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

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A Cast recommends podcasts we love.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's been ten years since Ireland Said Yes.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is the moment same sex supporters in Ireland new
they'd made history.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Shane Daniel Byrne and my series Ireland Said Yes.
I'll be talking to some of the key figures, activists
and unsung heroes who were instrumental in the success of
the marriage equality campaign.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
What does it cost me to have my son have
the joy of a wonderful partner in a wonderful marriage.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
You could listen to Iland Said Yes on Spotify, Apple
Podcasts or rebe you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
A cast is home to the world's best podcasts, including
the Blind Boy Podcast, Ready to Be Real with Chila
Show Again, and the one you're listening to right now.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
You're listening to Luke's English podcast. For more information, visit
Teacher Lukes dot co dot 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

(01:09):
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 you could watch the film as part of
your English learning process if you wanted to. You could

(01:29):
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 let me just read through some notes I have

(01:50):
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 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

(02:11):
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 managed to explore complex ideas
with the sense that treating almost any subject with a

(02:32):
sense of humor 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 analyzing

(02:55):
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

(03:17):
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 Ratuno, 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

(03:38):
famous scenes. Will describe and analyze 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

(04:01):
actors from Britain plus one American, and that's Graham Chapman,
John Clees, Eric Idol, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam.
They were highly educated people who made it their business
to create some very silly TV shows and films, mainly
in the nineteen seventies, and those TV shows and films

(04:22):
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 humor, 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,

(04:45):
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 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.

(05:08):
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

(05:29):
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

(05:52):
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

(06:13):
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

(06:33):
we go. Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode. I'm
talking to Anthony Ratuno again. Hello Anthony, Hello, Hi there,
it's been two years? Is it two years?

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah? Last time I was on, i'd 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.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
And I've found it again. Where was it under the sofa? Yeah,
right round the back of the sofa anyway.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Yeah, nice to be back.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
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?

Speaker 1 (07:23):
I mean, it's one of those films that you know,
you tape it off the telly and watch it about
four hundred times and you almost never need to watch
it ever again. Really, it's like Beatles songs, say, I
brought it to the Beatles already. Now 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,

(07:45):
be it Python or Beatles. So yeah, for this one,
what they often do on the DVDs they have for
the Pythons. Obviously there's five of them. Well, Tory Jones died,
but when they were doing these DVDs there are five
of them, so you'd have two commentaries. So it's nice
to have the titles 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,

(08:07):
I hadn't really seen I don't really need to sit
down and watch the film, even though I'm sure it
will still be pleasurable because it's you.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
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
you know, the Holy Grail, I had that one on.
It's one of those ones I had on video, as
you said, you know, and back in the old old days,

(08:37):
when you know, 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, and so I got to know it really
really well, became really comforting. But this one, I kind
of watched it on TV when it was showed on TV. Finally,
after not being shown on TV for a long time,

(08:58):
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 he saw this?

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Not specifically, I remember the first bit of it I
saw was do you remember the first comic relief?

Speaker 4 (09:22):
I don't know if I remember the first ever one,
but I remember the early days of comic relief.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, nineteen eighty eight. It was. It was Lenny Henry
and Griffrey Stones were the presenters. Yeah, and they had
a top ten comedy sketches and I realized I hadn't
seen any of Monty Python at that point, but I
knew Faulty Towers really well. So Monty Python was that
thing that John Clees did before Faulty Towers. And yeah,

(09:48):
it was the Stoning was in it, the Stoning scene
with him as the head master figure, and I just
absolutely love that. I thought, God, I wonder if everything
the best of the film's as good as this, and
basically it was. You know, it's probably about thirteen or
fourteen when I first saw it.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
How does this rank in terms of all of the
Monty Python stuff that they did, all of their work
for you.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
I mean right at the top. Really, 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

(10:36):
I didn't think were like amazingly good, whereas in this
nearly everything is really really good. Yeah, 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. They used to call it the difficult third album.
Everyone seems to call it a difficult second album. It

(10:58):
was actually originally the difficult third out. So the first
two series of The Sketch Show are pretty good, and
then they do start to repeat themselves, and then Meaning
of Life, which is the other film, is again is
a bit. It's really like Sketches, isn't it. So I
think there's two proper films if you like that they made,

(11:19):
and I think this one ranks higher.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
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,

(11:42):
which is very haphazard, and it's basically just going from
castle to castle 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, though, yeah,
there's definitely more of a storyline. They really kind of
did it properly, didn't it, didn't they this time?

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, it seems amazing to say about this film, but
this is their most serious film in the sense of
trying to make 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.

Speaker 4 (12:20):
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

(12:41):
typical English characters, like the cheeky chappie and the kind
of upper class idiot and you know 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

(13:03):
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 you know are always
there with Python, and there's one in particular in this
film which it's just extraordinary really. And then as well

(13:25):
as that, in this film there is a narrative, the
story of a guy trying to you know, just trying
to live his life, and then there are themes. There
are some big themes going on as well. Yeah, it's
it's often rated really highly, and generally speaking, I think
the Pythons themselves and most people like critics and fans

(13:49):
and stuff, seem to hold this one up as being
their base their best work. And it's probably because of
that reason that, as well as having really good comedy
in it, there is a you know, this subject matter
is quite quite sort of serious and intelligent, and it's
kind of making a bigger point.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, I think the fact that there'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

(14:32):
and spoke about lofty things. I positive to you, if
you remember, if we could suddenly wake up tomorrow and
even go back further than this film six hundred BC,
what did people talk about. Did people go, oh, bloody,
how it's raining? You know? Did they talk about that?
The idea of the python's ninety it's the voices themselves,

(14:54):
and also the things they talk about, which is everyday stuff. Yeah,
the seven on the Ma being the best example problem.

Speaker 4 (15:02):
Well, yeah, So that that point though about Biblical epics,
because the film is making fun of lots of different things,
you know, and one of those things is the cinematic
genre of the Biblical epic, like ben her or the
Ten Commandments, or Jesus of Nazareth. Is that also in
that category? I haven't seen it.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
The Zephyr Ellione. Yeah, that just been made, hasn't it.
Yeah that was serious. It was Robert Powell, wasn't it. Yeah,
that's Jesus.

Speaker 4 (15:31):
And in those films, the characters would speak in these
very portentious voices. And you know, Allo, I said to him,
you know this kind of because it's you know, they
think about the filmmakers thought about those things in the
context of like the Old Testament or something, and you know,

(15:52):
the English of the King James Bible, and it's all
very very big and serious, and especially when it's America
is doing it, you know, and you get John Wayne
and 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 yeah, my sandal is killing me. I tell

(16:14):
you what. The scrap just keeps falling off. It's absolutely murder.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Yeah. It's bloody hot today, isn't it. When someone going
to event sunturn lotion, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah,
it's the idea that in bibber clepics everyone's a poet,
aren't they. Everyone just speaks so wonderfully poetically. Yeah, that's
unfortunately it wasn't true.

Speaker 4 (16:36):
Yeah, in those they're all speaking in a sort of
written form of formal English. So context of the film.
So we've got their TV series as you 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.

(16:58):
Can we talk about the making in the production of
the films, you know, how they came up with the idea. Well, actually,
we're probably sorry, We probably need to explain something about
what the film is basically about what is the basic
plot of the film.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, there's a baby called Brian is born, is it
in the major next door to Jesus.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah, Brian Cohen is born Brian Cohen. It's not Jesus.
There's Jesus is born just next door, and the wise
men come accidentally, they drop in on Brian thinking that
it's him, but they get the wrong baby and move
on to Jesus. So, yeah, he's born next door to

(17:40):
Jesus in another manger.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, and then just gets mistaken for him. 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 doing that story, the innocent man somehow gets
mixed up in lots of trouble, so he almost implicates himself.

