MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN
Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam. Dir. Terry Jones, Columbia, 1979BLAZING SADDLES
Gene Wilder, Cleavon Little, Madelaine Kahn, Harvey Korman. Dir. Mel Brooks, Warner Bros., 1974
My free range parents - was I a free range child? I've never gotten that cliche right - took me and my brother to see WIZARDS, dropped us off at THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES when I was nine, my brother seven. Liberal '70s parents. Who drew the line at R-rated movies. Nope. Not gonna happen not taking you to R-rated movies we ever hear of you seeing an R-rated movie you're at least grounded.
I must've understood their weakness. After taking us to see WIZARDS, a relatively filthy PG movie, how could they refuse me LIFE OF BRIAN?
I didn't use that gambit, but I prevailed. LIFE OF BRIAN became my first R-rated movie. Dad took me when it played the Esquire, the local second-run house with the 40-foot screen. I began laughing in the first minute. After a half-hour my face hurt. I looked over at my Dad, and he was about to collapse.
Many of my best memories of Dad take place in movie theatres. He was not a film fan. I was. So he took me. He didn't always love the movie, but he had a good time. He took me out to dinner for RETURN OF THE JEDI's opening night in Cincinnati. He thought the movie was meh, but he made the night special for me.
It must be Sunday. Sunday evenings, late afternoons, number among the most magical, melancholy, perfect times in life. My family always spent them together. Watching TV, doing/not doing homework, Mom in & out, readying dinner, my brother and I not fighting. These days, I get all emotional on Sunday around dusk, or if I get weepy and weird, and I did, Sunday dusk is a likely time.
Never expect that. Mom & Dad split up after 38 years, when I was 31. Never saw that coming. Dad turned out to be my brother's only point of intersection with me. When Dad died in '10 my relationship with my brother died, too. Mom's willing to interact with each on our own, as if we're both only children of the same mother. After Mom texted me to say I can't be bipolar because she read it on the internet, communication with the Home Office has grown erratic. I don't think anyone needs excuses, but if anyone needed an excuse to start weeping...
My face aches at the moment. It has since I finished watching LIFE OF BRIAN 30 minutes ago. I had a choleric fit during the Biccus Diccus scene. This movie's a workout. As it was at 12, in the Esquire with Dad, 42 years ago. Most of my comic and satirical sensibility, most of my lifetime irreverence for authority, for organized religion, for most hierarchical systems, and for dogmatic, charismatic movements can be found in Terry Jones's 1979 masterpiece of blasphemy.
It must be Sunday. Sunday evenings, late afternoons, number among the most magical, melancholy, perfect times in life. My family always spent them together. Watching TV, doing/not doing homework, Mom in & out, readying dinner, my brother and I not fighting. These days, I get all emotional on Sunday around dusk, or if I get weepy and weird, and I did, Sunday dusk is a likely time.
Never expect that. Mom & Dad split up after 38 years, when I was 31. Never saw that coming. Dad turned out to be my brother's only point of intersection with me. When Dad died in '10 my relationship with my brother died, too. Mom's willing to interact with each on our own, as if we're both only children of the same mother. After Mom texted me to say I can't be bipolar because she read it on the internet, communication with the Home Office has grown erratic. I don't think anyone needs excuses, but if anyone needed an excuse to start weeping...
My face aches at the moment. It has since I finished watching LIFE OF BRIAN 30 minutes ago. I had a choleric fit during the Biccus Diccus scene. This movie's a workout. As it was at 12, in the Esquire with Dad, 42 years ago. Most of my comic and satirical sensibility, most of my lifetime irreverence for authority, for organized religion, for most hierarchical systems, and for dogmatic, charismatic movements can be found in Terry Jones's 1979 masterpiece of blasphemy.
My first three R-rated movies are LIFE OF BRIAN, Ken Russell's ALTERED STATES, & Bob Fosse's ALL THAT JAZZ. Most of what I love, in cinema and life, finds full wxpression in those three movies. I look at myself at 53 and what I believe and what I love and those movies seem perfect to usher me into the adult world. (They also demonstrate the utter parental collapse following BRIAN. ALL THAT JAZZ is a dirty movie by '21 standards.)
It has been however-long since I've sat down with LIFE OF BRIAN. Not sure I ever owned it. I'm this guy with Monty Python: LIFE OF BRIAN occupies this sentimental niche, but the last time I watched HOLY GRAIL I recited every line, word for word, which amused me more than the film. It's possible to see a movie too many times, and I still am not ready to try HOLY GRAIL. I may never watch it again, a strange sentiment, or not, for a movie I've seen better than a thousand times.
