Weekly Blog Post 9

It's the last day of the school week for the quarter, exams not included, and I'm so tired with a fried brain I'm not sure what to write. I've been trying to recall a memory from English class to write about and the best I can remember is the day we watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

All I could think about when we were about to watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith was "so much for avoiding this movie". I'd read a really bad response from a local in the paper to it and the scenes I came in on when it played on TV could never catch my interest. So I'd decided to scratch it off my 'to see' list; I'm sure eventually I will watch it just to see what the fans saw in it to be fans about. Either way, I was pretty excited when Monty Python became the 'movie-of-the-day'.

Now, I hadn't seen that film in a few years, but in grade school my friends and I were hooked. We still quote it today (perhaps not as much as back then) because we just can't forget the scenes we watched over and over again. My favorite memory besides my dad walking in on it, grimacing, and leaving (I believe it was the killer bunny scene), was the 7th grade speech project.

For 7th and 8th grade my class was assigned a speech project. We could do comedy, drama, monologue, partner (2 people max), and so on from any film, book, or speech we liked. Then we'd take turns presenting in front of the class and on occasion were sent around the school to entertain the other classes. If we so wished, there was a speech contest for various grades around schools in Cincinnati. I have no idea why (given my hate for public speaking), but I signed up with a friend and speech partner both years.

7th grade was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. My friend and I had teamed up to be the king (me) and a combination of two guards (her) for the scene about trying to make the guards stay in the room with the prince until the king returns. Only one guard spoke while the other hiccuped, so we made them one person, pretended the prince was there, and attempted to pick up accents from the movie. We must have watched those scenes 20 times to write down every bit of dialogue and make a system so we knew when to pick up after each other. I don't know how the script writers came up with the dialogue they did, but that is one hard scene to copy down!

We rehearsed for ages, timed ourselves, and went to rehearsal "training" with our teacher and other groups from our school that would be competing. We had to give the speech twice for two different panels of judges (3 in each) and they scored us on various points. That year we missed a 3-way trophy tie by a couple points and got the blue ribbon, which was still pretty good for nerve-wracked 7th graders.

Overall the experience was great and we still quote lines from the especially memorable speeches that had us laughing with tears in our eyes. The following year I teamed up with another friend and did a scene from Emperor's New Groove (we got blue ribbon, missed by 1 point for the mini trophy on a 5-way tie I believe). Anyways, the Monty Python movie just made me remember the good grade school times and pains of writing (really, copying) a speech and giving it.