From trent.blogspot, Monty Python legend and star of the new Shrek the Third was in toronto over the long weekend to promote his new play/musical "Not The Messiah". He took some time to talk to Mad Dog & Billie on Toronto's 99.9 MIX FM where he dished out some juicy goods:"I've always loved Toronto cuz we kicked off our world tour here in 1974 when we came as Python so there’s a great openness and a willingness to see something new ... So many people love the coconut gag from Monty Python -- it's of course a radio joke and its been stolen patently by Shrek 3 I'm happy to say -- So we'll be able to sue their asses!" to which the MIX FM reporter said "GO ON ..."
Eric: "No, I mean it's like there it is in the first 30 seconds -- you go -- wait a minute, John [Cleese] and I are in this film and you steal our joke? Um, I don't know how the others are going to take to this ... I hope they (Dreamworks) cleared it with them -- and they also steal from Spamalot, you know ...
MIX FM: "Don't you think they did that to pay homage to you?"
Eric: "Do you think if I stole your wallet that'd be homage to your money? -- you see they neglected to tell us -- so the first I saw it was in the premiere -- and I was SHOCKED -- my whole family went WHAT! How dare you! So I walked out -- calmed down -- and walked back in -- but I was shocked and I think if you steal peoples jokes, I don't think that's homage, I think that's theft.
5 comments:
He's being silly.
I can't tell. I thought it was an homage when I saw it.
Eric Idle stole Shrek 3. He deserves a spinoff movie.
I can't tell either, nor did I see the flick, but if I'm guessing the joke right it's coconuts/horse hooves and I can't see how you can do that joke without it being an homage.
His crack about the money reminds me of those anti-pirating commercials. "You wouldn't steal a car, would you?" Except "You wouldn't steal a joke, would you?"
I had this friend named Dave when I worked in children's books. We found ourselves in this situation countless times: there'd be some group thing, I'd make a joke that somehow nobody but Dave heard, then he'd make the joke ten seconds later and everybody would laugh, and he'd look at me apologetically.
However, probably the people who wrote the joke in and cleared it had nothing to do with communicating with the Pythons about anything. I could see that being an obnoxious surprise.
I've purposefully stolen Lauren's jokes and gotten laughs out of them right in front of her before. I can't tell you how humorous I find that. She's left with the option of saying "hey, that was my joke!" which won't get her anywhere and kill the mood altogether or else just shake her head and confront me with it later.
It was the coconuts/horse thing that they were referring to. And that is obnoxious - not only did they write the joke in, they had a team of animators put it all together right up to the expression of embarrassment on the coconut sound effects guy. And they still didn't let them in on it? Maybe they just wanted to surprise them with the homage.
Shrek 3 was lame.
Well, to be fair, its their joke, you should ALWAYS ask first before you use someone elses stuff. but following this, is Mr Cleese made about this? i'm just curious, by the mr Idle should sue; there is too much intellectual theft happening these days.
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