December 15, 2006
Reader’s Almanac: 12/15
Born today: Francois, duc de La Rouchfaucauld, memoirist, non-fiction, 1613; L(udwik) L(ejzer) Zamenhof, Esperanto creator, Bialystok, Poland, Russian Empire, 1859; Maxwell Anderson, playwright, Atlantic, Penn., 1888; Betty Smith, novelist, poet, Brooklyn, N.Y., 1896; Muriel Rukeyser, poet, essayist, New York City, 1913; Edna O'Brien, author, short-story writer, screenwriter, Twamgraney, Ireland, 1930.
Died: Izaac Walton, fishing author, biographer, Winchester, Hampshire, 1683; Horace McCoy, crime novelist, screenwriter, Hollywood, 1955; Walt Disney, animator, Los Angeles, 1966.
SPEEDLINKS:
20,800 to 54 to 8: Literary agent Kristin Nelson crunches the year's numbers. The set in the title? Queries to partials read to clients.
Biography Lesson for the Day: When researching your subject's life, Always be nice to the subject's ex-wife.
This is a Surprise? The BBC thought Monty Python disgusting. Of course, they were referring to the infamous undertaker sketch, with its three options of what to do with the customer's dead mum: "burn her, bury her or dump her." I'll only add this bit from "Monty Python: The Case Against" about the writing of the sketch.
The writers of the notorious "Undertakers" sketch were Chapman and Cleese. Graham Chapman remembers the afternoon they wrote it as one of the funniest of his life; John Cleese has said, 'If you could have seen us writing it, it was not two calculating members of the IRA planning to destroy the world, but two young men holding their sides and shaking with laughter." The sketch was brought to a writing meeting in the garden of Terry Jones' house in Camberwell. Terry Gilliam collapsed with laughter and remained hysterical for the rest of the day, but Idle, Palin and Jones were more shocked. Terry Jones, who had elderly parents, remembers being called away to the phone and thinking that they couldn't put this one out. "But then, why not? We think it's funny."
As producer, Ian MacNaughton felt less sure and he took the precaution of 'referring' the script upwards. 'Reference upwards' is the BBC's system of self-censorship. If a producer is unsure of his ground, he seeks senior advice, and the matter can go as high as the Director-General if a difficult decision has to be made. In this case the Head of Comedy, Michael Mills, read the script and said that it was all right, provided that the audience was shown to register its disapproval by taking over the set. (In fact a truly disapproving reaction would have been a shocked silence -- Eric Idle remembers the sharp intakes of breath when he performed the sketch on their Canadian stage tour.)
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