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cover of episode 938. Film Club: Monty Python’s Life of Brian (with Antony Rotunno)

938. Film Club: Monty Python’s Life of Brian (with Antony Rotunno)

2025/6/3
logo of podcast Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

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Luke: 我会通过谈论电影来帮助英语学习者提高英语水平。你可以根据自己的喜好,选择是否观看电影来配合学习。我的播客旨在帮助全球的英语学习者,通过涵盖文化话题和提供听力练习来帮助英语学习者,并且经常涉及英国喜剧。英国喜剧以幽默的方式探索复杂议题。今天的节目是关于 Monty Python 的另一部著名喜剧《Monty Python's Life of Brian》。我们将深入讨论这部电影的制作、故事、角色和争议。Monty Python 是一个由英国喜剧演员、作家和演员组成的团体,外加一位美国人。Monty Python 的作品以其巧妙的荒谬而闻名,《Life of Brian》被认为是他们评价最高的作品。这部电影因被认为嘲笑耶稣及其追随者而备受争议,但实际上这部电影是关于 Brian 的。我不想冒犯任何人,只想谈论这部著名的英国电影。如果你觉得可能会被冒犯,请跳过本集。如果你喜欢关于英国喜剧电影的深入讨论,请继续收听。我将与 Anthony 讨论 Monty Python 的《Life of Brian》。 Anthony: 我上次来的时候得了新冠,瘦了很多,不过现在又胖回来了。我经常看 Monty Python 的电影,尤其是带有评论音轨的版本。我喜欢看带有字幕和评论的 Monty Python DVD,但我看的《Life of Brian》不如《Holy Grail》多。我以前经常看《Holy Grail》的录像带。我以前经常反复观看《Holy Grail》的录像带,但《Life of Brian》看得较少。我第一次看到《Life of Brian》的片段是在 Comic Relief 节目中。我在 Comic Relief 节目中看到了《Life of Brian》的片段,并因此喜欢上了 Monty Python。《Life of Brian》在我心中排名很高,几乎完美。我认为《Life of Brian》接近完美,而《Holy Grail》有几个场景不够好。Monty Python 的电视剧质量不一,而《Meaning of Life》更像是一系列小品。我认为 Monty Python 只有两部真正的电影,而《Life of Brian》排名更高。《Holy Grail》只是一个中世纪背景下的系列小品,而《Life of Brian》有更强的叙事性。《Life of Brian》是 Monty Python 最严肃的电影,尽管它仍然很荒谬。《Life of Brian》既荒谬又深刻,具有多重层次。《Life of Brian》中的角色是不同情境下的英国典型人物。《Life of Brian》在圣经史诗的背景下,既有荒诞时刻,又有着深刻的主题。《Life of Brian》讲述了一个普通人努力生活的故事,并探讨了一些宏大的主题。《Life of Brian》因其喜剧性和深刻的主题而备受赞誉。《Life of Brian》背后的哲学是讽刺那些不独立思考的人。Monty Python 的喜剧源于他们不理解为什么圣经史诗中的人物总是用高尚的声音谈论高尚的事情,他们认为人们会谈论日常琐事。Monty Python 模仿圣经史诗,并用日常的语言和话题来呈现。

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This chapter introduces the podcast episode and the film Monty Python's Life of Brian, highlighting its comedic and controversial aspects and the episode's purpose as a film club discussion with guest Anthony Rotunno. It sets the stage for an in-depth analysis of the film's writing, production, themes, and cultural impact.
  • Introduction to Monty Python's Life of Brian
  • Film club episode format
  • Discussion of the film's comedic and controversial elements
  • Guest Anthony Rotunno's participation

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You're listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teacherluke.co.uk.

Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. This episode is called Film Club Monty Python's Life of Brian and this is a film club episode. I haven't done one of these episodes for quite a long time. I used to do them a lot more. If you look back in my episode archive, you'll see quite a few film club episodes. The concept here is that, you know, I just talk about a film and

and you could watch the film as part of your English learning process if you wanted to. But you could listen to the episode, then watch the film, or you could watch the film and then listen to the episode, or you could just listen to the episode and not watch the film, or you could just not do anything and just stay in bed. It's up to you. But yes, Monty Python's Life of Brian is the film this time. And, uh,

Let me just read through some notes I have at the beginning of this and then we'll get into the episode properly. So, yeah, this is a podcast for learners of English around the world. If you're learning English, then this podcast is here to help you.

by teaching specific aspects of the language, by covering different cultural topics, and simply by giving you plenty of listening practice on a variety of subjects. I like to talk about different things in my episodes, but a theme I often come back to is British comedy, films and TV series. Comedy is a big part of British popular culture.

And as well as just being entertaining and a bit of a laugh, I think our best comedies manage to explore complex ideas with the sense that treating almost any subject with a sense of humour is somehow an important thing to do. And on the podcast over the years, I've done episodes about various comedy shows and films. And of course, this includes quite a few episodes about Monty Python's Flying Circus.

As long-term listeners might remember, in the archive there are episodes about the Monty Python TV series, episodes analysing certain Monty Python sketches and specific English used, and also a couple of episodes about the classic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is an absurd adventure into medieval British history.

This episode today is a return to the Film Club British comedy series. And today's film is Monty Python's other famous comedy, Monty Python's Life of Brian. And I'm joined by fellow English teacher, podcaster and Monty Python enthusiast, Anthony Rattuno, returning to the podcast. The plan is to discuss this film in a lot of depth.

talking about the people who made it, how and why they did it, the characters, the story, and the most famous scenes. We'll describe and analyse the comedy and the way it manages to make some quite serious points, while at the same time being very absurd and ridiculous. We also cover some of the reasons behind the film's controversy too. Just in case you don't know,

Monty Python's Flying Circus is the name of a group of comedians, writers and actors from Britain plus one American. And that's Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam. They were highly educated people who made it their business to

to create some very silly TV shows and films, mainly in the 1970s. And those TV shows and films were somehow very clever in their silliness. Life of Brian is perhaps their most highly rated work. People praise it, meaning they say lots of positive things about it, for the quality of the humour, but also for the way it deals with such profound and serious subject matter.

This is a film that was controversial when it was first released, meaning some people didn't like it and were very upset about it. This is because people thought that it made fun of the life of Jesus and his followers. People felt that it mocked Jesus. Arguably, this is not true. I mean, it kind of is true, but it's also not really true. The film isn't about Jesus. It's about Brian.

But unsurprisingly, the film has offended people over the years. But I do want to say that this is not what I'm particularly interested in doing, by the way. I don't particularly want to offend anyone. I just want to talk about this famous British film. So if you feel that you might be offended by the subject matter of this episode, please feel free to skip this episode this time.

that would be fine. I wouldn't want you to feel that I hadn't warned you at the beginning. And I wouldn't want you to feel that it was necessary to write comments to me about how this was offensive to you or anything like that. So I don't think any of that's necessary. So to avoid all of that, if it sounds like you might be offended by the subject matter,

of this episode. You could just pick a different episode from the archive to listen to, or just wait for the next new one to arrive, which will happen soon, and just enjoy that one so that we can all just keep calm and carry on. But if a long, in-depth conversation about one of the highest rated and best loved British comedy films of all time is something that appeals to you, and maybe you're already a fan of Monty Python,

and you've enjoyed previous similar episodes I've done, then listen on. Okay, so now that I've said all that, let's go back a few weeks to when I spoke to Anthony about Monty Python's Life of Brian, and here we go. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode. I'm talking to Anthony Rotuno again. Hello, Anthony. Hello. Hi there. It's been two years. Is it two years? Yeah, last time I was on, I just had COVID, so...

It suddenly appeared a week later after the first part because it was a two-parter. Yeah, that's right. Having lost loads of weight, but you'll be pleased to know I've found it again. Where was it? Under the sofa, yeah. Right, around the back of the sofa. Anyway, yeah, nice to be back, yeah. Yeah, nice to have you back as well, yeah. So we're going to talk about Monty Python's Life of Brian. When was the last time you saw this, actually? I suppose you watched this again for this episode, but before this, when did you last see this?

I mean, it's one of those films that, you know, you tape it off the telly and watch it about 400 times and you almost never need to watch it ever again, really. It's like Beatles songs. See, I brought it to the Beatles already. You know, they're just in there and obviously stuff nowadays we live in this YouTube thing and social media. So stuff comes into your feed anyway, be it Python or Beatles. So yeah, for this one, what they often do on the DVDs they'll have for the Pythons, obviously there's

five of them well tory jones died but when they were doing these dvds there were five of them so you'd have two commentaries so it's nice to have the subtitles of the film going on so you can really appreciate the script and then have them talking over it so that's what i did but before that i hadn't really seen i don't really need to sit down and watch the film even though i'm sure it would still be pleasurable because it's you know it's all in there actually this one i haven't seen this one as much or i hadn't seen this one as much

I still haven't seen this one as much as Holy Grail, which we talked about before. And the Holy Grail, I had that one on. It was one of those ones I had on video, as you said.

Back in the old, old days when you just had a few VHS videos lying around and you would find yourself watching the same things over and over again, yeah, Holy Grail was one of those. I got to know it really, really well. It became really comforting. This one, I watched it on TV when it was showed on TV. Finally, after not being shown on TV for a long time, they showed it again.

and then, you know, probably got it on DVD, watched it a few times. But yeah, I haven't watched it as many times as Holy Grail, so I was less familiar with this one, but I've got to know it a lot better. Do you remember the first time you saw this? Not specifically. I remember the first bit of it I saw was, do you remember the first comic relief?

I don't know if I remember the first ever one, but I remember the early days of comic relief. Yeah, 1988 it was. It was Lenny Henry and Griff Rees-Jones were the presenters. Yeah, and they had a top 10 comedy sketches. And I realized I hadn't seen any of Monty Python at that point, but I knew Fawlty Towers really well. So Monty Python was that thing that John Cleese did before Fawlty Towers. Yeah.

And, uh, yeah, it was the stoning was in it. The stoning scene with him as, as the headmaster figure. And I just absolutely love that. And I thought, God, I wonder if everything, the best of the films as good as this. And basically it was, you know, so, uh, it's probably about 13 or 14 when I first saw it. How does this rank in terms of all of the Monty Python stuff that they did, all of their work for you? I mean, uh, right at the top, really, uh,

I love Holy Grail. And when we did Holy Grail a couple of years ago, that really amplified that one for me. And I was thinking, oh, you know, maybe they're on a par. And I wouldn't say one is objectively better than the other one, but I don't know. I just think this is close to perfect. Holy Grail, there were just two or three scenes that I didn't think were like amazingly good. Whereas in this, nearly everything is really, really good.

