The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 173

mi ii 'irt'IjihiifwnC'Hrifiih e4iWiiWini I'tufrawinx i rfra fri jr mrjrnr all efcri movies THE MIAMI HERALD Sunday Sept 23 1979 3L Furor Over of Caught Its Stars by Surprise -V' OS'- Vj ni jT I sc -I I "A'1 vOl iV A Lf r'A yr A cameraman films angry Arabs burning pictures of Mr Mike in Mondo Video a movie with something to offend everyone 'i 'W "Mr- X- Kj of twits on the television series we can ask people to do is see the film and if offended by it they have a right to tell their friends not to Jones who seems as uncomfortable as Chapman with the sobriety of the debate surrounding Life of Brian said that if the film satirized anything it was political fanaticism Although there are religious jokes including a hilarious mis construing of the Sermon on the Mount by people too far back in the crowd to hear properly the butt of the Pythons' humor is the leftwinger who takes himself and his cause seriously The Pythons of course are no strangers to controversy though they have never encountered one of this vehemence Their first two collective films And Now for Something Completely Different an anthology of some of their most inspired skits and Monty Python and the Holy Grail an erratic savaging of Camelot were well received WHEN IT circulated the idea of Life of Brian the British conglomerate EMI was prepared to put up the $4 million needed for filming When the executives saw some of the material the offer was withdrawn Eventually George Harrison extended some of his Beatle millions and the Pythons set to work OjOOOOOQQQOO We have never come across such a foul disgusting blasphemous film before of is a vicious attack upon Judaism and the Bible and a cruel mockery of the religious feelings of Christians as well Rabbi Abraham Hecht President of the Rabbinical Alliance of America By DESMOND RYAN Knight Rlddr Niwt Sarvlc NEW YORK Terry Jones and Graham Chapman two vital coils in Monty Python stretched their legs across a coffee table strewn with copies of Variety and Screw magazine and glasses of day-old Coca-Cola tepid enough for English palates With straight faces an expression clearly alien to them they pleaded not guilty Jones and Chapman are the director and star or if you are a person of deeply held religious convictions the perpetrators of Life of Brian said Jones "that there would be a Christian reaction but we think there would be a Jewish There have in fact been several reactions to what promises to one of the most controversial films There have been lines stretching into the distance at Cinema 1 the prestigious Third Avenue theater where Life of Brian has amassed what Variety with its usual reticence called a "boffo gross" There have also been many lines of newsprint in which Catholic and Jewish clergymen have vied with each other in denouncing the film THE FILM is the third to Include the full company of six Pythons a flamboyant and possessed group of comedians who have built a fanatical cult following with their constantly rerun television series It recounts the story of one Brian of Nazareth born in a manger a few stalls away from the Messiah and destined to fall in with a hapless band of anti-Roman revolutionaries called the Judean Front The uproar that the film has aroused is best suggested by an excerpt from the screenplay: Brian strolling the streets of Jerusalem falls into conversation with a cured leper who now finds begging difficult BRIAN: cured you?" EX-LEPER: did I was hopping along when suddenly he comes up and cures me One minute a leper with a trade next moment me gone Not so much as a No avid follower of the Pythons would be surprised or affronted by this exchange but Life of Brian has brought their humor to a wider forum in which there are feelings to be offended Although the Pythons say their intentions have been misunderstood Life of Brian raises interesting and perhaps unresolvable questions of where the rights of humor impinge on the insistence of the religious that their beliefs be respected DID NOT set out to offend anyone or debunk any religion in said Chapman the lanky former medical student who plays Brian and a wide assortment Oh No Mr Mike! A Too Foul And