45 Trivia Tidbits About ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’ on Its 45th Anniversary
Although somewhat tame by today’s standards, when Monty Python’s Life of Brian was released in 1979, it was considered to be among the most offensive — and blasphemous — films ever made. While no strangers to controversy, Monty Python faced a backlash like never before with their third film, in which they relentlessly mocked organized religion via a biblical epic parody about a man named Brian who is mistaken for the messiah just because he’s Jesus’ neighbor.
Forty-five years after its initial release, Life of Brian is still regarded as a classic, and many consider it to be the best, most sophisticated work the Pythons ever did. Here’s how it all came about, how angry it made everybody and why it’s stood the test of time…
Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory
Life of Brian was first conceived when the Pythons were on the publicity tour for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It began with Eric Idle pitching the others a movie called Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory.
From Jesus to Brian
Michael Palin told The Guardian in 2019 that, while the Pythons knew Idle’s title was too provocative, “we liked the challenge of doing a film about religion. Then someone suggested it be set around the time when Jesus was alive, but it’s a case of mistaken identity. Someone who’s thought to be the messiah, but spends the whole film protesting that he isn’t.”
The Pythons Did Their Homework
Before writing the film, the Pythons attended screenings of several biblical epics.
The Python Process
“Generally speaking, the Pythons wrote in separate groups who came together later. We ended up in Barbados for two weeks and got a lot of the script done there — the linking up of the various sketches. It gave the script a great clarity that Holy Grail and The Meaning of Life don’t have,” Palin told The Guardian.
‘Nobody Wanted to Make It’
According to John Cleese, the original budget for the film was just $3 million, but in both the U.K. and the U.S., no producer would touch it due to its subject matter.
Funded By a Beatle
At one point, EMI Films was originally going to finance the film, but they backed out. Idle then pitched the film to his friend and former Beatle George Harrison, who mortgaged his house for $4 million. When asked why he was willing to do this, Harrison simply answered, “Because I want to see it.”
HandMade Films
Harrison formed the company HandMade Films to finance Life of Brian. In all, HandMade Films would go on to make dozens of movies, including Time Bandits, The Long Good Friday and Withnail and I. Before it was sold off in 2013, the last film HandMade Films produced was 127 Hours.
Harrison Got What He Paid For
Harrison also appears as an extra in Life of Brian.
Who Is Brian?
“John Cleese had wanted to play Brian,” Palin told The Guardian. “Graham Chapman had been drinking quite a lot, and John thought we needed a safe pair of hands for the lead role. But Graham gave up drinking just before and was dry throughout. He had a kind of decency that anchored the whole film.”
Brian, the 13th Disciple
Cleese later outlined the film’s early concepts on The Dick Cavett Show, explaining, “We had an idea maybe that Brian was the 13th disciple, but he had a very demanding wife and he was always late. He arrived two minutes after the water had been turned into wine. And he missed everything, and he never got to the Last Supper because his wife had friends coming around and he was going to meet them at the garden afterwards and he went to a club called the Garden.”
Ultimately, Cleese explained that it didn’t work because “the moment you got near the figure of Christ, it just wasn’t funny. Christ was wise and flexible and intelligent (whereas) comedy is about envy, greed, malice, avarice, lust and stupidity.”
The Pythons Were in ‘Total Agreement’ on ‘Life of Brian’
Per Chapman, although Monty Python often disagreed about things when making their TV show, he said for Life of Brian, “We were in total agreement as to what sort of shape that movie should take. It therefore had a beginning, a middle and an end, which is unusual for us.”
A Last Supper Cut Scene
“When we put the script together, we had a lot of rather funny little scenes that we thought would be great, but they were biblical jokes and they weren’t part of the story of the mistaken identity,” Palin explained on The Jonathan Ross Show. “There was one amazing scene, which would have been very funny, but it was Peter ringing up to book a table for the Last Supper. ‘That will be 12, please, for Friday.’ ‘12 people Friday? You must be joking! I’ll do you three tables of four.’”
Why Palin Didn’t Direct
Terry Gilliam had co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Terry Jones, yet Jones took over full directing duties for Life of Brian. “I didn’t have a problem with (Jones) doing Life of Brian on his own,” Gilliam explained to The Guardian. “Directing Python was hard work, because people didn’t like to be uncomfortable: they didn’t like to wear beards or uncomfortable costumes. Those, to me, were important elements, and I didn’t want to have to fight for that stuff.”
