A Loss For Words
Terry Jones, without peer among the fearless
I remember, as a young man in 1970’s America, when I first discovered Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It was, all at once, hilarious, brain-busting and, frankly, scary. Anarchic, cerebral and existentially unmoored from both punchlines and linearity, the show was so different from anything I had experienced that I was simultaneously entranced and terrified. Monty Python’s Flying Circus was the Book of Revelations set to muzak, with a smarmy emcee in a cheap suit and with puns.
I was too young to see The Holy Grail in theatres and when The Life of Brian was released I was not allowed to see it, having been told it was blasphemous. I grew up Roman Catholic at a time when the adults were grappling with The Church; between warning the boys not to be found alone with Father McPedo and warning the girls (and wives) not to be alone with Father Handsy; and dealing with the three steps forward, two steps sideways, and a days march backwards of Vatican II; we were taught to fear ahead of time. That’s why I wasn’t allowed to see a movie that the adults hadn’t seen either.
But being a latchkey kid and, indeed, encouraged to watch PBS, I soaked up Flying Circus. With its subversive shards of jumbled up reality, quick-witted u-turn plotting, whiplash scene changes, and rat-a-tat dialogue, watching it I would surf a rising delight…
