Life Of Brian- 1979 Debate (1/4)

good evening tonight every expense spared guests include paul jones and the blues band the author of the book more frequently stolen from public libraries throughout the world than any other that's norris mcmurta and four gentlemen who will be discussing a controversial film inspired by the new testament only yesterday in the scotsman a prominent news item-headed new superstar rao revealed that the film jesus christ superstar has this week been banned from a cinema in the western isles as blasphemous a curse placed on another remote scottish cinema which dared to screen superstar in 1976 led to the recent closure of that particular house of entertainment if superstar still has this trouble nearly 10 years after its creation what hope does monty python's life of brian have today soon the opinions of john cleese michael palin malcolm muggeridge and mervyn stockwood the bishop of southwark here's a moderately controversial clip from the film oh hello mother don't you hello mother me what are all those people doing out there come on what do you mean up to my leg i think they must have popped by something now go away is a very naughty boy i'm is not a batsuit and that's my final word that extract featured graham chapman as brian and terry jones who also directed the picture as mandy mother of brian with us tonight another one-third of monty python john cleese and michael palin cracked bbc cutbacks michael why the name brian well i don't know we've always used brian and python to to portray a certain sort of character fairly anonymous and and i apologize for anyone called brian slightly sort of there's a good chance of dim that's not fair it's slow slow to to to catch on and there's a fighting chance of at least one brand watching tonight so careful i don't know have you seen the figures no actually john did a john was in the sketch about uh the footballer being interviewed in one of the very early python shows and it was all uh you know brian yeah brian but it's one of the funny names isn't it it's like trevor and kevin i mean they're just funny what inspired the film life of brown i mean how did that strange idea take root in and and in indeed in whose skull did it take root well uh we're not exactly certain it's always difficult to to find the exact moment when it when it came up but i know that when we were um we were going around the world sort of doing premieres for for the holy grail we had a lot of times sparing airports and cafes and restaurants we got to thinking about a new film and what particular area we might go in and we were still keen to do a historical film i'm saying more fun dressing up and all that we've done the bowler hatted city gents on python and i think it was eric who came up with this title out of the blue called jesus christ lust for glory and i must admit that when we started talking about it we actually explored the idea of doing a comedy film about jesus you know with all the jokes about someone trying to book a table for 12 at the last supper so it's uh you know saturday night i'll do your three fours come on tomorrow i know it's got to be tonight and all those two and the more but the more that we read about jesus and the background to his life it was quite obvious that there was very little to ridicule in jesus's life um and therefore we were sort of on to a loser the characters we like to portray in python are failures a dim or idiotic sort of incapable in one way or another jesus was a straight direct man so making very good sense and so we decided that would be very sort of just a rather shallow film just about jesus so we got brian in you must have known though that even in those early days you were heading for trouble and criticism and controversy a because you were well known b because you know to put it mildly the uh subject matter is quite well known yeah that worries i mean i feel that python that's we've always thrived on that it's always been a bit of an uphill struggle so what first person i mean was it the laughter idea or the message i mean which was the first of the two that it's the laughter we go for the jokes first i mean the reason that it sounded like an interesting territory to go into to explore because when you go in there you really don't know what you're going to write i mean we usually sit around for about three days discussing theoretically what we're going to write then we go and write something completely different and the film actually starts when somebody comes in halfway through the second week and reads something out and we all laugh and that's the first point on the graph do you see what i mean wait another week and then somebody else writes something funny and then we have two points on the graph and when we got about six or seven we start writing stuff to join it together it's pretty slow process because it's sort of democracy gone mad it took a long time i just it took a long time for for brian to really get off the ground we wrote an awful lot which was then just thrown away because it was it was sort of struggling too hard to be sort of controversial well actually you know mike that i don't know i agree with that because i don't think that we were coming in with stuff about christ we all started writing about on the edges all the people who'd arrived five minutes after the miracle been done you know which is as bad as being 2 000 years late as if you didn't see it you know it doesn't matter whether you're five minutes late or whatever actually we did have the idea that he was the thirteenth uh disciple didn't we sort of slide around yes he was gonna write a gospel but he was always late because it was also called brian of nazareth at one point wasn't it yeah yeah and yet you changed that title yet that would have worked wouldn't it for this movie or not well i think i i always thought that that title somehow asked for the comparison with with um jesus of nazareth you know the power thing too much it looked as though we were going for the comparison but you apparently used uh blue grade sets that he used on jesus of nazareth didn't you in fact use the same scenario the ones he hadn't taken down we uh yes we used we used them for building our own sets in there was temples there in monastery in this place in tunisia which it was not really because we one stage we were looking for about i think five or six different places we might have shot at italy spain jordan israel morocco tunisia and i think we decided tunisia eventually partly because we thought there might be religious trouble um in the catholic countries and partly because we discovered they've been making a lot of films uh in the last two or three years in tunisia and then when you sort of say we'll get the rashes here in the morning you don't arrive and find there's a lot of rashes there you know it's practically an industry over there of making films about jesus because rossellini had made a film then who grade had been there for a couple rossellini an italian director made a film about jesus then i don't know i missed that football isn't he second half he was very good he's made a film about jesus and it came out yes i think so well the extraordinary thing is tim i don't know all the facts on this because i was only told this about four days ago but apparently there are now four quote funny unquote films about the bible coming out the next three months as a result of brahman i think it may just be coincidence mind you we've been talking about it on and off for three years so maybe the idea sort of filtered into somebody else's how did the whole thing get together because see what you had this great idea in an airport lounge or wherever and still you have fairly long way to go from you know terminal two to um screens was a very big airport but it is that pragmatic thing because you have trouble um with the cash and and backers pulling terrible trouble yes in fact if george harrison hadn't known eric idle the film wouldn't have been made because although the americans i mean after the emi thing fell through um we then went to america i didn't send fell through fell through oh fell through failed failed to happen as it were we then went to america and they were all prepared to give us a little bit of money but not enough not as much as we needed to make the film so we needed i think two and a half million dollars to make it from for the american territories and they wouldn't give us more one three quarters so come the middle of the year um we suddenly realized we weren't going to make it and then out of the blue john goldstein the producer said well i've got one more meeting with george harrison and george harrison which is i think is is really one of the great most magnificent acts of the century um said he was quite happy to put up a million pounds for no other reason apparently he wanted to see the movie that's true yeah weren't you all in in some danger of splitting up or at least some internal conflict did the film in fact bring you together yes i mean i think it it did after the grail there was about a year spent sort of in the wilderness as it were no one quite sure what they wanted to do and people going off to try and do their own things faulty towers or ripping yarns or whatever um also there was a stage when we hated each other well i never hated you whatever any of the others may say i always liked you what about your solo projects i mean are there going to be any more ripping yarns any more faulty towers there'll be no more faulty tires he said he sent me a wonderful telegram last week when i had my 40th birthday and it read we love the first 40 stop are you going to do any more you got it right well are you i mean is there going to be a i don't think so no i i i feel we've we've done that just as i felt about python and the teddy that you actually reach a point and then you it's the law of diminishing returns you could go on and does that mean there won't be any more pythons on the telly highly unlikely at the moment totally i mean i don't think anything is absolutely definitely ruled out i tell you what i hate that's the sausage machine and you get into it the moment you sign on the on the dotted line 13 shows that's eight months in the diary filming editing rehearsing it's much nicer to take one tour or and a half thing like a film and spend a lot of time and then you can savour it and explore and do a lot of talking which is much better than having to get everything written every day jones gets very oppressed by work he doesn't like it and i mean what i feel about the python shows is that actually i don't know where we would start off i think we almost almost did everything in those in those three series and and i just don't know i mean we're beginning tonight because we were saying in the dressing room you know i mean it's terribly funny it suddenly strikes us here we are you know in a bishop of malcolm margaret you're going to come on you know in the studio tonight it's not it's not a sketch i'm implying that possibly there might be a third or fourth rather fourth uh python movie full-length film and this is this is certainly on the car yes in fact we're supposed to be meeting november the 19th monday week uh to discuss this very thing i think it's very likely that we'll do another film again we want to see if there's if there's an area that nobody's gone into you see because the one thing about this film i mean i really like it and there's a lot of stuff we've done i don't like that much but i i really like this film and there are moments when i watch it and i think i haven't seen anything like this before on the screen is is there anything that you think could offend you on screen