And I've always, I think we talked about this last time. I've always found the TV show to be very uneven. The first series is pretty good. It's almost like bands with albums, isn't it? I mean, they used to call it the difficult third album. Everyone seems to call it difficult. Second album was actually originally the difficult third album. So the first two series of the sketch show are pretty good. And then they do start to repeat themselves again.

And then Meaning of Life, which is the other film, is, again, it's a bit, it's really like sketches, isn't it? So I think there's two proper films, if you like, that they made. And I think this one ranks higher. Yeah. And you're including Holy Grail as the other proper film. Yeah.

But even that doesn't have the same sort of narrative through line that this one has. Because Holy Grail, people say that it's really just a medieval setting with a vague kind of plot, which is the quest for the Grail, which is very haphazard. And it's basically just going from castle to castle and,

trying to get the grail and no one's got it. And then stuff happens. It's just a series of sketches with a medieval theme. And this one, oh yeah, there's definitely more of a storyline. They really kind of did it properly. Didn't it? Didn't they? Yeah. It seems amazing to say about this film, but this is their most serious film in the sense of trying to make a, a good, a really good film. And Holy Grail was a good film, as you said, but,

Yeah, this is them almost doing it properly, even though it's completely silly. Yes, it is completely. It is completely silly, but there's layers to it. So you've got the kind of ridiculous silliness

including very funny characters, which are kind of like English archetypes in a different situation, which is part of what was funny about Holy Grail. You get these kinds of typical English characters, like the cheeky chappy and the kind of upper class idiot and whatever. And then you put them in a medieval theme. And then it's the same thing with this.

where you've got these very funny, different, very well-observed characters. And sometimes you only see them for a few minutes each time. But then within the sort of context of a biblical epic is a funny kind of contrast. But then as well as that, there are the incredibly absurd moments that are always there with Python. And there's one in particular in this film which...

It's just extraordinary really. Um, and, uh, and then as well as that in this film, there is a narrative story of a guy trying to, you know, just trying to live his life. Um, and then there are themes, there are some big themes going on as well. Um, um,

Yeah, it's often rated really highly. And generally speaking, I think the Pythons themselves and most people, like critics and fans and stuff, seem to hold this one up as being their best work. And it's probably because of that reason that, as well as having really good comedy in it, the subject matter is quite serious.

and intelligent and it's kind of making a bigger point yeah I think the fact that it's got a more there is a philosophy behind this film which is that it's lampooning people who don't think for themselves that's the basic thing

The other thing, maybe just establish this right at the beginning of the conversation, is that a lot of the comedy comes from the idea that they didn't understand why in biblical epics everyone spoke in lofty voices and spoke about lofty things. I posited to you, if you remember, if we could suddenly wake up tomorrow and even go back further than this film, 600 BC, what did people talk about? Did people go, oh, bloody hell, it's raining?

Did they talk about that? The idea of the pythons, not only is the voices themselves, and also the things they talk about, which is everyday stuff. The Sermon on the Mount being the best example, probably. Well, yeah. So that point, though, about biblical epics, because the film is making fun of lots of different things.

One of those things is the cinematic genre of the biblical epic, like Ben-Hur or the Ten Commandments or Jesus of Nazareth. Is that also in that category? I haven't seen it.

The Zeffirelli one, yeah. That had just been made, hasn't it? Yeah, that was serious. It was Robert Powell, wasn't it? Yeah. That's Jesus. And in those films, the characters would speak in these very portentous voices. And, you know, lo, I said unto him, you know, this kind of... Because it's...

The filmmakers thought about those things in the context of the Old Testament or something, and the English of the King James Bible. It's all very, very big and serious, especially when it's Americans doing it.

You know, and you get John Wayne go, surely this must be the son of God, you know, but in reality, yeah. As you said, if you go back to those times, people will just be going, Oh, bloody hell. My sandal is killing me. I tell you what, the strap just keeps falling off. It's absolutely murder.

Yeah, it's bloody hot today, isn't it? When's someone going to invent suntan lotion? Yeah, it's the idea that in biblical epics, everyone's a poet, aren't they? Everyone just speaks so wonderfully poetically. But unfortunately, that wasn't true. Yeah, they're all speaking in a sort of written form of poetry.

formal English. So context of the film. So we've got their TV series, as you said, then they did their first film, which was done on a micro budget, but did quite well, actually. And then they were in a position where they could

make another film. Can we talk about the making and the production of the film? Do you know how they came up with the idea? Or actually, we probably, sorry, we probably need to explain something about what the film is basically about. What is the basic plot of the film? Well, there's a baby called Brian is born. Is it in the manger next door to Jesus? Yeah. Brian Cohen is born. Brian Cohen. It's not Jesus. Jesus is born just next door.

Um, uh, and the wise men come accidentally. They, they drop in on Brian thinking that it's him, but they get the wrong baby and move on to Jesus. Uh, so yeah, he's born next door to Jesus in another, uh, manger. Yeah. And then just gets mistaken for him. Um,

But the interesting thing they do, it's almost like, you know, Hitchcock was famous for the man on the run, innocent man on the run story. That became his trademark. And at some point during that story, the innocent man somehow gets mixed up in lots of trouble. So he almost implicates himself. And what happens with Brian is there's a point in the film where he poses as a Messiah for a particular reason, to evade the Romans. Yeah.

And then obviously that everything he said is then taken as gospel almost, but taken as wisdom. And then later on he says, okay, I am the Messiah because he wants them to stop calling him that. So they say only the true Messiah would deny it. Okay, I am the Messiah. So in a way he's almost making it worse for himself. Just the same as those innocent men on the run.

We'd get embroiled in stuff. So that's the cleverness of it. And really Brian's story, he's just kind of like just trying to get by. He lives with his mum. He learns that his father was a Roman. He's kind of the illegitimate son of a Roman centurion. So he's got a complicated sort of, you know, backstory. But he hates the Romans who are occupying the town.

And he can't stand the Romans, and so he wants to join a kind of revolutionary people's group, a group of revolutionaries who want to get the Romans out.

But also part of the reason he wants to join the group is probably because he fancies one of the members, a girl called Judith. Judith Iscariot, that is. Judith Iscariot, that's right. And so he's just trying to live his life. He's trying to have a normal life, dealing with the normal things that most young men deal with.

And he gets caught up in some complicated things because of the context he lives in. As you say, he's trying to escape from the Romans. He ends up falling out of a window or something and he lands in a spot where some preachers are preaching. And in order to avoid being caught by the Romans, he pretends to be a preacher and starts saying some stuff.

He engages the attention of the people around him and he starts developing a following by accident. And then he runs away and they're all arguing about the significance of the fact he left his sandal behind and he left a gourd behind. And all the followers start chasing him and they gather in numbers. There's more and more of them.

And, yeah, he protests that he's not their Messiah over and over again, but they don't believe him. Just like you said, he said, all right, then I am the Messiah. And, of course, that fuels their confirmation bias even further. So, again, a very profound point, which is how –

is this whole thing about framing. I mean, we use framing in life coaching, but it's so big now, the way that comments and things people say are framed. And with social media, it's so relevant, but with social media, when you type things, people can't even see your face, like what your expression is. But the idea is that what someone says, I wouldn't say it doesn't matter, but it can be interpreted in so many different ways. So everything Brian does and everything Brian says, he's given this credit.

um i just mentioned very quickly the introduction song because you're talking about um he's just a normal dry trying to get on with life in ad 33 um the opening song which is probably not really my favorite but it's got some good lyrics his face became spotty things started to grow he started to shave and have one off the wrist i want to see girls and go off and get pissed so in their silly way they are

Trying to say, not that you'd be concentrating on the lyrics much, but yeah, he's just a normal guy trying to do normal things. Yeah, especially, that's especially a good description of like your typical English guy, I would say, kind of going through adolescence and growing up to become a young man. Those are the sorts of typical things that English guys, you know, deal with. But again, set in the context of...

the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. How did they come up with this idea then of setting their film in this period of time in this place? Yeah, well, there were a couple of different stories. One was that Eric Idle said to a reporter, he said, what's your next film going to be about? And he said, oh, I think we're going to call it Jesus Christ Lost for Glory. And I don't even know if he pre-thought that. And then there's a slightly different version where they have a meeting where

And he comes up with it then. So, I mean, whichever one, it was Eric Idle who came up with that. And their ideas gestated for a long time. That was the point. It seems quite spontaneous, but it's one of those interesting things where the script is very, very carefully put together and loads of ideas are discarded. But then when they deliver it, it seems spontaneous. So do you know anything anymore about how the Jesus angle came about?

Yeah, so I think, you know, as comedy writers and performers, they're always looking for the comedy. And that's the first thing. They've got to find something that's funny. That's their medium. And so, yeah, they were looking for ideas that were funny and searching, always searching for the funniness. And they knew that there was something funny about the title, Jesus Christ Lust for Glory, that the idea there was that they could do something funny

in the genre of the biblical epic, like the way they did a genre of the kind of swashbuckling medieval adventure in their previous film. They could do a similar thing with this. And they looked into it and I think initially they were considering making something about the 13th apostle, that there was another apostle that was just late all the time. Yeah.

He wasn't at the Last Supper because he was late, he got waylaid or something. They were working on that as a possible idea, and that involved looking at Jesus and the things that Jesus was saying. But the more they researched Jesus,

the specific teachings of Jesus, the more they realized that they weren't really that funny. And in fact, they actually agreed with a lot of the things that Jesus said, you know, that they're, they're perfectly fine. There's not really anything to make fun of there, you know, love thy neighbor. Yeah. You know that this is fine. You know, he's preaching all the, all the nice things. Um, and they worked out,

That there's humor in the fact that perhaps, again, if you look at what life was like in those days, and you imagine the Sermon on the Mount or imagine the reality of life in those situations, that there would be human things going on, like people misunderstanding what Jesus had said and then disagreeing with each other about it.

And so it became more about the, if there's any satire in it, it's about the way that people misunderstand, uh, the, the teachings of Jesus or misinterpret the teachings of Jesus or the way people slot into a sort of, um, group think, um, and don't question things. And, um, so it became about kind of human group behavior, um,

I suppose, you know, because it's not just exclusive to Christianity. I think it's broader than that. And that you get also the film makes fun of left wing politics in the UK, which was very sort of splintered. Right. And in the, the characters of the resistance group that Brian wants to join,

those scenes where they're talking about how to stop the Romans and stuff. They're clearly making fun of British left-wing politics of the, of the seventies, which was very divided. You've got this left-wing movement with all these parties that spend as much time fighting against each other and disagreeing with each other as they do actually trying to achieve their main goals. And so. Can I just say there's a wider point. It's not even just them.