Gilliam Did Take the Reins from Jones for One Scene
Gilliam, who worked as a production designer on the film, directed the wise men scene while Jones was off location-scouting.
Brian’s Look
The film needed to feel “real and dirty and decayed,” Gilliam also told The Guardian. “By making everything so grimy and unpleasant, it made the humor funnier.”
Brian’s Location
Life of Brian was shot in Tunisia, not far from where George Lucas shot Star Wars.
Why Tunisia
Filming in the Northern African country allowed the Pythons to reuse the still-standing sets from the 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth.
Paging Dr. Chapman
Prior to joining the Pythons, Chapman was a physician, and he served as the on-set doctor — particularly for stomach ailments — on the set of Life of Brian
An Ad-Lib-Free Zone
“Python didn’t ad-lib because John didn’t like it,” Gilliam told The Guardian. “He’s a fundamentalist when it comes to humor.”
‘Brian Was Different’
Cleese once said in an interview that filming Life of Brian “was extraordinarily efficient. I will always remember on the first day, I played the priest in the stoning sequence. We got out there at eight o’clock, and by lunchtime, we had the scene shot and I was in the hotel swimming pool. Usually, it takes about three days till you get to know everyone on set; it’s like moving to a new football team, you don’t know how people play, but Brian was different. Terry Jones was very well prepared, and the camera and sound people were working like a well-oiled machine. God smiles on some projects, and he smiled on that one.”
The Pythons Weren’t Big Fans of Christianity
According to the making-of documentary The Secret Life of Brian, “Born in the 1940s, all of the Pythons had received some form of religious education, but Christianity was either rejected or distrusted by each.”
‘We Shared the Same Attitudes Towards What Religion Wasn’t’
“I don’t think you could’ve ever gotten the Pythons to agree on what (religion) was,” Cleese has maintained, “but we agreed on what it wasn’t and that was lucky.”
So Nude It’s Normal
During the hermit-in-the-hole scene, Jones was sitting naked for so long that he forgot he didn’t have clothes on.
Spike Milligan’s Cameo
Irish comedian Milligan briefly appears in the movie because the Pythons found out he was vacationing in Tunisia at the same time they were filming.
Heil Otto!
“One scene deleted from the film was the ‘Otto’ scene, which features a radical, first-century Jewish revolutionary who has the same dreams as the young Adolf Hitler,” Jones told The Telegraph in 2007. “Otto sports a toothbrush mustache, and, in case we still haven’t got the message, his disciples all wear a symbol that combines the Star of David with a swastika. These are ‘Nazi Jews.’”
Despite being obviously offensive to Jews, Jones said he cut the scene because, “it wasn’t relevant; it wasn’t part of the story.” He later regretted removing it, however.
Biggus Dickus
“The most difficult thing to shoot was the Pontius Pilate scene because it had to be structured around continuous suppressed laughter,” Palin explained to The Guardian. “All the centurions had to be on the verge of cracking up, while Graham and I had to remain totally straight-faced. It was really hard work. On the various takes, I used to have to think of a silly word to whisper into someone’s ear. It worked very well, but there’s one take where I’m nose-to-nose with Chris Langham and we both crack up, and I’m not fully turned away from the camera.”
‘Tell Us More!’
Cleese has said his favorite line in the movie is when Brian is telling his followers, “You’ve all got to work it out for yourselves,” and they say, “Yes, we’ve got to work it out for ourselves!” Then his followers say, “Tell us more!” Cleese hates, though, that the joke almost never gets a laugh.
Naked Graham Chapman Offended the Extras
Jones told Esquire that when Chapman addresses the crowd totally naked, several Muslim women who were extras objected to the sight of a nude man.
‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’
In a video for the Monty Python YouTube channel, Idle revealed that, as the Pythons were writing the movie, they struggled to come up with the right ending. “All of our characters are heading for crucifixion, so how are we going to end this movie?” he explained. “So I said, ‘Well, with a song — we can sing it from the crosses.’ They really liked that. Then Gilliam said, ‘We can dance.’ So it became this big musical number, and I said, ‘It should be about looking on the bright side. It should be a cheery-uppy song, a ridiculously cheery-uppy song, maybe with a whistle, like a Disney song.’” Amazingly, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” only took Idle an hour to write.