LIFE OF BRIAN is literally blasphemous, according to the Church of Rome, which declared the film a threat to the faith upon its release. God bless the little pederasts, they called that one. Terry Jones' and the Pythonners' absurd religious spoof fires a broadside at all religion's fundamental hypocrisy and paradoxical dogma, not only Rome. Even a lapsed Catholic can see Python thumbing its nose at Mother Church. I did not know that at 12, but after four years of both Jesuit and Franciscan high school I sure do.
I imagine these days people can find issues with this movie, and I guess we're supposed to be more understanding of everyone and I keep hearing satire is dead, and I can see stuff people might find difficult, but I found myself all in on LIFE OF BRIAN, as I was at 12 and the too-few other times I've seen it. This movie owns me. Shit, it helps define me.
For all the time and obsession I devoted to HOLY GRAIL, I think LIFE OF BRIAN's the better film, particularly from a structural point of view. All three of their features function as contrivances to connect a series of comedy sketches. HOLY GRAIL made great use of Terry Gilliam's animations to connect the individual sketches, but Gilliam, despite appearing in the picture, provided only the epic opening credits sequence and the bit with the spaceship. LIFE OF BRIAN connects its skits with other bits of business, exposition & backstory for Brian and his mother - Jones works from a real, pro screenplay. It's more of a traditional, linear-story movie than HOLY GRAIL and particularly MEANING OF LIFE, which is pretty much a big budget feature length film of their BBC TV show.
It has been however-long since I've sat down with LIFE OF BRIAN. Not sure I ever owned it. I'm this guy with Monty Python: LIFE OF BRIAN occupies this sentimental niche, but the last time I watched HOLY GRAIL I recited every line, word for word, which amused me more than the film. It's possible to see a movie too many times, and I still am not ready to try HOLY GRAIL. I may never watch it again, a strange sentiment, or not, for a movie I've seen better than a thousand times.
LIFE OF BRIAN is literally blasphemous, according to the Church of Rome, which declared the film a threat to the faith upon its release. God bless the little pederasts, they called that one. Terry Jones' and the Pythonners' absurd religious spoof fires a broadside at all religion's fundamental hypocrisy and paradoxical dogma, not only Rome. Even a lapsed Catholic can see Python thumbing its nose at Mother Church. I did not know that at 12, but after four years of both Jesuit and Franciscan high school I sure do.
I imagine these days people can find issues with this movie, and I guess we're supposed to be more understanding of everyone and I keep hearing satire is dead, and I can see stuff people might find difficult, but I found myself all in on LIFE OF BRIAN, as I was at 12 and the too-few other times I've seen it. This movie owns me. Shit, it helps define me.
For all the time and obsession I devoted to HOLY GRAIL, I think LIFE OF BRIAN's the better film, particularly from a structural point of view. All three of their features function as contrivances to connect a series of comedy sketches. HOLY GRAIL made great use of Terry Gilliam's animations to connect the individual sketches, but Gilliam, despite appearing in the picture, provided only the epic opening credits sequence and the bit with the spaceship. LIFE OF BRIAN connects its skits with other bits of business, exposition & backstory for Brian and his mother - Jones works from a real, pro screenplay. It's more of a traditional, linear-story movie than HOLY GRAIL and particularly MEANING OF LIFE, which is pretty much a big budget feature length film of their BBC TV show.
Unlike HOLY GRAIL, where the troupe goofs on a wide array of subjects, including monarchy and its bizarre premises for holding power, LIFE OF BRIAN feels pointed, specifically aimed at organized religion, institutional authority, hierarchical power structures, and the equal futility in the flipside, as the revolutionaries rebel according to the oppressor's rules. The jokes and the situations feel more specific, more shaped around a certain set of ideas.
LIFE OF BRIAN also lets Graham Chapman be an actor, a real character, a leading man. In HOLY GRAIL he's the central straight man, not an actor but a reactor.
LIFE OF BRIAN also lets Graham Chapman be an actor, a real character, a leading man. In HOLY GRAIL he's the central straight man, not an actor but a reactor.
As Brian, Chapman seems to have agency, forward momentum. He makes choices that lead to consequences as opposed to crazy shit happens and King Arthur reacts. He wants friends, acceptance. He gets a girlfriend. It's all very rudimentary, and the jokes take precedence, but Brian represents a sea change from King Arthur, and in Chapman as a performer.
Today it feels strange I got so crazed for HOLY GRAIL. It's a great collection of hilarious gags, but LIFE OF BRIAN is a traditional movie, and it may be funnier and better for that. I think it's perfect.