Humans form into subgroups anyway. And humans, if you take an average, I'm sure they've done experiments, just take an average number of humans and plonk them somewhere, the same things will start to happen.

A couple of strong people will emerge as a kind of alpha males, if you like, or females. And then subgroups will form. So it's not even, you're right, they are making fun of left-wing groups, but they're even making a wider point there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, you know, they're kind of making fun of all these things. But anyway, yeah, so they started with that idea and they decided that Jesus was actually kind of great and not really that powerful.

uh, worth ridiculing. Uh, but they still found something that they could make fun of. Um, and yeah, chose not to make the film about Jesus, but about a guy called Brian who kind of,

just lives parallel to Jesus. But I mean, you know, they are making, they are kind of making fun of, um, you know, sort of Christianity or dog dogma, you know, the, um, the dogmatism of followers and how people end up focusing on the rules and get carried away by applying the rules. And even if they've misunderstood those rules, that's kind of,

what people end up focusing on rather than the actual teachings themselves. It's more like applying the teachings. Yeah. But I mean, that's becoming more and more relevant because bureaucracy is taking over the world. Bureaucracy has increased massively in the last, I don't know, it's probably always been increasing, but,

Yeah, just rules and, like you said, dogma. And again, with social media and everything on the internet, really, if you go to chat rooms, it's about how things are framed and what you believe. And one TED talk, this guy was saying, what the actual truth is doesn't matter. It's only what people believe as the truth. That is the truth.

In terms of you've got sufficient numbers, I'm saying sufficient numbers believe something, then to them that becomes the truth. Yeah, which is quite a frightening idea because then that could be weaponized. You know, if you can kind of basically convince enough people of a certain reality, then you can get a lot done because you've got a lot of force behind you.

And that's kind of, that tells you a lot about what, you know, what's going on today, isn't it? It's like a battle for information, a battle for the minds of everyone on the planet, you know, and a lot of that's about controlling and manipulating information and reality. So that essentially people don't put up a fight against certain things happening because they think that it's the right thing, even if it's bad for them.

um whoa yeah i heard someone on a podcast talking about they don't it was a scientist they had analyzed pod um youtube stats and things like that and they said when a video goes viral the chances of it going viral go up massively when it reaches like ten thousand or whatever five thousand ten thousand and i think the chance that something will become

basically established fact in society needs a certain amount of people to believe it. Obviously influential people, you know, if Kim Kardashian decided that I was the king of the world, then, you know, it could happen. You have a pretty good chance that you could get, get there. You just need the right people. But no, seriously, you need a certain number of people and then it just kind of mushrooms and then something becomes established fact. Almost. I think nowadays, yeah,

a lot of people think there's nothing is established fact, but as much as it can be, you know, yeah, it's a frightening thing. I think, I think there are still established facts. I think we, you know, we shouldn't lose grip on the, on reality as much as possible. You know, while it is true that,

a lot of perspective and relativism is involved in the truth, and one person's truth is another person's lie. This can be true to an extent, but there are still certain things that are just true and not true. You know, like numbers of people in a place at a certain time, or scientific facts like what a certain medicine does or doesn't do.

Well, I don't know about that. Well, I'm not necessarily talking about the vaccines there. I know that's something that can be refuted and so on. But, you know, I still maintain that there is an absolutism to some truth that it's not all just up in the air and flexible and redefinable, you know.

I suppose opinions. I'm thinking more of opinions. Yeah. Just before we go on, could I just tell you, very funny, two original ideas they had for this film, for scenes. This is, again, about bringing biblical epics into present day parallels. Trying to book a table for the Last Supper, but all the restaurants being full.

And Jesus is like a table for 12. Yeah. Oh, it's Jesus and the 12, isn't it? Does the 12 mean table 13? Yeah. Table for 13. Sorry, gov. You know, that was the Eric Idle thing where he's saying, well, we got, we can do, we could do a table of five over here and a table of eight over there. Well, that worked for you. No, we need to be all together. And the other one was people turning up late for miracles, which is a bit similar to what you were saying earlier. Someone just turned. Oh, has he already done the water into wine? Oh,

late again. Oh, damn it. When's he going to be walking on water? Oh, a week Thursday. You know, that kind of thing. He's already done it. Yeah. How was this film made? So they came up with the idea, they worked on it, they kind of, um,

changed their focus and then found what they thought would be the funny idea and all started writing for it and everything like that. But in the way that films are made, it's not just the writing of the script and the direction and the location. There's all the money that has to be put up for it. Now, EMI, who were their sort of production company at the time, they had kind of given them a green light for their next film because the Holy Grail had done so well and costs so little.

So I think EMI were like, go ahead, boys, go and make us another film on the cheap. Do you know what happened though? I think it was at the 11th hour. It was Bernard Delfont, who is mentioned right at the end of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. You know, we'll never get any money out of this Bernie or something. That's a sly reference.

He apparently hadn't. I think he was the EMI head or head of films or something like that. He read the script having not read it, apparently. Maybe they just thought, oh, we can trust them, you know. He read it, yeah, and just said, there was a quote, but I didn't write down. But, yeah, he just said, oh, no way. And then who stepped up after that? If you're going to bring it around to the Beatles, I mean, you're forcing it. Yeah.

This is great though, isn't it? Because after the head of EMI, who was not a filmmaker, took a look at the script and realised what was going on, that there were references to Jesus and this could be seen as a kind of, yeah, like a criticism of Christ. Some people were scared of blasphemy because in those days,

I'm not sure these days, in the UK anyway, in those days you could be prosecuted for blasphemy. You could be arrested and prosecuted for it. These days they don't have blasphemy laws in the same way. But anyway, so the head of EMI panicked and basically said no and

took away the funding for the film. And this is, as you said, just a few days before they were due to go off and start filming it. And so they all desperately needed to raise money. And it was Eric Idle who lived in Los Angeles at the time. And he went to see his mate George Harrison of the Beatles. St. George of Harrison. St. George of Harrison, exactly. Because he lived in Los Angeles as well at the time.

And apparently Eric Idle showed him the script and said, look, you know, we need money for this because of EMI have lost their bottle and have pulled out. Yeah, they were friends. They've become really good friends, apparently. I don't know what the chronology is with the Ruttles. I think the Ruttles must have, it came out in 78. So it must have been obviously made before Life of Brian. George Harrison was in it. And the Ruttles is this lovely bridge between the Beatles and the Pythons.

And George apparently, I mean, I guess they sent him the script. He might have even just said, no, I trust you. But anyway, probably read the script. And he said, I mean, you know, because I wanted to see the film. What are those brilliantly, beatily things to say, you know? And he said in an interview, I pawned, the way he said it, we had to pawn the house and pawn the office.

As if they're going, you know, like to a pawnbroker. Right. Yeah, that's almost Python in itself. Someone pawning their house, you know, just in the street. Yeah.

Because normally you would pawn a guitar, for example, take it down to the pawnbrokers. That's P-A-W-N, right? And if you're short of cash at the end of the month, you might pawn some of your possessions and the pawnbroker gives you cash and then you can kind of buy them back later. But you wouldn't normally pawn a house. But he did put up his house as collateral against...

uh the project or at least got cash remortgaged i think is what it is i think he remortgaged his house um and set up a company and ended up putting three million pounds into the project yeah i've heard three and four but say between three and four but which is obviously now that doesn't see it sound like a lot of money does it but you know it's 1978

And I think the Beatles, the situation with their money was they didn't know how much money they had. They couldn't just go to their bank account and say, I've got this amount. Because obviously they've got the collateral of all their songs that they can produce. I'm sure the Pythons had a bit of that as well, where your reputation gets you a pass to some extent. Because the money you're going to make off future projects. But with this one, I think the EMI guy is just like, okay, I know they're great and everything, but...

I don't know if we can risk it. And George was just like, yeah, I love the pythons. You know, I can raise the money. Let's do it. And they actually, did they form handmade films just entirely for this reason? Apparently. Oh, they did. Right. Apparently. Um, yeah, which is great because handmade films then went on to make some really lovely, great British films, including notably with nail and I, and a few others. Long good Friday. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, really nice stuff. And Brazil, right? Isn't Terry Gilliam's Brazil a handmade films production? So yeah, that's obviously just a fantastic story that George read the script and he said, yeah, I'll give you the money. You know, and the story is, yeah, I just wanted to see the film. So it's like the most expensive cinema ticket in history. By the way, £3 million is,

in 1978. Today, adjusted for inflation, is worth about £22 million. Hmm. Yeah. It's not chicken food, is it? Still quite a small amount for a feature film, I think. A lot of feature films cost a lot more than that. But they were pretty efficient, weren't they, in their filmmaking, I think. We mentioned Jesus of Nazareth. Also, we know that they filmed it in Monastir, Tunisia.

And because there were so many, I don't know if they're all biblical epics, but so many historical films were made there. Michael Palin said some of the extras would almost had a regular gig. Oh yeah. Another biblical epic. And so they had the sets from Jesus of Nazareth, which obviously saved a lot of money. And apparently the extras were saying to Terry Jones, Oh, Mr. Zaffirelli doesn't do it like that. Oh, should we just quickly make the point as well that, um, I think Holy grail looked very cheap. Um,

That was, as we said, made in 1975. This one, I think this was a conscious thing. They said, if everything looks brilliantly realistic and we really make the effort to make it look like the world, then the jokes would be more effective because the juxtaposition is more. If it just looks like a crap version of Judea, then it doesn't quite have that power. I think Holy Grail, we could argue about, it sort of looks epic and cheap at the same time, I think.

Would that be fair? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think so. Part of that, I think, is Terry Jones's direction. Hmm.

