People in the News for March 9, 1998

Monday, March 9, 1998 | 8:54 a.m.

And now for something completely the same: A group of aging Brit performers decide to reunite, briefly, lucratively, to recapture their magic of 30 years ago. Great!, you're saying, the remaining Beatles have found another Lennon demo! Well, no. Oh, well, then The Who must be mounting another This is Absolutely Our Last Final Concert Tour! Wrong again. The members of Monty Python said this weekend they'll stage a reunion tour next year, marking the 30th anniversary of "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Yes, perhaps the lumberjack shirts will have to be let out around the middle, and the silly walks will owe as much to arthritic joints as comic timing, and, after three decades, the parrot is undoubtedly really dead, but at least it's the genuine Python. All over America, comedy fans are looking up from their umpteenth "South Park" rerun and exclaiming, Monty Python? I think I've heard of those guys! It will be a less-than-full Monty, of course; original member Graham Chapman died in 1989. The remaining Pythons -- John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin -- shared a stage for the first time since 1981 at this weekend's U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo. Cleese noted that previous reunions were thwarted because they always focused on time-consuming movie projects. "We could probably find 10 weeks for a tour," he said. Idle added that it "would be fun if we could still be funny." Ho ho! The troupe is still out there!

Briefly

There's nothing like a maniac killing people and destroying public buildings with a front-end loader to make a pensive TV producer think, Hey, cool! "It was great for us," says "South Park" co-creator Trey Parker of a recent construction-equipment rampage in Alma, Colo., near his hometown. "We were thinking: 'What are we going to do for another show?"' In fact, Parker and partner Matt Stone have 20 new "South Park" episodes to deliver, so they're undoubtedly eagerly scanning America's front pages for news of more hilarious killings. It can be fun as along as it's funny. Meanwhile, the two have also been hired to script the sequel to "Dumb and Dumber." This is going to be the big one, sonny!

Compiled by Scott Dickensheets