Crunchy frogs?
The anarchist peasant from Holy Grail was a political awakening for me.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate of the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!
If I went around calling myself emperor because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me they’d put me away!
(It’s amazing how much of this aligns with Graeber’s work)
I believe he was supposed to be a digger actually. But anarchist peasant is pretty close
The fact that their sketch use of “spam” made it into general usage.
I’m torn between “every sperm is sacred” and the biggus dickus scene. Both make me laugh uncontrollably every time.
He has a wife, you know…
“You know what she’s called? Incontinentia… Incontinentia Buttocks WILL YOU STOP LAUGHING!?”
That scene is always able to make me laugh.
They told the actors playing the guards it was very important that they keep a straight face throughout, and then planned on cracking them up. Or so I’ve been told
I believe it is true. The extras were told they wouldn’t get paid if they laughed. I love when he swings his toga around and gets in that guards face - “how 'bout you centurion? Do you find it risible to laugh when I say the naaaame…”
I think most of the scene was scripted apart from the part about his wife which was improvised, that’s why you can hear the crew behind the camera laughing as well.
Here’s the video I got that from: https://youtu.be/RmCWDZulUuQ
I’d like to think it was less a threat and more an appeal to professionalism.
“We’ve got to get this scene, and time is running out. You guys have to treat this like you’re doing Shakespeare live. Whatever you do, don’t fuck this up.”
The Biggus Dickus sketch is brilliant.
Judean People Front vs People Front of Judea. So many issues of today can be boiled down to that discussion.
Also, I kind of agree that everyone has the pholosophical right to be pregnant, even if it’s not a possibility.
SPLITTER!
The aqueduct?
I can’t believe no one has mentioned my favorite running Python gag:
That’s because nobody expects them
The burn the witch sketch. I still show it to students to show how bad science and good science differ
I can’t narrow it down to one gag, but Holy Grail as a whole.
The castle of aaaaaargh.
Perhaps he was dictating it.
It’s only a model
Shh!
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, song from Life of Brian
The Universe Song from Meaning of Life is also great
I forgot about this one! Brilliant
Such a jaunty representation of nihilism.
Four Yorkshiremen is an all-time classic sketch. Idk if it’s my favorite but it’s up there and nobody else mentioned it so 🤷♂️
“We would’ve DREAMED to have a hole in the ground!”
The entirety of Holy Grail, for starters. My high school history teacher said that it was one of the most realistic depictions of life in the Middle Ages ever put on film.
After that…
“What have the Romans ever done for us?”
“The roads!”
“Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads–”
…and…
“Oh, we used to dream of livin’ in a corridor! Would ha’ been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.”
Television Announcer: And now, the penguin on top of your television set will explode. {BOOOM!} Watcher: How’d he know that? Television Announcer: It was an inspired guess.
The multiple layers of cognitive dissonance are wonderful.
In my first year of high school I had Latin, which I hated with a passion. Before, I thought that it would boil down to learning some common words and sayings and proverbs, but no. It was learning latin as a foreign language. I don’t think I was taught anything remotely as useless as that. And I really don’t like the teacher and she didn’t like me and it was truly awful and I hated every second of it. It was so awful that I had nightmares about it, even years after high school.
A couple (two I think) of years after that latin studies I saw the Life of Brian for the first time. I didn’t know what I was going to see, so when the “romanus eunt domus” scene came. It wasn’t just hilariously funny it was also cathartic.
So I’d say that. I remember that sketch almost by heart since the first time I saw it.
I came here to say this. And for people who didn’t study Latin (which I did as an adult, having chosen German as my second foreign language at school), there is a video on YouTube which explains in detail exactly why that scene is so funny:
Pining for the fjords.
The witch trial which explains duck typing perfectly.