(18:07):
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, and then obviously that
everything he said is then taken as 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

(18:30):
calling him that. So it's 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.

Speaker 4 (18:43):
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 the illegitimate
son of a Roman centurion, so he's got a complicated
sort of you know, backstory. He but he hates the
Romans who are occupying the town, and he can't stand

(19:08):
the Romans, and so he wants to join a kind
of revolutionary people's group, a group of revolutionaries who want
to 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.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
Judith Iscariot.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
Yeah, Judith is Garriot, that's right. Yeah, and yeah, And
so he's just trying to it's just trying to live
his life, you know, it's trying to have a normal life,
dealing with you know, the normal things that most young
men deal with. And he gets caught up in some

(19:52):
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 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

(20:12):
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 guard behind, and they start 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

(20:35):
believe him. Just like you said, he said, all right,
then I am the Messiah, and of course that fuels
that fuels their confirmation bias even further.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
So again a very profound point, which is how it's
this whole thing about framing. I mean, we use framing
in the 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 tie things, people can't even see your face,
like what your expression is. But the idea is that

(21:05):
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.
I just mentioned very quickly the introduction song, because you're
talking about he's just a normal drive trying to get
on with life. In AD thirty three, the opening song,

(21:27):
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 a silly way they are trying to say,
not that you'd be concentrated on the lyrics much, but yeah,
he's just a normal guy trying to do normal things.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
Yeah. Especially, that's especially a good description of like your
typical English guy, I would say, kind of going through
adolescents and growing up to become a young man. That
those are the sorts of typical things that English go on,
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

(22:12):
this period of time in this place.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, but there are a couple of different stories. One
was that Eric Idol said to a reporter who said,
what's your next film be about? And he said, oh,
I think we're going to call it Jesus Christ Lust
for Glory, And I don't even know if he prethought that.
And then there's a slightly different version where they have
a meeting and he comes up with it then. So,
I mean, whichever one it was Eric Idol who came

(22:36):
up with that, and their ideas just stated 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 seems spontaneous.
So do you know anything any more about how the

(22:59):
Jesus angle came about?

Speaker 4 (23:02):
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

(23:24):
Christ Lust for Glory. That the idea there was that
they could do something 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 they I think initially they wanted to they were

(23:45):
considering making something about the thirteenth Apostle, that there was
another apostle.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Oh yeah, that was.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
Just late all the time. Yeah, you know, and he
never he wasn't at the Last Supper because he you know,
he kind of got it 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 the specific
teachings of Jesus, the more they realized that they weren't

(24:14):
really that funny, and in fact, they actually agreed with
a lot of the things that Jesus said. You know
that 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 nice things. And they worked out that there's humor
in the fact that perhaps, again, if you look at

(24:36):
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,

(24:58):
it's about the way that people misunderstand the teachings of
Jesus or misinterpret the teachings of Jesus or the way
people slot into a sort of group think and don't
question things. And so it became about kind of human

(25:19):
group behavior 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 characters and of the resistance

(25:49):
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
seventies which was very divided. That 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

(26:10):
as they do actually trying to achieve their main goals.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
And so can I say there's a wider point. It's
not even just them. Humans form into subgroups anyway, and
humans if you take an average surely done experiments, just
take an average number of humans and plunk them somewhere,
the same things will start to happen. A couple of
strong people will emerge as the kind of alpha males

(26:36):
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 even make it a
wider point there.

Speaker 4 (26:45):
Yeah 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 like great and not really
that worth ridiculing, but they still found something that they
could make fun of, and yeah, chose not to make

(27:05):
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, you know, sort of Christianity or dogma, you know,
the dogmatism of followers and how people end up focusing

(27:29):
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.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
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 the rules and and yeah,
like you said, dogma, and again with social media and
everything on the internet, really if you go to chat rooms,

(28:07):
it's about how things are framed and what you believe.
And and one Ted talk, this guy was saying, what's
the truth? 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.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
Yeah, which is quite a frightening idea, because then that
can 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 of about what, you know, what's going

(28:51):
on today, isn't it. It's like a battle for information,
about 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.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
I heard someone on the podcast talking about it. Was
a scientist. They had analyzed 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 ten thousand. And I
think the chance that something will become basically established fact

(29:37):
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.

Speaker 4 (29:51):
You've got a pretty good chance that you could get
just the right.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Seriously, you need a certain number of people and then
it just kind of ushrooms and then something becomes established
fact almost. I think nowadays a lot of people think
there's nothing is established fact. But as much as it
can be.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
You know, yeah, it's a fight any thing. I think.
I think there are still established facts, and I think
we you know, we shouldn't like 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

(30:31):
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 you know, scientific facts
like what a what a what a certain medicine does
or doesn't do. You know, well, I'm not necessarily talking

(30:53):
about the vaccines there, because I.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Know that's that's.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
That's the sort of that's something that can be refuted
and so on. But you know, I still I still
maintain that that there is an absolutism to some truth,
that it's not all just up in the air and
flexible and redefinable.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
You know, I suppose opinions. I'm thinking more of opinions. Yeah,
just before we go on, can I just tell you
very funny two original ideas they had for this film.
Oh for scenes, this is again about bringing biblical epics
into present day parallels, trying to book a table for

(31:35):
the Last Supper, but all the restaurants being full, and
Jesus is like a table for twelve. Yeah, Oh, it's
Jesus under twelve, isn't it. Twelve, table thirteen at table
for thirteen. Sorry, guv.

Speaker 4 (31:49):
You know that was the Eric Idol thing where he's saying, well,
we've 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.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
No, we need to be all together. And the other
one was people turning up late for miracles. It is
a bit similar to what you're saying earlier. Someone just said, oh,
has he already done the water interwinel Ago?

Speaker 4 (32:09):
Ah, damn it.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
When's he going to be walking on water a week Thursday?

Speaker 4 (32:14):
That's already done it?

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (32:16):
How was this film made? So they came up with
the idea, they worked on it, they kind of you know,
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

(32:37):
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, you know, so little. So I think
em I were like, go ahead, boys, go and make
us another film on the cheap. Do you know what happened?

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Though? I think think it was at the eleventh hour.
It was Bernard Delphant, who is mentioned right at the
end of Always Look on the bright Side 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.

(33:19):
Apparently maybe they just thought, oh, it's we can trust them,
you know. He read it, yeah, and just said I can't.
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.

Speaker 4 (33:39):
This is great, though, isn't it? Because Yeah, after the
head of em I, who was not a filmmaker, took
a look at the script and realized what was going
on that there was there were references to Jesus and
this this could be seen as a kind of yeah,
like a criticism of Christ. Some people were scared of

(34:01):
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 ahead of em I panicked and
basically said no and took you know, took away the

(34:26):
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 Idol who
lived in Los Angeles at the time, and he went
to see his mate George Harrison of the Beatles, Saint
George of Harrison, Saint George of Harrison exactly, and because

(34:50):
he lived in Los Angeles as well at the time.
And apparently Eric Idol showed him the script and said, look,
you know, we need money for this because EMI have
lost their bottle and have pulled out.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
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
seventy eight, so it must have been obviously made before
life for 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

(35:24):
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,
one of those brilliantly beatley things to say, you know.
And he said in an interview, I pawned the way
the way he said it. We had to pawn the
house and pour in the office as if they're going,

(35:44):
you know, like to a pawnbroker. Right. Yeah, that's almost
Python in itself, someone pourning their house, you know, just
in the.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
Street as normally would like you would pawn a guitar,
for example, take it down to the pawnbrokers. That's pa
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

(36:12):
wouldn't normally pawn a house. But he did, like put
up his house as collateral against the project, or at
least got cash. Re mortgaged, I think is what it is.
I think he re mortgaged his house and set up
a company and ended up putting three pounds into the project.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Yeah I've heard three and four, but say between three
and four, which yeah, I mean obviously now that doesn't
see it sound like a lot of money, does it.
But you know, it's nineteen seventy eight, 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 about
because obviously they've got the collateral of all their songs

(36:56):
that they can produce. I'm sure the Pythons had a
bit of that as well, where your reputation gets you
a pass to something extent because you've, yeah, the money
you're going to make off future projects. But with this one,
I think the guy just 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

(37:16):
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.