Today it feels strange I got so crazed for HOLY GRAIL. It's a great collection of hilarious gags, but LIFE OF BRIAN is a traditional movie, and it may be funnier and better for that. I think it's perfect.
I hate that word in reference to films. They shouldn't be perfect. They should be achievements, built by imperfect hands, not divine relics. A perfect movie sounds like a boring movie to me. But some movies work, completely, totally, in every way. For me.
LIFE OF BRIAN is probably a crude piece of technical filmmaking, by some standards, its mistakes glaring. I can't see them. I wouldn't object to seeing them, I'm not fanatical, but they wouldn't alter my reluctant use of the p-word in reference to the picture. Everything in it works. Not every joke lands, but often I'm laughing so hard after two or three jokes I miss another three, so it all evens out. Hell, I laughed as hard today as 42 years ago.
I don't often do that. I can't even imagine doing it. Monty Python still wield that power, however. That is no bad thing. It's good to have roots, to have formative years and definitive experiences. It's good when writing about one of those can still summon the emotion of a lifetime ago. It's good to know that we have them, and what they are. It's great that we can revisit them. It's great we can go back to a moment where we touched perfection. Monty Python's LIFE OF BRIAN is one of mine.
As is BLAZING SADDLES, though in less specific ways. My parents married in 1962. I didn't arrive until 1968. Those six years remind me of white spaces on old maps. It's the undiscovered country of my parents' life before kids, when they spent money on books and music and went to films and Mom drank liquor and they had friends without kids.
LIFE OF BRIAN is probably a crude piece of technical filmmaking, by some standards, its mistakes glaring. I can't see them. I wouldn't object to seeing them, I'm not fanatical, but they wouldn't alter my reluctant use of the p-word in reference to the picture. Everything in it works. Not every joke lands, but often I'm laughing so hard after two or three jokes I miss another three, so it all evens out. Hell, I laughed as hard today as 42 years ago.
I don't often do that. I can't even imagine doing it. Monty Python still wield that power, however. That is no bad thing. It's good to have roots, to have formative years and definitive experiences. It's good when writing about one of those can still summon the emotion of a lifetime ago. It's good to know that we have them, and what they are. It's great that we can revisit them. It's great we can go back to a moment where we touched perfection. Monty Python's LIFE OF BRIAN is one of mine.
As is BLAZING SADDLES, though in less specific ways. My parents married in 1962. I didn't arrive until 1968. Those six years remind me of white spaces on old maps. It's the undiscovered country of my parents' life before kids, when they spent money on books and music and went to films and Mom drank liquor and they had friends without kids.
Little of those years translated to me and my brother. My parents put away their pop culture in favor of their kids'. They stopped listening to Nina Simone - Mom had all her records - and Al Hirt and listened to Sesame Street albums and TRAIN TO THE ZOO and, eventually, Captain&Tenille and the Bee Gees.
One thing to emerge from those years is Mel Brooks. Mom and Dad loved Brooks & Reiner, loved Reiner's writing for the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, loved THE PRODUCERS and THE TWELVE CHAIRS, and introduced us to his work. We saw BLAZING SADDLES, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, HIGH ANXIETY, & HISTORY OF THE WORLD PT. I in the theater with at least one parent. Dad thought HISTORY was pretty weak, but he enjoyed the other three. He didn't necessarily like, or even seek out, a lot of things, but he drove us 25 minutes to the nearest multiplex with nary a grumble to see HIGH ANXIETY (the other three were all seen at the Esquire.)
My memory tells me my brother and maybe Mom were along for my first screening of BLAZING SADDLES, which must've been in re-release, playing the 2nd run houses. It also indicates I laughed my ass off, but that memory's not as sharp as LIFE OF BRIAN. It's not the same as the times with Dad and me, alone.
It could also be, however, that I did not laugh until I ached at BLAZING SADDLES. I didn't when I watched it yesterday. I've seen both movies dozens of times - it's not simple overexposure. Our Man in the Valley told me not long ago he prefers YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN to BLAZING SADDLES, which surprised me, but I now see what he means. Not unlike LIFE OF BRIAN, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN feels more focussed, tighter, more cohesive. BLAZING SADDLES uses the Western to goof on contemporary culture while also poking fun at the genre's conventions and tropes. I hate phrases like "it serves too many masters," but that seemed like the problem yesterday.