Funny Faptasrpa Productions Presents THURS OCT 4 8 PM Tim Curry 2 L0 A FRI 0CT2S 9 PM MIDKITE The Police 0 GUSMAN CULTURAL CENTER 2 Tickets 650 res'd odv 700 day of show Tickets avail at all BASS A locations ind ail Soars Infoi 651-8750 OOOOOOOOQOOO mmmmL i Trrrrmrp SOMETHING here to offend nearly everyone something to make you squirm besides a lot of quite wonderful comic material a twisted mind behind the cat swimming school (in Amsterdam of cats and where cats of all stripes are hurled poolward while an instructor yells at them to that flutter A veritable hail of cats spinning into the water in slow motion heralds the start of the class But comic genius in such bits as the cargo-cult tribe that waits for airlifts of junk from passe American fads (hula hoops lava lamps Like buttons) or the experience at Cafe No Americain a Paris restaurant where the help really hates Americans or the dream sequence in which terrorists break into suburban homes to assassinate their appliances and leisure-time goods (including the New York Times) It's all to the tune of The Haunting Theme From Mondo Video and all shot in a carefully gritty home-movie style designed to parody the quasi-documentary weirdness of that film trip into the bizarre Mondo Cane And ever-present is the figure of Mr Mike behind shades and a child-molester trench coat clutching the MOST OF THIS stuff is truly bizarre Most of it is hilarious But as has always been the case with the ensemble of writers and comedians that shuttle back and forth between The National Lampoon and the Second City improv-comedy group most of whom are on hand in Mondo there are some bits that go on too long some that fail altogether Discipline has always been a problem with this whole crew of comedians and Mondo would be a minor masterpiece of macabre comedy if the bits had been shortened and the pace accelerated As it is there are some things that work at all including some desultory nods to avant-garde film But then (something wrong with Dan Aykroyd) and a six-minute reprise of the life and career of the indestructible Mr Bill Mr Bill is in traction these days recovering from his flaming auto accident But then Mr Bill be driving anyway He has no license and he's only three inches high Yes good stuff this Mondo And sick And a good thing it on TV where some unwary soul could stumble on it in the wee hours only to be traumatized At least moviegoers will know what to expect when they walk in You are warned By BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Writer The ooze of feature-length material from television onto the big screen has already been viewed with alarm and rightly so seen Battlestar Calactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TV productions all the way move out into the the- aters And they were bad straight- luuVlL from-Burbank lowest-common-de- npiiiptii nominator stuff RtVltW This isnt elitism at work here ei- ther There are good reasons why vir-' tually no American television pro grams are worth leaving the house and paying good money to see The comedies are only 22 minutes long the dramas are made with built-in 15-minute cycles of rising and falling action designed to hold viewers over through the commercial breaks and both kinds are made under close supervision by a censor determined that they should not offend If you had to write a formula for preparing a mediocre movie you could hardly do better BUT WAIT What if someone at one of the networks someone misguided or perverse made a television show and didn't follow the rules a show so crass so tasteless so misanthropic in its quest for the cheap laugh that no network executive would touch the thing without gloves on? That would be Mr Mike's Mondo Video in your neighborhood theater now and nothing you can do about it Mondo really was made for TV It was supposed to go In the Night slot on one of those nights when was taking a breather Michael O'Donoghue (Mr Mike) a writer for The National Lampoon and writerperformer on produced directed and cowrote Mondo as a special project for NBC What he delivered is by turns so offensive and so weird that if Mr Mike really thought it would find air time he must have been on something The