Speaker 4 (37:28):
Apparently, 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. Friday, Yeah, yeah,
really nice stuff. And Brazil, right, isn't it Terry Gilliams

(37:49):
Brazil 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 now, I just wanted to see the film. So
it's like the most expensive cinema ticket in history. By
the way, three million pounds in nineteen seventy eight today,

(38:12):
adjusted for inflation, is worth about twenty two million pounds. M.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yeah, it's not tricky.

Speaker 4 (38:19):
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.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Mentioned Jesus of Nazareth. Also we know that they filmed
it in monaster A, 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 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.

(38:58):
And apparently the extras were saying to Terry Jones, oh,
mister Zephyre, Eli doesn't do it like that. Oh, should
we just quickly make the point as well that I
think Holy Grail looked very cheap. Yeah, that was, as
we said, made in nineteen seventy five, this one. I think.
I think this was a conscious thing. They said, if
everything looks brilliantly realistic, and we really make the effort

(39:21):
to make it look like the world, then the jokes
will be more affective, because the juxtaposition is more if
it looks if it just looks like a crap version
of Judea, then it doesn't have that 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?

Speaker 4 (39:41):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think so. Part of that,
I think is Terry Jones's direction, you know, because with
Holy Grail. Terry Jones and 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
Wakowski Brothers or something like that, so that they argued

(40:05):
a lot while they were making the film, and it
was really difficult for everyone. For this one, they really
kind of made an effort to be clear about it.
And Terry Jones was the director and Terry Gilliam ended
up being a production designer, so he was responsible for
the look of the film, which was a really good

(40:28):
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,

(40:49):
you know. And I was thinking while I was watching
this one again, what would it have been like if
Gilliam had directed this? Hmm, what do you think? What
do you think would have been a difference.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
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 as director to choose the scenes, I'm
not sure, but I mean, obviously you'd get more visual sweep. Yeah,
And I don't know whether you would. I don't know
whether they would cut the jokes or just make the
film ten minutes longer with more scenes enough, But I

(41:27):
think Terry Jones is an amazing job. I mean, he
wasn't really a director.

Speaker 4 (41:33):
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 moment where it
doesn't is because they do have some pretty spectacular sets.
So there's like the Roman scenes, especially with ponscious pilots,
and there are there's a palace that they're in and

(41:54):
there are high columns which I think we're left over
from Zephyrelli's film. 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

(42:17):
a a lot closer, 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

(42:40):
be at the other end of the room moving in
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
that it's like a weird dream, you know, which was
one of the reasons he was so good with Hunter S.

(43:03):
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

(43:24):
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 have kind of added just a few
extra layers of distance between you and the jokes less economical.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
I'd say, yeah, yes, I was actually saying that, No,
it's actually Holy Grail. I was saying, look cheap and
epic at the same time. Oh yeah, I think this
one actually looks pretty epic most of the time.

Speaker 4 (43:58):
I think it would have looked even more epic if
Gilliam had been in charge of it, Like that scene
with the you know, the Biggest Dickers scene, it's all
very close stuff. It's almost like a shot for TV,
you know, whereas I think Gilliam would have been really
sort of like enjoying the darkness at the edge of
the scenery and the ceiling and the light coming through,

(44:19):
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.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, if you think of Holy so keep talking about
Holy Grail. But that whole the majestic sweep of the
countryside just made the fact that they were pretending to
be on horses and just 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

(44:54):
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 CLEAs, I mean him and Connie
Booth spent six weeks on each script for forty Towers
half an hour slips, six weeks honing it. So you

(45:16):
had it in the Pythons. You obviously had a lot
of chemistry. You had a few opposites. I think Clees
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 it's necessarily a serious film, but
it's a serious attempt to make a film. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (45:39):
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. But to
make good comedy does require a lot of graft, a
lot of work, and yeah, they they went and stayed
in Barbados all together, staying in the same house for

(46:03):
two weeks 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 you do a
really good job on the film, you know, and they
were able to film it quickly and efficiently, like the
stoning scene that you said. I think John Clees said

(46:24):
that he was really pleased and surprised that they were
able to get that whole scene done in one morning.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yeah, that was the very first scene, wasn't it.

Speaker 4 (46:33):
Yeah, And Clees, I think set 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'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

(46:55):
you know, you got your shooting on film, which is
so valuable, and you can't wait and you've got to
find your moment. You've got to prepare everything advanced, 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, Clees was saying that it was he

(47:18):
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're all sort of on there. They were all sort
of at their best for that.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
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

(48:03):
think in the 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 don't know.

Speaker 4 (48:15):
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 you know, 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

(48:37):
it Mark Lewisham, I don't know, but that 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

(48:58):
it might have been just brilliant in slightly different.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
Ways, different type of brilliant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd agree
with that. Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4 (49:06):
Can we talk about different members? So we mentioned Jones
and Gilliam Cleaes, Yeah, how do they all? What do
you think of each python in this film?

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Yeah? I mean we could go through and just talk
about which roles they all played. Obviously they I mean
they if you really went into every role they played,
it's a lot. But yeah, I 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.

(49:40):
I listened to about half an hour of our Holy
Grail review in preparation for this. Nice really 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

(50:03):
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 cloged this. But of course
he has the same initials as Monty Python. I'm sure

(50:24):
that doesn't mean anything. Oh, it's like John Clee's having
the same initials as Jesus Christ. You know, in your
mind it sort of triggers something. But yes, so let
me ask Can I ask you a question as well?
If you were going to take on one or two
pythons out of say the Sketch Show or a film,

(50:46):
like a couple of them left, which ones do you
think are the most indispensable? You had to pick a couple.
That's really really difficult to do because I think that
as great as Graham Chapman was in the straight roles
Holy Grail and Life of Brian, absolutely spectacularly brilliant acting,

(51:09):
I think in the terms of the Sketch Show, apart
from writing, because he co wrote The Parrot Sketch, I
think possibly as a performer, he was the one you
could do without. Not that you want to do without
any of them, but yeah, which are the most indispensable
for you?

Speaker 4 (51:24):
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 what
I'm getting at is that maybe for this reason, Eric

(51:45):
Idol could be dispensable because he was sort of like
he described himself as the wicket keeper.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Of Monty, which is.

Speaker 4 (51:52):
Like someone's got their own role. It's kind of like
not the not the most important one. So This is
a cricket reference for those who don't don't get it
that the bowlers and batsmen in cricket are the stars
of the show. Basically, what I'm getting to is that
I think Clees and Palin are probably the two indispensable ones. Really,

(52:14):
if you if you want to whittle Python all the
way back, is that what you've chosen as well?

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Yeah, just to say that we don't collude, Yeah, pleasing
Palin and the nexus I've written down here, Yes, I
think next I.

Speaker 4 (52:27):
Next with the plural work, I don't know what is
the plural of nexus. I don't know. It must be
next sci. Hold on a minute, oh, dear, plural of
nexus next? No, it's it's nexus is it's not nexts I.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
I don't think the plural of circus is ski, but
in our world it still works.