Um, you know, because with Holy Grail, Terry Jones and Terry, Terry Gilliam both directed it, which sounds like a nightmare. You can't have two directors on a film unless they're really, really close, like the Wachowski brothers or something like that. Um, so that they argued a lot while they were making the film and it was really difficult for everyone. Uh, for this one, they really kind of, um, uh, made an effort to, uh,

be clear about it. And Terry Jones was the director and Terry Gilliam ended up being the production designer. So he was responsible for the look of the film, which was a really good idea because he's good at that, you know, adding smoke effects and just making everything look kind of look spectacular, but definitely they've got different directorial styles. And you look at Gilliam's work, it's a lot more,

you know, visually rich, you know? And I, I was thinking while I was watching this one again, what would it have been like if Gilliam had directed this? What do you think? What, what do you think would have been the difference? I suppose. I mean, if they're using the same script, I don't imagine that the director would, would say, I don't know, just the director choose the scenes. I'm not sure, but I mean, obviously you'd get more visual sweep, uh,

Yeah. And I don't know whether you would, I don't know whether they would cut the jokes or just make the film 10 minutes longer with more scene stuff. But I think Terry Jones is an amazing job.

I mean, he wasn't really a director. Yeah. He kept things very tight, very close. I mean, what you said about how sometimes it looks a bit cheap and sometimes it doesn't. Now the, the moments where it doesn't is because they do have some pretty spectacular sets. So there's, there's like the Roman scenes, especially with Pontius Pilate. And there are, there's a palace that they're in and there are high, high columns and,

which I think were left over from Zeffirelli's film. Almost certainly, yeah. And I remember Gilliam talking about this, that he was really impressed actually by this location. And he was a bit annoyed with Terry that he didn't spend more time showing this. Terry Jones's shots were a lot...

lot closer, you know without a lot of stuff around the edge and Gilliam's work often you do get a lot of wider long shots with movement and you get characters who are in the middle or maybe on the edges where they're having a conversation but there's all this other stuff going on as well. The camera can sometimes be at the other end of the room moving in and

And there's two characters having a conversation. You can hear them clearly as if you're next to them, but the camera's way over here, which is kind of one of the great things about Gilliam's work is that you get this weird sense that you're kind of sweeping around and it's like a weird dream, you know, which was one of the reasons he was so good with Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because he was so good at...

capturing that sense of disconnection between the actual characters who are talking and the weird and wonderful things that are going on around them and how disassociated everything is from everything else, which is what you get from Gilliam's work sometimes, that sort of weird space of the sense of space, the stretchiness of space or something, but you don't get any of that stuff, which could have distracted from the humor. It would have been wonderful, but it might've,

kind of added just a few extra layers of distance between you and the jokes. Less economical, I'd say. Yeah. Yes. I was actually saying that, no, it's actually Holy Grail I was saying looked cheap and epic at the same time. Oh, yeah? I think this one actually looks pretty epic most of the time.

I think it would have looked even more epic though, if, if Gilliam had been in charge of it. Um, like that scene with the, you know, the biggest dick has seen, it's all very close stuff. It's almost like a T it's shot for TV, you know, whereas I think Gilliam would have been really sort of like enjoying the, the darkness at the edge of the scenery and the ceiling and the light coming through. And that's that sort of thing, which I don't know if that would have,

aided the comedy sometimes with comedy a lot of efficiency is really important because if it's not adding to the comedy then it's taking away from it yeah if you think of holy so keep talking about holy grail but that that whole the majestic uh sweep of the countryside just made the fact that they were pretending to be on horses and just going

that worked well in that way and just having this sort of epic music and stuff I think you were saying earlier won't we that Holy Grail is quite a bit looser this is the thing about the Pythons I was saying it seems spontaneous and improvised but that works so well because it's so tightly prepared and someone like John Cleese I mean him and Connie Booth spent six weeks on each script for Fawlty Towers half an hour script six weeks honing it

So you had in the Pythons, you obviously had a lot of chemistry. You had a few opposites. I think Cleese and Terry Jones are the ones that clashed more than everyone, but they also had a kind of tight and quite serious, you know, they actually are making a serious attempt to make a film. This is what I tried to say earlier. It's not this necessary, a serious film, but it's a serious attempt to make a film.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing about comedy that people sort of often don't realize because it looks like it's all very loose and just sort of trivial and glib. Um, but to make good comedy does require a lot of, uh, graft, a lot of work. And yeah, they, they, they went and stayed in Barbados, um, all together staying in the same house for two weeks, um,

to really hone the script, which I think made a big difference to this. It really allowed them to be efficient and really kind of, um, um, yeah, do a really good job on, on the film, you know, and they were able to film it quickly and efficiently. Like this, the stoning scene that you said, I think John Cleese said that he was really pleased and surprised that they were able to get that whole scene done in one morning. Yeah. That was a very first scene, wasn't it?

Yeah. And Cleese, I think, said that it was then that he realized that

it was going to be good because Cherry Jones really had worked out, worked everything out. And as a director, I mean, it must be so hard to direct a film when you've, especially when you've got lots of extras and you're in a weird environment, you know, that you're not used to and you've got all, you know, you've got, you're shooting on film, which is so valuable and you can't waste it. And you've got to find your moment. You've got to,

prepare everything in advance, like where every single person is standing, where the camera's going to be, where it's going to go, at which moment. And he had it all organized in advance, you know. And so, yeah, Cleaves was saying that

He was so impressed that Terry Jones really had got his act together and it was all done within a few takes, snap, snap, snap, all done before lunch. So yeah, they all, I think the mood was really, really good and they were all sort of on their, they were all sort of at their best. Yeah. Also Terry Jones was directing his friends and was also in the film playing multiple characters. So you think about all that,

and you think what a headache that would be i think terry jones was probably one of the one of the more balanced of the pythons i think personality wise i think palin and jones probably had a fairly uncomplicated uncomplicated and good friendship i think i think in their hands of someone more neurotic juggling all that i don't know that could have been a bit of a nightmare i don't know maybe that's what happened with terry gilliam on the first film it just got a bit much for him i i don't know

I just feel like Gilliam gets distracted by other things, whereas Jones was able to stay focused on the comedy and keep it really lean and efficient and focus on that. But who knows? It's a bit like the Beatles. There's a Beatles analogy again. I don't know who it was who said this. Was it George Martin or was it Mark Lewisham? I don't know. But you can cut through the Beatles and every layer of it is good.

you know? So whatever iteration you have of it, it still turns out really good. You know? So if Terry Jones directed this one and it's brilliant, but if Gilliam had directed it, it would also have been brilliant and it might've been,

just brilliant in a slightly different way. Different type of brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd agree with that. Yeah, definitely. Can we talk about different members? So we, we, we mentioned, uh, Jones and Gilliam, um, please. Yeah. How, how do they all, what do you think of each Python in this film? Yeah. I mean, we could go through and just talk about which roles they all played. Um, obviously they, I mean, they, if you really went into every role they played, it's a lot, but,

Yeah, I've started to think I go through Python phases pretty regularly. They're sort of always there, you know. Yeah. I sometimes think about who are my favorites and everything. And you'll be very impressed with this. I listened to about half an hour of our Holy Grail review in preparation for this.

And I see if we can just continue the magic seamlessly, you know? And you mentioned that Michael Palin was your favorite Python, I believe. And I don't know if you meant comedy, personality, or both, but I don't know about you, but as you get older, sometimes the guys who are a bit more dignified,

you used to think they were boring and too nice, but then you sort of realize as you get older, that dignity is a good thing. And something really dignified and great about Michael Palin as a person. And as a Python, I also realized I hadn't clocked this, but of course he has the same initials as Monty Python. I'm sure that doesn't mean anything. Oh yeah. It's like John Cleese having the same initials as Jesus Christ, you know, in your mind, it sort of triggers something. But, um,

Yeah. So let me ask, can I ask you a question as well? Like if you were going to take one, one or two pythons out of say the sketch show or a film, like a couple of them left, which ones do you think are the most indispensable? You had to pick a couple. That's really difficult to do because I, I think that as great as Graham Chapman was in the straight roles, um,

holy grail and life of brian absolutely spectacular like brilliant acting um i think in this terms of the sketch show apart from writing because he co-wrote the pirate sketch i think possibly as a performer he was the one you could do without not that you'd want to do without any of them but yeah which are the which are the most indispensable for you all right so like a large thing about python is the interaction between them

Right. So you need several pythons in a scene to make it, you know, peak Monty Python.

So you need ones that work well together. And then what I'm getting at is that maybe for this reason, Eric Idle could be dispensable because he was sort of like, he described himself as the wicketkeeper of Monty Python. It's just like someone who's got their own role. It's kind of like not the most important one. So this is a cricket reference for those people who don't get it.

um the the bowlers and batsmen in cricket are the stars of the show basically what i'm getting to is that um i think cleese and palin are probably the two indispensable ones really if you if you want to whittle python all the way back is that what you've chosen as well yeah just to say that we don't collude yeah cleese and palin are the nexus i've written down here yes next i ask but

With the plural work. I don't know. What is the plural of Nexus? I don't know. It must be Nexi. It must be Nexi. Hold on a minute. Oh dear. Plural of Nexus. No, it's, it's Nexus is it's not Nexi. I don't think the plural of circus is Circai, but in our world it works. It still works. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um,

But yeah, and maybe like their most iconic sketches as well are Cleese and Palin.

Cleese obviously is really obviously noticeable. He's very tall. He's kind of got a very specific manner about him. He's probably the alpha male of the group. You know, he's got a certain confidence in himself and a certain self-assuredness and a strident sort of nature to him, which makes him quite outstanding. And he's brilliant. Yeah.

But Palin, yeah, is not that kind of alpha male type person. He's the more quiet, nice guy off camera, as far as I can tell. But then in the scenes and in the show and in the films, he's just got so much range, especially in this film. So he's still my favourite, and I think he's my favourite in this film as well.

Should we just quickly name check the roles that they play? So Cleese is obviously in the stoning. I mean, in the stoning, he's the authority figure, the headmaster, sending someone to the back of the class for throwing stones too early and that kind of thing. He's obviously the centurion. He gives the Latin lesson. He's Reg from the People's Front of Judea. And then obviously various ones within that.

