The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film and Monty Python

The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film
- 11 minutes long
- Directed by Richard Lester and Peter Sellers, in collaboration with Bruce Lacey
- Released in 1959
- Cost around £70 to make, including £5 to hire the field
- Filmed over 2 Sundays
- Slapstick comedy
- "Director Richard Lester first worked with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan on three television series, The Idiot Weekly Price 2d, A show called Fred and Son of Fred (all ITV, 1956), each of them an early attempt to transfer the surreal humour of radio's The Goon Show to a visual medium."
- "While the style of comedy may be very much of it's time, the film's employment of visual humour clearly owes a significant debt to silent cinema, with the sepia tint serving to reinforce the sense of homage (although sepia is a property of early photography, not cinema). This deliberate archaism is underpinned by the preponderance of late-Victorian / Edwardian clothing and props: top hats, plus fours, deerstalkers, a gramophone and a plate camera."
- "The film's lasting legacy, however, was its influence (as part of Milligan's overall body of work) on British comedy in general, and on Monty Python's Flying Circus (BBC, 1969-74) in particular. This is evident not only in its surreal humour, but in the way that elements of one routine are threaded through subsequent scenes, transcending the stand-alone sketch form - a tactic subsequently favoured by the Python team."

The link below leads to a clip of 'The Running Jumping and Standing Still film'. Blogger wouldn't let me upload the video on here and I can't find a full version of the film, only parodies and tribute videos!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTmaQdmtfok

Below is a video showing Monty Python's Flying Circus Top Ten Moments, to give you a bit of an idea about how weird and surreal Monty Python is!

Links to pages I've looked at for info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Jumping_%26_Standing_Still_Film

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053231/

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/471274/index.html

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/peter_sellers_vs._spike_milligan_the_running_jumping_standing_still_film_19