Speaker 4 (52:51):
Yeah, okay, yeah, but yeah, and maybe like their most
iconic sketches as well are CLEAs and Palin. H Clees
obviously is really obviously noticeable. He's very tall. He's kind
of got a very specific manner about him. He's probably

(53:13):
the alpha male of the group, you know. He's 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. But Palin, yeah,
is not that kind of alpha male type person. He's

(53:35):
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, like especially in this film. So he's still
my favorite, and I think he's my favorite in this

(53:55):
film as well.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Should we just quickly name check the role that they
play so pleases? Obviously in the Stoning, I mean in
the Stony, 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 reach from the people's

(54:19):
front of his Judea, and then obviously various ones within that.
What are Palin's main roles if you think of Michael.

Speaker 4 (54:28):
So 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 mountain. It's a very beautiful moment,

(54:49):
you know, played by a great actor with a lot
of dignity. And then the camera pans back slowly to
reveal a big crown, 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

(55:12):
amongst themselves, misunderstanding what Jesus is saying and arguing and
Palin place one of the characters there, who's a sort
of like again, typical English guy, a kind of very
stressed out husband, henpecked husband who's got anger management issues. Yeah,

(55:37):
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.

Speaker 5 (55:45):
See if you haven't been going on with that big nose,
hey say that once more a special bloody facing better
keep listening. Might be a bit about blessed older big
noses all lay off him. Oh you're not so bad yourself,
calm face? Where are you two from no city? H
one more part? I mate, I'll put you in a
fucking cleaner language. Don't pick your nose. I wasn't gonna

(56:08):
pick my I gonna thump him.

Speaker 4 (56:10):
So there's him.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Yeah, I'll take leaders.

Speaker 4 (56:17):
Mate, one more word out of your ta.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (56:22):
Just the way he inhabits those roles, it's just just
wonderful to see. I'm trying to find that.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
They've got the x x leper as well.

Speaker 4 (56:33):
X lepper. So yeah, Brian and his mum were walking
through town and there's lepers going spare some arms for
a poor leper, people with leprosy, and Palin comes up,
spare some arms for a for a poor x leper.
So he's the ex leper who's full of beans, jumping around,

(56:54):
chasing after them, explaining his story of how he can't
beg for money as a leper and more because he
got cured by Jesus. And he's he's not very appreciative.
He's like, you know, bloody do gooder.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
Yeah, he's taking away his livelihood. Yeah, Jesus took away hislihood.
Basically again, it's that just that irony. That's the other
thing about both, and if people don't know them, irony
just taking something and subverting it to something very simple
mm hmm.

Speaker 4 (57:23):
So he's the ex leper who and it's quite a
memorable performance, like leaping around. Then there's Francis, a member
of the People's Front of Judea and not the Judea
in People's Front splitters, yeah, but the People's Front. It's
just like a character in the People's Front of Judea.
Not particularly, I mean, he's just like a sort of

(57:44):
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 realizing.
And then there's the prisoner because Brian gets Brian gets
arrested by the Romans, gets shoved into a prison underground

(58:07):
and they're hanging up attached to the wall by metal.
Shekels is this guy with a big long beard. He's
obviously been in prison for 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,

(58:30):
pale in you lucky bastard.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Yeah, five years and that They only turned him up
the right way yesterday. There's been hanging upside down for
five years, down.

Speaker 4 (58:43):
For five years.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Yeah, but my favorite, my favorite lady goes, Oh, you'll
probably get away with crucifixion for a first defense.

Speaker 6 (58:50):
Yeah, Oh, you lucky buster.

Speaker 7 (59:07):
Who's that you love?

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Lie bost? What prob little Jesus?

Speaker 7 (59:13):
P Oh what you mean?

Speaker 4 (59:16):
You must have slipped him a few shekels?

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Slipped him a few shekels?

Speaker 8 (59:19):
You saw him spitting my face?

Speaker 1 (59:21):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (59:22):
What wouldn't I give to be spatter in a face?

Speaker 7 (59:25):
Oh?

Speaker 9 (59:26):
Sometimes I ain't awake a night dream and a bit
of spatter in a face. Well, it's not exactly friendly,
is it. They have been miracles, miracles, Why.

Speaker 10 (59:36):
Dear Evan, it's to be allowed to be putting a
miracle just for a few hours. They must think a
sun shines out your arse.

Speaker 4 (59:45):
Sonny, I'll let off me.

Speaker 8 (59:46):
I've had a hard time, you had a hard time.

Speaker 9 (59:50):
I've been here five years.

Speaker 4 (59:51):
They'll learn me the right way up yesterday. So don't
you come all right?

Speaker 8 (59:55):
All right?

Speaker 5 (59:57):
They must be your old god old myn.

Speaker 8 (01:00:01):
What would they do to me?

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
Oh, you'll probably get away with crucifixion.

Speaker 5 (01:00:05):
Crucifixtion. Yeah, first off, get away with crucifixion.

Speaker 4 (01:00:10):
It's special thing the Romans ever did for us.

Speaker 11 (01:00:13):
Oh yeah, if we didn't love crucifixion, this country being
a right bloody mess.

Speaker 8 (01:00:17):
God, I wanted to move me to another cell. Catty
lovey favoritism, shut up your.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
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 he's like very
very sort of right wing character, isn't he who thinks that?
You know, he really believes in crucifixion. He thinks it's

(01:00:59):
the best thing for these these criminals, ennail some scent
into them, I say. And he really respects that. Even
though the Romans are being so cruel and mean to him,
he really respects them. It's like a terribly fantastic race, the.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Romans loving your tormentors as well, isn't it. Again. It's
a 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. It's all framing,
you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Another serious point within an
incredibly silly scene.

Speaker 4 (01:01:34):
Is definitely then there's Conscious Pilot. He plays the part
of Pilot and another incredible performance, And I think that
his his approach to this was based on how he'd
seen the upper classes, especially aristocracy, and so it's kind

(01:01:55):
of about the class system really, and again contry asking
different characters. And what's interesting about the scenes with Ponscious
Pilot 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

(01:02:18):
high status position is constantly being undermined by all sorts
of things. So 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 crowd of people. And his opinion of himself is

(01:02:42):
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

(01:03:03):
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
he's so pompous. Yeah, and people just laugh at him.

Speaker 3 (01:03:20):
Only one.

Speaker 5 (01:03:23):
The floor? What's thrill him to the floor? M h nah?

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
What is your name?

Speaker 5 (01:03:35):
Du Brian Briana.

Speaker 11 (01:03:43):
The little rascal has spirits as it spoy a touch
of doing.

Speaker 10 (01:03:56):
About eleven so you're dead away does to what's take
him joy?

Speaker 8 (01:04:03):
And gough.

Speaker 12 (01:04:09):
What?

Speaker 4 (01:04:15):
But yeah, there's just like the kind of the arrogance
and yeah, just throw him to the floor centurion very
roughly those lines throw thrown to the floor.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Sa yes.

Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
And so there's conscious pilot they're boring profit.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Oh yeah, I love it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:40):
So there's there's like this place where there are profits
in a in a line and it's a bit like
Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, people standing up on sort
of on little platforms just prophesizing about things. And he's

(01:05:00):
one of the prophets and he sort of plays the
the man with the least charisma that you can imagine.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Yes, he's quoting from He's quoting from the Book of Cyril, though,
which is quite good, is it?

Speaker 4 (01:05:14):
The Book of Cyril.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
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 actually
influenced Blackadder because in Blackad of four Field, Marshall Hagues
has a tortoise called Alan, doesn't he.

