"The Rutles 2" Out on DVD March 1st

A rather scathing review from DVD Journal:

http://www.dvdjournal.com/quickreviews/r/rutles2.q.shtml

 

Just out of curiosity I checked out Amazon's reviews...not too pretty...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...ref=sr_1_1/103-2523843-8503865?v=glance&s=dvd

After seeing (and unfortunately buying ) and reading the reviews for Rutles 2, I can totally understand why WB did not want to put it out.

 

I was of the understanding that the differences in the All You Need Is Cash DVD vs the original VHS or LD was that this time 'round they used the BBC edit of the program and not the NBC broadcast version (sans the shooting sequence w/ Dan Akroyd).

The new DVD is a DUD. The video interview segments with Shandling, Steve Martin, Carrie Fisher, etc. are not funny at all. The only funny moment for me was the scene with Jimmy Fallon. That was laugh out loud funny, IMHO.

 

Ouch! Those reviews are pretty rough -- and I thought MY review was harsh! Even the "positive" (3 star) reviewers were disappointed.

Sean Murdock

 

Any idea what Neil Innes thinks of RUTLES 2?

 

Since he's an intelligent fellow he probably thinks the same thing as all of you folks here. But I doubt he will publicly criticize it because the inclusion of his Archeology songs presumably means he stands to make some money off it.

I have to say, not including Innes, Fataar and Halsey in the film seems so incredibly stupid. It seems such a no brainer really, the idea of new interviews with pathetic aging Rutles with face lifts and wigs. My guess would be that Idle completed the film while he and Innes were still estranged, and it was only after its completion that they reconciled and Idle decided to use the Archeology music. That the only explanation that makes sense.

 

they are not in the film! wow that is strange!

 

A recent article from the Kansas City Star has an update with quotes from Eric and Neil about their relationship around the Rutles:

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/entertainment/movies/video_dvd/11677940.htm

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Posted on Thu, May. 19, 2005

Idle and Innes have become what they parodied


First came Paul vs. John, which begat Dirk vs. Nasty, which begat Eric vs. Neil.

Monty Python member Eric Idle and comedic songwriter Neil Innes were the close friends and collaborators who created the Rutles three decades ago as a parody of the Beatles — a very popular band, you may recall, whose bitter breakup left close friends/collaborators Paul McCartney and John Lennon at each other’s throats.

In the wake of the recently released straight-to-DVD “The Rutles 2: Can’t Buy Me Lunch,” Idle, who plays McCartney stand-in Dirk McQuickly, and Innes, who plays Lennon stand-in Ron Nasty and wrote the Rutles’ dead-on parody songs, are going at it.

“Neil is a clever and gifted singer and songwriter who’s determined to be a failure, and his determination succeeds,” volleyed Idle, who wrote and co-directed the 1978 NBC special “All You Need Is Cash”

Innes, who tends to be more restrained, returned, “I look at it all with some kind of amusement because I’m not showbiz-y and I think probably Eric is, and if people want to be possessive and don’t want to share their toys in the sandpit, I couldn’t care less.”

British-born humorist Martin Lewis, who has helped produce various projects involving the Beatles and Rutles, said he and George Harrison couldn’t help but notice the parallels.

“The person who found it most amusing was George, who said, ‘You’re supposed to be sending us up. You’re not supposed to be emulating us.’ ”

Idle and Innes go way back together. “Too far,” Idle said, laughing. “And no further.”

Innes, whose Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band appeared in the Beatles TV movie “Magical Mystery Tour,” made musical contributions to Monty Python’s TV shows and films. That’s Innes as the minstrel singing about Idle’s “brave Sir Robin” in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” which Idle recently refashioned as the Broadway hit musical “Spamalot.”

After the Python’s series ended, Idle and Innes created and starred in the 1975-76 sketch-comedy show “Rutland Weekend Television.” One segment showed a quartet of mop-tops running around a la “A Hard Day’s Night” to Innes’ first Rutles song, “I Must Be in Love.”

That clip aired on “Saturday Night Live,” and soon “SNL” producer Lorne Michaels was producing “All You Need Is Cash.” The show put the “mock” into “mockumentary” six years before Rob Reiner’s “This Is Spinal Tap” coined the phrase.

The story would end happily there, but Innes revisited the idea with the well-received 1996 Rutles album “Archaeology,” a take-off of the Beatles’ “Anthology” CDs being released at that time.

Idle, who didn’t write or perform on either Rutles album (he lip-synced as Dirk), actively opposed “Archaeology” as well as Innes’ proposal to mount a Rutles concert tour.

“Neil seemed to forget that it was a joke,” Idle said. “The Rutles is a parody of something that exists. He wanted to do some kind of story about them all going on. You can’t do a parody if you lead. He seemed to have missed that point slightly.”

Idle laughed. “Pictures of them all looking bald-headed — I don’t get the joke, personally.”

Innes, who sees the Rutles as “a kind of semi-official biography,” said from his England home that fans had been pressing him to record more Rutles songs, and Harrison also encouraged him, saying, “Oh, you should do it. It’s all part of the soup.”

