Deliberately wasting your time
July 5, 2014 1:48 AM   Subscribe

Diehard fans of Blackadder, Bottom, The Young Ones and/or Monty Python, do you know your lines? Resting in a quiet, dusty corner of the web is a comprehensive repository of the scripts in plain text. The first Blackadder episode is hard to read, it's a solid wall of text, the next is slightly better. After that things improve.

Additionally there's a transcript of The Meaning of Life, two versions of Life of Brian (not sure why) and three of Holy Grail. One of the Grails is the screenplay before filming. Another begins with a nice note from "the typist", typed a long time ago:
... This is a complete, to the best of my ability, transcript of "Quest for the Holy Grail". It runs about 91867 bytes long, and took me about 9.64 hours to type in from an audio cassette recording. ... Naturally there's no substitute for the real thing, and if you are serious enough about it to actually try performing one of the sketches, I'd advise you to consult the actual movie on videotape and to use this script to save you the trouble of typing out the scenes of interest.
posted by valetta (20 comments total) 33 users marked this as a favorite
 
Another excuse to visit the end of the last episode of Blackadder, still one of the most unexpectedly moving scenes ever put on television.
posted by JHarris at 3:29 AM on July 5, 2014 [6 favorites]


Blackadder is a great series, except the first season, too much like mister Bean.
posted by Pendragon at 3:32 AM on July 5, 2014 [3 favorites]


Pendragon, you know that Blackadder came first, right? Blackadder in 1983, Mr. Bean in 1989.
posted by GrammarMoses at 3:59 AM on July 5, 2014


Sir
We, the Blackadder & Monty Python fans don't need to know "our" lines.
We just put in the DVD every leap year or so & have a healthy laugh.

And we usually die softly, but then, perhaps you weren't talking to me.
Thanks for the post, it's not a parrot, but cool anyway.
posted by The Dot at 4:16 AM on July 5, 2014


Madame
I do apologise.
The shopkeeper told me it was a parrot.
posted by valetta at 4:42 AM on July 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


No it isn't.
posted by Flashman at 4:46 AM on July 5, 2014


valetta
( that's the capital of Malta, right? )
How did you know that i'm french?
You some sort of a psychic? Pls don't give me
them goosebumps.
posted by The Dot at 5:03 AM on July 5, 2014


It's not quite the capital of Malta, as you will see if you click my profile. Did not know you are French, but I'm glad you are. I have my reasons.

I apologise for the goose. The bumps will go down in a short time. Just relax, and breathe. All is well.
posted by valetta at 5:17 AM on July 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Now, this a total derail & i am seriously ok with a mod, getting this comment deleted.
Valetta IS the capital of Malta. Think of it like you'd do in regards to aruba for ex.
Simply fantastic, not to be missed. It's sister island Gozo is something, Tom Hanks,
wouldn't, for the world, gump over.
Full disclosure: i'm not working for the maltesian touristic department
posted by The Dot at 7:14 AM on July 5, 2014


Dot, I see I must apologise again.

I say valetta's not quite the capital of Malta because when I signed up I mis-spelled it with one L instead of two. Just a little joke, not made very clear, sorry. (I would love to visit Valletta someday.)

Derail over. Carry on threading.
posted by valetta at 7:27 AM on July 5, 2014


valetta

let me apologize too.
dunno quite what for, but i feel like it's my turn now.

Thx for the post again & the chatting.
posted by The Dot at 7:36 AM on July 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Funny, I don't remember the Misspelling World Capitals skit from either Blackadder or Python.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:07 AM on July 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


Blackadder is a great series, except the first season, too much like mister Bean.

I would have said the exact opposite. I thought the first season lunatic, offbeat, and full of original characters and story lines. No surprise that the BBC wanted to cancel it, and only changed their mind when Ben Elton was brought in as a co-writer. From then on, the series fell into its groove as a study in extended insult humor and flatter characters. Well done, to be sure, but at the cost of the manic, unpredictable zest of season one.

(I also preferred Clever Baldric to Fool Baldric, but that's just me.)
posted by BWA at 10:16 AM on July 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


<3
posted by ephemerae at 11:42 AM on July 5, 2014


I say valetta's not quite the capital of Malta because when I signed up I mis-spelled it with one L instead of two. Just a little joke,.

Though arguably it should be one L, as it is named for Jean de Valette. The origin of the second L is unknown (certainly to me, I believe as well to scholarship).
posted by BWA at 4:01 PM on July 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Wot the 'L you on about over there?
posted by BlueHorse at 6:13 PM on July 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Blackadder is a great series, except the first season... I would have said the exact opposite.

Interesting. I don’t think series 1, 2, and especially 4 are very good at all, but 3 is just about my favorite British TV of all time. (Excepting the Pythons, of course. And Fawlty Towers.)
posted by LeLiLo at 7:15 PM on July 6, 2014


On Blackadder, I like them all generally. 4th season is probably my favorite, the change in setting works very well I think. 1st is special, though, for being so different from the others. But they're all good. It's Blackadder, after all.
posted by JHarris at 8:19 PM on July 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Interesting. I don’t think series 1, 2, and especially 4 are very good at all, but 3 is just about my favorite British TV of all time.

Hm. Don't quite see series three as particularly stand-outish. I like Regency stuff as well, but the cast seem to be reprising the same roles as 2 and 4 - annoyed and aggrieved Blackadder and his stupid companions and superiors, florid insults. Call in costume change and Bob's your uncle. All very well done, but a tad predictable. (Though Miranda Richardson as Elizabeth was some kind of genius.) Back in Season one, Blackadder is a many sided creation indeed, and arguably grows as a character.

Everyone's got their own buttons, of course. I also liked season one for the variety of supporting roles. (Peter Cooke, I mean to say, Jim Broadbent and the magnificent Miriam Margolyes.)

I could go on, but hey! As JHarris says - It's Blackadder, after all.

(Then again, I don't much like Fawlty Towers. It's the over the top British anger thing that gets tiresome. To me at least.)
posted by BWA at 4:29 PM on July 8, 2014


In 1996 I was in 9th Grade. I did not have Internet access, nor did most of my friends. I lived in a rural area and there just wasn't that much interest. At school you could only have the password to access the school's internet if you were taking advanced computing, which seemed a very reasonable rule to everyone until the ubiquitous AOL disks started arriving in everyone's mailboxes a few years later. At this time, the Internet seemed like something you needed a vast amount of knowledge to use, and I didn't know any casual users beyond the kids who hung out in the computer lab all day. In my mind, the Internet was, like, math? Something complicated and dull and requiring a lot of commands, key entries and floppy disks.

In English class one of my good pals, a diehard nerd and huge Monty Python fan like myself, told me and my friend Jason that there was a place on the Internet where you could find the full scripts for all of the Monty Python movies. We were incredulous. He vowed to bring in a complete script for Holy Grail the next day to prove it. We LAUGHED at him and said, sure, throw in Life of Brian too, just to prove that you didn't stay up all night typing them out. Sure enough he brought in the scripts and we were blown away. This Internet thing seemed pretty cool after all. For the next year or two he would write us a note in class saying "any requests?" and we'd write down things we'd want to see if he could find. Usually movie or TV scripts, song lyrics or information about things we were into.

All this to say, I feel like the internet all this time has just been a big loop, and I just completed my first lap.
posted by SassHat at 10:51 AM on July 10, 2014 [3 favorites]


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