Speaker 4 (01:05:34):
So yeah, yeah, and there's a boy called Bob in
that as well. So yeah, taking very sort of ordinary
English names and putting them in these different contexts. Yeah,
that's certainly funny.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
I love that, but yeah, just the boring prophet again,
they're subverting it because you think of prophets and preachers
as charismatic. So it's just nice, really good the way
he pulls that off.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):
In a kind of Peter Cook 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

(01:06:22):
afternoon someone who lost their hammer will will find that
hammer again, and they won't really understand why. And their
friend will forget to tell their father thing that he'd
been told to tell but then hadn't remembered to do
it previously. Maybe on a Thursday evening about eight o'clock
they're shout in.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
That time, be rumors or things.

Speaker 10 (01:06:46):
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 a sort of raffia
work base that has an attachment. At this time a
friend shall lose his friend's hammer, and the young shall

(01:07:07):
not know where lie the things possessed by their fathers
that their fathers put there only just the night before.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
About eight o'clock. It is written in the book of.

Speaker 4 (01:07:18):
Cyril, the most Boring Preacher, And there's one person listening
to him else, and also the Roman centurion, whose job
it is to manage the queue for crucifixion.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
Crucifiction good straight down there or a line on the left,
one cross.

Speaker 4 (01:07:40):
Each right, which is so, yeah, there's all these people
lining up that 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,

(01:08:02):
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,
who actually likes them, and he wants to treat people fairly.

(01:08:22):
And so yeah, he's a very sort of mild mannered person.
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.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
Next crucifixion is good.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
Out of the door line on the left, one cross each.

Speaker 5 (01:08:48):
Next crucifixion is good. Out of the door line on
the left, one cross each.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Next crucifixion.

Speaker 5 (01:08:57):
No freedom, That freedom for me, They said, I ain't
done anything, so I could.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Go free and live on an island somewhere.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
Oh oh that's jolly good.

Speaker 9 (01:09:07):
Well, if you're good, then now many putting your legs.

Speaker 5 (01:09:10):
Crucifixion really I see it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
Very good, very good.

Speaker 5 (01:09:14):
Well out of the John, do I at a door
each la.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Crucifixion, yes, good, And in.

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
This case, crucifixion good meaning good, Yes, you're in the
right queue, rather than crucifixion is good because obviously crucifixion isn't.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
Good, you know. Yeah, it's crucifixion as bureaucracy. It's admin basically,
and right, I don't know, I don't know how much
our audiences know about crucifixion. But if you, if you,
if you actually have a look at it, it's so
horrendous that some people wouldn't even talk about it in
these in those days, like you wouldn't say the word

(01:09:53):
because it just terrified people too much. So the comedy
is when you know that, then the or if you
watch the Passion of the Christ, which is obviously a
completely serious look at Oh that's obviously Jesus. But yeah,
if you look at it and see how horrendous crucifixion is,
and the joke actually works better, that the subversion works

(01:10:15):
better as as cruis crucifixion as an admin. So we've
got one hundred and forty, they've got all the names
written out, you know, Yeah, it's 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's sort of, you know, keep a nice
straight back, let's put on a good show, as if

(01:10:36):
they're just doing tripping of the color or something, you know,
something completely innocuous. Yeah, very good.

Speaker 4 (01:10:42):
Yeah, they're not making fun of crucifixion, of course, but
they are using the fact that chrus Fishon is so
serious and awful as as a contrasting factor with the
sort of yeah typical application of boring admin. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
but again, just a really great performance by Palin. And

(01:11:03):
then of course there's that wonderful moment where Eric Idol'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's just does his kind of cheeky, chicky 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,

(01:11:24):
there's the guy in the queue CRUs fiction. No, actually
freedom what yeah? Yeah they just told me I could
go free?

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:11:31):
Oh really, well, okay, off you go then you know
the guys sort of. Yeah, CRU's fiction really very good. Yeah,
first line on the yeah, I know one cross each.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Yeah, because we get to know that it seems that
that guy and 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 a good idea. Yeah, yeah, right, so.

Speaker 4 (01:11:57):
They keep 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 this guy is say, I know, actually it's a
freedom I'm in the wrong queue. Oh all right, then
well you better go. Yeah that's how easy it is
to escape.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
I didn't clock that. So Eric Idol, that is pretty
much the same characters. The same one who's haggling, is
the same one who.

Speaker 4 (01:12:18):
It's not the same person. I just mean they're different
people in the 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 it's great.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
So he's got the hagler, cheeky cockney and then obviously
the final song. I mean you were talking about contribution
to Python. If you took his songs out of Python, generally,
that would lose a lot. Yeah, really a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:12:45):
I think really you can't. You can't. Really we did
that thought experiment of taking you know, reducing Python down
to its you know, raw material, but really I think
you can't. Really, Like, it's the six of them, and
if you take one element out, it's not really the

(01:13:06):
same thing, you know. Yeah, So removing Eric Idol from
Python I think would be really bad. Again, you could
probably play a game of cricket without a wiki keeper,
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.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
Yeah, we've done, please paling Idol. Terry Gilliam obviously tends
to play acting wise always these very grotesque characters, doesn't he, Yeah,
Holy Grayland.

Speaker 4 (01:13:39):
This actually the scene the two scenes that made me
laugh out loud than most in this were involved Gilliam.
So there's the scene where Brian is being chased by
the Romans and he runs up and up and upper tower,
which hasn't been finished yet, and he falls off the
top and a UFO, which happens to be flying part

(01:14:00):
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

(01:14:20):
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.

(01:14:41):
It's just so ridiculous that I just can't believe anyone
would really take the time to be offended by the film.
Oh Lucky balasted, But I love that scene. And you know,
the spaceship is made from old bits of the set,

(01:15:01):
leftover bits of the 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 phew, right, but this one is going changing gear

(01:15:22):
as it goes. I think it's skids as well. At
some point its skids in space and does a one
eighty turn handbrake turn.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
So Terry Jones, shall we talk about that?

Speaker 4 (01:15:35):
Well? Yeah, he obviously plays Mandy Brian's mum, the Virgin Mandy.
Just can you describe his performance as Mandy?

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
I mean, I think they all agree that he was
the best at playing women. And it's always it. He's
not the Messiah, it's always this similar voice he does
whenever he does women, Ryan going out about sex, sex
sex sex.

Speaker 4 (01:16:02):
Yeah, yeah, that voice that they could do.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
No, it's just 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, which he goes
to visit him when he's crucified, be about to be crucified.
She's genuinely upset, you know, Yeah, she is.

Speaker 4 (01:16:21):
She's really disappointed, isn't she. She's so disappointed in him.
It's so sad Anton. The film is so sad. That's
another thing. So in terms of I still think Holy
Grail's my favorite. I know this is brilliant, but in
just in terms of the way it makes me feel
maybe one of the reasons why I haven't watched it

(01:16:43):
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 I always look on the bright side
of life, and life's a piece of shit, and and
you know when you look at it and you know
you come from nothing, you go back to nothing. So
what have you lost? Nothing?

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
Afing? Are you being serious? Then you're being serious that
it makes serious.

Speaker 4 (01:17:08):
It really makes me feel sad. Yeah, because I.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
Was waiting for the punchline. But you're being serious.

Speaker 4 (01:17:13):
No, no, okay, seriously because because like you know, Paul Brian,
he's first of all, he's kind of like still living
with his mum, 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.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
Thirty three, isn't he bro thirty three?

Speaker 4 (01:17:35):
Well, yeah, the character will be thirty three years old.

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
Was Graham probably about just actually just under thirty under forty, I'd.