Idle’s Faux-Cockney Accent Saved the Day
Despite what Idle says, though, the other Pythons actually weren’t all that crazy for his song idea originally. But they went ahead with it anyway. It didn’t click for them until months later when Idle decided to add a cockney accent to his singing voice in it.
It Opened in America First
Although Monty Python was more popular in Britain, the film opened in the U.S. three months — on August 17, 1979 to be exact — before it opened in the U.K. The reason being: The U.S. has no blasphemy laws, unlike the U.K.
‘An Ingenious Advertising Campaign’
According to Cinema.com, “The film was backed by an ingenious advertising campaign in which each Python recruited either a relative or friend (Gilliam’s mum, Palin’s dentist) to present their own radio spot. By far the best was Cleese’s 80-year-old mother, Muriel, reading an appeal to listeners, claiming that she is 102-years-old and kept in a retirement home by her son, and that unless enough people see his new film and make him richer, he will throw her on to the streets where she will assuredly perish. The ad won a delighted Muriel an award for best radio entertainment commercial of 1979.”
A Hit at Home…
Life of Brian made nearly £3 million at the British Box Office in 1979, making it the fifth highest grossing film of the year in the U.K.
...And Overseas
Life of Brian was the highest-grossing British film in North America in 1979, making $19 million at the box office.
Blasphemy!
Predictably, religious groups protested the film, with some calling it “the most blasphemous film ever.”
But Those Critics Really Didn’t Know What They Were Talking About
Chapman told Johnny Carson that Life of Brian was mostly criticized by people who had never seen it.
The Movie Still Got Banned, Though
“It was banned in Ireland, Norway and Italy,” Palin recounted for The Guardian. “Thirty-nine British councils either banned it or gave it an X certificate.”
The Longest Ban of Them All
In fact, the film was banned in the Welsh city of Swansea until 1997, when it finally premiered to aid the charity organization Comic Relief. Upon its release there, Idle joked, “What a shame. Is nothing sacred?”
Debating ‘Life of Brian’
Cleese and Palin once appeared on a talk show to debate the film’s messages with the Bishop of Southwark and born-again Christian writer Malcolm Muggeridge, both of whom found Life of Brian offensive. “That interview was a huge turning point: it helped break the assumption that religion was something the establishment told people how to talk about,” Palin told The Guardian. “They’d embarrassed themselves by making a pathetic case.”
Palin’s Rage
Reflecting on the debate years later, Palin said, “I’d never been so angry in public before.”
As for Cleese: “I was aware Michael was steaming, but I was kind of enjoying it because they annoyed me and I’d reckoned that we were nailing them. I thought we were winning.”
Cleese Thinks the Film is Religious
“All the messages in it are profoundly religious,” he maintains. “If you take religion to be a sort of revelatory and rather authoritarian creed, in which certain things are handed down (and) must not be examined and must be obeyed and there is an authoritarian structure enforcing it. If that’s what you mean by religion, then I suppose it is, in many ways, anti-religious, but it’s certainly not against Christ or anything Christ said. It is against the manifestations of certain aspects of organized religion.”
Mr. Bean on Brian
The debate was such a big moment on British television that the sketch show Not the Nine O’Clock News parodied it a few days later with a sketch in which Rowan Atkinson played a bishop who’d made a film about the life of John Cleese.
‘Life of Brian’ Is in the Criterion Collection
They even got Cleese, Gilliam, Idle, Jones and Palin to record two separate commentaries for the film.
Maybe Brian Is the Messiah After All
In 2006, Channel 4 in the U.K. held a poll for the 50 greatest comedies of all time. Life of Brian came in at number one.
‘The World Never Really Changes, Or It Just Gets More Absurd’
“We made it 40 years ago, but it’s so applicable to our world now,” Gilliam maintained to The Guardian. “Which either says the world never really changes, or it just gets more absurd. There’s fundamentalism, there’s anti-Semitism — we deal with that when Brian finds out his father’s a centurion — and then there’s Stan who wants to be a woman. Our headlines are about this stuff every day. The only difference now is people have lost a lot of their sense of humor that they had back when we made the film.”
