A Pocketful of Python Volume 4
Terry Gilliam
Foreword by Eric Idle
A celebration of the silly and enduring genius of the Monty Python team. Each volume in the Pocketfuls series is picked by a different Python and includes their best visual and verbal gags.
In October 1969 the BBC broadcast the first programme in a new series: Monty Python's Flying Circus, written and conceived by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.Over the years the six of them followed this with another 44 extremely silly programmes, a German TV special, five full-length feature films, seven books, nine long-playing records and live stage shows that toured the UK and were seen in Canada and New York and at the Hollywood Bowl. This new volume continues the series of pocket anthologies for which each of the Pythons makes a personal choice of favourite bits from the vast Python oeuvre. Terry Gilliam's selection contains classics of silliness that include "Why Accountancy is Not Boring", "The German Lumberjack's Song" and "Stan's Right To Have Babies" as well as some startling and less familiar verbal and pictorial gems. The book comes complete with an embittered contribution by the sweet-natured Eric Idle. Welcome to the back flap of this wraparound book cover. Usually this important part of the book would have to include a photograph of the author and a brief blurb about his wife and dog and his pleasant country pursuits and his two and one third lovely children and what he gets up to in his spare time when he's not churning out another important and rewarding book. Seldom does it include information about colostomy bags, lower intestinal tracts or words like polyps and sigmoidoscopy. This is the kind of information that back flaps notoriously shy away from.
Well this back flap is different.
Since most of the so-called Pythons are dead or dying this back flap will shrink from nothing. What can they do if we choose to reveal information about their swelling prostates or their loss of basic motor skills?
At best they might manage to roll their eyes in mute anger and try to drool on us as they strain against the jungle of IV tubes that leash them to their private, non-NHS urine soaked hospital beds. Ha! the fact is, they probably can't even manage to read this type through the thickening mist of their cataracts.
No, this is a back flap unafraid to say anything it wants, to BE anything it wants...to stand tall! Freed from the need to suck up to the authors' pathetic egos, it will sing and dance and recite obscure poetry. It will quote the Greeks. It will repeat favourite passages from David Irving.
Yessirree!!... there's absolutely nothing in the world to stop it going on and on and on and on and on and on as long as it jolly well li
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About Terry Gilliam As part of the Monty Python team, Terry Gilliam produced the series' bizarre animations as well as performing. His subsequent career has encompassed animation and film-making, and he has directed films including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Brazil, Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
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