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Discovering Dad: Terry Gilliam’s daughter uncovers her father’s artworks
07.26.2012
10:01 am
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I probably owe Terry Gilliam money. I nicked his book Animations of Mortality when I was a kid as I wanted to improve my skills at drawing cartoons. Gilliam’s work was a big influence, (along with Ronald Searle and Ralph Steadman), and I spent hours perusing the pages of my pilfered goods, learning how to create art from a Master

What joy, therefore, to find Mr Gilliam’s daughter Holly has started a blog uncovering her father’s brilliant work, uploading discoveries on an almost daily basis.

Since October last year, Holly has undertaken this mammoth task of organizing her father’s archive:

....all his work from pre-Python days, as a cartoonist, photojournalist & assistnat editor for Help! magazine, through all his original artwork and cut-outs for Python animation, posters, logos and generally everything Python, to his storyboards, designs and sketches for his feature films and other non-film related projects (including his opera of “Faust” and that infamous Nike commercial).  Why!? Because I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by my father’s amazing work all my life and I think it should be seen by everyone so I am organising the archive so it can eventually be put in a book and an exhibition.

Holly is to be commended for this fabulous undertaking and I’m more than delighted she is sharing her father’s spectacular art works, and am now certainly willing to cough up the five quid owing on the book.

See more of this on-going project at Discovering Dad aka delving into Terry Gilliam’s personal archive. Or, follow Holly on twitter for updates. All images copyright Terry Gilliam.
 
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Previously on Dangerous Minds

Terry Gilliam: How he made stop-frame animations in his bedroom


 
Bonus Gilliam’s Monty Python illustration, after the jump…
 
Via Laughing Squid
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.26.2012
10:01 am
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‘The Hippie Temptation’: TV news report from 1967
07.25.2012
12:02 pm
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This is something from our archives with improved video.

“My mom thinks that where I’m living down here the Hippies are a bunch of dirty, filthy, infectious people. This is my bag and I found my place here and I scream and I holler and I’m happy.”

CBS TV documentary from 1967 exposes the shocking truth about America’s drug-addled youth. Prepare yourself for a terrifying descent into an LSD hellhole. 50 minutes of hippie hedonism with Harry Reasoner.

With the Grateful Dead and Canned Heat.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.25.2012
12:02 pm
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‘Weezy, get me some LSD’: When Sherman Hemsley met Gong
07.24.2012
04:42 pm
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Sherman Hemsley, the actor who played George Jefferson, was known to be a huge fan of prog rock, especially Gentle Giant, Nektar and Gong.

Hemsley collaborated with Yes’s Jon Anderson on a funk-rock opera about the “spiritual qualities of the number 7” (never produced). Hemsley also did an interpretive dance to the Gentle Giant song “Proclamation” on Dinah Shore’s 70s talkshow, that was apparently somewhat confusing for her.

But the best story, I mean the best story of all time, is the one told by Gong’s Daevid Allen about his encounter with the beloved 70’s sitcom star. Here is Allen’s verbatim tale as related to Mitch Myers (and originally published in Magnet magazine):

“It was 1978 or 1979, and Sherman Hemsley kept ringing me up. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap because we didn’t have television in Spain (where I was living). He called me from Hollywood saying, ‘I’m one of your biggest fans and I’m going to fly you here and put flying teapots all up and down the Sunset Strip.’ I thought,  ‘This guy is a lunatic.’ He kept it up so I said, ‘Listen, can you get us tickets to L.A. via Jamaica? I want to go there to make a reggae track and have a honeymoon with my new girlfriend.’ He said, ‘Sure! I’ll get you two tickets.’

I thought, ‘Well, even if he’s a nut case at least he’s coming up with the goodies.’ The tickets arrived and we had this great honeymoon in Jamaica. Then we caught the plane across to L.A. We had heard Sherman was a big star, but we didn’t know the details. Coming down the corridor from the plane, I see this black guy with a whole bunch of people running after him trying to get autographs. Anyway, we get into this stretch limousine with Sherman and immediately there’s a big joint being passed around. I say, ‘Sorry man, I don’t smoke.’ Sherman says, ‘You don’t smoke and you’re from Gong?’