medium that invented my is not going to warm to Rootboy Slim singing Boogie Till You Puke much less the scenes in which the camera is up Cheryl O'Donoghue and former NBC programming chief Paul Klein were quick to capitalize on the cold feet with a theater release and attendant publicity And good that they did Mondo the most offensive movie of the year but there are moments moments mind you when one of the funniest It helps to be a devotee of the nothing-is-safe brand of humor That way you be shocked when they throw the cats in the pool when they expose the cult of (members of the Temple of the Perfect Wave) who worship Jack Lord off the says the preacher (Dan Aykroyd) patch me through to musical success stoiy of the Hiod Schonfcerg Timet FESTIVAL OF CHAMBER MUSIC AT TEMPLE BETH SHOLOM with nTHE 0CH4MBER CCNTtft MR MIKE'S MONDO VIDEO ft rated ft contains soma nudHy a profanity and comic suOiect matter that may be disturbing to those who are easily ClxiETY LINCOLN 1 at MONDAY DECEMBER 17 pm KO IWASAKI Cello Guest Artist SAINT SAENS Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs Op 79 ROBISON ARNER DE PEYER WADSWORTH SCHUMANN for viola and Plano Op 1 13 TRAMPLER WADSWORTH DVORAK Terietto Op 74 KAVAFIAN BUSWELL TRAMPLER SCHUMANN Quartet for Plano and Strings In Hat major Op 47 WADSWORTH BUSWELL TRAMPLER IWASAKI TUESDAY DECEMBER 18 pm EMANUEL AX Piano Guest Artist DEBUSSY Syrinx ROBISON ARENSKY Suite No 1 for Two Pianos Op 15 AX WADSWORTH MOZART Quartet for Flute and Strings In major 285 ROBISON KAVAFIAN TRAMPLER PARNAS DVORAK Quintet for Plano and Strings in A major Op 81 AX BUSWELL KAVAFIAN TRAMPLER PARNAS THURSDAY DECEMBER 20 pm EMANUEL AX Piano Guest Artist BEETHOVEN Serenade No 6 for Flute Violin and Viola In major Op 25 ROBISON BUSWELL TRAMPLER DEBUSSY Sonata for Violin and Plano in minor KAVAFIAN AX PROKOFIEV Overture on Hebrew Theme for Clarinet Plano and String Quartet Op 34 DE PEYER WADSWORTH KAVAFIAN BUSWELL TRAMPLER PARNAS MOZART Quintet for Clarinet and Strings In A major 581 DE PEYER BUSWELL KAVAFIAN TRAMPLER PARNAS SATURDAY DECEMBER 22 pm SHLOMO MINTZ Violin Guest Artist EMANUEL AX Piano Guest Artist MOSKOWSKI Suite for Two Violins and Plano in minor Op 71 BUSWELL MINTZ WADSWORTH BEETHOVEN Sonata No 5 for Violin and Piano In major Op 24 MINTZ AX FAURE Quartet tor Plano and Strings In minor Op 1 5 No 1 AX MINTZ TRAMPLER PARNAS SUNDAY DECEMBER 23 pm YO-YO MA Cello Guest Artist EMANUEL AX Piano Guest Artist STRAVINSKY du soldat" (Trio Version) DE PEYER BUSWELL WADSWORTH CHOPIN Sonata for Cello and Plano In minor Op 65 MA AX SCHUBERT String Quintet (Two Cellos) In major Op 163 BUSWELL KAVAFIAN TRAMPLER MA PARNAS $00 Five Different Programs Limited Seating Please Reserve Now! A dazzling array of artists all soloists in their own right join forces to bring South Florida some of the greatest music! ARTIST MEMBERS Leonard Amer oboe James Buswell violin Gervase DePeyer clarinet Ani Kavafian violin Leslie Pamas cello Paula Robison flute Walter Trampler viola Chari as Wadsworth piano harpsichord GUEST ARTISTS Emanual Ax piano Ko Iwasaki cello Yo-Yo Ma cello Shlomo Mintz violin of the most treasured of Mew York musical Temple Beth Sholom of Greater Miami 4)44 Chase Avenue Miami Beach FL 33 1 40 I would like to aubscrlbe to THE CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY FESTIVAL Please list me as an: 13801 South Dixie Highway Three Minutes South of Dadeland Featuring: Concert Series September 9th Arioso String Quartet September 16th Pentasonics Brass Quintet September 23rd Southern Winds Quintet September 30th Brass Tacks Tuba Factory Performances Begin At 2:00 PM At Our Miami Store Refreshments Will Be Served ksavem 1C3 Seven Days 238-8630 Complete Series 75 00 Individual Tickets 1500 60 00 1250 fianarak Complete Sertea 45 00 uenerai ndv)duankkete 1000 Qallery teeti 750 ach concert call FOR RESERVATIONS: 532-3491 Judy Drucker Chairman Enclosed Is check for I Mo Refund or Fechanflcs (ftekf check payable to Temple Beth Sholom) pices enclose a stamped laif-eddresseil envelope eo your ticket may bf melted All Angel Sponsor subscribers are Invited to remain after the concerts for a reception with the artists in the Temple Banquet Hall.