IS there life left in the dead parrot sketch?It has been 25 years since Monty Python was a living comedy troupe - the film "The Meaning of Life," released in 1983, was its swan song - but that has not stopped one alumnus from trying to convince the world that Python, like the parrot in its ancient skit, is just resting. For decades, Eric Idle has made sure the Monty Python name continues to grace books, DVDs, concert tours, a Broadway show, ring tones and video games.
Now he is helping take Monty Python to the Internet.
Pythonline.com, a social network and digital playground, offers clips of old material that people can use to make mash-ups, perhaps inserting their own pet in the killer-rabbit scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." The home page has a blog format with news about the surviving Pythons; elsewhere there are chat boards and e-mail forums. Membership is free.
Mr. Idle is a driving force behind the site, though his role could only be described as, well, something completely different.
"I write about football for them occasionally," he said, laughing. "I thought it was the most abstruse thing I could do for it."
Despite the continuing wit and charm of Mr. Idle, the Web site's current content is not very funny. The discussion forums tend toward comments like "Happy Birthday, Eric!" The classic clips, which are familiar, are now available on YouTube, where they are more likely to be viewed by younger people, for whom they are fresh and hilarious.
The other Pythons - John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Michael Palin - are not active on the Python site. (Graham Chapman, the sixth Python, died in 1989.) Mr. Cleese was the only one who chose to comment on the digital venture, saying he was "vaguely aware" of Pythonline, but had no intention of contributing.
Mr. Idle tried to get Pythonline.com going on his own several times in the 1990s, only to set the project aside. "It was like Sisyphus," he said. "Every morning there was another mountain to push the pebble up. Then I got annoyed because people would deny it was me, so I would tell them to shove off and they would say, 'Oh, it is you.' "
In 2007, he signed a partnership with the New Media Broadcasting Company, a small outfit in Glendale, Calif., to jointly operate Pythonline. The site has been in beta-testing mode since the spring and will be officially introduced at the end of the month, said Scott Page, chief executive of New Media Broadcasting.
Mr. Page said the Python channel on YouTube had recorded 4.5 million video views and 52,000 subscribers in its first two weeks.
Previous incarnations of Pythonline were static, Mr. Page said, "something you would go to and look at content, but couldn't participate." This time, he said, "it's not just about watching, it's about participating, everyone getting involved."
New Media Broadcasting aims to make Pythonline profitable through advertising revenue and paid subscriptions, though the company is currently coasting on "substantial" private financing, Mr. Page said. The company's mission is to run sites where artists can communicate directly with fans.
Although Monty Python has already had a lasting mark on the Internet - junk e-mail was named spam after a Python sketch - purists argue that it is impossible to keep the original material as vibrant as it once was. Back in the 1970s, when the British group introduced America to silly walks, upper class twits and the "Lumberjack Song," Python had a cultish intellectual following that prided itself on understanding the humor that had been incubated at Oxford and Cambridge.
But older fans complain that Python gets watered down with every new iteration. People who laughed at the Latin grammar lesson in "Life of Brian" in 1979 might cringe at "Spamalot," the Broadway show that translates the 1975 movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" for a mass audience. (Symbolically, the Broadway show, which will close on Jan. 18, now stars Clay Aiken of "American Idol" fame.)
Mr. Idle, who lives in Los Angeles, became the group's de facto torch bearer in the late 1990s, when he began delving into its catalog and repackaging old material, often with a knowing wink, as with his 2000 tour, "Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python."
"I did try stopping for 10 or 15 years, but the trouble with Python is it's a bit like being a Beatle," he said by telephone. "You can't start over again."
SO far his biggest post-Python hits are "Spamalot," which won a Tony award for best Broadway musical in 2005, and a 2007 concert tour based on "Life of Brian" called "Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy)." He is now working on a book about Python's touring days and a celebration next year to commemorate the group's 40th anniversary.
"What we have is a brand, a franchise," he said. "We created this name that exists, and everyone knows what it means and we should be grateful to our younger selves that we own it all."
Because the original members of the group own the rights to most of the Monty Python catalog, each continues to reap royalties from Mr. Idle's productions.
"The rest of us aren't terribly interested, but we are very grateful that Eric is doing it," said Mr. Cleese, an original Python who mentioned an expensive divorce as just one reason he appreciated the continuing royalties. Still, he said, it was "basically terribly boring to me to be going back and doing something I did 35 years ago." (That said, he noted that his current project was a stage musical adaptation of his 1998 film, "A Fish Called Wanda.")
Clearly the public does not share Mr. Cleese's boredom with Python. "Spamalot," according to Variety, has grossed $162 million since opening in 2005, not counting the touring productions.
"Here it never stops," Mr. Idle said of Python in America. "It's on television all the time, and people know it backwards and forwards. They all learned 'The Holy Grail' in college as though it were a text. There isn't a demographic that hasn't been tickled by Python, which struck me as completely bizarre."
While Mr. Idle has proven adept at wringing money out of Python, some question whether there is a price to the group's legacy. "When you can get a Monty Python screen saver, it ceases to be what Monty Python was," said Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University (and a huge Python fan in high school).
When Pythonline officially makes its debut, it will compete for attention with CollegeHumor.com and FunnyOrDie.com. Monty Python has had "a huge resurgence recently with the Will Ferrell generation of comedy - silly is back in a big way," said Sam Reich, director of original content at CollegeHumor.com. "Sketch in general is back in a big way thanks to the Internet - sketch works online."
Fans should not expect to see much fresh material from Mr. Idle. At 65, he is "not a YouTube, Facebook kind of guy," and prefers to spend his time writing songs. "I go down every few months and visit them and encourage them, but I couldn't do that anymore," Mr. Idle said. "It's just too boring."
MICHELLE
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