John Cleese, the comedy veteran star of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, has made a surprising admission – that he once killed a man.
30.10.2023 - 05:21 / variety.com
Naman Ramachandran John Cleese, founder member of seminal British comedy group Monty Python, has said that they were “early targets” of cancel culture. Cleese was speaking with The Sunday Times about his new GB News chat show “The Dinosaur Hour,” which has an episode on cancel culture. Monty Python’s 1979 film “Life of Brian” caused a furore when it released among some members of the Christian community.
“You could say that we were early targets of cancel culture,” Cleese told The Sunday Times. “People don’t like to have their cherished ideas punctured or questioned. We all love to live in our own closed systems of thought, to be surrounded by people who think a bit like us.
This is what happens on the internet too, where you get these blasted echo chambers. It’s why comedy is even more important today as a way of pricking those bubbles, opening them up, letting in fresh air. It is good for all of us.
The problem is that cutting-edge comedy becomes difficult if a joke that transgresses someone’s idea of good taste means that the comedian is banned for life. It subverts the creative impulse.” When asked whether the comedy he was famous for, which peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, would work in today’s times, Cleese said: “The trick with creativity is to understand that it is not a talent, it’s a frame of mind. You have to get away from fear and doubt.
You have to get into a place of playfulness and curiosity so that you can find connections and push boundaries. Cancel culture tends to make people less broad in their thinking, more literal-minded. It is tougher to make funny — or intellectually interesting — associations.
In cultural terms, it is dangerous. I’m so old I am not bothered about getting canceled. But as a young
.John Cleese, the comedy veteran star of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, has made a surprising admission – that he once killed a man.
Daily Mail.Cleese continued: “He was a dentist, he had a huge laugh. A famous laugh.
K.J. Yossman “Guardians of the Galaxy” star Karen Gillan is set to star alongside “Downton Abbey’s” Hugh Bonneville in a new dramedy from Steven Moffat about cancel culture, Variety can reveal.
Monty Python would often dryly announce, “and now for something completely different.”Well, not much is different about the revival of “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” the musical that’s based on their 1975 film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” that opened Thursday night at the St. James Theatre.
Dolly Parton has defended her decision to keep a duet with Kid Rock on the tracklist of her new album ‘Rockstar’, arguing that cancel culture is “terrible”.Kid Rock appears for a duet with Parton on the track ‘Either Or’, but courted controversy earlier this year when he hit out at Anheuser-Busch over its partnership with trans activist and influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who is a Bud Light brand influencer.Rock posted a video of himself using a semi-automatic rifle to shoot bullets at several cases of Bud Light which had been placed on top of a table by a river.“Grandpa is feeling a little frisky today. Let me tell you as clear and concise as possible,” he said before shooting the beer. He then raised his middle finger and shouted: “Fuck Bud Light and fuck Anheuser-Busch.”Now, Parton has explained why she kept the duet on the album in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. It was recorded prior to the Bud Light incident.“Somebody was talking to me the other day: ‘How could you do this [song] with Kid?’” she said.
Is Dolly Parton being kind to a fault here?
Zack Sharf Digital News Director Henry Selick and Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is officially 30 years old. In a recent interview with The New York Times, the two collaborators recalled Disney not wanting to have its name on the project due to its darker tone. The studio had the film developed under its more adult-leaning production banner Touchstone Pictures.
The Last of Us will be heading into production for its second season early next year with an eye for a 2025 launch.
wanted to be Barbie, producers said, which originally gave them pause, since that’s not a Disney character.“We searched through ‘Toy Story’ and found that there was Barbie in Disney, and there was Tour Guide Barbie!” producer Jamie Hammer told People. “So it ended up working out. And Whoopi looked amazing.
Rosanna Pansino is done talking about her MrBeast situation and is apologizing to the creator.
Andrew Cuomo is blaming cancel culture for his 2021 political downfall.
Manchester city council is asking the people of Manchester to get involved in a new discussion about the future of the city's arts and culture. The new initiative is looking for locals to give their feedback and ideas on what Manchester's cultural scene from music festivals to museum exhibitions should feature over the next 10 years.
Former ESPN President John Skipper, who led the effort to secure the current NBA rights deal, says incumbents Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have no choice but to re-up with the league.
With “All The Light We Cannot See” hitting Netflix next week, Shawn Levy is making the press rounds to promote his miniseries. And that gives him a chance to talk about his upcoming projects, too, like “Deadpool 3” and the “Star Wars” project he has in development.
Johnny Marr has said in a new interview that The Smiths‘ break-up was “mostly a personal thing”.Speaking to MusicRadar, the musician reflected on how the Morrissey-fronted band parted ways back in 1987 following the release of their fourth and final studio album, ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’.“It was mostly a personal thing,” Marr told the outlet. “We were working at such a breakneck pace – 50-odd tracks in four years – that I thought I was going to end up repeating myself.”He continued: “Also, I was frustrated with what people expected me to come up with.
John Stamos is looking back at his divorce from Rebecca Romijn.
Johnny Marr has said that gifting Noel Gallagher with an expensive guitar – after he smashed the previous one – is partly what motivated him to stop drinking.Marr previously recalled the time he gave a young, “skint” Gallagher his guitars before the pre-Oasis guitarist could afford his own.“He was just this guy who I recognised was intense and really serious about what he was doing, and he was skint and I had a load of guitars and I thought, ‘right OK well I’ll give him this guitar’,” he told Radio X.The Smiths guitarist gave Gallagher a 1960 Gibson Les Paul – which can be heard on The Smiths’ 1986 album ‘The Queen Is Dead’, and was formerly owned by The Who‘s Pete Townshend – only for him to smash it while dealing with a stage invader during a gig in Newcastle.Gallagher called Marr to ask for a replacement, after which the guitarist gifted his black 1978 Gibson Les Paul Custom.Marr also gave his 12-string sunburst Gibson 335, which features in the video for ‘Sheila Take a Bow’, to former Suede guitarist and producer Bernard Butler.“It’s just to be nice,” Marr told The Guardian. “As simple as that.
Ellise Shafer Kevin Spacey made a surprise appearance at an Oxford lecture honoring late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton on Monday night, performing for the first time since he was acquitted of sexual assault charges in London. In a clip from the event titled “what Shakespeare can teach us about cancel culture,” The Spectator associate editor Douglas Murray invited Spacey on stage to perform a monologue from “Timon of Athens.” “In an era of cancellation and defenestration we sometimes forget that we cannot go on like this and that we have been here before. We know this because our greatest writers and artists have addressed this question in their own times,” Murray said, referencing when Scruton was briefly dismissed from a government commission in 2019 over offensive remarks he made in an interview with the New Statesman.
Kevin Spacey was rewarded with a standing ovation after an appearance at a University of Oxford lecture about cancel culture.
Kevin Spacey is in the headlines for multiple reasons right now.