completely obvious pain of Mr. M.E. Palin. (Me Palin, you Jane. Me Palin. You Jane.) Not that I’ve seen it. But I’ve seen Palin and I know what he can do. He can do anything. (Well, no, I don’t know that for absolutely sure, but I’m relatively positive.) His is a comic force that I have almost complete and utter faith in.
Almost? Yeah, almost.
He has a few faults that, even over the forty-odd years he’s been funny, he still has yet to work out, but I don’t mind them. I put them down to his style, which of course means that most likely he never will work them out.
He is gifted with nearly perfect timing, for one thing. It is perfect as far as comedy goes, but when he backslides into drama (as in “American Friends” for example) it’s a bit shaky, and sometimes even touch and go. You can recognize a Palin-helmed project a mile away— by it’s abrupt, ordinary endings, mostly. When, during the main Python years, he helped to abolish the punch line, it was quite funny and quite original, but it staggered his style quite a bit and now he has no idea how to end things. In both ‘American Friends’ and his novel ‘Hemingway’s Chair’, this shows up all the time. He’s best when he works with someone else, because that usually balances this out, and luckily he usually did work with somebody.
Take, for instance, ‘Time Bandits’, which he co-authored and was featured in, and which is a children’s (and adult’s, though not in the traditional sense) classic. He wrote it with Terry Gilliam, the American Python (the really, really weird Python). Now, Gilliam, as I just mentioned somewhat parenthetically, is really, really weird. And Palin is really, really bad at endings. Gilliam’s no ace, either, but what I’m trying to say— that is, my point is that they kind of balanced each other out. Palin’s gloriously light touch brightened much of the film, and then at the end he seems to have let Gilliam have his way and the thing got really, really weird. It is an odd contribution to anti-society, but a thoroughly lovable one.
Take Palin’s seventies TV show “Ripping Yarns”, which he shared with friend and fellow Python Terry Jones, as another for instance. I have seen just three of the nine half-hour short stories; as I recall, they were: ‘The Testing of Eric Olthwaite’, ‘Whinfrey’s Last Case’, and ‘The Curse of the Claw’. When I rented them I was a little nervous at first, having formed the impression that they were children’s stories and having formed the impression that unless Palin was exceptionally brilliant and rather adorable too it was going to be a waste of my money (except I seem to remember that my sister paid for it. Ah well). Well, it wasn’t a waste of my money— oh, whatever. Palin was exceptionally brilliant and rather adorable, too, in every role he played. To the American eye, no matter how world-wise, the British are a bit odd looking, but that can be deceptive. Palin is odd-looking, too, but in a really good way. He was one who deserved that age-old pick-up line, “You’re too good-looking to be a comedian.” He was the handsome Python, as well as the nice one.
Enough raving.
“Ripping Yarns” was fantastic, better than ‘Time Bandits’, even better than some of Python, which is a difficult feat that can apparently be managed only by the Pythons themselves. Jones is my second favorite Python after Palin, and they work marvelously well together.
Cleese is a bit of another story.
I think I like him. I’m really not sure. It’s not a love-hate relationship I’ve got with him, it’s more of a sort of love-annoyance one. He’s gotten scary-looking lately (viz. ‘Rat Race’) but can still handle drag (viz. ‘The Out-Of-Towners’) although admittedly not without frightening a few small children in the audience. I think he’s funny. I think he’s quite often brilliant. I think he’s probably fairly nice unless you get on his bad side, though niceness doesn’t shine out of him like it does Palin, and only occasionally do I worry about the size of his bad side (it’s not like I’m ever going to work with him or anything, right, I mean let’s be reasonable here. Darn.). He’s my dad’s favourite Python, and one of my sisters’, too. (Although she’s also quite fond of Eric Idle.) I think my main problem with him is one of height. He is way too tall.
I am a short person. As Dennis repeatedly puts it (every....single...time....he....sees...me....) I am ‘vertically challenged’. (Dennis is keen on being politically correct about everything.) I am four foot eight, a good four inches behind my sister, who is four years my junior and disgustingly proud of her height. As with most short people, I have an instinctive distrust of anyone taller than me (viz. the world in general) and a tendency to dislike rather strongly anyone over six feet. People that tall may fall at any time, may suddenly take a peculiar bent and shout “Timber!” and dive at the shortest person they see. I suppose this may be the only reason I don’t love Cleese for his talent as I do Palin for his.
That, and also I have a recurring nightmare of waking to find Cleese looming over me with a rock-hard halibut. (No alternate meanings here; that is what I’m seriously talking about. Remember the fish-slapping dance?)
My friend Martha (favourite Python: Chapman) has seen “A Fish Called Wanda”, and tells mind-boggling tales of earthquakes, typhoons, and other natural disasters, all as a result of how hard she was laughing. It is true that the town in which she lives, as well as several of the surrounding cities, was overcome by an immense tidal wave the very same night she watched it (no it isn’t, it isn’t true at all, I made it up). I’d read somewhere of some of the scenes, and had mentioned to her that the one I most wanted to see was the french-fries-up-the-nose part. She said that was funny, sure, but the parts that really killed her (pun probably intended) was when Palin, as Ken the stuttering animal-loving misbegotten, was trying to knock off an elderly witness-to-a-crime, and kept getting her dogs instead. As Martha told me this she went into waves of hysterical laughter, in between which she related to me the ways in which he committed murder and how sorry he was afterwards, and attended the dog’s funerals, hiding behind trees and crying his eyes out. I don’t know how much of this is true. Martha doesn’t lie nearly as much as me, but she does embellish quite frequently, and the manner in which I was hanging on her every word, enraptured by her description of a dog being smashed flat by a safe, may well have inspired her to heights of eloquence heretofore unattained under the influence of the work-a-day comedian.
All this counts for naught unless I can persuade Dennis, that keeper of the keys to the Palin, to tape a movie for me this Saturday night (or Sunday morning, depending on how you look at it). I’ve asked him before and he always heaves a sigh and says, “All right, we’ll see about getting that silly thing taped for you,” and then nothing ever comes of it, so I’m not overly enthusiastic. Except for one thing....
I was sitting down with the Sunday paper, this Sunday past, and looking through the TV Guide for the next week (this week). It has a list of the movies on all week, and as I usually have things I’d like to get taped, I go through and look for them to see if they’re showing. I’ve been meaning to get Martha a copy of “Drop Dead Fred” but it hasn’t been on this past couple of weeks, so I looked for that first. There it was, all well and good. Then suddenly I was overcome by this pure feeling of goodwill towards all. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice’, I thought peacefully, ‘if “A Fish Called Wanda” were on and I could note that down to be attended to later?’ Dreamily I turned the pages to the ‘F’ section, dozed through them, and then sat bolt upright and had to fight back hysterical laughter as I found my very own hazel eyes gazing upon the sacred words— except nothing is sacred to a Python, you know.
Well, there you have it. A realistic fable, a true-to-life fairy tale of one sixteen-year-old girl with no life and her pathetic pursuit of a movie starring her favorite British ex-comedian who is forty-two years older than her. Proof, at last, that dreams do come true.
Oh my lord!
John Cleese just walked in!
He looks quite angry and he’s carrying a fish!
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