Inside the front door of Sherman’s house was a sign saying, ‘Don’t answer the door because it might be the man.’ There were two Puerto Ricans that had a LSD laboratory in his basement, so they were really paranoid. They also had little crack/freebase depots on every floor. Then Sherman says, ‘Come on upstairs and I’ll show you the Flying Teapot room.’ Sherman was very sweet but was surrounded by these really crazy people.

We went up to the top floor and there was this big room with darkened windows and “Flying Teapot” is playing on a tape loop over and over again. There were also three really dumb-looking, very voluptuous Southern gals stoned and wobbling around naked. They were obviously there for the guys to play around with.

[My girlfriend] Maggie and I were really tired and went to our room to go to bed. The room had one mattress with an electric blanket and that was it. No bed covering, no pillow, nothing. The next day we came down and Sherman showed us a couple of [The Jeffersons] episodes.

One of our fans came and rescued us, but not before Sherman took us to see these Hollywood PR people. They said, ‘Well, Mr. Hemsley wants us to get the information we need in order to do these Flying Teapot billboards on Sunset Strip.’ I looked at them and thought they were the cheesiest, most nasty people that I had ever seen in my life and I gave them the runaround. I just wanted out of there. I liked Sherman a lot. He was a very personable, charming guy. I just had a lot of trouble with the people around him.”

Oi, if Daevid Allen thinks you’re weird, you must be a stone freak! (Like our pal, opera singer/actor Jesse Merlin. He met Daevid Allen in San Francisco and Allen said “Just look at him. He’s a perfect example of himself!” Coming from Daevid Allen, that’s the best compliment in the history of the world, isn’t it?)

Below, Sherman Hemsley as “George Jefferson,” dancing up a storm to Nektar’s “Show Me the Way”!
 

 
After the jump, Gong on French TV, 1973.

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.24.2012
04:42 pm
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America’s Got Stupid: The ‘Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo’ show
07.24.2012
04:18 pm
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Remember “Honey Boo Boo,” the hyperactive, over-caffeinated “go-go juice” chugging star of the child beauty pageant reality show Toddlers & Tiaras? How could you forget her, right? Well, Honey Boo Boo and her family, mother June, father “Sugar Bear” and sisters “Pumpkin,” “Chubbs” and “Chickadee” will soon be appearing in a new six-part series on TLC called Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

The network this will air on is TLC. That used to stand for “The Learning Channel.” I wonder what those initials stand for now?

I also wonder if “Mountain Dew” is going to sponsor this? If not Mountain Dew, who?

How many products would benefit from an association with a show like this??? Domino’s Pizza, Little Caesar’s, Doritos, I guess the list is depressingly endless, isn’t it?
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.24.2012
04:18 pm
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One of SNL’s best and brightest: Tom Davis has died
07.19.2012
06:57 pm
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Jane Curtin, Al Franken, Tom Davis and Gilda Radner.
 
Comedian and writer Tom Davis of Saturday Night Live fame has died of throat and neck cancer at the age of 59.

Davis, along with his partner Al Franken, was responsible for some of the funniest and weirdest routines during SNL’s glory days, including the hugely popular running skit The Coneheads, which Davis said was inspired by one of the many LSD trips he took as a teenager in the late-1960s and early ‘70s. It should come as no surprise that Davis was into psychedelics. His humor was often laced with the kind of down-the-rabbit hole surrealism that arises from seeing things through a lysergic lens. Having Jerry Garcia as a friend also provided him with access to all kinds of cool shit, including an introduction to Stanley Owsley.

Davis retired from being a performer in the mid-1990s - although he briefly returned to SNL as a writer in 2003 - and focused on the writing of his memoirs, Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL From Someone Who Was There, and a book he was co-authoring on Owsley. Davis, an unrepentant psychonaut to the end, continued to embrace life even as he was leaving it. I hope his last trip was/is a good one.

