Get imaginative

So I watched Monty Python: The Almost Truth this weekend and I, as you'd expect, found it fascinating. Seems like every few years there's a new documentary on them, so it's almost become its own category. This one's one of the best. There are a lot of interviews with the Pythons and I always prefer ones where their involvement is obvious. I get cranky when it's really just a clip show and someone just tells me what I already know.

I thought it was an interesting decision to dedicate one show of the mini series to each movie. So a casual fan who hasn't seen Life of Brian probably didn't have a lot of interest. And I imagine there were a few people who avoided the Meaning of Life. And while some of them felt like a special feature left of the last release of the film, there was some new material.

I also could have done without some of the other speakers. Maybe some of them are more famous in England than they are here, and some I couldn't figure out why they were famous even after a little Googling. As though we still need convincing that MP influenced some comedians for the last thirty, almost forty, years.

I think my favorite part was during the Life of Brian show, they talked about how they initially wrote the movie about Jesus. After a little while, they realized it wasn't a good idea because Christian or not, His teachings just aren't funny. Take care of the sick and poor, treat others well. Not a lot of humor there. But one bit they lost completely involved a disciple trying to make dinner reservations for the last supper where the host tells them they'll have to wait for a table for 13, but they can get 6 and 7 in right now. He tells them it'll take even longer if they all want to sit on the same side of the table. Funny and pretty harmless, but you know there would have been much more offensive stuff in the movie had they gone that route.

Still, that would have been a great bit.