What are Palin's main roles, if you think of Michael Palin in this film? So in chronological order, I think, you've got the character who is a spectator at the Sermon on the Mount, which we haven't mentioned. The sort of thing about that is that the film more or less opens with Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount. It's a very beautiful moment, you know, played by a great actor,

with a lot of dignity. And then the camera pans back slowly to reveal a big crowd and you keep going back. And then right at the back of the crowd, there's a group of,

people attempting to listen and they're too far away to be able to listen and they start arguing amongst themselves misunderstanding what jesus is saying and arguing and palin plays one of the characters there who's a sort of like again typical english guy a kind of very stressed out husband henpecked husband um who's got anger management issues yeah yeah yeah

And he's got this beard and stuff, and he keeps turning around to tell people to stop talking because he can't hear Jesus, and he's very angry. See, if you hadn't been going on, we'd have heard that, big nose. Say that once more, I'll smash your bloody face in. Better keep listening. Might be a bit about blessing all the big noses. Oh, lay off him. Oh, you're not so bad yourself, conk face. Where are you two from? Nose City? One more time, mate. I'll take you to fucking cleaners. Language!

pick your nose I wasn't gonna pick my nose I was gonna thump him so there's him yeah right I'll take you to the fucking gladiators yeah tell you what mate

One more word out of your table, you're a fucking cleaners. Yeah. Just the way he inhabits those roles. It's just, just wonderful to see. I'm trying to find the next level. Ex leper as well. Ex leper. So yeah, Brian and his mom are walking through town and there's lepers going spare some arms for a poor leper people with leprosy and Palin,

Comes up, spare some alms for a poor ex-leper. So he's the ex-leper who's full of beans, jumping around, chasing after them, explaining his story of how he can't beg for money as a leper anymore because he got cured by Jesus. And he's not very appreciative. He's like, you know, bloody do-gooder. Yeah, he's taking away his livelihood.

yeah jesus took away his life he had basically again it's that just it's that irony that's the other thing about python if people don't know them irony just taking something and subverting it just something very simple so he's the ex-leper who and it's quite a memorable performance like leaping around yeah then there's francis a member of the people's front of judean not the judean people's front

Yeah. But the people's front, he's just like a character in the people's front of Judea. Not particularly, I mean, he's just like a sort of fairly earnest member of the people's front of Judea, but he's very stupid. And he just repeats what Reg says, and then sometimes sort of disagrees with him without realising. And then there's the prisoner.

Because Brian gets arrested by the Romans, gets shoved into a prison underground, and they're hanging up attached to the wall by metal shekels. It's this guy with a big long beard. He's obviously been in prison for years. And Brian gets thrown to the floor and the jailer, brilliantly played by Terry Gilliam, spits in his eye. And Brian's like on the floor kind of, you know,

feeling wretched and yeah Palin goes you lucky bastard yeah five years and they only turned him up the right way yesterday yeah he's been hanging upside down for five years hanging upside down for five years yeah but my favourite my favourite line he goes oh you'll probably get away with crucifixion for a first defence yeah brilliant oh god

You lucky bastard! You lucky, lucky bastard! What? Troubled the little genius pet, aren't we? What do you mean? You must have slipped him a few shekels, eh? A few shekels? You saw him spit in my face! Oh, what wouldn't I give to be spattered in the face? I sometimes ain't awake at night dreaming of being spattered in the face.

It's not exactly friendly, is it? They have manacles. Manacles! My dear Evan, it's to be allowed to be put in manacles just for a few hours. They must think a sun shines out of your arse, sonny. Oh, lay off me. I've had a hard time. You've had a hard time? I've been here five years. They only hung me the right way up yesterday. So don't you, comrade. All right, all right. They must think you're Lord God Almighty.

What would they do to me? Oh, you'd probably get away with crucifixion. Crucifixion? Yeah. First offense. Crucifixion? It's the best thing the Romans ever did for us. What? If we didn't have crucifixion, this country would be in a right bloody mess. Nail them up, I say! Nail some sense into them! What do you want? I want you to move me to another cell. Oh, look at that! Bloody favoritism! Shut up, you!

Yeah. So that character, yeah, the guy's been imprisoned by the Romans for five years and they only turned in the right way up yesterday, but he loves the Romans. He thinks they're doing a terrific job. And, uh, he's like very, um, very sort of right wing character, isn't he? Who thinks that, you know, he really believes in crucifixion. He thinks it's the best thing for these, these criminals and nails some sense into them. I say, uh,

And he really respects that, even though the Romans are being so cruel and mean to him, he really respects them. He's like, oh, terribly fantastic race, the Romans. Loving your tormentors as well, isn't it? Again, it's a comment on people who just love the government no matter what they do. And they're framing governmental actions as the right thing to do. So it's all framing government.

You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Another serious point within an incredibly silly scene. Yeah. Definitely. Then there's Pontius Pilate. He plays the part of Pilate and another incredible performance. And I think that his, his approach to this was based on like how he'd seen the upper classes, especially aristocracy. And so it's kind of about the class system and,

really. And again, contrasting different characters. And what's interesting about the scenes with Pontius Pilate is that he is supposed to be the most high status person in the whole place. That he is the Roman ruler of Judea, right? But he's constantly, his high status position is constantly being undermined by all sorts of things. So there's the fact that he is

Obviously, he has a very high opinion of himself. He's really, really arrogant. He goes around telling people what to do, and he loves the moments when he has to go and address the problems.

crowd of people and his opinion of himself is so high he's unaware of how everyone thinks he's completely ridiculous I mean he's got this speech impediment which is the kind of crux of a lot of jokes which is probably not that

it's not the sort of thing you'd have in a comedy show these days, I think. That's a bit of a sign of the times that a speech impediment could be used as the kind of butt of a joke lots of times. But it's not just that. It's also that he's this high-status Roman leader. He's so pompous, yeah, and people just laugh at him. Hail Caesar! Hail! Only one survivor, sir. Ah! Throw him to the floor! What, sir? Throw him to the floor! Ah!

What is your name, Jew? Brian, sir. Brian, eh? No, no, Brian. The little rascal has spirit? Has what, sir? Spirit? Yes, he did, sir. No, no, spirit, sir. A touch of... Oh, about eleven, sir. So, you dare to wade us? To what, sir?

Strike him, Centurion, very roughly. Ah! Oh, and throw him to the floor, sir. What? Throw him to the floor again, sir. Oh, yes, throw him to the floor, please. But yeah, there's just like the kind of the arrogance. And yeah, just throw him to the floor, Centurion, very roughly. All those lines. Throw him to the floor, sir. Yes. And...

So there's Conscious Pilot. The Boring Prophet. Oh, yeah, I love it. So there's like this place where there are prophets in a line. It's a bit like Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, where you have people standing up on sort of on little platforms just prophesying about things. And he's one of the prophets, and he sort of plays the –

the man with the least charisma that you can imagine. Yeah. He's quoting from the book of Cyril, which is quite good. Is it the book of Cyril? Yeah. That's a bit of a nod back to Holy Grail because there was a, there was a peasant called Dennis. They obviously know these names, don't they? And that, that actually influenced Blackadder because in Blackadder 4, Field Marshal Haig has a tortoise called Alan, doesn't he?

So yeah. Yeah. And there's a boy called Bob in that as well. Yeah. So yeah. Taking very sort of ordinary English names and putting them in these different contexts. Yeah. That's certainly funny. I love that. But yeah, just the boring profit again, they're subverting it because you think of profits and preachers as charismatic. So it's just, I don't know. It's really good the way he pulls that off in a kind of Peter Cook style.

Steve Coogan kind of way, he really just gives the character a sense of dimension without really doing very much. It's just a very believable character, this sort of person who's really, really very uncharismatic and saying, yes, and at some point, maybe on a Tuesday afternoon, someone who lost their hammer will find that hammer again and they won't really understand why and their friend will...

forget to tell their father a thing that he'd been told to tell but then hadn't remembered to do it previously maybe on a Thursday evening about 8 o'clock There shall in that time be rumours of things going astray and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are

And nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth

The things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about 8 o'clock. Yay! It is written in the Book of Cyril. The most boring preacher. And there's one person listening to him. What else do we know? And also the Roman centurion whose job it is to manage the queue for crucifixion. Crucifixion? Good. Straight down the line on the left, one cross each.

Right. So yeah, there's all these people lining up. They're going to be crucified. And yeah, he's there. He's kind of like the sort of middle manager who would have a clipboard. And I've heard Palin talking about this character, saying that he imagined him like this, that he was just a very nice guy, like a really nice chap, doesn't really believe in crucifixion.

but that's just the job that he's been given. So he kind of like, it doesn't feel good about it. He feels kind of guilty. He likes the local people, you know, he actually likes them and he wants to treat people fairly. And so, yeah, he's a very sort of mild mannered,

And yeah, the joke being crucifixion. And the person goes, yes, good. So crucifixion, good. That's the joke on the word good, which can be used for different things. Next. Crucifixion. Yes. Good. Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each. Next. Crucifixion. Yes. Good. Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each. Next. Crucifixion.

Crucifixion? No, freedom. What? Freedom for me. They said I hadn't done anything so I could go free and live on an island somewhere.

And in this case, crucifixion, good, meaning good, yes, you're in the right queue, rather than

crucifixion is good because obviously crucifixion isn't good you know yeah it's crucifixion as bureaucracy uh it's it's admin basically and um right i don't know i don't know how much uh our audiences know about crucifixion but if you if you actually have a look at it

It's so horrendous that some people wouldn't even talk about it in those days. Like you wouldn't say the word because it just terrified people too much. So the comedy is when you know that, then the comedy, or if you watch The Passion of the Christ, which is obviously a completely serious look at, well, that's obviously Jesus. But yeah, if you look at it and see how horrendous crucifixion is, and the joke actually works better.

the subversion works better as a crucifixion as an admin so we've got 140 they've got all the names written out you know yes on the left one cross each you know and later on when we're going to carry their crosses i think he might be the same guy he sort of you know keep a nice straight back let's put on a good show as if they're just doing tripping of the color or something you know something completely innocuous yeah very good

Yeah, they're not making fun of crucifixion, of course, but they're using the fact that crucifixion is so serious and awful as a contrasting factor with the sort of typical application of boring admin. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But again, just a really great performance by Palin. And then, of course, there's that wonderful moment where Eric Idle's character, who, as far as I can tell, Eric Idle plays the same character all the way through this film. He kind of, he just does his kind of cheeky,

he's good at that cheeky cockney isn't it he's great at that yeah there's the haggling scene there's the seat there's the character being crucified next to brian there's the guy in the queue crucifixion uh no actually freedom what yeah they just told me i could go free yeah oh really oh well okay off you go then you know the guy sort of only jokes yeah it's crucifixion really oh very good yeah first line on the left yeah i know one cross each

Yeah, because we get to know that it seems that that guy, I know this is totally ridiculous, he turns up every week and gets rescued by his brother halfway. That's why he keeps turning up to be crucified.

I think that's the idea, yeah. Yeah. Right. So he keeps getting rescued and then they catch him again and put him in the queue. But yeah, it's just so funny that all you need to do to this guy is say, oh, no, actually, it's freedom. I'm in the wrong queue. Oh, all right, then, well, you better go. That's how easy it is to escape. I didn't clock that. So Eric Idle, that is pretty much the same characters. The same one who's haggling is the same one who...

