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''Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure'' is a 1999
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
television
documentary presented by
Michael Palin
Sir Michael Edward Palin (; born 5 May 1943) is an English actor, comedian, writer, television presenter, and public speaker. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. Since 1980, he has made a number of travel documentaries.
Palin w ...
. It records Palin's travels as he visited many sites where
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...
had been. The sites include Spain, Chicago, Paris, Italy, Africa, Key West, Cuba, and Idaho.
After the trip was over Michael Palin wrote
a book about the journey and his experiences. This book contains both Palin's text and many pictures by
Basil Pao
Basil Pao Ho-Yun (鲍皓昕) is a Hong Kong-based photographer. He has been the stills photographer on the BBC filming teams that made Michael Palin's television travel programmes.
Early career
Pao was born in Hong Kong, but started his career a ...
, the stills photographer who was on the team.
The journey
The series consists of four 50-minute episodes, as follows:
Episode 1
The programme starts out with Palin sitting on a beach reading a novel of Hemingway. After being chased by a fake
bull
A bull is an intact (i.e., not castrated) adult male of the species ''Bos taurus'' (cattle). More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species (i.e., cows), bulls have long been an important symbol in many religions,
includin ...
he ends up in
Pamplona
Pamplona (; eu, Iruña or ), historically also known as Pampeluna in English, is the capital city of the Chartered Community of Navarre, in Spain. It is also the third-largest city in the greater Basque cultural region.
Lying at near above ...
, Spain. There he watches the famous
bull run and then goes to interview a professional
matador
A bullfighter (or matador) is a performer in the activity of bullfighting. ''Torero'' () or ''toureiro'' (), both from Latin ''taurarius'', are the Spanish and Portuguese words for bullfighter and describe all the performers in the activit ...
. Hemingway loved the bull run, and Palin confides that it must be an age thing – he can't stand watching it.
Travelling to Africa where Hemingway went on many safaris, Palin goes to a local
Maasai circumcision where the teenage boys are dressed up in finery. "Which of you is the most beautiful here?" he asked. "We are all beautiful," replies the boy, "except you!" Afterwards, he catches a view of
Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest point.
Episode 2
In Chicago, Palin spends a bit of time exploring the city before going to Hemingway's birthplace,
Oak Park. After strolling through Hemingway's first home and singing some of his childhood songs, he goes back to Chicago and enters a local shooting range, hoping to be like Hemingway. Mostly, Palin just jumps at the recoil.
On to
Michigan
Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...
, where Palin visits the area where Hemingway first learned to fish, and attempts to catch a few himself. He catches none and ends up hooking the cameraman's ear. Going to the local grocer, Palin asks for things that might have been on Hemingway's shopping list to see if the modern grocer would still carry it. In the process of asking for canned meat, ("We have Spam," the grocer says,) he ends up singing the Spam song from the famous Monty Python
sketch. Then it's off to Italy.
In Italy, Palin goes to the area where Hemingway was wounded during World War I and supposedly buried a ten-pound note in the ground. After a fruitless search, Palin buries his
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physi ...
in the ground. After attempting to drive an Italian ambulance and become a Red Cross nurse, he travels on to France.
Paris, France was "...the city I love most in all the world," according to Hemingway. Now Palin goes through the City of Lights and reenacts perhaps the strangest part of Hemingway's life in 1928 – when the writer was reaching for the cord for the lavatory, he ended up pulling the skylight cord, and the pane of glass crashed on top of his head.
Episode 3
In a random twist of events, Palin pops up in the
Florida Keys and sees a Hemingway look-alike contest at the local restaurant in
Key West. He also goes to visit a man who had boxed with Hemingway.
Going to
Uganda
}), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The sou ...
, Palin looks at the site where Hemingway's plane crashed, after which the newspaper headlines incorrectly declared that the famous author and his wife were dead. Palin soon flies on to Venice, Italy, to keep following Hemingway's always moving footsteps.
In Venice, Palin walks in the midst of an ancient festival that had been forgotten for 200 years and was revived only in 1975. The people wear masks and cloaks, so Palin decides to get into the spirit and dresses up as a
Gumby
''Gumby'' is an American clay animation franchise, centered on the titular green clay humanoid character created and modeled by Art Clokey. Gumby stars in two television series, the feature-length '' Gumby: The Movie'', and other media. He im ...
from the
Monty Python television series. After this, Palin goes to a dinner before participating in a duck hunt, and interviews the Italian people at the meal. Putting on a warm jacket and gloves, Palin and the Barone, his duck-hunting partner, wait in vain for three and a half hours for a duck to come.
Episode 4
Palin flies to Cuba where he finds many Hemingway leads and visits his former home and a hotel room he often stayed in. Many failed attempts to interview President
Castro are made, and Palin, after waiting a few extra days to have an interview, jets off towards the American West.
Following the last stretch of Hemingway's life, Palin becomes a cowboy at a dude ranch in
Montana
Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...
and succeeds in roping the camera operator. After rounding up a few cows, Palin goes to
Ketchum, Idaho
Ketchum is a city in Blaine County, Idaho, located in the central part of the state. The population was 3,555 at the 2020 census, up from 2,689 in 2010. Located in the Wood River Valley, Ketchum is adjacent to Sun Valley and the communities sh ...
to visit Hemingway's grave. He professes that "I'm still looking for some sort of approval from him... some sort of nod of acknowledgment from Hemingway." The grave obligingly replies, "Bull-s***."
DVD edition
The programme has been released on DVD in the UK, on a single disc. Unlike the DVD editions of all of the other Michael Palin trips there is no extra material on this DVD. It was released on DVD in Region 1 (North America) in 2008.
External links
*
Palin's Travels – the official website*
{{Ernest Hemingway
1999 British television series debuts
1999 British television series endings
1990s British documentary television series
BBC television documentaries
Works about Ernest Hemingway
1990s British travel television series
Works by Michael Palin