The Columnist Manifesto

I thought Monty Python and the Holy Grail was somewhat funny the first time I saw it, but my laughs became increasingly forced with each successive (forced) viewing. You know how you can feel like a human laugh track when you're making an effort to enjoy comedy with your hilarious friends (who may or may not be forcing the laughs themselves)?

Can you name 5 attributes of a cult film? Here goes:

1) Repeat viewings by obsessive adherents.

2) If the humor (or the art form or whatever the schtick is) doesn't totally grab you, it's unbearable after the first or second viewing.

3) Memorization of script by obsessive adherents.

4) Script seems like a catalogue bag of catch phrases.

5) If obsessive adherents are put in mind of one of the catch phrases, they will mechanically repeat nearly all of the film's catch phrases and much of its dailogue, providing own laugh track with each bit, until they have worked up the appetite to see film again. Then they will insist on renting the film or grabbing it off the shelf (if the copy they own is near at hand).

Now showing at our Northwoods vacation condo? Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The movie that milked gratuitious medieval sword-slayings for all their comic value and then some. Here are some catch phrases to get you going:

"Bring out your dead!"
"Help, I'm being oppressed!"
"Flesh wound!"
"This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let' s not bicker about who killed whom!"
"Bring out the holy hand grenade!"
"Nih!"
"Q: What is your favorite color. A: Blue... no! green!... aaauuggghhh!!!"

I don't think it's just me -- all the tag lines seem to have exclamation marks. It's a great time for me to slip off to "Brew Moon" for some wi fi and coffee. For all my anti-Starbucks rhetoric, I sure am a sucker for Norah Jones in the background and this: