The Gospel According to Monty Python

When Monty Python made its TV debut on England's BBC in October 1969, most viewers understandably expected a lion-and-trapeze act. As it turned out, it wasn't the first time that the crazed, wacky group consisting of five Brits and a Yank would confound and outrage its audience. In the years since, after 45 shows, three movies and numerous books and records, the group's mordant and intelligent satire has become known from Australia to Zambia.

But this time the boys may have gone... too far. At least some who have seen their new movie, "Life of Brian," think so. Conceived, written and performed by the group as a whole, the satire on the life and times of Jesus has set off shock waves. Here's a report:

[Q] Playboy (to Eric Idle): Your new film, Life of Brian, is about a klutzy guy who is born in the manger next to Jesus' and goes on to be mistaken for the Messiah. How would you characterize what your group is trying to do?

[A] Idle: It's a very moral film, perhaps one of the most moral films made in the past ten years.

[Q] Playboy: Give us some idea of the plot.

[A] Idle: The plot? It's the story of Brian, of course. The time is Jerusalem, the place 2000 years before Hollywood. A young and remarkably unattractive girl, Mandy Cohen, is raped by a Roman centurion, who promises her the known world--salves, asses, baths and all the gold she can eat--before deserting her. The fruit of their union (continued on page 216) Monty Python (continued from page 161) is Brian. The rest, as they say, is history.

[Q] Playboy: Thanks. Won't a lot of people see the movie as a blasphemous travesty on the life of our Lord?

[A] Idle: I don't see why. He's our Lord, too.

[Q] Playboy: There are a lot of references in the film that some may interpret as anti-Semitic. Are there any Jews in Monty Python?

[A] Idle: Nobody's admitted it, but lots of us are circumcised. Sure, I expect there'll be a little bit of fuss, but anyone with a grain of brains will understand it's not an attack on Christ or on Jews; it's just a critical look at the Church establishment. But the most important thing is that George has to get his money back.

[Q] Playboy: George?

[A] Idle: George Harrison. He financed the film, went into hock for it. He also appears in a bit part in the film. He plays the man who rents out the Mount for the Sermon.

[Q] Playboy: What did it feel like, being crucified in the film?

[A] Idle: Very nice, thank you. I did yoga. We were up there for days. A very uncomfortable way to die, I'm sure. You died of exposure, not the nails. The nails are no big deal, nothing to get hung up about. That's what struck us when we first thought up the idea: the irony of a carpenter ending up on a wooden cross. Naturally, we started out with some awful jokes, how Jesus was really a terrible carpenter who kept hammering nails through his hands, and how the cross kept toppling over so he'd have to yell instructions. That's not the direction we took, finally.

[Q] Playboy: How did you decided on the final tone to take in the movie?

[A] Idle: After we'd gotten the bad jokes out of our system, we all went off and did independent research--read books on the period, the Dead Sea Scrolls, contemporary histories. I became fascinated with the origins of Jewish monotheism and dug out embarrassing facts about Solomon, for example, who worshiped 400 gods when he died. But what was interesting was that none of us came back with material about Christ himself. There is nothing particularly funny or mockable about what he said. They were just simple, basic truths and moral precepts. But everything that went on in Christ's lifetime gave enormous scope for comedy--the authorities, the people, the churches. They were as prone to human error as anything that goes on today, and that's the direction we took.

[Q] Playboy: And you don't think you've tilted at one taboo too many?

[A] Idle: Religion, or the Christian religion, really, is a taboo that nobody is allowed to satirize. But, as I wrote in the foreword to the book version of Brian, one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount and style of comedy that's allowed. A healthy society allows more satirical comment than a repressive one, so if comedy is to act as a safety valve, it has to deal with taboo areas.

[A] Did you know that blasphemy is actually illegal in England, meaning you can be tried and convicted for it? Not too long ago, a Danish film maker was in England to raise money for a movie about the sex life of Christ. He was immediately deported. If he'd been making a movie about Buddha's sex life, that would have been perfectly OK.

[Q] Playboy: So you think you'll have less trouble with it in America?

[A] Idle: What I like about America is that the country is based on people running away from religious persecution and from British tax laws--which is exactly what I'm doing, at least as far as taxes go. So fuck George III and all his descendants, and fuck the creatinous English bureaucracy, too.

[Q] Playboy: (to Terry Gilliam): Give us your version of what you tried to do in making a film satirizing Jesus Christ.

[A] Gilliam: I don't think you can call it a Jesus Christ movie. It's hardly religious, in fact.

[Q] Playboy: How do you see it?

