Nice funeral

Wow, I just watched this for the first time on Sunday, and just two days later it shows up on this blog. That is just to coincidental for a natural explanation. The only explanation is that there must be a god, and he is a Monty Python fan.

Hey, that was Bill Oddie in the audience! Not enough people know about Bill Oddie here in the US... for some reason he never got the fame here the Pythoners did.

Bill Oddie is kinda a hero of mine.

Brilliant. Perhaps the best ever piece of Python, in fact.
This is humanism at its best.

Best. Memorial. Ever.

Sweet and funny.

It's a classic! I want my own funeral to be like this.

As it should be! (At least in this case...) Far better than the usual procedure.

Man, I wish that I have made so many people so happy that oblique references at my Death-day party (why the fuck not call it what it should be?) will be recognized and laughed at.
Then again, I have the opposite problem of most people: I hope that there will be tears, I know that there will be laughter. I just want it to be in the appropriate direction, i.e., at my enemies... cause fuck those folks.
Dirty splitters...

For those, like me, who can't get to Youtube at work here is a transcript of the euology.

I always thought that to be a more profound song than most people would give it credit, but hearing it sung at a eulogy actually brought a tear to my eye. The tragedy of life is that it is a comedy. And the comedy of life is that it's tragedy.

"For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow."

I heard that when the HMS Sheffield was sunk during the Falklands war, the sailors on deck were singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life as they got into the life rafts.

-jcr

The lucky b-b-b-b-astard escaped c-c-c-rucifixion, didn't he?

Damn, they were all so young! Love the Pythons!

I've seen this clip a dozen times, but for some stupid reason this is the first time I noticed Jonathan Miller in the audience. (Which brings up an interesting question... should I have my eyes checked, or does this mean they're getting better?)

Anyway, I must make a point of befriending some brilliant comedians before my end. Can't stand the thought of a humdrum, weepy funeral on my behalf. Nope, booze and laughter for all, that's my last request.

Isnt this a truly moving clip,what a beautiful funeral speech,and what a good way to celebrate someone's life,rather than the faked sadness of a professional liar in pompous robes,I will be making very clear to my family what kind of funeral I want for myself,and it might even involve a little Python !
And I didnt know G Chapman had died so early,what a shame.

If I was going to have a service, which I'm not, that's the way I'd want it to go, although now that both "shit" and "fuck" in a memorial service are already taken, I'm not sure what claim to fame anyone could ever get from mine.

I guess it's best I'm not having a service so people don't feel bad. :)

Absolutely brilliant service.

It doesn't seem like almost 20 years.

Life is too short to worry about reigious nonsense.

Great service. I noticed Jonathan Miller was in attendance.

I was surprised this wasn't in the 16 ton set.

Instead we have to settle for a low rez copy of a copy.

Cephus,
That still leaves you with 5 other words you can't say at a memorial service.

In their memoir's (Monty Python's autobiography by Monty Python), Eric Idle says that singing that song was the hardest thing for him to do. He even had started writing another song ("Life will get you in the end"), but could not finish it. Eventually he completed it for the funeral of George Harrison.

This is what really happened to Chapman's ashes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utHmeN31RT0

BTW, here's Graham Chapman in his late twenties:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2146405894003682853

Lassi,

I just pissed myself laughing,thanks for the link mate,that was the funniest thing ever......

y'know, just a few days ago I decided that i want that song at my funeral. (ok, it was after reading about some odd choices for funeral music by australians. somehow, i'd love to have 'ding dong the witch is dead', but wrong gender. sigh.)

but that's not why i called. i'd like to lodge a formal protest about 'canned funerals'. you know, the ones where the person presiding knew the decedent very obliquely (if at all) and twists the occasion into a g*d-fest that would have made the dead guy wince...

i think we should all write our own 'eulogies'. i now i will. (including a few pointed jabs at my survivors).

and i'd like to close with a fond reminiscence of my grandmother's funeral. she was dirt-poor. but somehow she managed to save $400 (in 1980?) 'for vodka at my funeral'.

after the standard grief at the graveside, it was a great party! that's how i want to go: celebrated for my life.

#10: I agree so much I can't think of anything else to say.

"For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow."

I've seen this clip a dozen times, but for some stupid reason this is the first time I noticed Jonathan Miller in the audience.

Sitting next to his brilliant partner in crime, Alan Bennett, no less.

Hey, that was Bill Oddie in the audience! Not enough people know about Bill Oddie here in the US... for some reason he never got the fame here the Pythoners did.

And Tim Brook-Taylor was on the stage singing near the end, too.

Bill Oddie is kinda a hero of mine.

I'm more of a Graeme Garden person myself :-)

I'm appalled, that clip was totally FUCKed.

Bill Oddie is kinda a hero of mine.

Not sure who he is, but you have to admire somebody with a sphincter named after him.

@#16

Well since 'shit' and 'fuck' are taken, you might just have to justify them calling you a literal 'motherf*cker' at your funeral.

I can hear it now:

"We are gathered here. . . all three of us. . . to mourn the passing of Blake Stacey. . . that total motherfucking cunt."

This is what Simone de Beauvoir had to say after the death of her friend Albert Camus;

"it wasn't the fifty-year old man who'd just died I was mourning; not that just man without justice, so arrogant and touchy behind his stern mask...it was the companion of our hopeful years, whose open face laughed and smiled so easily, the young ambitious writer, wild to enjoy life, its pleasures, its triumphs and comradeship, friendship, love and happiness. Death had brought him back to life; for him time no longer existed" (Beauvoir, 1968, p.497).

Isn't that what we should always try to do, when someone close dies, rejoyce like at Chapman's funeral, bring back to life those fondest and most laughable memories, as if indeed for them, time no longer existed ?

For another brilliant song relating to death and funerals try Jake Thackery's "The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackery." Bloody hilarious!

OMG, that's both funny and sad. Actually, seeing the classic python end credits adds to the effect.

"Tis but a scratch." "Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!!"

Well, fuck me.

[I remember that Cleese speech. Good man!]

Anyone notice Douglas Adams at that memorial too? A better bunch of atheists you couldn't find under one roof. I suspect the Dawk was probably there too.

And to Harry Sigerson - Jake ThackRAY was brilliant, wasn't he? (But please spell his name right!) Americans probably wouldn't know of him, but they should look up his works; quintessentially English with a gallic tint, and uproariously funny. And all delivered with a poker face that would make Buster Keaton look like laughing boy.

The emotion on Eric Idle's face as he launched into song.... I felt like I was intruding on a very private moment.

There is life after death!!! Watch Graham Chapman communicate with the surviving Pythons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyWwuJCRTXk

Live every day as if it were your last, because one time you'll be right. I loved MPFC, even if I saw it a decade late on PBS. I have said previously that when I'm gone, don't mourn, have a party. Not because I've "gone to a better world"
or whatever bloody afterlife euphemism comes to mind, but because I'd rather my friends had a wake in the old Irish tradition. And if someone like John Cleese wants to call me a bastard, let him. I'd be laughing along with him if I were there.

We can all only hope to have such a service.

Great video. I'm sure Graham would have loved it.

I've told my significant other that I want (modified for the occasion) the monologue from the "Dead Parrot" sketch, read at my funeral. The part towards the end that goes "He's not pining, he's passed on. He has ceased to be, etc." at my funeral. Nor will I want a church service (gave up Catholicism for Lent and religion for my sanity) and said that the rest of the funeral should be "bake me, bury me, have a party".

day late and a dollar short...

a lot of that eulogy didn't make it to the film:

http://www.geocities.com/fang_club/chapman_memorial.html