It's not the same person. I just mean that there are different people in the film. But in terms of the way he plays each person, he's more or less doing the same performance for each person, which is fine because it's great. So he's got the Hagler, Cheeky Cockney, and then obviously the final song. I mean, you were talking about contributions to Python. If you took his songs out of Python, generally, that would lose a lot. Yeah. I mean, really a lot.

I think really you can't, you can't really, we did that thought experiment of taking, uh, you know, uh, reducing Python down to its, you know, raw material. Um, but really I think you can't really like this, the six of them. And if you take one element out, it's not really the same thing, you know? Um,

Yeah. So removing Eric Idle from Python, I think would be really bad. Again, you could probably play a game of cricket without a wicketkeeper, but it wouldn't be good. You know, you'd spend a lot of time running off to the boundary, trying to recover the ball. Someone's going to hurt their hands. All right, what have we done? Cleese Palin, Idle, Terry Gilliam, obviously tends to play acting wise, always these very grotesque characters, doesn't he? He's both in Holy Grail and this.

Actually, the two scenes that made me laugh out loud the most in this were the involved Gilliam. So there's the scene where Brian is being chased by the Romans and he runs up and up and up a tower, which hasn't been finished yet. And he falls off the top and a UFO, which happens to be flying past the earth at the time, a spaceship catches him and he gets involved in a space battle.

And Gilliam talks about this in the commentary where they, I mean, I just love that moment because it's so unbelievably absurd. And I just feel like anyone taking the film seriously and getting offended by it, like really, you know, with this scene in it.

the scene where he gets caught by a passing spaceship and gets embroiled in a Star Wars style space battle and then is dropped back off where he was before with the Romans still chasing after him. It's just so ridiculous that I just can't believe anyone would really take the time to be offended by the film. Oh, you lucky bastard.

But I love that scene. And, you know, the spaceship is made from old bits of the set, leftover bits of the set that they had lying around. And Gilliam decided to give the spaceship gears like it's a motorbike.

the spaceship normally spaceships are just like right but this one is going changing gear as it goes I think it skids as well at some point it skids in space and does a 180 turn handbrake turn shall we go Terry Jones shall we talk about that well yeah he obviously plays Mandy Brian's mum the virgin Mandy

laughter

Can you describe his performance as Mandy? I mean, I think they all agree that he was the best at playing women. And it's always, he's not the Messiah. It's always this similar voice he does whenever he does women. Oh, Brian! Oh, he's going on about sex, sex, sex, sex! Yeah, yeah. That voice that they could do. No, he's just very good. Because it's not just playing a generic woman. It's a very specific personality.

And at the end, she's really upset when she goes to visit him when he's crucified. About to be crucified. She's genuinely upset, you know? Yeah, she is. She's really disappointed, isn't she? She's like so disappointed in him. It's so sad, Anthony. The film is so sad. That's another thing. So in terms of, I still think Holy Grail is my favourite. I know this is brilliant. Mm-hmm.

But just in terms of the way it makes me feel, that may be one of the reasons why I haven't watched it as much as Holy Grail, that it just makes me feel really, really sad at the end. Because the guy gets crucified. He dies at the end. I know there's the song, and always look on the bright side of life, and life's a piece of shit, when you look at it. And you come from nothing, you go back to nothing. So what have you lost? Nothing. Nothing.

Are you being serious then? You being serious? It really makes me feel sad. Yeah. Cause I was waiting for the punchline, but you're being serious. No, no, no. Okay. Cause like, you know, Paul Bryan, he's first of all, he's kind of like still living with his mom and he's meant to be in his twenties, but he's being played by Graham Chapman, who is probably in his forties, fifties at the time.

Well, he must be 33, isn't he, Brian? 33. Well, yeah, the character will be 33 years old. How old was Graham Shortman? Probably about just under 40, I'd say. You think so? Okay, so not far off. Because I always felt like this was a middle-aged man playing a much younger character, which was kind of funny in itself.

but he's got kind of a pathetic sort of life where his mum is not very sympathetic with him and, and he's frustrated and he wants his own independence, wants his own life. He, he wants to be with girls. He wants to actually have a proper life. And instead he's just following his mum around and, and, and,

He can't really make an impact on the society he lives in. Then there's a horrible misunderstanding, and he's so anxious. He just wants all these people to leave him alone. They follow him and follow him. Then he gets, through no fault of his own, he gets arrested twice and then sentenced to be crucified. He hasn't done anything.

And he's up on the cross and it's just like one thing after another where he does get pardoned by pilot and pilot comes, the centurions come out and say, we're looking for Brian and everyone else out there. Just like in that film. Yeah. Should we explain, do you mind if I explain this? Because this is pure Python. So in the film Spartacus, it's all about the slaves rebellion. It was a film directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1960, 2000.

And in a famous scene at the end, they're going to crucify Spartacus or he's going to be singled out for something horrendous. And they all stand up and say, I'm Spartacus as this wonderful show of solidarity.

So in this one, someone's going to be released. Brian's going to be released from this horrendous death. And again, research it if you want to. It's the most horrendous thing you'll ever read about or see. And everyone else says, I'm Brian. And someone famously said, I'm Brian and so is my wife.

So again, it's not just making a serious point, but it's saying that, yeah, sometimes there's solidarity between people, but we're all into self-preservation at the same time. And when it's your life, you're probably going to look after number one.

So again, a serious point within a very silly scene. Yeah. And then Judith comes, but she's a disappointment. She doesn't rescue him. She's just proud of him for dying as a martyr. Well, that's the thing. The left-wing group are just proud because he sacrificed himself for the cause.

Because the idea of that group is not to get anything done. It's just to have a cause. It's like going on. It's like people who want to continuously go on a diet. There's certain steps they won't take to lose weight because then they'd have to stop the diet. They're enjoying the diet. And the socialists just love discussing things. And when she says, Brian's going to be crucified, Reg immediately says, no.

Right, this calls for immediate discussion, as opposed to immediate action. She's just trying to get them to rescue him, to do something, and they can't because they can't just take direct action. And then there's another group of radicals who come and, as a protest, commit suicide.

There's an interesting backstory to that. We probably shouldn't go into that. We've got too much to talk about. Yeah. And then his mum comes and you think, oh, surely his mum's going to rescue him. I remember this distinctly, actually, when I was, however, old, 15 or something when I first saw it.

His mum comes and she's just, she just is really angry with him. She storms off and sort of disowns him. And so he's just left. But I suppose that's, you know, in a way, kind of what life is like, isn't it? You know, death is not a resolution of all, it doesn't get neatly resolved.

when you die, you're probably, everything is probably unresolved and it all seems like it's very unfair, you know? Um, so that is strong. It's a strong thing to do in a film.

But I have to say it does make me feel a bit sad. It's like, it makes me feel like it's a Sunday evening and I've got to go to school the next day. It just fills me with that kind of feeling. Maybe the first time I watched it, maybe the first time I saw it, it was Sunday evening. And it combined with that already, that feeling of dread into this feeling of like, Oh God, this is just, I just feel so bad for the guy, you know?

Yeah, there was one bit of dark humor just to do with this crucifixion as admin thing. When the party are going to obviously carry their crosses up to the point, there's one guy with a cross and then this, I don't know what you call him, almost like a saint, played by Terry Jones, says, let me shoulder the burden. Because famously, Jesus, if you

believe that story was two weeks to carry the cross so they got someone to help him carry it so this is what this guy has in mind but the guy who's got the cross just slips off so Terry Jones yeah and even the cheeky Cockney oh he had you didn't he the cheeky Cockney's behind him he got you

So this poor guy who's trying to do a good thing, trying to carry someone's cross ends up getting crucified as well because he gets lumbered with the cross. It's just like all of the injustice and the dark ironies of life. Yeah, a lot of them are included here, but it is a very clever way that they've made it

A really good mix of comedy and, um, or what's this is one of those words I can never remember, but it's the opposite of comedy pathos. So it's, it's a, yeah, it's a, it's a, a powerful mix of pathos and comedy, which, you know, it's good. I mean, there's only so much you can do with comedy in terms of making a serious film that people respect you for.

have respect for. Because comedy films never get the awards. Comedy almost never wins the Academy Award for Best Picture or anything. People kind of look down on it like it's not very serious. It's sort of frivolous. So it can't be understated how much of an achievement it is that they made a comedy that also is...

is so sort of that has so much sort of seriousness to it and profundity yeah yeah it's that ability to to make a funny joke and make a serious point at exactly the same time sometimes you know the killer line could be

a great gag line and a serious point, you know, it can happen exactly the same time. Should we just talk about, just to round off the round off the pythons, Graham Chapman obviously plays biggest diggers, biggest diggers. That didn't work. Biggest diggers. Biggest diggers. And a couple of other ones, but yeah, mostly, I mean, he's Brian. So he got the lead role both times and I thought he was absolutely spectacular in Holy Grail. Just the voice alone was brilliant. And this is just very good.

I wonder where, what point did he emerge as the best, almost serious actor playing comedy, but doing it in a serious way? I can't think of anything in the sketch show where he was a main person. I can't think of anything specific. It felt like they were all interchanging all the time. And then suddenly he gets the lead role twice.

I wonder why he got the lead role in Holy Grail. Yeah, it's a good question, really. I suppose it's because he's quite tall and he has that sort of voice, you know, I am Arthur, King of the Britons. I'm looking for knights to join me at my table at Camelot. Will you join me? That sort of commanding voice. And yeah, I suppose they just discovered that he was perhaps the best straightforward actor ever.

I think that Cleese wanted to be Brian, actually. Yeah, and they said, sorry, mate, we need you for all these amazing roles. Because I suppose he would have had a, perhaps Graham Chapman didn't have a massive range of roles he could play. Perhaps he did. Obviously, in the early days, up to around the making of this film, he was a quite serious alcoholic.

And he straightened himself out for this film and got it together. Yeah, I think maybe for Holy Grail, you know, there was a size difference. The two Cambridge guys were much taller and the Oxford guys were shorter. I suppose for that film, you would need somebody, either Chapman or Cleese, for Holy Grail. To be King Arthur, yeah. Yeah, I think in Brian, it's a bit different. You wouldn't necessarily need somebody tall. But I don't know. What does he bring? It's just...

