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Monty Python's Top Gun

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

My apologies for this is a very silly post…

I’m reading Michael Palin’s Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980 to 1988 and he mentions a dinner meeting with Don Simpson.  I couldn’t help but see a mental image of Top Gun if it had been a product of the Monty Python team…

First the budget would have been a lot smaller and so the production values and special effects would have been somewhat cut back. They wouldn’t have been able to afford real aircraft. They’d have been running round with cardboard wings on their arms. However, in a step up from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they would have had real sound effects – just they might not all be from the right kind of aircraft or even from the right period. That would be OK though because the film would struggle to place itself in time as continuity is driven to insanity with scenes of WWI fighter aces; Biggles; sequences ripped out of Sink the Bismark and Reach for the Sky; sequences of jet fighters from a 1980 Simpson / Bay production; and at one point Snoopy flying his kennel.

But what about casting?

Michael Palin …Marverick
John Cleese …Iceman
Carol Cleveland …Charlie
Terry Jones …Blue (aka Norwegian Blue aka Goose)
Graham Chapman …Viper
Terry Gilliam …Jester
Graham Chapman (In Drag) …Carole

Yet the idea that scares me more than any other… “Take My Breath Away” performed by The Rutles.

Is there a film that you’d reimagine as a Python production?

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