Speaker 4 (01:17:44):
Say, you think, so okay, so not far off, because
I always thought 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 he's frustrated and he wants
his own independence, wants his own life, he wants to

(01:18:07):
be with girls, he wants to actually have a proper life,
and instead he's just following his mum around, and you know,
he can't really make an impact on the society he
lives in. And then there's a horrible misunderstanding and he's
so anxious and he just wants all these people to
leave him alone, and they follow him and follow him,

(01:18:28):
and then he gets through no fault of his own,
he gets arrested twice and then sentenced to be crucified.
You know, 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
that the Centurions come out and say we're looking for
Brian and everyone else out there, just like in that film.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
Yeah, should we explain? Do you mind if I explain this?
Because this is pure Python. So in the film Sparta
It's all about the slaves Rebellion as a film directed
by Stanley Kubrick in nineteen sixty and in a famous
scene at the end, they are they're going to crucify it. Yeah,
they're going to crucify Spartacus or he's going to be

(01:19:15):
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

(01:19:37):
says I'm Brian, and someone famously said I'm Brian, and
so's 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, again a serious

(01:19:58):
point within a very silly scene.

Speaker 4 (01:20:01):
Yeah, and then Judith comes, but she's she's a disappointment.
She doesn't rescue him, she's just proud of him for
dying as a martyr.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
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 socialists just love discussing things. And when she says

(01:20:35):
Brian's going to be crucified, Regi says, right, this calls
for immediate discussion as opposed to immediate action.

Speaker 4 (01:20:44):
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 like a group of another
group of radicals who come and as a protest, commit suicide.
There's an interesting backstory to it. We probably, yeah, I

(01:21:04):
shouldn't go in, You've got too much to talk about. Yeah,
and then his mum comes and you think, oh, surely
his mum's going to rescue I remember this distinctly actually
when I was however, old fifteen or something. When I
first saw it, his mum comes and she's just she
just is really angry with him, and she storms off
and sort of disowns him, and so he's just left.

(01:21:25):
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. He doesn't get neatly resolved.
Probably when you die, you're probably everything is probably unresolved,
and it all seems like it's very unfair, you know.
So that is strong. It's a strong thing to do

(01:21:47):
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. Just fills me
with that kind of feeling. Maybe the first time I
watched it, Maybe the first time I saw it was
Sunday evening, and it combined with that already that feeling
of dread into this feeling like, oh god, this is

(01:22:08):
just I just feel so bad for the guy, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:14):
Yeah, yeah, there was one. There was one bit of
dark humor just to do with this crucifixion as admin
thing when 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

(01:22:37):
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 waits, Yeah, and even the chiky cottony Ah, he
had you, didn't he the chiky cottony's but he got you.

Speaker 4 (01:22:57):
So this poor guy who is trying to do a
good thing, trying to carry someone's cross, ends up getting
crucified as well because he gets lumbered.

Speaker 1 (01:23:04):
With the cross.

Speaker 4 (01:23:05):
It's just like all of the all of the sort
of 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 this is one of those words
I can never remember, but it's the opposite of comedy pathos.

(01:23:28):
So yeah, it's a it's 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,
that have respectful because, like you know, comedy films never
get the awards they you know, comedy almost never wins

(01:23:49):
the Academy Award for Best Picture or anything. You know,
it's people kind of look down on it, like, you know,
it's not very serious, it's sort of frivolous. So it's
it's it can't be understated how how much of an
achievement it is that they made a comedy that also
is so sort of that has so much sort of

(01:24:12):
seriousness to.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
It and profundity. Yeah, yeah, ites that ability 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 gagline and a serious point. You know,
it can happen exactly the same time. Should we just
talked about just to round off the round off the pythons.

(01:24:34):
Graham Chapman obviously plays Biggest Diggers, Biggest Diggers, it didn't work,
Biggest Dickers h 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 it was absolutely spectacular
in Holy Growl, just the voice alone, it was brilliant.
And then this is just very good. I wonder where

(01:24:56):
what point did he emerge as the best, most 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 feels like they're all into changing all the time,
and then suddenly he gets the lead role twice.

Speaker 4 (01:25:17):
I wonder why he got the lead role in Holy Grail. Yeah,
it's a good question.

Speaker 1 (01:25:23):
Really.

Speaker 4 (01:25:24):
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, Camelod, will you join me? That sort
of commanding voice, And yeah, I suppose they just discovered
that he was the he was perhaps the best straightforward actor.

(01:25:47):
I think that Clees wanted to be Brian. Actually yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
They said, sorry, mate, you know, we need you for
all these amazing roles, because I suppose he would have
had a perhaps scream rupman didn't have a massive range
of roles he could play. Perhaps he did. Yeah, 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,

(01:26:15):
I think. I think maybe for Hodi Grail, you know,
there was a size difference. The two Cambridge guys were
much taller and the guys were shorter. I suppose for
that for you would need somebody either Chapman or Clees
for Holy Gray.

Speaker 4 (01:26:28):
To be King Arthur.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
Yeah, yeah, I think Brian a bit different. You wouldn't
necessarily need somebody tall. But I don't know what does
he bring.

Speaker 4 (01:26:36):
It's just he brings a certain kind of anxiety to
the role, which I think that he probably had in
his life. Anyway, It's quite a complicated character, and I've
under you know, 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,

(01:26:59):
isn't he. Like I've 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
this 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.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
A bit of an empty shell almost as a person, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:27:25):
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

(01:27:46):
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 Palin commented that that Chapman
is excellent at playing scared. Like the bit where he

(01:28:06):
gets caught by the Roman centurion graffiting on the graffiti.

Speaker 12 (01:28:10):
Ing on the wall.

Speaker 4 (01:28:11):
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. We could do that. But yeah,
so I think he just had the skill the ability

(01:28:33):
to play the right kind of to do the right
kind of performance for the role, and maybe he just
wasn't quite right for any of the other roles, unlike
it was just perfect as the Roman centurion.

Speaker 1 (01:28:46):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:29:00):
Just imagine 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. He's great, though, I mean, he was great.

(01:29:24):
You know it's Graham Chapman. You know, it's the Bloody
Beatles White album is in a few Yeah, he's still great. Yeah,
it's still great. And his early TV roles, some of
them were fantastic. But I don't know, Yeah, probably just
somehow the best straightforward, normal dramatic actor just.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
One thing with that scene where so the PFJ People's
friend Judea ask him to write Romans go Home on
the walls. He starts writing it. The centurion to 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 that took me back to language lessons. I say,

(01:30:11):
you're doing well French. We did, we did French obviously
in English schools, and you're you have to order ten
tickets and you say, I wouldn't really work in French
because the pronunciations the same. Anyway, It doesn't matter another well, Spanish,
let's say you have to order ten tickets and you
should say de bieti and you say dcepi. The teacher

(01:30:36):
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.

Speaker 5 (01:30:51):
Romarni's and Thomas people call Romanns. They go the house.
It says Romans go home, doesn't what's learning for Roman?

Speaker 1 (01:31:03):
Come on?

Speaker 8 (01:31:03):
One?

Speaker 5 (01:31:04):
Roman goes like a fro any romany pent. What is
a go conjugate the verb to go?

Speaker 10 (01:31:17):
He's it, he must it is so is third person
present indicative that they go?

Speaker 5 (01:31:25):
F Romans go home is an order, so you must
use the internative, which is.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
How many Romans eat.

Speaker 5 (01:31:41):
Thomas nominately go home.

Speaker 1 (01:31:44):
This is motion towards isn't it?

Speaker 5 (01:31:46):
Boyd against him?

Speaker 12 (01:31:53):
Against them?

Speaker 5 (01:31:54):
The look of.

Speaker 3 (01:32:02):
Warm.

Speaker 5 (01:32:04):
I understand right, it's not done by sunrise. I'll cut
your balls off.

Speaker 4 (01:32:12):
Yeah, And that is informed by the fact that apparently
for two years after university, John Clees worked as a
Latin teacher or a Latin 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 trying to teach

(01:32:35):
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, and so he's just so many

(01:32:58):
different conjugations because of the subject verb agreement, but also
because of whether it's diicative or indicative or imperative or
whatever that affects 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,

(01:33:22):
it's so brilliantly, so brilliantly done. And then it's like, right,
write that out one hundred times before dawn if you
got If you don't get it done by sunbrise, I'll
cut your balls off right of course.