Yet Idle liked the “Archaeology” songs well enough to include them in “Rutles 2,” which he made in 2002 and which gathered cobwebs until Warner Bros. released it on DVD this spring.

“Rutles 2” essentially is an Idle solo project in which he reprises his narrator character and essentially retells the Rutles story, intercutting new celebrity interviews with outtakes and recycled footage from the first special.

Idle desired no participation from Innes or the other Rutles, John Halsey (Barry Wom/Ringo) and Rikki Fataar (Stig O’Hara/George).

“He said, ‘I’m a one-man band on this, all right?’ ” Innes recalled. “So I said, ‘Well, all right, if that’s the way you feel about it.’ ”

To Idle, the project was “a labor of love and he admits he couldn’t interest any American cable network in showing it.

Halsey doesn’t blame them.

“It’s lousy, ‘Rutles 2,’ ” Halsey said from the Castle Inn, the pub he owns in Cambridge, England. “He should’ve just left it alone. It was one of the best things he was ever involved in, the first Rutles movie. Now he’s just ruined it. It’s just stupid. It doesn’t work at all.”

More than a few reviewers on Amazon.com agree. Sample headline: “Stop Eric Idle Before He Kills Again!”

While Innes was in New York, he had a chance to check out “Spamalot,” Idle’s far more commercially successful plundering of his past. Innes wrote the music for two of its songs, which originally appeared in “Holy Grail“: “Knights of the Round Table” and “Brave Sir Robin.”

“He wrote the music for the Sir Robin song, not the lyrics,” Idle pointed out. “After all, how funny is the music?”

“Last year, about April, I said, Eric, do you want any more songs for ‘Spamalot’?” Innes recalled. “Because I’ve been speaking to the other Pythons and I’ve got two rip-snorters that would be absolutely perfect for it. But he said, ‘No, it’s all done, and Mike Nichols loves it.’ ”

Still, Idle took it personally that Innes didn’t attend the show’s Broadway premiere, which was attended by the other Python members.

These days Innes’ version of the Rutles occasionally performs live, such as at last summer’s huge Glastonbury rock festival. Fans sang along and tossed tea bags on stage in reference to the show’s joke that the band’s landmark “Sgt. Rutter’s Only Darts Club Band” album was recorded under the influence of tea.

“If I do anything with the Rutles now, it’s largely for the fun of it,” Innes said, noting that he and Halsey plan to perform a few Rutles shows in England this summer. The last show is scheduled for Liverpool in August, and after that Innes said he’ll continue playing Rutles songs, but not in costume.

“It’s rather like George wanted to put the Beatles suit back in the cupboard and move on,” Innes said.

“I now want to put the Rutles suit back in the cupboard and move on. And say, ‘So long and thanks for the tea bags.’ ”

 

A few miscellaneous points:

1. Re. the title of the television programme, 'Rutland Weekend Television' (an amalgamation of 'London Weekend Television' [a legitimate regional television station] and 'Rutland' a county in England).

Rutland was not just the smallest county in England (approximately 11 miles by 13 miles), at the time of the television show it had ceased to be (an ex-county, etc.; fill in your own 'parrot sketch' inspired comments here). The show first aired in May 1975. In 1974, the UK government formally abolished the county and incorporated Rutland with neighbouring Leicestershire county for administrative reasons (i.e. cost cutting). (BTW, Rutland regained its status as an independent county in 1997.)

The whole point of the joke regarding the title 'Rutland Weekend Television' is that the imaginary television station supposedly originated from a place that did not exist. pbluther (the author of the 12 part article) does not mention this in his discussion of the show's title.

2. John Cleese thought of the title, 'Rutland Weekend Television'.

3. While I read the article about Eric Idle, Neil Innes and the Rutles with (more than) a grain of salt, it does appear to contain the ring of truth about it. The newspaper article from the Kansas City Star is certainly disillusioning. It's funny how we superimpose virtues on the people whose work we admire, both idealizing and idolizing them. They become who and what we imagine they should be. Idle's comments in that article come across not just as ungracious, but downright vicious.

4. John Halsey (Barry Wom) used to organize an annual Rutles-Fest near his pub, in Cambridge (I believe). I'm not sure if he continues to do so.

5. Does anyone know who pbluther is?

 

Sorry, I don't quite understand the point(s) you are trying to make. Could you elaborate?
Thanks!

 

“It’s lousy, ‘Rutles 2,’ ” Halsey said from the Castle Inn, the pub he owns in Cambridge, England. “He should’ve just left it alone. It was one of the best things he was ever involved in, the first Rutles movie. Now he’s just ruined it. It’s just stupid. It doesn’t work at all.”

I agree with Barry Wom.

 

THANK YOU!!THANK YOU!! I swore I saw that scene when it first aired too. Everybody I've ever asked about it said they don't remember that. I started to wonder if I dreamt it. But Eric (as interviewer) goes on to insult the man until he shoots himself. It was hilarious and I was sad that it was cut out.

Nice to have that mystery solved eh, Scoob?

Peace Love and Rutland Orange Peel
Marky

 

This explains why Rutles II was such a piece of crap. Eric Idle should have left well enough alone. At best, it should've been included as bonus material on the real Rutles DVD. How sad...and ironic.