[A] Gilliam: It's a film about suburban England, cleverly disguised as a Biblical epic with expensive sets and costumes. The title that kicked the whole thing off was Jesus Christ, Lust for Glory. A fantastic title, I thought, but it got lost in the shuffle. We shied away from what we originally planned. There was a steady retreat from all references to Christ, so that the film is now more about revolutionaries attacking the Roman establishment. I suppose everyone felt they didn't want to knock Christ himself, which is fine, but there was a certain amount of pussyfooting, a dilution of original intent. Instead of going for religion in this film, Python attacked the area they know best, suburban England. Maybe it's because the other guys all come from conventional middle-class English backgrounds, went to either Oxford or Cambridge and find it easier to laugh at that than at religion. I don't know that they're particularly religious themselves, but my guess is that none of them had the strong religious upbringing I had. I come from a quite rigorous American church family. I suspect they're afraid to tackle religion, whereas to me religion is familiar territory, and I'm not afraid to attack it at all.

[Q] Playboy: Nobody would accuse you of showing undue reverence after seeing the animated sequence you did in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which God appeared between the clouds and told people to stop groveling in front of Him because He found it annoying.

[A] Gilliam: Well, there's no mystery about the subject for me. When we started Brian, I wasn't afraid to deal with Christ, but some people really got bothered. I once did a bit about a telephone lineman working up a pole. The camera pulls back to show the guy's working on one of the three crosses, with wires strung between them, and the guy's having a problem getting an answer. This really bothered John Cleese, not through any conviction, I'm sure, but through some vague concern that Christians might be offended. And this shying-away process still goes on. Since the editing is just being finished now, they're talking about pulling out the scenes with Otto and his wonderful Jewish suicide squad. Apparently, they showed it to the guys at Paramount and half of them shorted out their pacemakers.

[Q] Playboy: Perhaps that was because, from the rushes we saw, Otto and his men were proto-Nazis wearing an emblem that looked rather like the Star of David reshaped into a stylized swastika.

[A] Gilliam: But that's no reason to take it out, I don't think. It's crucial to the ending. I especially like it after Otto and his guys have killed themselves, and they're all lying on the ground, tapping their feet to the song the crucified guys do at the end of the picture, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. This works really well, but there's been pressure from people in the States to drop it, when, from my point of view, the more it irritates and offends, the more reason to keep it in. If it gets people's backs up, terrific, especially if they're studio bosses. We've got to maintain a certain level of offense; otherwise, we're just entertainers. It's one way of proving to ourselves that we're not just in it for the money.

[Q] Playboy (to Michael Palin): Gilliam says Life of Brian isn't about the times of Jesus Christ but about suburban England. Do you agree?

[A] Palin: Actually, he's not far off the mark. Most of us come from an English middleclass background, quite normal, and to that extent, Brian resembles all Python material, in that it's just another version of things seen from our particular viewpoint. In the case of this particular film, we decided to ignore the divine element in the Bible story and concentrate instead on the historical background of a small country called Judaea dominated by the great imperial power of Rome. No doubt, Judaea had its own urges for self-expression and independence, and Rome probably reacted to those in the same way as all colonial powers do when the rightful owners kick back. All of this is a perfect area for Python to work in, the ludicrousness of power itself, authority, the trappings of authority--and the extraordinary lengths to which authority must go to preserve its credibility. A wonderful area for Python to make jokes about pomposity and the deflation there of. It's all part of what very clever people call the ongoing process of demystification of the hero.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any qualms about turning the Crucifixion into a comic turn?

[A] Palin: I must say, I found myself wondering how on earth we could handle it, but once we'd acknowledged the idea that it wasn't only Jesus who was crucified, that, in fact, crucifixion was an established form of capital punishment, as well as a grand public spectacle, it was possible to let the mind roam and look at other aspects of crucifixion--the attitudes, for example, of other people involved in arrangements.

[Q] Playboy: Such as the centurion you play in the film?

[A] Palin: Exactly. There's this pathetic young man, a draftee in the Roman army, just been transferred from Italy to Judaea, and it's his job to mark the victims off on a list as they leave the cells. He doesn't actually say "Have a nice day" as they go out, but he's that type, gives them a bright, reassuring smile and an encouraging pat as they trudge off. And, of course, the locals are there for a day's outing, a treat, just like the crowds that used to fill the streets of London to watch public executions not too long ago. People haven't changed that much in 2000 years--a violent death happening to someone else always cheers them up.

[Q] Playboy: Who did the research for the film?

[A] Palin: We all did, with varying degrees of interest. One book I read gave some excellent insights, for example, into the prophet and messiah business of the day. There were an awful lot of them on the loose. I think there was a certain amount of integrity in the writing. I mean, we didn't just make jokes about Jesus falling off his donkey. We'd had all that, gone past that stage. Laughed ourselves silly at trying to reserve a table for the Last Supper, Jesus saying, "Book it in the name of the Lord," and being told he could have only two tables for four people and one for five. We felt that area was too easy. We wanted to go further.