Speaker 1 (01:33:34):
But that's the other thing I didn't even I didn't
even clock, like, 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 into right,
romans go home a hundred times so everyone will see
the sign. He doesn't. 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

(01:33:56):
called writing lines, isn't it. As a punishment, you have
to write a SA. And we had a teacher was
actually really good, and he was a nice fellow. 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 fifty times.

Speaker 8 (01:34:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
Yeah, it's quite bizarre thing, isn't it. As a punishment
at school, you just have to sit there really writing
the same sentence for it over.

Speaker 4 (01:34:24):
Yeah. I suppose it's a combination of a punishment something
boring we have to write something one 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.

(01:34:44):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:34:54):
Oh yeah, some lines. They actually had a.

Speaker 4 (01:34:58):
A sort of a lesson moral to the thing you're writing.
I mean, like what you had what your teacher said,
which is like if even after repeated warning, warning, I
will get lines, 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

(01:35:19):
one hundred times, So I guess that's it. It's a
combination of like a punishment and an education all in one.

Speaker 1 (01:35:26):
Yeah. Should we just say, maybe what the other most
famous scenes are without describing them? All?

Speaker 4 (01:35:33):
Yeah, we've gone through a lot of it. What would
you say, are they absolutely go to since there's there's
what are the rooms ever done for us?

Speaker 7 (01:35:39):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:35:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:35:40):
Which is an absolute classic?

Speaker 8 (01:35:43):
They let us?

Speaker 5 (01:35:44):
Why take everything we had and.

Speaker 3 (01:35:47):
Not just from us, from our fathers and from our
fathers fathers, I'm from our father's father's father's yeah, and
from our father's father's father's father.

Speaker 5 (01:35:55):
Don't the point why they have given us in return?
The aqueduct? What the aqueduct? Oh yeah, yeah, they did
give us, that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:36:08):
And the sanitation, Oh yeah, the sanitation remember what the
city used to be? Like, I'll grant you the aqueduct
of sanitation are two things the romans out and the roads?
Well yeah, obviously the roads, I mean the roads go
without saying, are they but apart from the sanitation, the
aqueduct and the road, irrigation, medicine, education, yeah you're all right,

(01:36:30):
fair enough?

Speaker 11 (01:36:30):
And the wine.

Speaker 10 (01:36:33):
Yeah yeah, that's something we really misreges the Romans left
the public baths.

Speaker 3 (01:36:38):
And it's safe to walk in the streets at night,
now rege.

Speaker 1 (01:36:40):
Yeah, they certainly night.

Speaker 5 (01:36:41):
To keep order. That's basically the only ones who could
in a place like this. All right, But apart from
the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, rose,
the fresh water system, and public health, what are.

Speaker 8 (01:36:55):
The Romans that are done for us?

Speaker 7 (01:36:58):
Brought peace? Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:37:01):
Shut up, I read the list. Sanitation, medicine, education, wine,
public order, irrigation, roads, a freshwater system, public health, and peace.
Apart from that, et cetera.

Speaker 4 (01:37:13):
Yeah, okay, that's the good. 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?

Speaker 1 (01:37:32):
Yeah, he's not a mess. He's a very naughty buy.
Possibly the most famous line.

Speaker 4 (01:37:38):
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 and
his mum, Brian's mum comes home and finds him in
bed with Judith, and she's she's very upset about it.

(01:37:59):
And then and she opens the windows and who are
all these people?

Speaker 12 (01:38:04):
You know?

Speaker 4 (01:38:05):
And they're like, we're here for Brian. Here's the Messiah,
and yeah, the lion, he's not the Messiah is 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

(01:38:27):
tell them some things. He's saying, Look, you know, you
don't need to you don't need to follow anyone. You know,
this is the point. You just need to think for yourselves.
He's really earnestly trying to tell them some really good things, which,
you know, like think for yourself, make your own judgments.
Don't just assume what everyone else is saying is true.
This is old point. You don't have to follow me,

(01:38:49):
You don't really have to follow anyone, just sort of
work it out for yourself. Going going back to what
they their motivation for making this film or the content
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

(01:39:13):
they are all these prophets, you know, and that's part
of it, Like just people wanted someone to tell them
what to do, someone to tell them it was going
to be all right, someone who would be kind of
from God, a kind of leader. People always desperate for
a leader, and they just decided that it was him, and.

Speaker 1 (01:39:33):
They still seem to be really as well. They just
replaced gods with you know why, celebrities apparently, you know,
that kind.

Speaker 4 (01:39:42):
All sorts of different things. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's
just just a kind of aspect of human nature that
is quite destructive at times. It's probably 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. But they can

(01:40:03):
go badly wrong, you know, which is why we need
to always try and think for ourselves and not just
assume things or 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.

Speaker 1 (01:40:24):
Yeah, well then again, yeah again, you've got a really
good gagline. 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. Very python, there's always one voice in a

(01:40:44):
crowd just saying the opposite.

Speaker 4 (01:40:46):
Also, just the sort of 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. Yeah I'm not as if
to say I'm not different. I'm the same as everyone else.
But he's the only one who's saying it.

Speaker 5 (01:41:11):
Now you listen here, he's not gonna he's a very
naughty boy.

Speaker 7 (01:41:16):
Now go away, please 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

(01:41:38):
follow anybody. You've got to think yourself.

Speaker 8 (01:41:43):
You're all individual Yeah, you're all different.

Speaker 1 (01:41:51):
Yes I'm not.

Speaker 4 (01:41:57):
That scene where the Romans 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

(01:42:20):
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

(01:42:44):
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

(01:43:07):
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. So that's how they manufactured that sort

(01:43:31):
of that genuine laughter.

Speaker 11 (01:43:33):
Now Jewish, let Skellion, I'm not Jewish.

Speaker 8 (01:43:38):
I'm a rooman, a woman.

Speaker 5 (01:43:40):
No, no, Roman, Wow, your father was a woman?

Speaker 11 (01:43:47):
Who was it?

Speaker 7 (01:43:49):
Here was a century in the Jerusalem garrisons. Really?

Speaker 3 (01:43:55):
What is his name?

Speaker 1 (01:43:56):
Not just Maximus.

Speaker 8 (01:44:00):
And Joya?

Speaker 5 (01:44:01):
Do you have anyone of that name in the Garthen?

Speaker 3 (01:44:03):
Well knows it?

Speaker 5 (01:44:04):
Do sound very sure? Have you checked one? He's a joke, sir,
like a SI Sons or Biggest Stickers? What's the funny about?

Speaker 11 (01:44:17):
Because dickers?

Speaker 4 (01:44:18):
What is a joke name? Sir?

Speaker 5 (01:44:20):
I have a very great friend in woe called Biggest Stickers.

Speaker 3 (01:44:25):
Science.

Speaker 5 (01:44:26):
What is all this insolence?

Speaker 11 (01:44:28):
You will find yourself in gladiator school very quickly with
rotten behavior like that.

Speaker 7 (01:44:34):
Can I go LARSA.

Speaker 5 (01:44:38):
Wait your biggest stickers?

Speaker 3 (01:44:39):
He has of this?

Speaker 11 (01:44:42):
Take him away?

Speaker 7 (01:44:43):
Sorry?

Speaker 11 (01:44:44):
No, no, I was in fighting rabbit wild animals within
a weak river for you. I not have my friends
really cute about a common soldiering anybody else?

Speaker 9 (01:45:00):
You like a little?

Speaker 5 (01:45:02):
When I mentioned my friend Dicus, because.

