We may have a hard time imagining this now, but a century ago comic songs were an absolute staple of popular entertainment. The British music hall teemed with tunes poking fun at working-class life and the hardships of World War I, and American vaudeville was populated by singers who spoofed romance or ethnic characters. Jazz Age composers like Cole Porter (“Be a Clown”), Gus Kahn (“Makin’ Whoopee”), and Harry Ruby (“Hooray for Captain Spaulding”) brought enormous style and sophistication to the form, and for every performer who made the transition to radio and talkies—like Fanny Brice (“Second Hand Rose”), Eddie Cantor (“If You Knew Susie”), or Jimmy Durante (“Inka Dinka Doo”)—there were hundreds more still plying similar material onstage. The traditional comic song hung on well into the 50s, as the last vaudeville stars finished out their careers on TV variety shows and younger performers like Danny Kaye and Jerry Lewis carried the torch.
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In the 50s the record business developed a niche market for novelty songs like “The Flying Saucer” or “The Chipmunk Song,” which often capitalized on sound effects, samples of hit records, or other gimmicks. (It lives on in the records of Ray Stevens, Adam Sandler, and “Weird Al” Yankovic.) But after rock began to colonize the record charts, the traditional comic song became hopelessly square; hip performers like the Smothers Brothers or Steve Martin might have incorporated music into their acts, but usually they were subverting the songs for comic effect. American vaudeville and British music hall lived on in the musical numbers of Mel Brooks and Monty Python, but they were exceptions to the rule. Nowadays, when performers like Sarah Silverman, Tenacious D, or Flight of the Conchords break into song, the whole enterprise is usually framed by ironic quotation marks.
Unfortunately the video makers decided to forgo the expense and hassle of clearing film clips, so The Seventh Python has to make do with footage of Innes rummaging through his back catalog in March 2003 as he rehearses and plays his first LA shows in nine years. There are no clips of the Bonzos performing in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour (as the house band during the strip-club scene) or on the 60s children’s show Do Not Adjust Your Set, which became a cult favorite among adults; there’s no footage of Innes as Sir Robin’s minstrel in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, cataloging all the ways his boss could be dismembered, or as Rutles founder Ron Nasty in All You Need Is Cash, holding a press conference in a bathtub, under a running shower, to announce his impending marriage to a neo-Nazi. Director Burt Kearns hits his theme insistently, coming back again and again to Innes’s dislike of fame, yet the movie dwells on Innes’s friendship with the Beatles and leans heavily on Python’s Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, and John Cleese as talking heads.
review
Directed by Burt Kearns
Punching the Clown ★★★
Directed by Gregori Viens
