40 Years Ago

John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Rowan Atkinson

Atkins: You can’t beat a good glass of château le chasselet.

Jones: Ah you’re right there Obadiah.

Cleese: Who’d a thought 40 years ago we’d be sitting here, drinking Chateau…

Palin: In them days we’d be glad to have a cup of tea.

Atkins: Aye, a cup of cold tea.

Cleese: Without milk. Or sugar.

Atkins: Or tea!

Palin: Aye, in a cracked cup as well.

Cleese: We never had a cup. We used to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

Atkins: The best we could do was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

Jones: But you know we were happy in those days, although we were poor.

Palin: Because we were poor. My old dad used to say to me, “money doesn’t buy happiness son”.

Cleese: He was right. I was happier then we had nothing. We used to live in a tiny old tumbled down house with great holes in roof.

Atkins: A house. You were lucky to have a house. We used to live in one room, 26 of us no furniture and half the floor was missing, huddles in one corner for fear of falling.

Jones: Well you were lucky to have a room. We used to have to live in a corridor.

Palin: We used to dream of living in a corridor. It would have been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. Got woke up every morning by having a load of rotten fish dumped all over us. House ha!

Cleese: Well when I say house it was only a hole in the ground covered with a couple of feet of torn canvas, but it was house to us.

Atkins: We were evicted from our hole in the ground. We had to go and live in lake.

Jones: You were lucky to have a lake. There were 150 of us living in shoe box in middle of motorway.

Palin: Cardboard box? (Jones: Aye) You were lucky. We lived for three months in a rolled up newspaper in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at 6 every morning, clean the newspaper, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down the mill 14 hours a day, week in, week out, for two pence a week and when we got home our dad would trash us to sleep with his belt.

Atkins: Luxury. We used to have to get out the lake at 3 am, clean the lake, eat a hand full of hot gravel, work 20 hours a day at mill for two pence a month, come home and dad would beat us about the head with a broken bottle, if we were lucky.

Jones: Well of course we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of shoe box in middle of night and lick the road clean with our tongues, eat half a hand full of cold gravel, work 24 hours a day for two pence every 6 years and when we got home our dad would slice into us with bread knife.

Cleese: Right! I used to get up in the morning at half past ten at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of freezing cold poison, work 28 hours a day at mill and pay the mill owner to let us work there. And when I got home my dad used to murder me in cold blood each night and dance about on our graves, singing hallelujah.

Palin: Aye, you try and tell the young people of today that. They won’t believe you!

V for Vendetta

"Evey Hammond: [Voiceover] Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot... But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But who was he really? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I've seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them... but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it... ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love... And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man... A man that made me remember the Fifth of November. A man that I will never forget."

"V: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

"V: [Evey pulls out her mace] I can assure you I mean you no harm.
Evey Hammond: Who are you?
V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey Hammond: Well I can see that.
V: Of course you can. I’m not questioning your powers of observation I’m merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.
Evey Hammond: Oh. Right.
V: But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona.
V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. [carves V into poster on wall]
V: The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. [giggles]
V: Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.
Evey Hammond: Are you like a crazy person?
V: I am quite sure they will say so."

"[after a hail of gunfire doesn’t stop V]
Creedy: Die! Die! Why won’t you die?… Why won’t you die?
V: Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof."

"Evey Hammond: Where did you get all this stuff?
V: Oh, here and there, mostly from the Ministry of Objectionable Materials.
Evey Hammond: You stole them?
V: Oh, heavens, no. Stealing imples ownership. You can’t steal from the censor; I merely reclaimed them.
Evey Hammond: God, if they ever find this place…
V: I suspect if they do find this place, a few bits of art will be the least of my worries."