I wake up in the morning, delighted to be waking up, read, write, feed the birds, watch sports on TV, accepting the fact that in the foreseeable future I will be a dead person. I want to remind you that dead people are people too.”

Here’s a fun clip of Davis as Keith Richards and Franken as Mick Jagger doing “Under My Thumb” at Stockton State College in New Jersey, 1983.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.19.2012
06:57 pm
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Doctor Who action figures ‘sing’ Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’
07.19.2012
12:56 pm
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A big collection of Doctor Who action figures “sing” Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”

This version of Reed’s “Perfect Day” was originally done for a BBC charity promotion in 2008 which included a vast array of singers including “David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, Bono among many others.”

Unfortunately, the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory are not included in the video.
 

 
Thanks you, Edward Ludvigsen!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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07.19.2012
12:56 pm
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The Mighty Boosh: A killer remix of Kraftwerk Orange’s ‘Electro Boy’
07.18.2012
04:23 pm
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Here’s a groovy extended dance mix of Kraftwerk Orange’s “Electro Boy” from the fabulous The Mighty Boosh comedy series.

Driving along on the plastic dream
Heart beats fast like a tiny machine
I am electro boy
I am electro girl
Skating along on the perspex scene
Crystal moccasins, bionic cheese
I am electro boy
I am electro girl”

Featuring Neon, Ultra and Johnny Two Hats.

And don’t forget, The Human League invented music.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.18.2012
04:23 pm
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Monty Python and the amazing space age slenderizer
07.17.2012
03:30 pm
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I’m gonna look for a pair of Trim-Jeans, the “amazing space age slenderizer,” on eBay. Man, could I use a pair. Losing nine inches on my waist in three days? I could start wearing skinny black jeans again.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.17.2012
03:30 pm
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On Location With Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques: Rare interview from 1973
07.13.2012
06:14 pm
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Here’s an interesting little curio for those who love British comedy - an interview with Eric Sykes on the set of of his little known feature film directing debut, You Better Go In Disguise in 1973. To the younger generation, Sykes may be best known for his performances in Harry Potter, The Others and even The Tele-Tubbies, but for those who grew-up in the seventies, he will always be remembered for his classic sit-com Sykes.

Long before Schwarzenegger and De Vito, Sykes and the wonderful Hattie Jacques were the original comedy twins. Over 9 series, Eric and Hat were essential Monday night viewing, and were the perfect neighbors, and the kind of relatives I always wishes I had.

Sykes was a comedy genius, who started his career writing brilliantly surreal monologues for Frankie Howerd, his first script was the tale of Frankie taking two elephants on a journey by train. Sykes then went onto write The Goons, when Spike Milligan was indisposed, and formed a legendary writing group with Milligan and Alan Galton and Ray Simpson (the talent behind Tony Hancock and creators of Steptoe and Son). Then in the 1950s, Sykes started a partnership with Hattie Jacques that would last until the beautiful Hat’s untimely death in 1980.

Hattie makes an appearance in this clip along with sixties TV ‘tec, Stratford Johns who looks like he’s being interviewed by a giant. Of course, Johns was best known for his role in Softly, Softly, Barlow and Watt and Brond. Sykes gives a purposely confusing description of You Better Go In Disguise, which bombed and was later remade in a slightly different version by Eric in 1981 as If You Go Down to the Woods Today.
 

Eric Sykes interview after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.13.2012
06:14 pm
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Creepy puppet will haunt your dreams
07.12.2012
07:20 pm
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Sesame Street takes a detour to Chernobyl in this clip from the ultra-creepy kiddie show “Peppermint Park.”

As Ernie the puppet - who seems to have lost all his teeth, has Bell’s palsy and the epidermal sheen of someone who has undergone a recent face transplant - sings about the letter “M,” I can’t help but wonder what kind of horrible deformities are hidden beneath those gloves he’s wearing. Some kind of radiation-related disfigurement? All I know is he’s the saddest fucking puppet I’ve ever seen and I’m torn between sympathy and horror.
 
Watch it after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.12.2012
07:20 pm
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