Did you happen to record Monty Python’s Flying Circus
when it was shown on PBS back in the 1970s?
Do you still have the tapes?
Is there a TIME LIFE logo at the end?
If so, please write to me. Thank you!

Click here to learn the story.

THE WORKS OF TINTO BRASS

Punch

(1978)

and

The Pig Advantage

(1978)

Brass tried once again to get Punch off the ground, this time with Malcolm McDowell in the lead. I don’t know what The Pig Advantage was supposed to be. The term might or might not derive from Tennessee Williams’s play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof :

BIG DADDY: Son, I thought I had it.

BRICK: Had what? Had what, Big Daddy?

BIG DADDY: Cancer.

BRICK: Oh...

BIG DADDY: I thought the old man made out of bones had laid his cold and heavy hand on my shoulder!

BRICK: Well, Big Daddy, you kept a tight mouth about it.

BIG DADDY: A pig squeals. A man keeps a tight mouth about it, in spite of not having a pig’s advantage.

BRICK: What advantage is that?

BIG DADDY: Ignorance — of mortality — is a comfort. A man don’t have that comfort, he’s the only living thing that conceives of death, that knows what it is. The others go without knowing which is the way that anything living should go, go without knowing, without any knowledge of it, and yet a pig squeals, but a man sometimes, he can keep a tight mouth about it. Sometimes he... can keep a tight mouth about it....

Neither Punch nor The Pig Advantage was ever made, as no studio wanted to touch Brass with a ten-foot pole at this litigious period of his life. Here are the references:

The London Times, Wednesday, 3 August 1977, p. 13:

...Malcolm McDowell soon became a friend, and Brass now has another film project with him, something that relates to a Punch-and-Judy show, he says, without supplying details....

Variety (17 August 1977), p. 28:

Tinto Brass is at work directing “Punch” for producer Vincenzo Siniscalchi in Naples and London.

Variety (26 April 1978), p. 46:

Giovanni Tinto Brass is set to direct “Punch” for Euro Int’l.

Variety 22 November 1978, p. 31:

...One of his upcoming pet projects is “Borgia” — a spectacular biog of Pope Alexander XI [sic] — one of the Popes most responsible for national unity in Italy and illumination worldwide, according to Brass. Second project is a social thriller, “The Pig Advantage.” Brass said both scripts were circulating and he has been getting nibbles — which cannot become hard and fast deals until “Caligula” friction is conciliated.