Put better, BLAZING SADDLES gives me the sense that Brooks understood the better westerns of the Golden Age used the form to explore/examine larger issues even as they were also extended metaphors promoting a US history in which our westward expansion was not a case of genocide and theft, and wanted to use a Western spoof to satirize the genre's problematic handling of race in the Old West while also skewering movies he clearly loved. If that's the idea, he gets mixed results, with the homage/sendup side of things faring better than the racial. That's the more remarkable because BLAZING SADDLES, despite getting the look and tone right, despite featuring a cast of ex-western day players, despite using a DP who shot Westerns for Sam Fuller, despite containing delightful in-jokes for genre fans, is not, itself, a good Western. SILVERADO, which winks at genre conventions, is a good Western. THE GREAT BANK ROBBERY, featuring Zero Mostel as a sham priest competing with rival gangs to rob a supposedly-impregnable bank, is a good Western. RUSTLER's RHAPSODY, which forces its true-blue hero to confront a villain even nicer and more clean-cut than himself, is a good Western. BLAZING SADDLES is a good movie shaped (mostly) like a Western.
I cannot recall the last time I sat down and watched all of BLAZING SADDLES, but I know it happened before I became a student of the Western, which made it a richer experience. I recognized sendups of parts of SHANE, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, & HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER. I considered pairing it with Michael Curtiz's DODGE CITY, as the saloon brawl that spills out into the studio lot is based on a saloon brawl which opens the Curtiz picture, but I have to be in the right mood for one of Errol Flynn's swashbuckler-cowboys.
One thing to emerge from those years is Mel Brooks. Mom and Dad loved Brooks & Reiner, loved Reiner's writing for the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, loved THE PRODUCERS and THE TWELVE CHAIRS, and introduced us to his work. We saw BLAZING SADDLES, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, HIGH ANXIETY, & HISTORY OF THE WORLD PT. I in the theater with at least one parent. Dad thought HISTORY was pretty weak, but he enjoyed the other three. He didn't necessarily like, or even seek out, a lot of things, but he drove us 25 minutes to the nearest multiplex with nary a grumble to see HIGH ANXIETY (the other three were all seen at the Esquire.)
My memory tells me my brother and maybe Mom were along for my first screening of BLAZING SADDLES, which must've been in re-release, playing the 2nd run houses. It also indicates I laughed my ass off, but that memory's not as sharp as LIFE OF BRIAN. It's not the same as the times with Dad and me, alone.
It could also be, however, that I did not laugh until I ached at BLAZING SADDLES. I didn't when I watched it yesterday. I've seen both movies dozens of times - it's not simple overexposure. Our Man in the Valley told me not long ago he prefers YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN to BLAZING SADDLES, which surprised me, but I now see what he means. Not unlike LIFE OF BRIAN, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN feels more focussed, tighter, more cohesive. BLAZING SADDLES uses the Western to goof on contemporary culture while also poking fun at the genre's conventions and tropes. I hate phrases like "it serves too many masters," but that seemed like the problem yesterday.
Put better, BLAZING SADDLES gives me the sense that Brooks understood the better westerns of the Golden Age used the form to explore/examine larger issues even as they were also extended metaphors promoting a US history in which our westward expansion was not a case of genocide and theft, and wanted to use a Western spoof to satirize the genre's problematic handling of race in the Old West while also skewering movies he clearly loved. If that's the idea, he gets mixed results, with the homage/sendup side of things faring better than the racial. That's the more remarkable because BLAZING SADDLES, despite getting the look and tone right, despite featuring a cast of ex-western day players, despite using a DP who shot Westerns for Sam Fuller, despite containing delightful in-jokes for genre fans, is not, itself, a good Western. SILVERADO, which winks at genre conventions, is a good Western. THE GREAT BANK ROBBERY, featuring Zero Mostel as a sham priest competing with rival gangs to rob a supposedly-impregnable bank, is a good Western. RUSTLER's RHAPSODY, which forces its true-blue hero to confront a villain even nicer and more clean-cut than himself, is a good Western. BLAZING SADDLES is a good movie shaped (mostly) like a Western.
I cannot recall the last time I sat down and watched all of BLAZING SADDLES, but I know it happened before I became a student of the Western, which made it a richer experience. I recognized sendups of parts of SHANE, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, & HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER. I considered pairing it with Michael Curtiz's DODGE CITY, as the saloon brawl that spills out into the studio lot is based on a saloon brawl which opens the Curtiz picture, but I have to be in the right mood for one of Errol Flynn's swashbuckler-cowboys.