He brings a certain kind of anxiety to the role, which I think that he probably had in his life anyway. He's quite a complicated character. And I've heard members of the group talking about how he did have some anxiety, which he brought to the role. Graham is a bit of a mysterious one, really, isn't he? Like I heard Palin saying that about Chapman.

asked about him sort of saying you know never really understood what was going on with Graham that there was a sort of a kind of emptiness there where you never really sure what it was so there was a sort of a yeah a lot to draw on I think a bit of an empty shell almost as a person yeah or a kind of

Maybe some pain, some kind of complex whirlpool of things going on. I think he had a lot of complications in his personal life.

And that's the sort of thing you can draw on, you know, if you are going to play a straight character with a bit of nuance to it, with an earnestness and anxiety, which is what Brian has got. And he's very good throughout the film of being afraid. He's very good at playing, playing,

scared. I think Peyton commented that, that Chapman is excellent at playing scared, like the bit where he gets caught by the Roman centurion, graffitiing on the graffitiing on the wall. I love that. That could be so terrified. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I feel like we could talk about this for ages and I'd love to talk about some favorite scenes and maybe kind of just sort of dissect them a little bit. Um,

We could do that. But yeah, so I think he just had the skill, the ability to play the right kind of, to do the right kind of performance for the role and maybe just wasn't quite right for any of the other roles. Unlike Chaklis, who was just perfect as the Roman centurion. Yeah, I just wonder if the other Pythons, although they wouldn't have said it to him, they might have surmised perhaps he doesn't quite have the range that we've got.

in terms of the number of characters. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know. That felt like it. Just with that. I can't imagine Chapman or Clapton for that matter. I can't imagine Eric Clapton playing any of those roles, but I can't imagine Graham Chapman really doing many of the other roles that the other guys were doing, like any of Palin's stuff. Maybe, maybe you could have done a boring preacher. Um,

he's great though. I mean, he was great. You know, it's Graham Chapman, you know, the bloody Beatles, white album. Yeah. Yeah. He is in a few other roles. Yeah. It's still great. Yeah. It's still great. Um, and it's an early, uh, TV role. Some of them were fantastic. Um,

But I don't know. Yeah, probably just somehow the best straightforward, normal dramatic actor. Just one thing with that scene where, so the PFJ, People's Front in Judea, ask him to write Romans Go Home on the walls. He starts writing it. The centurion turns into a Latin master and he's not upset because he's doing Romans Go Home. It's that the grammar is all wrong. Anyway, won't go through it all, but there was just one bit of,

that took me back to language lessons. Let's say you're doing, well, French. We did French, obviously, in English schools. And you have to order 10 tickets and you say, that wouldn't really work in French because the pronunciation is the same. Anyway, it doesn't matter. In another, well, Spanish, let's say, you have to order 10 tickets and you should say, and you say,

The teacher might say, how many tickets? Meaning that you've used the singular instead of the plural. So it's just that moment where he's going through it. How many Romans? Just the way he delivers it. Watch this then. Romanes eunt domus. People call Romanes they go the house. It says Romans go home. No, it doesn't. What's Latin for Roman?

Yeah.

Which is? Um, um, um, um, ee. How many Romans? Blah, blah, ee-tay. Ee-tay. Thomas, nominative. Go home. This is motion to wars, isn't it, boy? Dative, sir. Dative, dative, sir. No, ah, the accusative, accusative. Ah, domum, sir. Ah, domum. Except that Thomas takes the... The locative, sir. Which is? Domum. Ah, ah.

Understand? Yes, sir.

Now, write it out a hundred times. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar, sir. Hail Caesar. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off. Yeah. And that is informed by the fact that apparently for two years after university, John Cleese worked as a Latin teacher or Latin instructor. Oh, actually Latin. I knew he was a teacher. Yeah, he was teaching Latin. So that scene where he's going through all of the different grammatical corrections to help Bryant write the sentence correctly is directly informed by his experience of transcribing

of trying to teach students latin but also it's about latin because latin is such a not that i've studied it but it seems that it has so many of those grammatical layers to it that will affect the conjugation of different verbs you know just like just like you mentioned french and spanish you know they're influenced by latin um

And so, it's just so many different conjugations because of the subject-verb agreement, but also because of whether it's dicative or indicative or imperative or whatever. That affects the form of the verb as well. And also, you know, what the nature of the... There's other grammatical sort of aspects to it as well that all come into play. Yeah, it's so brilliantly done. Yeah.

And then it's like, right, write that out a hundred times before dawn. If you don't get it done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.

Right, of course, yeah. But that's the other thing. I didn't even clock, because when you're preparing for a podcast, you do look at it more carefully. I think, of course, that's subversion at the end, because he's getting him to write Romans Go Home a hundred times. So everyone will see the sign. He doesn't care that the sign is against the Romans. Write it a hundred times. We had a teacher at school, by the way. Yeah, it's called writing lines, isn't it? So it's a punishment. You have to write a sentence. And

We had a teacher who was actually really good, and he was a nice fella. And he had, if after repeated warnings I continue to disrupt the work of the class, I will get lines. So he'd come up with a really long sentence that you had to write out 50 times. Yeah, yeah. It's quite a bizarre thing, isn't it, as a punishment at school? You just have to sit there writing the same sentence over and over. Yeah.

Yeah, I suppose it's a combination of a punishment, something boring where you have to write something a hundred times, and also something that's educational because you practice your handwriting. And also it's supposed to get the, a bit like a mantra or something, get the idea lodged firmly in your head. I remember I got accused of lying.

because about my homework or something. And the teacher made me write, honesty is the best policy a hundred times. Oh yeah. So some lines they actually had a,

Sort of a lesson as a moral to the thing you're writing I mean like what you had what your teacher said which is like if even after repeated warnings Warnings on the class. I will get like I will get lines which is true, you know so it's a truth that kind of they Embed into your mind by making you write it out a hundred times. So I guess that's it It's a combination of like a punishment and an education all in one

Yeah. Should we just say maybe what the other most famous scenes are without describing them all? Perhaps we've gone through a lot of it. What would you say are the absolute go-to scenes? There's What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us. Oh, yeah. Which is an absolute classic. They bled us white, the bastards. They tainted everything we had. And not just from us, from our fathers and from our fathers' fathers. And from our fathers' fathers' fathers. Yeah. And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers. Don't lay me the point.

they ever given us in return? The aqueduct. What? The aqueduct. Oh, yeah, yeah, they did give us that. That's true, yeah. And the sanitation. Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like. Yeah, all right, I'll grant you, the aqueduct and sanitation are two things the Romans have done. And the roads. Well, yeah, obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without sand, don't they?

But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct and the roads... Irrigation. Medicine. Education. Yeah, you're all right. Fair enough. And the wine. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Public baths. And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg. Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it, the only ones who could in a place like this. All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Brought peace. Oh, peace! Shut up! Can I read the list?

Sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, public health and peace. Apart from that, etc. Yeah, okay. That's the condensed version, right. It's great and that can be applied to anything. Again, that's quite universal.

Isn't it? You know, and you saw people really rolling that one out for the, for the EU referendum, you know, apart from all these things, what's the EU ever done for us? Yeah. Yeah. He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy. It's possibly the most famous line. Yes, it is the most famous line. So this is when all of the crowds of followers, Brian's followers have followed him to his home and they're waiting outside for

And his mum, Brian's mum, comes home and finds him in bed with Judith. And she's very upset about it. And then she opens the windows. And who are all these people? You know, they're all like, we're here for Brian. He is the Messiah. Yeah, the lion. He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy. Yeah. Brilliant. But that's a really key scene. Yeah. That he then addresses the audience. He has to.

He has to address the crowd and he genuinely...

sincerely tries to tell them some things. He's saying, look, you don't need to follow anyone. This is the point. You just need to think for yourselves. He's really earnestly trying to tell them some really good things. Think for yourself. Make your own judgments. Don't just assume what everyone else is saying is true. This is the whole point. You don't have to follow me. You don't really have to follow anyone. Just sort of work it out for yourself.

going back to what they their motivation for making this film or the context of it they've said also that

that historical period, people were really desperate for a Messiah, apparently. People at that time really needed or wanted someone to follow. And so there are all these prophets, you know. And that's part of it. Just people wanted someone to tell them what to do. Someone to tell them it was going to be alright. Someone who would be kind of from God. A kind of leader. People were always desperate for a leader.

and they just decided that it was him. And they still seem to be really as well. They just replaced gods with, you know, wise celebrities apparently. All sorts of different things, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's just a kind of aspect of human nature that is quite destructive at times. It probably has its place, right? The desire for a leader, the need for a leader. There's probably a good reason in terms of survival from our history and stuff

Uh, but they can go badly wrong. Um, you know, which is why we need to always try and think for ourselves and not just assume things or, um, whatever. But yeah, of course there's that other classic line, which is like, you are all individuals. And the group goes, we are all individuals. I'm not.

yeah well then again yeah again you've got a really good gag line and a serious point right all in one you know just the irony of people saying yes we're all individuals yes we're all different that's it yeah yes we're all different i'm not and you can't see who it is it's very python there's always one voice in a crowd just saying the opposite also just the the sort of uh

the contradictory nature of the statements. And I like the fact that it's like reflected that we are all individuals. We are all different and they're all saying it in unison. And yeah, I'm not as if to say, well, I'm not different. I'm the same as everyone else, but he's the only one who's saying it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Other levels, isn't it? Yeah. Now you listen here. He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy. Now go away. Morning. Morning.

Please, please listen. I've got one or two things to say. You've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody. Think for yourself. Individuals. Individuals. All different. Yes, we are. I'm not.

That scene where the Roman guards are laughing, but they're really trying not to laugh is excellently done as well, because apparently they had to manufacture that situation quite carefully. Because it is one of the funniest things that you can see. People...

laughing, but they really don't want to. So they're really trying to hold onto their laughter, but it keeps coming out. It's like those scenes at the end of movies where they show you the outtakes where the actors can't stop laughing. I mean, this is really hard not to laugh along with them, even when you're just watching at home.

actors and you see their faces going and they're really trying to hold onto it and then they explode into laughter. And they manufactured it really well because the guards, the extras who keep laughing in the background and pilots going over to them and saying, is there something funny about the way I'm saying biggest dickers? And they're all kind of going, you know, they had to manufacture that. So they practiced it with different actors.

different extras i mean so they practiced the scene getting the position of the camera right practicing the lines and stuff with different extras and then they got these other extras in who'd never heard any of the dialogue didn't hear any weren't prepared for it at all and they did all the stuff and because it was all new to them you know they found it funny and they actually genuinely couldn't stop laughing um

So that's how they manufactured that sort of, that genuine laughter. Now, Jewish rapscallion. I'm not Jewish, I'm a Roman. A woman? No, no, Roman. No, your father was a woman. Who was he? He was a centurion in the Jerusalem garrisons. Really? What was his name? Nautius Maximus.