Channel: nir0bateman

Views: 3,531,961

Rating: 4.8264952 out of 5

Keywords: Bishop, of, Southwark, Arthur, Mervyn, Stockwood, Malcolm, Muggeridge, tim, rice, debate, michael, palin, john, cleese, monty, python, Monty Python, Monty Python's Life Of Brian, John Cleese

Id: 1ni559bHXDg

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 30 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/drugs4hire]

Monty Python talking about the debate 30 years later.

[u/joemi]

I'm honestly astounded by Muggeridge and Stockwood. They seem to have no ability to consider any criticism, and their main response to anything Cleese and Palin say is simply to dismiss it and then lob insults/damnations. Whereas Palin and Cleese's responses were of the "I see your point, and here's why I disagree..." type, Muggeridge and Stockwood's responses were more of the "you're absolutely wrong, and you're going to hell..." type.

I'm a little disappointed that Cleese and Palin did not push more on the subject of the power that the Christian church wielded throughout all the time that the the great works of art were made that Muggeridge repeatedly cited. Of course all those classic best-of-the-best works were Christian; the Church never would have allowed them to be otherwise. Cleese did briefly mention that they would have been burned for making that film 400 years earlier, but I wish they would have stuck with that power issue a bit more.

[u/Huwage]

An important fact to note: Stockwood and Muggeridge missed the first 10 minutes of the film because they were in the bar too long. They thus didn't see the bit where it's made very clear that Brian is not Jesus - which, as the interview shows, skewed their perspective a little.

[u/sudevsen]

not posting superior version of the debate

You had one job,OP

[u/karldmason]

I re-watched the whole thing recently, we appear to be back in this situation again in the UK and the discussion around it is even more difficult than back then. so many more dishonest people in the mix to muddy the waters, due to that in many peoples eyes Cleese and co are no different to the people they debate in this interview. we never really change as much or as fast as we think we do.

[u/super_aardvark]

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

[u/bserum]

The fact that Muggeridge and Stockwood outright refuse to believe that the movie about a guy insisting he's not the messiah isn't about their messiah is a level of irony I did not know existed.

[u/Kwintty7]

Absolutely shocking, disgraceful and should be banned.

I am, of course, talking about Tim Rice's tie and suit combo.

[u/Alan_Smithee_]

Interesting, watching this through the lens of history.

Both Muggeridge and the Bishop talk about how the film will be irrelevant and forgotten, yet they're the ones forgotten.

Sadly, apparently they missed that it's clearly not Jesus, but just a naughty boy. Unfortunately, Cleese and Palin didn't really stress that.

Mother Theresa? Discredited. Bishop Stockwood? Outed as a closet homosexual.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, but his hypocrisy is palpable.