the rutles

September 10 movie: The Rutles. I almost don't know what to say about this. It's one of my all time favorite movies. I finally got it on DVD and tonight I watched the commentary. I must say, Eric Idle doesn't give great commentary. There were some interesting details, for instance I didn't realize that Stig's girlfriend/wife in the movie is played by mod icon Penelope Tree, the actor's wife in real life. And I hadn't known how many of the locations they used were the same as the Beatles has used. But Idle mostly spends the commentary dropping names of famous people he knows, and congratulating himself on the gags he likes. Also he has a dismaying tendency to conflate the Rutles and the Beatles, talking about events in the Rutles' career (like Leggy taking the teaching post in Australia) as if it had actually happened to the Beatles. And more than once he even gets the names mixed up, referring to the real band as "the Rutles" and even calling John Lennon "Nasty."

I had heard a rumor that Idle sued Neil Innes over the royalties for Archeology, demanded songwriting credit for all songs because the original Rutles concept was his (Idle's) idea, and was a total asshole about the whole thing. Which would be completely awful since Innes had already gotten screwed out of royalties on the first Rutles album. But Idle spoke very highly of Innes on the commentary, and even mentioned sympathetically how Innes had been shafted on the songwriting credit for the soundtrack album. I searched online and didn't find anything about bad blood, much less legal action, between Idle and Innes. I really hope that rumor was false. It would really suck.