Centurion, do you have any one of that name in the garrison? Well, no, sir. Well, you sound very sure. Have you checked? Well, no, sir. I think it's a joke, sir. Like, uh, Ciliosaurus or Biggus Dickus. What's so funny about Biggus Dickus? Well, it's a joke name, sir. I have a very great friend in Rome called Biggus Dickus. Silence! What is all this insolence?

You will find yourself in Gladiator's school very quickly with rotten behavior like that. Come and go now, sir. Wait, you have bigger stickers? Here's a bit. Wait! Take him away! Oh, sir. No, no. I want him fighting rabid wild animals within a week. Yes, sir. For you. I will not have my friends ridiculed by the common soldiery.

Anybody else feel like a little giggle when I mention my friend Dickus? What about you? Do you find it visible when I say the name Dickus? Dickus? He has a wife, you know. You know what she's called? She's called Incontinentia.

Yeah, all pretty classic, really. Yes, it is all brilliant. I mean, do you want to talk finally about the controversy? How did this film become so controversial? It did get banned in a few places. Yeah, I mean, obviously the word spread. And I think the premiere was in America. And they were actually told to write wills before they left.

Was that serious? Yeah. Right, their last will and testament. There were various groups like this group of rabbis were upset, and they were like, well, why are they upset? I don't remember exactly what everyone was upset by, but obviously apart from the obvious, the idea of ridiculing Jesus. And they went on this discussion program presented by Tim Rice, and you had Clees and Palin on one side,

the bishop of Southwark I want to say yeah and Malcolm Muggeridge who's quite famous sort of intellectual and I was saying to you before we started recording my my relationship with religion and spirituality has changed a lot over the years and actually I did this time around watching I did get to see their points a bit more but the central point is that um

Yes, they are ridiculing Jesus. This is coming from Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark. He's got this massive crucifix, if you remember, and he's sort of fingering this crucifix that he's wearing. Yeah, and then they're saying, no, Jesus is in the film, as we said at the beginning. We're not ridiculing Jesus. We're ridiculing people who don't think for themselves. And it's quite a lively debate. But actually what happened in the end was that apparently, I mean, the bishop was a bit of a – he liked a drink or two.

And apparently at the end, they treated it as if it was good sport, you know. Oh, that was a good argument. So Cleese and Palin, ironically, are the ones who had been taking it seriously. So, I mean, they had to take it seriously, not only this debate, but the whole controversy, because it's serious stuff, you know. If you upset, as John Lennon found out, if you upset the Bible Belt in America, you know, it's serious. So when did it... It's life-threatening. Who banned it then, John?

What's the Sweden and Denmark thing? I always get that the wrong way around. Or was it Norway? So, yeah. So it was at, the film was advertised in Sweden with the tagline, a film so funny, they banned it in Norway. Norway. Right. Okay. So it, I think it got banned in Norway. They didn't, Norwegian cinemas didn't show it.

which became a selling point in Sweden. I think in a few other places as well, maybe. In the UK, it didn't get banned in cinemas, but there was a pressure group, a Christian pressure group run by Mary Whitehouse. Yeah, the Nationwide Festival of Light. The Nationwide Festival of Light, that's the name of the group. And that's actually a pretty small...

in terms of representation of the UK. It's a small group with a loud voice who put pressure on local cinemas

telling the owners of cinemas that this is a very, very blasphemous film, that it's very, very offensive, and that this is a Christian nation, and we shouldn't be putting the film on. And in fact, if we do, then there could be very bad consequences, but not really outlining what the consequences could be. So it's almost like, is it a threat? Is it a piece of advice? And a lot of the cinemas receiving this letter

chose not to put the film on because it's just too much trouble for some local cinema in England when they receive this information from a respectable source as a, you know, this Christian group. They just chose not to put the film on. Well, yeah, it got what actually was a 14 certificate, double A. 14 was switched to 15. Obviously, people in England will know. 15 certificates. But then it was banned by local councils.

But Terry Gilliam loved it that some people would travel to the place, people who lived in the place where it would be banned would travel en masse to places in England where it hadn't been banned. So yeah, it was quite nice. And it didn't actually affect the success of the film because it became something like the third or fourth most successful British film of the year.

Yeah, she's not bad. Pretty good for a comedy. Yeah. I wonder if it's always been accepted that banned stuff attracts people. Has that always been the case? Must be, I suppose. Yeah. I mean... When you ban something, it's like, well, what are they banning then? I want to see that. You know, it has that completely counterproductive effect. Yeah, that it feeds into the culture of the thing that's been banned. For example, banning certain substances...

that becomes part of the culture of that substance, that there's an edginess and a danger and a kind of glamour, exactly, to doing something that's against the law. You know, especially if you're in a place where, you know, actually the application of the law against that thing is a little bit lax. I'm not saying that something illegal always works.

in that thing being done more because in some places where the law is incredibly harsh, you know, then no, it's not like in Singapore, people that they're like getting together secretly to chew gum. Yeah. Or J-Walk. Or J-Walk. Yeah.

Groups of people defiantly jaywalking. Right. But maybe like smoking weed, it does become, you know, like the law, the application of the law on smoking weed is pretty lax these days. And yet it still has that kind of edgy kind of...

culture around it whereas if it was legal it might not be quite as seen as quite as a cool thing to do yeah you know no one thinks you're cool because you drink a pint of beer in a pub you know because there's no real danger involved in that well Anthony we've rambled and talked at length about this film I've enjoyed it I enjoyed revisiting the film and

and looking at the scenes and the characters and performances again. Um, so that's good fun. Yeah. I ended up with just so many notes that I thought in the end, let's just, you know, start the conversation and all the good stuff will come out. So there's loads of stuff we haven't talked about, but that's absolutely fine. Cause you know, that'd be another hour or two probably to get it all out. Oh,

I would like to recommend the thing that you mentioned earlier, which is basically watching the film again, but with the commentary track and you can actually, you can kind of, um,

You can find both commentary tracks on YouTube. If you just search for Life of Brian commentary one and commentary two, you'll find them. And you can even just listen to that. You can just listen to the different pythons talking about the scenes. You can hear some of the dialogue in the background. And that's just a nice way of revisiting it. And obviously a lot of the clips are on YouTube. You can get the film on Amazon Prime, I think. So there we go. Thanks, Anthony. You're welcome. I've really enjoyed this.

And I hope everyone listening also. And nice one. Speak to you soon. Yeah. Just for our, should we tell each other about our podcast for the separate audience? Yeah, yeah, of course. Absolutely. Go ahead. Okay. Film Gold, Glass Onion on John Lennon, obviously about John Lennon slash Beatles. And Life and Life Only is a bit more serious psychology and alternative media.

That's your three podcasts. My podcast is Luke's English Podcast. It's a podcast for learners of English all around the world. In some episodes, I do actually teach English rather than just rambling about things that perhaps the rest of my audience don't really know about. But I do like to talk about films and things and like to recommend films on the show. Luke's English Podcast, you can get it wherever you get your podcast. If you've got friends out there who are learning English, you can let them know about my show.

Lovely. All right. Good fun. We'll do it again. Meaning of life. Maybe next time. Meaning of life. Yeah. Wow. Round off the trilogy. Yeah. Another one for, for next time. Okay. Cheers. All the best. Bye.

Right, so there you are. That's the end of that. You are still here. You're still listening to this episode. You're still alive, I'm assuming, unless, of course, you are a skeleton with headphones on. But I don't think so. I hope you enjoyed this. By the way, if you'd like to watch the film, if you don't have a copy of it or something, you can get it on various streaming platforms. It's definitely on Amazon Prime. You know, it's on Prime Video.

So you can check it out there if you want. I think you can rent it on YouTube, you know, YouTube movies. You can get it there. It's on Apple TV as well. And of course, you could just, you know, go old school and get yourself a copy of the DVD or Blu-ray or something like that. If you'd rather not give your money to those huge streaming platforms, you could just get maybe like a secondhand DVD copy of it or something, wherever you get your secondhand DVDs.

If you live in the UK, as a lot of my listeners do, then you can often find Life of Brian in those sorts of DVD or Blu-ray sales that they have in

in like bookshops and things. But anyway, thank you to Anthony for joining me today. You can check out his podcasts. You'll find links in the description. If you're a Beatles fan, and why wouldn't you be, then you must check out Glass Onion on John Lennon.

It's full of very interesting insights into the life of John Lennon, which is a fascinating subject. If you like classic films, including a lot of stuff from the 1970s, then you should check out Film Gold.

Anthony's film review podcast, and he recently did a fantastic series about the life of Orson Welles, which was really interesting. And if you want to get into deeper subjects about the search for inner and outer truth, then check out Life and Life Only, his podcast.

third podcast. You'll find links to all of those in the description. And if you liked this episode and you want more like this, then you could check out previous episodes I've done about Monty Python. You'll find them in the episode archive. There's the one that Anthony and I did a couple of years ago about Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I should tell you what these episodes are, what the numbers are. So Holy Grail with Anthony.

was episode number 781 film club monty python and the holy grail what else then there are several episodes in which i analyzed certain comedy sketches uh there's episode 583 which is called british comedy the dirty fork restaurant sketch that is analyzing the english in a specific sketch

by Monty Python's Flying Circus and considering things about British communication style relating to apologising, making complaints and the sort of minimising language that we use in order to be polite.

So that's episode 583. What else? Episode number 202 was called British comedy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. So that's the first time I talked about that film. And I focused on one of the scenes from the film explaining the English in detail story.

And I ended up talking about politics and mythology and monarchy and anarchy and things like that. And then there's episode 195 called British Comedy, Monty Python's Flying Circus, which is a more detailed introduction to Britain's favorite comedy group and an explanation of the classic dead parrot sketch. So those are episodes that you could check out if you particularly enjoyed this one.

But that's the end now of this episode. If you are still here and you've listened all the way up to this point and you would like to prove that you're not a skeleton with headphones on, then you could write something in the comments section and you could maybe you could write, blessed are the cheesemakers. And if you've seen the film, then that might make sense to you. Or you could write, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Or you could write, always look on the bright side of life, something like that. Or whatever else you would like to write, just to leave your thoughts in the comments section. That would be great. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Speak to you next time on the podcast. But for now, it's just time to say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast.

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