Speaker 3 (01:45:11):
What about you?

Speaker 5 (01:45:13):
Do you find it visible?

Speaker 12 (01:45:16):
Will I say the name.

Speaker 8 (01:45:19):
Because because.

Speaker 5 (01:45:28):
He has a wife, you know, you know what she's called.
She's called.

Speaker 9 (01:45:34):
In Continentia.

Speaker 8 (01:45:39):
In continent.

Speaker 7 (01:45:41):
What is.

Speaker 1 (01:45:44):
I know?

Speaker 7 (01:45:44):
This?

Speaker 1 (01:45:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:45:47):
Pretty classic? Really, yes, it's 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.

Speaker 1 (01:45:59):
Yeah, obviously the word spread and there 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

(01:46:21):
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 Southook, I
want to say, yeah, and Malcolm Muggridge, who was quite

(01:46:43):
famous sort of intellectual. And I was saying to you
before we started recording 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 of it more. But the central point is that, yes,

(01:47:05):
they are rialdly cooling Jesus. This is coming from Malcolm
Muggridge and the Bishop of sou that he's got this
massive crucifix and they'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 really calling Jesus, we're ridiculing people who don't think
for themselves. And it's quite a lively debate. But actually

(01:47:27):
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 the end they treated it
as if it was good sport. You know, Oh that
was a good argument. So CLEAs and Paline ironically are
the ones who had been taking it seriously. So they,
I mean, they had to take it seriously, not only

(01:47:48):
this debate but the whole controversy because it's serious stuff.
You know, in you you upset, as John Lennon found out,
if you upset the the Bible Belt in America. You know, serious,
who did it? It's life who banned it?

Speaker 9 (01:48:02):
Then?

Speaker 1 (01:48:04):
What's the Sweden and Denmark thing? Always get the wrong
way around?

Speaker 4 (01:48:08):
So yeah, so it was. The film was advertised in
Sweden with the tagline a film so funny. They banned
it in Norway?

Speaker 1 (01:48:16):
Norway?

Speaker 4 (01:48:16):
Right, Okay, so 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.

Speaker 1 (01:48:38):
Yeah, the Nationwide Festival of Light.

Speaker 4 (01:48:40):
Yeah, the Nationwide Festival of Light. That's the name of
the group. And that's actually a pretty small group 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

(01:49:03):
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 out really
outlining what the consequences could be. So it's almost like
is it a threat, is it a piece of advice?

(01:49:23):
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
received this information from a respectable source as a you know,
this Christian group, they just chose not to put the
film on.

Speaker 1 (01:49:41):
Well, yeah, it got what actually was a fourteen certificate
double a fourteen was switched to fifteen obviously people in
England were no fifteen certificates. But then it was banned
by local councils. But right Terry Gilliam loved it that
some people would travel all to the place. People who
lived in the place where it be banned would travel

(01:50:04):
en mass to places in England where it hadn't been banned,
So yeah, it's quite nice.

Speaker 4 (01:50:10):
And then it didn't 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, which
just not burned pretty good for a comedy.

Speaker 1 (01:50:25):
Yeah, I wonder if it's always been accepted that banned
stuff attracts people. Has that always been the case? Must be,
I suppose?

Speaker 2 (01:50:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:50:35):
I mean when you ban something, it's like what are
they banning? Then I want to see that you know,
it has that completely counterproductive yeah, effact.

Speaker 4 (01:50:42):
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 legality to it.
Glamour exactly to doing something that's against the law, you know,
especially if you're in a place where you know, actually

(01:51:05):
the application of the law against that thing is a
little bit lax. And I'm not saying that something illegal
always results 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.

Speaker 1 (01:51:26):
Yeah, law.

Speaker 4 (01:51:30):
Groups of people defiantly daywalking, right, But maybe like smoking weed,
it does become you know, like 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, where as if it

(01:51:52):
was legal, it might not be quite as seen as
quite as a cool thing to do. 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 rampled and talked
at length about this film. I've enjoyed it. I enjoyed

(01:52:13):
revisiting the film and looking at the scenes and the
characters and performances again. So that's good fun.

Speaker 1 (01:52:22):
Yeah. I ended up with just so many notes that
I thought in the end of 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 because you know, that would be another
hour or two probably to get it all out.

Speaker 4 (01:52:38):
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.
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

(01:52:59):
the scene, so 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.

Speaker 1 (01:53:08):
I think.

Speaker 4 (01:53:11):
So there we go. Thanks Anthony, I've really enjoyed this,
and I hope everyone listening also and nice one speak
to you soon.

Speaker 1 (01:53:21):
Yeah, just for our shall we tell each other about
our podcast for the separate or.

Speaker 4 (01:53:25):
Yeah, yeah, of course, absolutely, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:53:27):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:53:38):
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 my audience
don't really know about. But I do like to talk
about films and things and like to recommend films on

(01:53:59):
the show Luke's English Podcast, So you can get it
wherever you get your podcast. If you've got friends out
there who are learning English, you could let them know
about my show.

Speaker 1 (01:54:07):
Nomally all right, good fun. We'll do it again, the
Meaning of Life maybe next time.

Speaker 4 (01:54:13):
Meaning of Life? Yeah, wow, round off the trilogy. Yeah,
another one for next time. Okay, cheers all the best
by right. So there you are. That's the end of that.
You are still here, you're still listening to this episode.
You're you're still alive. I'm assuming, unless, of course, you

(01:54:35):
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

(01:54:57):
on YouTube, you know YouTube Movie. 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 a maybe
like a secondhand DVD copy of it or something wherever

(01:55:19):
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 like
DVD or Blu ray sales that they have in like
bookshops and things. But anyway, thank you to Anthony for

(01:55:41):
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

(01:56:01):
of stuff from the nineteen seventies, then you should check
out Film Gold, Anthony's film review podcast, and he recently
did a fantastic series about the life of Aweson Wells
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 third podcast.

(01:56:24):
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

(01:56:47):
numbers are. So Holy Grail with Anthony was episode number
seven hundred and eighty one film Club, Monty Python and
the Holy Grail. What Else? Then there are several episodes
in which I analyzed certain comedy sketches. There's episode five
hundred and eighty three, which is called British Comedy the

(01:57:08):
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 apologizing, making complaints
and the sort of minimizing language that we use in
order to be polite. So that's episode five hundred and

(01:57:30):
eighty three. What Else. Episode number two hundred and two
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, and I ended up
talking about politics and mythology and monarchy and anarchy and

(01:57:53):
things like that. And then there's episode one hundred and
ninety five called British comedy Monty Python's Flowing 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

(01:58:18):
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

(01:58:38):
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 comment 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 Born. Thanks for listening to Luke's

(01:59:05):
English podcast. For more information, visit teacher Luke dot co
dot uk.

Speaker 12 (01:59:25):
What does it mean to be great at something? To
master the skills and expertise you need to make an impact.
At DCU, we nurture your talents, guiding you to greatness.
Developed in partnership with leading employers, our postgraduate courses offer
a wide range of unique and highly relevant qualifications. That's
why our high achieving graduates are consistently in demand. So

(01:59:49):
to follow your passions and discover your greatness, visit DCU
dot ie Ford slash postgraduate.

Speaker 4 (01:59:58):
If you enjoyed this episode of Uke's English podcast, consider
signing up for Luke's English Podcast Premium. You'll get regular
Premium episodes with stories, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation teaching from me,
and the usual moments of humor and fun. Plus with
your subscription, you will be directly supporting my work and
making this whole podcast project possible. For more information about

(02:00:22):
Luke's English Podcast Premium, go to teacher Luke dot co
dot uk slash Premium info.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}938. Film Club: Monty Python’s Life of Brian (with Antony Rotunno)