[Q] Playboy: (to Terry Jones): As director of the film, how would you answer people who find Life of Brian blasphemous?

[A] Jones (taking dictionary from bookcase): I'd suggest that they look up the word. Here, blasphemy: "A profane speaking of God or of sacred things; impious talk." Nobody can accuse us of that; in fact, I think the film is almost disappointingly reticent in its references to Christ or God. In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church tried to claim that criticism of the Church was the same as blasphemy, which, of course, it is not. I don't see how anyone can seriously contend that criticism of an earthly institution is the same as defaming God or Christ. I suppose some people may get upset by the film, some will probably insist on being upset by it, but I rather doubt that our little comedy is going to shatter the faith of anyone who genuinely holds a serious belief. They might even appreciate the occasional trenchant point the film makes.

[Q] Playboy: Such as?

[A] Jones: One example is where the crowd, having decided that Brian is a new savior, finds a sandal on the ground. Some of the people shout, "It's a shoe!" Others shout, "No, it's not, it's a sandal." One group isn't interested in the sandal; they find a gourd lying around and decide that this is the object they should venerate, and so they stand around arguing about these things and what they mean, then they all split into factions and go off in different directions. It's a bit like a three-minute history of the Church.

[Q] Playboy: (to John Cleese): Had you given much thought to religion before you started writing Life of Brian?

[A] Cleese: My own view is that religion has been a dead weight on England for years, a view that was reinforced by the research we did for the film. The Bible story itself just doesn't wash. Too many loose ends and inconsistencies, especially about Jesus Christ. At Sunday School, we learned that he was the meekest of men, but he raised holy hell in the temple, virtually demolished the place, or so we're told. What about the time when Mary comes to him and says, "I am your mother," and he says, "Piss off, I have no mother, no family"? This is a picture of a man who's totally alienated from his mum!

[A] Was he really a man who followed his own advice to turn the other cheek? It's quite obvious that this philosophy doesn't work in real life; we all know that groveling gets you nowhere, it only incenses people, so if Christ said it, I'm sure he didn't mean what we assume he meant by it. I often wonder how we came to adopt such a morbid, masochistic religion as Christianity. From the little we know of Jesus, I'm sure he would have gone along with the general principle that if a chap kicks you in the goolies, you give him one back. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, what bullshit! The man was a renegade who denounced and attacked every orthodox religious and political figure of the day. That's why they strung him up. He was a revolutionary, like all great religious leaders, like Mohammed.

[Q] Playboy: (to Graham Chapman): As the person who plays the title role of Brian, surely you must have some thoughts on religion.

[A] Chapman: I'm surprised that more churches don't go in for hallucinogenic mushrooms. It would make Communion a more meaningful experience.

[Q] Playboy: Until the churches reform themselves, what do you recommend?

[A] Chapman: Staring into the middle distance. One thing to do when you stare into the middle distance is use your imagination. If imagination made us what we are, perhaps it can come up with a cure for what appears to be global seizure of possibly terminal silliness. Look at Iran, for example, where you get an extremely silly monarch being replaced by an extremely silly fanatic. Does this represent change? I can't understand why the Ayatollah, who is portrayed as the epitome of the ascetic, austere religious visionary, chose a naughty place like Paris to spend his exile. Why not Baffin Land? Maybe he wanted a fun exile. Possibly he nipped out now and then for an occasional midnight flit in his Levis and T-shirt. But more likely he just put on his robes and pretended he was a sofa. Why the Persians want to be led by a man who looks like a piece of angry furniture is something one would have to take up with the Persians. Possibly because they're all stark, raving mad, just like the rest of us.

[Q] Playboy: You obviously have deep thoughts about religion and world affairs. As an actor who first earned his medical degree, you served as unit doctor in Tunisia during the filming of Brian There you were, playing a role of a guy who is mistaken for Christ, and you were healing the sick offcamera. Now, isn't all this a little over the edge?

[A] Chapman: Oh, I just looked at people's dicks and gave them pills. There were only two chronic sufferers from gonorrhea--I'm not saying whether they were actors or crew--one threatened involuntary abortion and an unbelievable number of diarrhea cases. We all came back alive, I believe.

[A] Cleese (to Playboy): Excuse me.

[Q] Playboy: Yes?

[A] Cleese: Here we are, waffling on about religion, and all those columns of type will run in the magazine, surrounded by glossy ads for after shave and tight trousers. Will anybody read this? Surely, people will just want to turn to the tits, won't they?

[Q] Playboy: No, our readers are too pious for that.

[A] Cleese: Oh. I was misinformed.

"It's a film about suburban England, cleverly disguised as a Biblical epic with expensive sets."