My favorite moments of parody feature Brooks as a Yiddish-speaking Native American, a wry wink at the number of Jewish men who've played tribal warriors and braves over the years, and Cleavon Little's stirring speech lifted straight from Henry Fonda's in John Ford's GRAPES OF WRATH. It tickles me that Brooks's only nod to our greatest Western director comes from one of his most famous non-Westerns.
Not that one needs to know much more than that Westerns exist to appreciate BLAZING SADDLES. That was almost as much as I knew when I first saw it and I howled at much of it. Brooks employed Richard Pryor and Andrew Bergman, who wrote THE IN-LAWS, to help him with the screenplay, so the jokes generally land right where they're supposed to land. Still, it bears mention that at the time Dad and I saw LIFE OF BRIAN, I had a C- average in Latin II, and that I attended an Episcopal church and youth group every Sunday, so I understood what Python skewered in a way I didn't with Brooks.
Not that one needs to know much more than that Westerns exist to appreciate BLAZING SADDLES. That was almost as much as I knew when I first saw it and I howled at much of it. Brooks employed Richard Pryor and Andrew Bergman, who wrote THE IN-LAWS, to help him with the screenplay, so the jokes generally land right where they're supposed to land. Still, it bears mention that at the time Dad and I saw LIFE OF BRIAN, I had a C- average in Latin II, and that I attended an Episcopal church and youth group every Sunday, so I understood what Python skewered in a way I didn't with Brooks.
I understood the racial satire, and this time through it felt as if the racial satire gets short shrift as Brooks tries to take his shots at so many other targets, from bureaucratic incompetence and corruption to musical numbers in Westerns. Or maybe it's just me appreciating the Western stuff more this time because I own the movies it references.
All I really know, I suppose, is that I got a cardiopulmonary workout watching both movies yesterday, but LIFE OF BRIAN, in addition to making me laugh until my face hurt, felt like a true rediscovery. It's so much more of a movie movie than its legendary forebears or its culty followup, and that helps it age.
All I really know, I suppose, is that I got a cardiopulmonary workout watching both movies yesterday, but LIFE OF BRIAN, in addition to making me laugh until my face hurt, felt like a true rediscovery. It's so much more of a movie movie than its legendary forebears or its culty followup, and that helps it age.
BLAZING SADDLES, in addition to being a so-so Western, barely makes it as a traditional movie, at least in the sense that the last 12 minutes feel like Brooks desperately seeking, and not finding, an ending, settling at last for the meta-textual, our heroes riding a limo into the sunset. It's not a terrible ending, but it always feels like a copout.
LIFE OF BRIAN and BLAZING SADDLES both continue as among my favorite comedies. Both made me laugh myself silly yesterday, BLAZING SADDLES fewer times than LIFE OF BRIAN, but it's still a goddamn funny movie. It's not as good a movie as LIFE OF BRIAN, not as well-constructed or acted, though Gene Wilder's Jim gives Brian a run for it, but it deserves its fame/infamy.
My parents had good taste. They took us to movies I love today, movies I'm glad they showed me because they thought I should see them, like THE BLACK STALLION and THE STING and A BRIDGE TOO FAR.
My parents took us to movies. Their parents worked all the time. My Dad said he remembered seeing one movie ever with his old man, an adaptation of Marjorie Keenan Rawlings' THE YEARLING. He said his dad fell asleep.
Knowing the hours my Dad favored, he probably wanted to be asleep by the time A PASSAGE TO INDIA ended, but he watched the movies we saw as a family. Dad wasn't often present, even if he was usually home. Maybe movies were a way to be present with us while also checked-out. Maybe that's wishful, romantic thinking.
No way to know, so I guess it doesn't matter, but my Dad took me to my first R-rated movie, MONTY PYTHON's LIFE OF BRIAN in 1980 and we were both present that night.
I knew the history going in, obviously, but I didn't expect it to be such a factor as I watched both films. Movies matter to me like that. I assume they do for everyone. Everyone who loves movies, anyway. Where I was, when it was, who I thought I was, all add or detract from the experience. I can't write about film and be clinical and detached.
I knew the history going in, obviously, but I didn't expect it to be such a factor as I watched both films. Movies matter to me like that. I assume they do for everyone. Everyone who loves movies, anyway. Where I was, when it was, who I thought I was, all add or detract from the experience. I can't write about film and be clinical and detached.
My family is broken, today, at this second. It doesn't look as if it will mend. I saw LIFE OF BRIAN and BLAZING SADDLES when our family existed. The Waits of Biddle Street. The Waits - they're from North Carolina.
I saw those movies WITH the Waits from North Carolina. Thanks to the gift of memory, imagination, and the digital video disc, I saw them with my family yesterday, too.
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