{"id":32632,"date":"2020-01-31T09:08:16","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T14:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=32632"},"modified":"2020-01-31T10:02:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T15:02:44","slug":"the-bootleg-files-the-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/31\/the-bootleg-files-the-box\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: The Box"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 718:<\/strong> \u201cThe Box\u201d (1981 short film starring Terry Jones and Michael Palin, directed by Micky Dolenz).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> It seems to have fallen through the proverbial cracks.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Unlikely.<\/p>\n

Terry Jones\u2019 death on January 22 brought forth a wave of warm and cherished memories of the Welsh funnyman\u2019s classic moments with Monty Python. Jones\u2019 passing also encouraged some die-hard Python fans to unearth a genuine rarity: a little-seen short film that Jones and fellow Python Michael Palin co-wrote and co-starred together under the direction of ex-Monkee Micky Dolenz. One could imagine these three distinctive talents would have created something truly remarkable, but they strangely came up with a weird little bore.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In 1976, Jones and Palin collaborated on a pair of one-act, one-hour plays gathered under the title \u201cTheir Finest Hours.\u201d The first, \u201cUnderhill\u2019s Finest Hour,\u201d involved a woman trying to give birth in a hospital while her obstetrician is more interested in listening to a cricket match on the radio. The second, \u201cBuchanan\u2019s Finest Hour,\u201d involved a former Member of Parliament who agrees to be sealed and mailed in a \u201cburst-proof box\u201d for a new package manufacturer as part of a marketing stunt, only to wind up trapped inside as the box when the delivery process goes awry.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir Finest Hours\u201d premiered at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. Audiences weren\u2019t particularly impressed with the works, which felt like overlong and undercooked Python sketches. \u201cTheir Finest Hours\u201d never made it to London\u2019s West End and was quickly forgotten after its brief run.<\/p>\n

In 1981, however, \u201cBuchanan\u2019s Finest Hour\u201d was dusted off to be made as a short film, with a generic title called \u201cThe Box.\u201d Micky Dolenz, who relocated to England in the 1970s to work as a director after his post-Monkees acting and music career flatlined, was tapped to direct the work. The experience obviously didn\u2019t make much of an impression on Dolenz, who briefly acknowledged the job in his 2004 autobiography without offering any anecdotes or insights on the production and his Python collaborators. But when watching \u201cThe Box,\u201d it is easy to understand why Dolenz chose not to dwell on it.<\/p>\n

The visual focus of \u201cThe Box\u201d is the title object, a large shipping crate that is first seen sitting on a pallet in an empty dockside warehouse. The soundtrack initially consists of Sir Clive (voiced by Charles McKeown), who is sealed in the box that is awaiting delivery from London to Newcastle. The box is supposed to be indestructible and airtight, with Sir Clive\u2019s occupancy as part of marketing stunt to highlight the strength of the British-made object. But as the film starts, Sir Clive is starting to panic at being entombed in the dark space. His assistant Harrington (voiced by Terry Jones) is supposed to be positioned outside of the box in case there is a problem and Sir Clive needs to be extracted ahead of schedule. Alas, there was a problem: Harrington somehow wound up in the box with Sir Clive, and there is no one outside to free them.<\/p>\n

While the soundtrack is filled with the irritated Sir Clive and the apologetic Harrington bemoaning their predicament, the viewer watches as the box is taken on a forklift and placed on the back of a truck, where it is driven to a pier. Oddly, neither Sir Clive nor Harrington are aware that they are in motion \u2013 and they are initially unaware that the box also includes a French escape artist who is tightly bound up (voiced by Michael Palin in an exaggerated French accent) and the decapitated body of his girlfriend.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if she does smell?\u201d Palin\u2019s Frenchman insists about his beloved\u2019s corpse. \u201cShe\u2019s beautiful to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the pier, a shipping label marked \u201cShanghai\u201d is plastered over the Newcastle address and the box is loaded on a freighter. However, the freighter explodes while at sea. It seems to only surviving element of the freighter is the box, which washes up on the beach of a deserted island. But Sir Clive hears someone outside of his packaged prison \u2013 a vaguely Italian voice. Alas, this stranger is no help \u2013 he is a papal emissary who is sealed in another crate marked \u201cPope in a Box\u201d with a silent Holy Father locked inside with him.<\/p>\n

The film ends with the reveal that everything being shown was actually a film. A sign reading \u201cBuchanans International Promotions\u201d is in front of the screen and a man in a business suit is watching the film. He then turns to the camera and admits the situation included \u201ccasualties\u201d from the incident, although he adds that \u201ca lot of folks died that year, anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Box\u201d is a unique part of Jones\u2019 and Palin\u2019s career in that it is painfully boring and thoroughly unfunny. For a 23-minute film, it drags on miserably as the talk between the three trapped men \u2013 and, belatedly, the Italian in the other box \u2013 goes absolutely nowhere. Maybe they were trying for a Pythonesque spin on Samuel Beckett\u2019s territory or a riff on Jean-Paul Sartre\u2019s \u201cNo Exit\u201d with a slightly kinky twist via the trussed-up Frenchman. When Sir Clive keeps reminding his fellow prisoners that they are running short on oxygen, it is not funny. And the dull visuals that Dolenz captured make a dreary situation much, much worse. Mercifully, the film version is much shorter than the one-hour theatrical edition \u2013 talk about too much of a bad thing!<\/p>\n

I am unaware of any U.S. theatrical or television exhibition for \u201cThe Box,\u201d nor does it seem to have been released on U.S. home video. The closest Americans came to this work was a brief 1990 staging of \u201cBuchanan\u2019s Finest Hour\u201d at Second City E.T.C. in Chicago \u2013 nearly all of Jones\u2019 obituaries failed to mention the play or the film.<\/p>\n

A muddy print of \u201cThe Box\u201d is on YouTube in an unauthorized posting, but even dedicated Python fans would be advised to pretend it\u2019s not there.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em>
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\nListen to \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud, now in its fourth season. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 718: \u201cThe Box\u201d (1981 short film starring Terry Jones and Michael Palin, directed by Micky Dolenz). LAST SEEN: On YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It seems to have fallen through the proverbial cracks. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Unlikely. Terry Jones\u2019 death on January 22 brought forth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":32633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[219,2435,2436,681,938,2434,2433],"class_list":["post-32632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-comedy","tag-michael-palin","tag-micky-dolenz","tag-monty-python","tag-short-film","tag-terry-jones","tag-the-box"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32632"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32635,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32632\/revisions\/32635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}