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That was sort of the 'Second City' approach, which was try to be intelligent and assume your audience is intelligent. We were influenced by 'Monty Python,' too, which would have philosophers in a wrestling match.
We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.
Missing out on 'Monty Python' was a real blow at the time. I sometimes wonder how things would have been different if I had been invited to join 'Monty Python,' but as the saying goes, one door closes, another opens.
Monty Python crowd; half of them came from Cambridge, and half of them came from Oxford. But, there seems to be this jewel, this sort of two headed tradition of doing comedy, of doing sketches, and that kind of thing.
If there's a British film in the marketplace that is successful on a worldwide basis - whether it's 'A Room with a View,' 'Four Weddings' or 'The Full Monty' - money follows, and everyone tries to emulate that success.
We just thought of 'Boosh' as an extension of our childhoods in a way, the stuff we had grown up on and loved: 'Monty Python,' The Goodies, Frank Zappa. It spoke to a certain type of person, and we just carried on doing it.
You write who you are somehow. Even if you try to not to. You can't help but write who you are. I'm just not a very cynical person. I believe in the humanity of people, whether it is just the guys in 'The Full Monty' or Aron Ralston.
'Pastoralia' by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book.
I loved 'SNL' growing up, and I would trick my babysitter into letting me stay up to watch it. My family would rent Marx brothers' movies and Monty Python episodes, and we watched 'In Living Color', 'The State', and 'Strangers with Candy'.
Mike Nicholls saw me in the musical of The Full Monty and brought me in to audition for Angels in America for HBO. And that opened a lot of doors because you could go to LA and say: "Well, I'm starring opposite Al Pacino and Meryl Streep..."
I would really like to do a movie. Schedule-wise I don't know when exactly, but I think it would be great to do a Portlandia movie. Some of my favorite television shows have done it and they've been great. Like Monty Python. I think it would be great.
I grew up a huge fan of The Three Stooges and Monty Python, so somebody getting slapped in the face with a fish, or falling out of a chair, or running into a door, or tripping over their own feet and eating it, is all stuff I find really, really funny.
I always look at 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail.' They talked about how they wrote this movie with horses, and then they realized that horses are super-expensive and time-consuming. 'Why don't we just change it to coconuts?' That's part of my process.
I was greatly influenced by 'The Goons' and 'Monty Python' reconstituting what comedy was - it could come from a funny word, not just a set up and a pay-off. I liked the zaniness; they were satirical, slightly saucy and very literary in their references.
I think I was the only person in my experimental film class doing comedy. But my sense of humor and a lot of comedy that I love is quite surreal and strange, you know? You could argue that 'Monty Python' is experimental film. It just happens to be really funny.
After a while, you become really irritated that you're not recognised as the person who wrote 'The Full Monty.' Everyone goes on about how lovely the characters are. That's because they were written! 'What a clever title.' Yeah, that's because I made up the title!
As a Jew reading about Jesus, I thought, 'He's a pretty good guy.' It's the same conclusion Monty Python drew in 'Life of Brian' - if people actually live what he did, it would be a pretty good world. But Jesus and Christianity have a tenuous relationship at best.
I've always been more of a nerdy, academic type. I loved 'Star Wars' growing up. I have three older brothers, so they were a big influence on me. We loved 'Danger Mouse,' and we love 'Monty Python'. We loved any kind of British comedy and 'Wallace and Gromit' and all of that stuff.
People can see that we are part of a tradition of absurd comedy, stretching from Spike Milligan and Peter Cook through to Monty Python and Vic Reeves. We're not like Ricky Gervais's hyper-real cringe comedy. We're at the other end of the scale, but there's room for the sillier stuff, too.
At the end of Season Four of 'Mr. Show,' instead of doing another season, everyone just thought they wanted to go and do a movie. Kind of like Monty Python. Monty Python went right into 'And Now For Something Completely Different,' and everyone kind of compared 'Mr. Show' to Monty Python.
I just don't know when we all decided that if it doesn't fit in a Happy Meal box, it's not for kids. I remember flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, and I grew up watching Monty Python. I think that kids can handle a lot more than we give them credit for, especially when it comes to the absurd.
I've learned to take care of myself. You know, I try to stay conscious of whatever my energy is at all times, really. I mean, I come home from work, and, depending on the day or depending on what was going on, if I needed to adjust, I'd just meditate, or play guitar, or watch some 'Monty Python.'
The Goons were always one of our favourites; we always felt we were in that tradition - Goons, Monty Python, Peter Cook, Vic and Bob, Spike Milligan. We felt we were part of that lineage, but in England, it wasn't happening like that. There was a brand of comedy like 'The Office,' which was very real.
So many of Spielberg's films inspired my imagination growing up. And then there are British films like 'The Full Monty' and 'Waking Ned Devine' that took me to places I really loved, with characters I just thought were amazing. But the films of Luc Besson showed me France - a really cool side of France.
One question about a joke is, how well is the strangeness of the situation resolved? At 'The New Yorker', we retain a lot of incongruity, tapping the playful part of the mind - Monty Python-type stuff. We also try to use humor as a vehicle for communicating ideas. Not editorial comment, but observation.
Science was always a passion, but I also loved 'Monty Python' and 'The Young Ones,' and I discovered the Footlights comedy club at university, where a lot of those people got their start. I had a go and loved it immediately. After that, I just couldn't stop writing sketches, and it all took off from there.
Monty Python never directly said, 'We're liberals' - they just did their sketches, and you had to figure it out. Generally, they were anti-establishment, of course, making fun of the people in power. I think, comedians, that's their job - pointing out what other people might not notice and going, 'Yoo-hoo, over here.'
I was always a fan of the old-style comics. I loved vaudeville. I loved Milton Berle, Dick Shawn, Phyllis Diller, Don Rickles, Charlie Callas, all those guys. Hilarious. I love the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies, and Abbott & Costello. My television influences were 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' 'Benny Hill,' and 'Hee Haw.'
All the great game show hosts have a signature 'look,' from Bob Barker's year-round Brazil Nut-hued tan to Monty Hall's oversized lamb chop sideburns. As the host of IFC's new comedy game show 'Bunk,' I, too, have worked to develop a style signature by being the first man or woman in TV history to host every show in my bare feet!
I grew up in a bit of a vacuum. And as a kid, you see 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' and you're like, 'Oh, it's a cartoon.' There's mixed media. It's funny, and there's stop-motion. But as an adult, you figure it out, how the entire underpinnings of their comedy was poking fun at the rank and file of the British aristocracy and the monarchy.
