The Crimson Permanent Assurance

The Crimson Permanent Assurance
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Produced by Terry Gilliam
John Goldstone
Written by Terry Gilliam
Starring Sydney Arnold
Guy Bertrand
Andrew Bicknell
John Scott Martin
Leslie Sarony
Music by John Du Prez
Cinematography Roger Pratt
Production
company
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release dates
 22 April 1983
Running time
 17 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English

The Crimson Permanent Assurance is a 1983 swashbuckling comedy short film that plays as the beginning of the feature-length motion picture Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.[1] Although it can be presented as a separate film and sometimes shown without the feature, it can also be considered a prologue to The Meaning of Life, which is almost never shown without The Crimson Permanent Assurance preceding it.

Having originally conceived the story as a 6-minute animated sequence in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life,[2] intended for placement at the end of Part V,[3] Terry Gilliam convinced the other members of Monty Python to allow him to produce and direct it as a live action piece instead. According to Gilliam, the film's rhythm, length, and style of cinematography made it a poor fit as a scene in the larger movie, so it was presented as a supplementary short ahead of the film.

It was a common practice in British cinemas to show an unrelated short feature before the main movie, a holdover from the older practice of showing a full-length "B" movie ahead of the main feature. By the mid-1970s the short features were of poorer quality, or simply banal travelogues. As a kind of protest, the Pythons had already produced one spoof travelogue narrated by John Cleese, Away from It All, which was shown before The Life of Brian in Britain.

The film includes actor Matt Frewer's debut performance.

Plot

The elderly British employees of the Permanent Assurance Company, a staid London firm which has recently been taken over by the Very Big Corporation of America, rebel against their much-younger corporate masters when one of them is sacked. Having locked the surviving supervisors in the safe, and forced their boss to walk a makeshift plank out a window, they commandeer their Edwardian office building, which suddenly weighs anchor, uses its scaffolding and tarpaulins as sails, and is turned into a pirate ship. The stone office building starts to move as if it were a ship. Sailing through the City of London, they then proceed to attack The Very Big Corporation of America's skyscraper, using, among other things, wooden filing cabinets which have been transformed into carronades and swords fashioned from the blades of a ceiling fan. On ropes, they swing into the board room and engage the executives of VBCA in hand-to-hand combat, vanquishing them.

After their hard-earned victory, the clerks continue to "sail the wide accountan-sea" (as they sing in their heroic sea shanty), until unceremoniously meeting their end by falling off the edge of the world, due to their belief about the shape of the world being "disastrously wrong".

Typical of how Pythons would weave previously 'terminated' plot lines into later scenes of the same episode (like Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition in the TV show, or the recurring theme of the swallows carrying coconuts in the movie Holy Grail), The Crimson Permanent Assurance suddenly re-emerges in the middle of the main feature of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (this time with both Eric Idle and Michael Palin added as members of the VBCA). After the donor scene, the movie shifts to follow a modern board room debate about the meaning of life (and that people are not wearing enough hats). This debate is happening at the Very Big Corporation of America headquarters building in the same room that witnessed the battle in the short film. The debate is halted when one executive asks, "Has anyone noticed that building there before?" which turns out to be the marauding old London building/pirate ship of the Crimson Permanent Assurance. The audience gets to see briefly the attack of the pirates from the angle of the victims in the board room. The raid is halted by a modern skyscraper falling onto the moving Permanent Assurance Company building; with a voice-over apologizing for the temporary interruption "due to an attack by the supporting feature".

Cast

Pirates

Very Big Corporation of America

Behind the scenes

In popular culture

The Crimson Permanent Assurance plays a prominent role in Charles Stross's 2013 novel Neptune's Brood, where the CPA is an interstellar insurance company that sponsors space pirates who double as cargo auditors. The CPA also features in the novel's twist ending.[4][5]

One of the sub missions in Fallout 4 was inspired by this sketch. When the character gets onboard the USS Constitution (an old Revolutionary War Navy vessel, powered with Jet Engines) it is located on top a old banking building. All the robots manning the ship have voices reminiscent of characters from old Pirate Movies, and during an attack the captain calls out "We must defend the Savings and Loan" (Although the sounds of gunfire and explosions does make it rather difficult to hear.)

References

  1. ↑ Hunter, I.Q. (1999). British Science Fiction Cinema. Routledge. p. 153. ISBN 0-415-16868-6.
  2. 1 2 Hunter, I. Q.; Porter, Laraine (2012). British Comedy Cinema. Routledge. p. 181. ISBN 0-415-66667-8.
  3. ↑ McCabe, Bob (1999). Dark Knights and Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam: From Before Python to Beyond Fear and Loathing. Universe. p. 106. ISBN 0-7893-0265-9.
  4. ↑ "The Crimson Permanent Assurance in Space", blog post by Charles Stross, September 30, 2010
  5. ↑ Stross, Neptune's Brood (2013), ISBN 0-425-25677-4

External links

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